It’s always hard to watch a genre property that you adore and not want to go completely FanBoy on it. Having a large collection of First Gen Transformers still sitting in a box in my closet, I was thrilled with the first Transformers movie. The FanBoy in me was willing to gloss over the many problems with that movie and would tell people “you should go see it!”

I still am paying for that recommendation.

So, when seeing The Avengers, the temptation to let the FanBoy take control was, I must admit, rather massive. It would have been easy to simply say “SQUEEEEEEEE!” and pass out from the sheer excitement of finally getting to see what has been so epically hyped for the past four years. But, alas, the FanBoy must be tamed and a professional review must be given. As such, I say this:

SQUEEEEEEEEEE!

With all the marketing that surrounded this movie, I had to wonder if it could ever hope to live up to the expectations. I happily say it doesn’t just live up to them, it exceeds them. Joss Whedon deftly writes a screenplay that allows the viewer to get proper contexts for where their favorite heroes have been, how they have come together, how they are flawed, what they stand for. It’s difficult when faced with an ensemble cast to give all the characters enough to do (Hello, Star Trek, I am looking at you!). Whedon does this so smartly I am still wondering what muse he summoned to assist in the writing.

You never got too much of one character or not enough of another. Normally, when characters from so many movies come together, something has to be retconned to make a plot piece work or a detail from another movie must be “forgotten” to make this one make sense. Not so in this. Action, humor, character development…perfectly blended. The camerawork, one of the things sometimes missed as being its own character in the movie, was fantastic. The pacing was mostly perfect–a smiiiiidge slow for me in the beginning but, being fair, it was because the FanBoy simply wanted to see all his super heroes as soon as possible.

It’s easy to build an effects laden movie, throw it on the screen, and hope people attend…Michael Bay has made a career out of it. But, to smartly put a movie such as this together, to direct this cast, build these characters, bring this to life, and do it to appeal to the mass audience in a way that’s smart AND believable in the characters’ universe? That’s not easy stuff, folks. While watching Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye romp on the screen was epic, the true hero here was Whedon. Well done, sir. Well done.

And, folks, as usual, you reaaaally want to stay to the very end of the credits…

We also asked Sam Roberts, who attended a preview screening for her thoughts.  And she “Ditto”