Kurt Loder Reviews The Avengers

More than anything else, writes Kurt Loder, The Avengers is a triumph for Joss Whedon, who wrote the script and directed the movie and is now, after years of smaller-scale wizardry in the fantasy genre, firmly installed in the top echelon of the Hollywood big time. Without his expert ministrations, the picture might have been just another comic-book superhero exercise. True, several of the characters he was handed here—Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and the Hulk—were already well-established among fan folk by nearly 50 years of Marvel comics and in more recent blockbuster franchise films of their own. But herding them together into one big super-pileup—and under the closely controlling hand of Marvel Studios—required a gifted traffic cop; and Whedon, who demonstrated a knack for ensemble maneuvering in his TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, was, as we now see, the ideal man for the job.