Nick Fury and SHIELD are trying to harness the Tesseract (aka the cosmic cube) for its unlimited energy when Loki appears and steals it.   He gains control of the minds of several personnel including Dr. Erik Selvig and Agent Clint Barton.   The destruction of one of SHIELD's bases leads Nick Fury to revive the Avengers Initiative and bring together Iron Man, the Hulk, Captain America, and the Hulk.   The Black Widow is sent to bring in Dr. Banner to track down the Tesseract as the new team tries to figure out what Loki's game is.  Loki wants to use the Tesseract to bring an alien army to take over Earth.   The team must figure out to work together to save Earth from the Alien invasion in what is one of the best movies based on Marvel comic books.

Joss Whedon is able to create several moments of humor, develop multiple characters and give them their own piece of the story, and put together a cohesive storyline with action scenes you can easily follow.   The Black Widow is given much more to do in this movie than IRON MAN 2 as she is given one of the more developed arcs of the film while Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk are more rewarding as characters if you have followed the previous movies.   The story is a little thin and somewhat predictable, but all of the character moments and quip worthy dialogue.  Still THE AVENGERS is an enjoyable ride if you haven't seen the other movies that led up to it.  

Stay around to the end credits for two bonus scenes (the first revealing the big bad guy behind it all who might figure into THOR 2 even though I wish the mysterious big bad was involved in a SILVER SURFER or GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movie).   The music score by Alan Silvestri help sell part of this fun superhero extravaganza.  I hope the big box office returns will lead Marvel to ask Joss Whedon to part of the second AVENGERS film and give Whedon more power to do more of the big movie projects he always wants to do (like another FIREFLY movie for example).  THE AVENGERS is a fun summer popcorn ride.   I hope the next Marvel Comics films are just as fun.

this movie review is (c)5-5-2012 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com