The Avengers compelled me to write this review immediately after seeing the film, which is totally not my style

I've read the backlash against The Avengers by the Serious Movie Advocates like A.O. Scott and Andrew O'Heir, and at my most disenchanted moments, I sympathize with them. However, it's a mark of the success of The Avengers that when I came out of the theater, I had turned into a fan of the purest, most obnoxious order... I wanted to go back to their reviews and post snarky responses about how they obviously didn't give it a chance, and they just didn't get it, and no matter how even-handed they sounded, I felt offended by the sneering subtext in their meta-criticism.

And as much as I find Samuel L. Jackson's snap at A.O. Scott to be childish, I understand where it came from. Just watching the movie made me want to stand up and cheer for it... I'd imagine that working on the film, acting the part of inspirational supervisor, can turn you into an unequivocal defender of its honor and integrity. Even the "splatter" graphic beside some Rotten Tomatoes reviews was enough to piss me off when I got home from the cinema. This is a testament to the very primal effectiveness of Whedon's film.

If I listed all the great things about the Avengers, I would certainly mark myself as a partisan. But I can't go and write a detached, ruminating reflection on its strengths and weaknesses, either, because I would severely understate its appeal. It's a film that feels great, even through all the spoilers, all the predictable twists, and all the formulas. So I'll take an entirely different angle in reviewing it: I'll list all the ways it COULD have gone wrong, and didn't.  All the pitfalls it managed to avoid.

NOTE - Minor Spoilers Below

1 - sidelining any particular character, either in terms of plot-significance, or in terms of screen time

With Captain America and Tony Stark as the two sides of guiding authority, and Hawkeye and Black Widow acting as sharpened but compromised tools of team cohesion, the other Avengers are free to take on rogue personalities and profound narrative significance. In fact, arguably, Banner and Thor are both the best-rendered characters and the most interesting individual stories within this omnibus. Reegardless, all six Avengers are absolutely given their due, which is a lot to ask in such a broad ensemble film.

As other critics have pointed out, the dialog is also written with remarkable agility, giving each character a unique voice that becomes clear immediately and remains refreshingly consistent. I won't harp on it. Joss Whedon knows how to handle characters.

2 - failing to create sufficient tension and chemistry between the protagonists

A number of critics point out how important it is that the Avengers have to face one another for a while before they get around to saving the world. It does indeed entertain the old comic book impulse of asking, "Who would win? Thor, Iron Man, or the Hulk?" But saying it that way makes it sound like a gimmick, a mere necessity, checked off a comic book fanservice checklist. It's not.

These moments showcase the primal appeal of comic books and give it a platform to become universal. In particular, when Thor's hammer strikes Captain America's shield, or when Iron Man starts showing signs of distress in Thor's grip... these moments are the small climaxes and reactions that keep the adolescent male imagination engaged.

For the record, the writers of The Avengers also manage to create a surprisingly subtle ecosystem of emotional relationships between the heroes. By the end of the second act, tensions within the group have risen to dangerous levels, but this tension is always ambient, an inexact collision of big egos and cross-purposes. If the writers had reduced it to simple binaries at any time -- authority versus renegade, confrontation versus surrender, interpersonal vendettas, etc -- it would have cheapened it. Instead, the characters' relationships retain their complexity and ambiguity throughout the film.

3 - failing to create a central, compelling antagonist

Loki was not thoroughly sketched out in The Avengers. A good deal of this work was left to Thor; The Avengers treated him as a fairly generic fascist supervillain. Nonetheless, Tom Hiddleston does justice to the role, giving Loki the burning, resentful self-importance that the character needs to set the end of the world in motion. His sheer malice gives a special endearing significance to all his confrontations and evil speeches, and it makes for a whole array of great moments.

4 - failing to raise the stakes enough for us to care

Throughout the course of the extended climax, there are a whole range of things for us to be vicariously protective of. The world as a whole... New York, which is a focal point for an alien invasion force, threatened by both the invaders and by its own supposed protectors... Tony Stark's life, which he offers as a chip in an intergalactic gamble... and Tony Stark's love for Pepper Potts, which is tapped as a corollary to his potential sacrifice. There is a great deal on the table by the end of The Avengers, and the film insists on our continued investment.

5 - not giving us enough huge, city-blasting special effects

Okay, so they obviously weren't going to make this mistake.

A good deal of the credit for The Avengers goes to the film for reasons that are hard to nail down. In particular, it balanced dialog and action in an elusive way -- somehow it functioned as a "screwball comedy" tucked within a constant stream of combat set-pieces, as if a personable, charismatic virus had infected a Michael Bay film. To fans of comic books, this creates a universe in cosmic harmony, because we're used to a medium where people manage to make long expository speeches in the middle of hectic combat. Its overstated dramatic moments (big speeches, flashes of sentimentality) also resonated with that comic book artificiality, which becomes a worthy aesthetic in its own right when it's applied with conviction.

The Avengers was so committed to its audience and so respectful of its constraints that it might feel disappointingly pedestrian if it's not taken in a certain spirit. However, pedestrian it is not. For a 2.5-hour film, it moves incredibly fast. For a massive high-flying actioner, it's amazingly human. And for an obvious ensemble franchise entry, it's strikingly intimate. Whedon was given a pile of bricks and mortar, and out of it, he fashioned a sculpture that respects the materials, and at the same time transcends them, and all our expectations.

Thor: Get up on your soap box, Blondie!

Thor! Critical response: widely assessed as "definitely good enough," except for a few particular critics, who totally couldn't get into it. The most unique film of the decade? Or of the superhero era? Or of the summer? Or of the month? Probably no, on all counts. And yet, it was worth making, and it's worth seeing -- not just because it worked as a film (it did), but also because it's a wise decision, fellow movie-watchers, to experience this critical part of the Avengers saga that's been developing over the last few years.

Now, I know that a lot of people think this film is very pedestrian, and only really functions as a long-form preview of the Avengers movie. There is some merit to this criticism, but don't take it too seriously... just because it's part of a slowly-developing mythology, and a lot of the film is hitched to this larger, half-formed "Avengers" thing, it doesn't mean it's a bad film. Or even an incomplete one. Nay; in fact, I think one of Thor's accomplishments is that it's both a significant part of a massive whole, and also a self-contained, fully-realized burst of myth-making in its own right.

The film is not ground-breaking. It hits a series of essential comic book beats... a half-hearted romance, a spiritual awakening on the part of the protagonist, an apotheosis, a return to the fray to redeem himself. Most of these are just monomythic tropes, retrofitted to the comic book genre, just as they've been retrofitted to pretty much every other action movie since the dawn of time. Then, it's also got some more precise parallels to its Avengers predecessor, Iron Man: a warlike playboy undergoes a personal struggle that leads him to a place of newfound respect and compassion; he takes on the traditional Hero role, and ultimately has to defeat some monster linked to his own past... Thor battling his brother, Tony Stark his old business partner. Yes, it's a formula, as also seen in Spiderman, Batman Begins, The Lion King, etc etc. Thor commits no crime in adopting the template.

We all know that narrative innovation is not why you're seeing this film. There are other, very good reasons to go see it. First and foremost, Thor nails a very particular tone in both the character and the setting. It's a wide-eyed adolescent idealism and naivety, something that plays as mythic/Shakespearean melodrama in Asgard, and then seems a bit clumsy when displaced into New Mexico. It's all about the fact that Helmsworth's Thor is the perfect virile man, with just a touch of boyishness, and a dash of tenderness to endear him to the female population that he's set to win over. The overserious myth undermines itself in the awkward details, Kenneth Branaugh's touches of craftsmanship. "We drank, we fought, he made his ancestors proud."

The character AND the setting. This is important. That "stay golden" feeling permeates the whole film, from the artificial golden Olympian walls right into the center of the family conflict, with all that courtly drama and those epic speeches and heroic posturing. We come to understand Thor because we see where he comes from. Nobody from those hallowed halls could be cynical, or jaded, or shackled in self-consciousness. This is a land where everyone is regal, and even here, Thor is the son of the king!

So it works. All by itself, as a movie, it works. It's a routine action romp with some big aluminum costumes and grand CGI sets, lots of lens flares, and the appeal of both an outrageous epic courtly drama and an endearing fish-out-of-water action comedy. The same character inhabits both worlds, so ultimately this hero-coming-of-age theme bridges the gap between them.

But it also works as part of something larger. And though you may hate that you seem to be paying for part of something unfinished... really, it's not so bad.

Did you ever watch wrestling? Before every major match, each wrestler gets an entrance sequence. He comes marching out, accompanied by a theme song, and for the bigger matches, there's often a whole stage show, a band, fireworks, a gospel choir, a massive Alice Cooper-style skeleton. For those few minutes, that wrestler basks in the glory of his own identity, merged with his surroundings, establishing his own mythical space.

Or, on a smaller scale, consider the recent character-based trailers for X-Men: First Class, providing individual bios for Banshee, Havok, Beast, and Mystique. You don't have to just jam all the major players into some grand scheme that reduces each of them to a particular role, a narrative chess piece. Without his little trailer, Banshee might always just be a cog in Professor X's wheel (pun less relevant for this film, but whatever). I think the studio owes him this little bit of promotion, a little personal space where his light can shine.

This is what the Thor movie is, in terms of the Avengers. It's an entrance, a character bio -- a platform for Thor to represent himself, where we can fully understand and invest in his character. Same as Iron Man was for Tony Stark. Same as Captain America will be for what's-his-name.

These three individual movies will allow Marvel to set up the cosmic relationship between these three elemental forces. Tony Stark, the savvy, smart-ass pragmatist, represents business and technology, the human technocracy at work in the modern world. Thor, with his wide-eyed Olympian power, will represent the mythic human spirit, man's timelessness and capacity to overcome our puny physical limitations. Captain America, the boy-scout, the nationalist, will represent patriotism, the collective historical spirit of pride and leadership and purpose. Technology - Spirit - Patriotism. And if the Hulk is in there, he will have to represent nature, the animalistic rage of the untamed world, which man finds within himself when he gives free rein to his fury.

Iron Man was already set up. Now we've got Thor, fully fleshed out and forged in his Olympian hyperreality. Next, we need Captain America, rising up from the smoke of a bygone World War. Then we'll be ready to see them get put together, directed by the Wheedster, and the fireworks can begin.