The Avengers is now officially the highest grossing opening movie of all time. The Avengers very easily best the record set by last summer’s Harry Potter finale by well over 40 million dollars. It brought home over 200 million dollars in its US release opening weekend. The movie has turned over 700 million dollars internationally at this point. It has turned shawarma into an overnight culinary must have superstar thanks to a quick quip from Ironman. It has already been greenlit for a sequel. What else can the Avengers do? The simple answer is do a comic book movie correctly.
Joss Whedon, the man who brought us Buffy and Firefly was the man chosen for the job of bringing The Avengers to the big screen and he did not disappoint. The man’s dialogue and creative genius are perfect for the big screen adaptation of The Avengers. He has even written for Marvel Comics before, so he was already familiar with the brand. Whedon brought this assembled team of actors and brought out stellar performances from all of them, even Chris Evans, who I have criticized in the past for lackluster acting, delivered under Whedon’s direction.
The Avengers is a comic book movie done perfectly. The interaction between the characters was amazing. The action was spectacular. It all added up to a wonderful movie. The whole cast does a terrific job. Robert Downey, Jr. continues to be Tony Stark incarnate. Mark Ruffalo joins the cast as Bruce Banner after the studio had a falling out with Edward Norton and easily gave the best performance of anyone to play Banner and The Hulk in the several recent actors to portray the role. His interactions with Downey’s Stark are also amazing. They all work well together to bring it all home.
The special effects are top notch in this film and the visuals are breathtaking. The movie has a huge feel to it and it makes the ending confrontation all that more impressive. The conflict felt epic and really felt like you needed a whole team like The Avengers to save the day. The team will be back to save the world from another impending menace as the studio has already greenlit a sequel to the film. No surprise with as successful and critically acclaimed as the film has been.
The dialogue is comic book dialogue but Whedon makes it all make sense and is perfect. One liners galore fill the movie and Tony Stark’s quip about locating a shawarma place after a battle led to a massive increase in sales of the Mediterranean dish in the ensuing weekend. Some restaurants that serve the dish saw weekend sales go up by upwards of 80% over normal weekends.
Talking about much more of the film may result in spoilers going out, but The Avengers is a phenomenal movie. It proved comic book movies can be done right, make sense, not be cheesy, stay faithful to the product, and be critically acclaimed while making gobs of cash. The Avengers is a must see and is probably the greatest comic book movie of all time. Marvel has outdone themselves and they have many more potential winners in the pipeline. DC will really have to step up their game to compete in the movie game with Marvel. This is the movie by which all future comic book movies will be judged.
