iB::Topic::The Avengers

The All-Star Game of modern superhero extravaganzas, The Avengers is humongous, the film Marvel and its legions of fans have been waiting for. It's hard to imagine that anyone with an appetite for the trademark's patented brand of fantasy, effects, mayhem and strangely dressed he-men will be disappointed; not only does this eye-popping 3D display of visual effects fireworks feature an enormously high proportion of action scenes, but director Joss Whedon has adroitly balanced the celebrity circus to give every single one of the superstar characters his or her due. Worldwide box office returns will be, in a word, Marvelous.

Over the past several years, Marvel has, with accelerated speed, expanded its cinematic repertoire of over-muscled, generally double-identitied heroes not otherwise encumbered by exclusive contracts with other studiosâ€”most notably The Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America--to arrive at the point where this summit meeting of superhuman good guys could be assembled. (A prominent relative, Spider-Man, has his own reboot coming up this summer.) After this, the characters will go their separate ways (Iron Man 3 starts shooting next month, with second chapters of Thor and Captain America set to roll within the year) before gathering again before too many movie summers pass. With the bundle this one will make, the pressure will be on make it happen sooner rather than later.

As creatively variable and predictably formulaic as the Marvel films have been, this one will not only make the core geek audience feel like it's died and gone to Asgard but has so much going for it that many non-fans will be disarmed and charmed. This is effects-driven, mass appeal summer fare par excellence, that sought-after rare bird that hits all the quadrants, as marketing mavens like to say. As enormous as the production is, though, the appeal of the ensemble cast makes a crucial difference; you get enough but not too much of each of them and they all get multiple scenes to themselves to shine.

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It's clamorous, the save-the-world story is one everyone's seen time and again, and the characters have been around for more than half a century in 500 comic book issues. But Whedon and his cohorts have managed to stir all the personalities and ingredients together so that the resulting dish, however familiar, is irresistibly tasty again. A quick coda reveals, to well-versed fans at least, who the new adversary in the next installment will be, underlining a reality as absolute as the turning of the Earth: Especially after this, Marvel movies will go on and on and on.