I am guessing opening internationally first has more to do with pirating than the fear of bad reviews.
Loved it, going to go see it a second time today. Between *Avengers *and Cabin In The Woods, it’s a very good time to be a Whedon fan.
My favorite line has to be, “What’s my secret? I’m ALWAYS angry.”
Yep, I think that line got the most cheers in the entire movie.
TBH, I was sold when I found out Hiddleston auditioned because he was in a play with Kenneth Branaugh who told him to try out for his new movie, Thor. That much British has to be awesome!
I loved him in the role because he reminded me a lot of one of my favorite actors, Mark Lindsay Chapman (circa the early 90s, when he played Dr. Arcane and completely stole the show on the cheesy old “Swamp Thing” TV series). If they’d made this movie 20 years ago I could easily have seen Chapman playing Loki.
In Branagh’s directorial voice-over for Thor, he gives out a huge amount of information about why he chose most of the people in the cast. He did an amazing job with that, even if he did spend a predictable amount of time shining up his own reputation.
And, I really loved the bit at the end with the Hulk
treating Loki like a gorilla with an ugly suitcase. The look on Loki’s face afterwards is priceless.
I’ve always wanted to see that in a movie.
Saw it last night–loved it!
I was especially surprised at how much I liked Black Widow in this. She was given some good character scenes (with Bruce and Loki) and her hand-to-hand fight scenes were well done. I was worried how two non-powered characters like Black Widow and Hawkeye would fit in with the others, but I think they were incorporated very well. Their inclusion, I would say, makes the story better by “humanizing” the team a bit. I was never worried about any harm coming to the big guys. Heck, Hulk and Thor are nigh-invulnerable. But I was never sure whether Black Widow or Hawkeye would be alive at the movie’s end. And I thought Scarlett Johansson did pretty well–I’ve always found her acting to be kind of wooden in the past.
Current estimates are that The Avengers will have an opening weekend domestic box office of 200.3 million dollars! That smashes the record set by the last Harry Potter movie ($169M). The Avengers has also taken in over $440M in foreign markets.
And it explained all of those little secret
smiles all through the movie, which brought a wonderful sense of closure.
Usually, with an actress as hot as Johansson, I have a hard time objectively judging her acting talent, since I’m too distracted just looking at her. Her scene with Loki, though, her acting shone through.
Saw it. Enjoyed it. The craft is on the screen - Whedon’s craft. I can see the film getting recognized.
My oldest son insists that I see this movie. I don’t like superhero movies or action movies or movies with lots of CGI, but I love Joss Whedon. Would I like this movie? The kid would be pleased that he recommended something I liked, our tastes are so different.
I think they down-graded the va-va-voom quality of her costume for this movie (possibly because she needed to be wearing more of a Standard Issue Shield outfit), which helped with that. I remember, in Favreau’s voiceover for Iron Man 2, he said when she first showed up on set in the Black Widow costume, everything just kind of… ground to a halt. His voiceover just sort of trailed off in the middle of a sentence.
It’s definitely Joss in the way he handles the humanity of the characters, the dialogue and interpersonal dynamics are just delicious.
It is all three of those things you don’t like, but it’s just about the most grounded such a thing an over the top thing can be. Besides, assuming you like Buffy, that’s pretty much a Joss style superhero story.
You may be a little lost, but I can’t imagine anyone flat out not liking this movie.
Saw it today, the 3D version just because I didn’t want to wait 30 minutes for the normal version.
Definitely buying this one when it hits blu-ray.
And a big HA HA to the nephew who couldn’t be arsed to call me before the movie (see the May rant thread in the pit for full laughs at his expense).
Guess I’ll have to wait a while to find out how a guy with bow and arrow can contribute to a group of super-powered people.
Precisely.
You will. Also a 120 pound woman with a pistol.
I thought it was more of a “we got 'em” fist bump gone bad…
It worked for us. 
…to a movie made in 1936! 
One thing that impressed me was that Black Widow wasn’t scared of any man… except Bruce. You could tell that the Hulk freakin’ *terrified *her- most likely because she knew that he was the one man she couldn’t control or kill.
Yeah, I just watched it for the second time, and I picked up on so many things I missed the first time- and this was one. On the second viewing, it’s obvious that he’s not on a knife edge- he’s on the other side, making it work *for *him. It even explains the final scene of the previous Hulk movie.
That scene was so incredible how they made Loki’s body contort like a ragdoll…and like you said, that look of utter shock on his face as he lay in that concrete trench created by his body being slammed over and over by Hulk was just amazingly funny.
Man I loved that movie. I felt the same way watching it as I did a child in the late 1970’s watching the superheroes from the Hall Of Justice fighting against the Legion Of Doom.
You know what? That might not be a bad idea for the next movie for the Avengers to fight a coalition of bad guys instead of a single, super-powerful one. I guess the X-Men kind of already covered that ground, but I could see it working for an Avengers movie.
If you are reading and haven’t gone and watched it yet…GO! Its so very well done.