The Age of Avengers

Actually, I spent most of a gray, dreary day getting through my 7 hour shift at work. It was off and on all afternoon, and I suspect it'll be like that for the rest of this week and next week as well. Easter is this Sunday; the beginning of the month is tomorrow. Most kids will probably be off for spring break starting Thursday or Friday. Thankfully, there really weren't too many problems. My relief was late. Thankfully, it died down enough by 6 that I was able to shut down and get out on time.

I got lucky with the weather both ways. It was just cloudy when I went to work. It must have rained fairly hard sometime in the afternoon. I saw the sky get dark around 2 PM. By 6 PM, the sky was lighter, and the rain was down to a light shower. I was barely wet when I got home. The rain has been off and on since.

Spent the rest of the evening eating scrambled eggs with mushrooms, spinach, and cherry tomatoes for dinner while finishing The Avengers, which I started this morning before work. Some of the most popular Marvel comic book characters - Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr), Captain America (Steve Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johassen), The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Helmsworth), and archery master Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) - come together to fight Thor's silver-tongued brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and the army of aliens he's called up via the Tesseract, an opening in space. The group, aided by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and his S.H.I.E.L.D agents, has to stop Loki and close the Tesseract before New York gets torn to shreds. Their biggest battle, though, is trying to figure out how six incredibly different people can figure out how to work together as a team, without killing each other before Loki does.

I know this isn't the darkest or most creative superhero movie around...but darned if it doesn't WORK. It helps that it's hilarious, with quips being fired off from just about every character on the screen. (Heck, the Hulk gets my favorite line in the movie.) It manages to tie all of the loose ends from previous movies, and even creates a few. My favorite characters are still the sweet Rodgers as the hero-out-of-time Captain and Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, a fairly good-natured scientist who is funny and charming...until you get him angry, and he unleashes his really, really big and angry side. The motion capture animation they did to make Ruffalo the Hulk was amazing.

Definitely a no-brainer, especially if you're a comics fan or a fan of the previous movies. The next one, Age of Ultron, is due out in a month. I may actually attempt to see this one in the theater this time. I hope it's just as much fun as the original.