Avengers (finally!): It's weird to say that the best thing about a movie is that it's thematically and structurally coherent and to mean that as a compliment, but, well, here we are. Whedon knocked the ensemble thing out of the park, as he does, and the end result is a sequel to four very different movies that manages to feel true to all of them. I never dreamed that was possible. Oh, and the teaser: FUCK YES. That was the first big comic story I read and I still have a soft spot for it. Cannot. Wait.
Despite having the best action sequence of the series (and holy crap that was a fun fight), it's still in the middle of the pack overall - behind Iron Man and Captain America, ahead of Incredible Hulk, waaaaaay ahead of Iron Man 2, maybe a bit better than Thor (which is no insult). It felt....not "forced," really, but deliberate. You could see Whedon putting in the effort to make all those moving pieces fit together. And they did! But not transparently so, at least until the end. That last fight, like I said, was the best of the series. It's big and dumb and goes on forever and has a Bayian level of explosions, but it's gleeful. You can feel everybody thinking "okay, we've done everything possible to justify this, now we just cut everything loose." Team-up attacks, special effects out the wazoo, Hawkeye in his element, the Best Fight Ever™....just a hell of a lot of fun.
Oh, and Widow and Hawkeye were shockingly well done. I figured they'd just be tossed in but Widow justified her presence on the team and then some in the Helicarrier segment, and Hawkeye...well, between this and EMH, I think Hawkeye's hax has become a genuine superpower.
