The Avengers

How can a film like The Avengers ever go wrong? It doesn’t just get one or two, but an entire league of superheroes together, gives each their rightful space, time, moment, scenes and dialogues on screen and yet doesn’t stray from its larger aim: to dazzle and entertain.

The world is in danger. Its adversary is the twisted Loki (Hiddleston) threatening to unleash a “potential global catastrophe” with the destructive Tessaract, otherwise harnessed as a source of unlimited sustainable energy. It’s for Nick Fury (Jackson), the head of the peace group Shield, to band the superheroes together to fight Loki under his “Avengers Initiative”. Helping him out is the Russian spy Black Widow (Johansson), who puts significant phone calls on hold to smash villains, and Agent Coulson who, when not building the superhero team, is into vintage trading cards.

The superhero group is comprised of Dr Bruce Banner (Ruffalo), lost in the slums of Calcutta, who has to reignite the huge, green, raging monster within him—we also know him as The Hulk—that he’s been trying to subdue. Then, there’s the godlike Thor (Hemsworth) who sports a deadly potent hammer and harbours some unresolved sibling issues with his half-brother Loki. Captain America (Evans), the boy scout, has returned to the world after being frozen for decades only to find that the world has become stranger than the one he had left behind. The flashiest, most “volatile and self-obsessed”, polarising and often caustically sarcastic of the lot is Tony Stark (Downey Jr), also described as the “genius playboy, philanthropist”. The scenes of Stark getting out of (and into) his Ironman gear themself make for sheer visual poetry. His banter with his lady love (Gwyneth Paltrow in a brief appearance) is, alone, worth the price of admission.

Yes, there’s the action, thrills, chases, chills and sfx galore, especially in the climax as we find New York taken over by shark-like space-ships and Loki’s villainous army. But what works the best for Avengers is its essentially simple, straightforward, frill-free, classic story-telling.

With emotions that touch a chord and a sense of humour that keeps you smiling. Like The Hulk wondering if he had hurt anyone on ground after falling from the sky—only to be told that he had only scared a few pigeons. Or Stark offering Loki a drink in the thick of their duel.

Then there are some great, crowd-winning one-liners like “Wars are not won by sentiments but soldiers”. Or when Loki tells the crowd he has brought down to its knees: “You were made to be ruled”, and a brave old man dares to challenge: “Not by men like you.” After a long time, here’s a Hollywood film that gets wolf-whistles and catcalls in Indian theatres. Never mind that the ragged Indian child shown in the Calcutta slums spoke to Banner in Hindi with a thick American accent.