Avengers

movies:  I, along with every other human on earth apparently, went to the opening weekend of the summer's first official blockbuster, Avengers.  It was just announced earlier today that Avengers smashed the previous opening weekend record held by Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2, becoming the first movie ever to hit the 200 million mark on opening weekend.  Blockbuster indeed.
Avengers is a movie that has been years in the making.  This is the sixth Marvel movie to be released in the past five years, all of which have been made aiming at the ultimate goal of making Avengers.  The heroes of these movies, who make up the Avengers are Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America, along with Nick Fury, Black Widow, and Hawkeye, who all had appearances in those movies.  And let me say it did not disappoint one bit.  It was an extravaganza of stars and action and humor and special effects and heroes fighting for their moment in the sun (much like the actors themselves a little bit I am sure).  All ego joking aside, it was a thoroughly entertaining movie with a story that tied together the previous movies together very nicely into one coherent story.
And despite the fact that the action takes center stage for a large portion of the movie, the credit for the actual quality of the movie has to go to its actors and its writer/director, comic book ubernerd Joss Whedon.  Whedon's success has largely been on tv shows or labor of love projects such as the recently released horror romp Cabin In The Woods.  It was questioned whether or not he could make the jump to being a summer tentpole director.  Not only did he do a fine job, but he also seemed to separate himself from the more established hollywood directors to helm comic book movies (Christopher Nolan notwithstanding of course) thanks to his love of the genre.  His love of comic books bled through the movie and made it as fun anything in the Avengers franchise.  He also realized that because this movie was supposed to be fun he was also able to inject the movie with his trademark quippy humor and uniquely silly use of the English language.  This linguistic trademark was also a concern.  People feared it would sound a little too cheesy coming out of "real movie actors".  This concern was put to rest with some of Robert Downey Jr.'s and Samuel L. Jackson's funniest work in years.  The only person who unfortunately didn't get to take part in the comedy too much was Chris Evans who plays Captain America.  While I understand that would have been a huge departure I kind of wish it could have happened.  Chris Evans is just so damn funny.  I swear he is the best meathead comedian out there.  Even Scarlet Johansson got to show that she can play a legit hero, no thanks in part to Whedon's love of pretty young girls with superpowers.
Avengers is loaded with memorable moments and thrilling action.  There are also a few surprise.  I know there are apparently more Avengers related movies to come but this still felt like the culmination.  It was the biggest and the flashiest and the funniest and had the most awesomely insane threat that there is no way anyONE could take it down.   It had to take seven superheroes to defeat the insanity of this movie.
Whew, I made it through this without getting into specifics just in case anyone who reads this happened to not see it opening weekend, which maybe impossible since it made the totally outrageous sum of 200 million dollars.
I forgot to mention when talking about the cast that Mark Ruffalo did such a fine job stepping for Edward Norton as Bruce Banner that by the end of the movie he is the only Hulk.  That was a great choice that possibly made the movie, given his status as the only unknown entity.