Obviously I walked in with sky-high expectations. Especially with the reactions the past couple of days, I wasn't sure it could meet them. It completely blew me away.
The story is a fun one, pretty basic plot structure with perhaps a few unexpected, shall we say, "tweaks". But the movie's heart lies in its characters. It is a true ensemble, in every sense of the word. Every character feels so fleshed out and three dimensional, you won't need to have seen the previous flicks to appreciate it.
Iron Man is Iron Man. He's sassy and snarky and just when you think he's a total dick he does something so selfless and noble. If you had a problem with his performance and arc in Iron Man 2 because he was never "off", he never let the stakes get to him and had a moment of sincerity, you won't have that problem here. RDJ's performance here meshes the fun and the sincere so well, it's great and it's hilarious and it's memorable in all the right ways.
I know some people found Evans' performance in Captain America bland. He was very Superman-esque: stoic, unflappable, heroic. Dare I say, pouty. True to the character but not necessarily what some audiences are looking for. Here, he's allowed to play. His interactions with these characters bring out all the best in him, both the strong noble leader and the fun jokey action hero. His arc in the movie is clear and it pays off in big ways in the film's third act.
Ruffalo's Hulk is fantastic. I'll just be blunt with it. He makes some very interesting decisions performance wise that give the character a very interesting dichotomy between an uneasiness and a total comfort. He's the one who you'd probably think wouldn't fit in a team movie, but the chemistry Ruffalo builds with the rest of the cast makes it seem so... inevitable. Huge crowd pleaser, people who hated the previous Hulk movies will love him here.
Thor is basically stepping in right where his solo movie left off. That character and that performance from Hemsworth was so effortlessly entertaining, such a star making turn. His chemistry with the others is so much fun, his moments with Hulk specifically deliver in big ways and he is never once shown as anything other than a powerhouse. I know that's been a concern
Scarlett Johansson was given nothing to do in Iron Man 2. I'll just come right out and say it. She was handed a character with no personality and one action scene and told to deliver. Well, not here. Black Widow is as integral to the team as the four big names. Her backstory is delved into a bit, and it's not as clean as most superhero's are. Johansson gives a very memorable performance and people who couldn't care less about her previously will probably be singing a different tune.
Can't really say much about Hawkeye and his role in this film without dipping the toes into spoilers. But even though he's not necessarily involved with the team through the whole movie, Renner has you cheering him on as much as the others when he finally is. You won't once question why a guy with a flippin' bow and arrow is so highly regarded by people with such influence and power.
Tom Hiddleston's Loki is a monster. He just is. He goes from pontificating about lowly humanity to snarling and stabbing and killing with such ease. It's very much an extension of his performance from Thor. But he's moved on from the cuddly confused frost giant in Thor. Dude's a bad mother****er.
Samuel L. Jackson is given the unenviable task of playing a character that is a riff on himself. He handles it with aplomb. He creates a character who feels powerful but helpless, a man in charge who ultimately has no say. It's the first time I've seen him truly act in a decade. Welcome back, Sam.
Smulders, Gregg, Skarsgard and Paltrow are all good in supporting roles. They have their moments and they handle them well. But this is an 8-man show. No one's overshadowing the big guns here.
The film is structured wonderfully, it's a bit of a slow start but once it gets going it is breakneck, relentless, nonstop, brutal. The third act is like nothing you've ever seen in a superhero movie. It's the ending to one of the Transformers sequels, if said Transformers sequel had taken the time to build stakes and characters and made said final act feel earned. It's long but it flies by. You'll never want it to end.
Flaws? It's got them. What film doesn't? There are 3 or so scenes set in space early on that are fairly cheesy. It's a bit of a slow-starter, the first 20 or so minutes are mostly build-up and not as well paced as the rest of the film. There were 2 camera angles that felt wonky to me, and a single moment of CGI that felt off.
9.5/10. Brilliant. Can't wait to see it again at midnight on May 4th.