With the sheer amount of hype surrounding this film in the run up to it’s release, starting with the first Iron Man movie a few years ago, there is no way it could possibly live up to it. Is there? To someone who isn’t familiar with the run-up movies (Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man 2, Captain America) this film will probably just seem like a loud, fast mess. Thankfully Marvel have been quite clever in communicating that these films are pretty much a series to be followed, and as such I think most people view them that way, so the confusion issue shouldn’t be a problem. The film starts pretty much as a continuation of Captain America (and possibly Thor), and my only criticism was that at the beginning of the movie I felt like I had missed something, and spend a couple of minutes trying to recap in my mind the ending of Captain America. This isn’t such a big problem, and made me simply think I should have re-watched the Captain’s movie before coming to see this one. For the rest of the film, however, I watched it with the same sense of awe and enjoyment as I did many years ago with another highly anticipated movie, Star Wars. I think there has been only one movie in the interim that affected me in the same way; the first Matrix film. With so many characters to manage, I was expecting this film to be pretty much Iron Man 3 with some guest stars, but this isn’t the case at all. Joss Whedon (love him) manages to spend time with each of the major characters and develops each one during the story, so they all have something to do and somewhere to grow. You can tell that it has been created by someone who loves and understands comic books. The Avengers contains all the elements you would find in a comic, such as pitting one Superhero against another to see who would win. Comics are pretty much all about this character versus that character, and this film joyfully does the same thing. We get Thor versus Iron Man, Thor versus The Hulk, The Hulk versus Black Widow, and most laugh out loud of all, The Hulk versus Loki. These confrontations aren’t the main story obviously, but when these smaller battles are placed within the bigger story, they make complete sense, and actually add to the story and character development. The film grabs you and keeps you with it, with the action building and building until you reach the climax and are whooping and punching the air merely at the sight of a damaged “A” on the side of a building. Whedon’s directing is masterful. So does The Avengers live up to the staggering amount of hype surrounding it? Oh yes! Absolutely!