As a completist, I'm forced to type up something about "The Avengers". Here goes. It's big, it's fun, it's bright, it's exciting, it's funny. There. All done. Hmmm...that doesn't seem complete really.

The most compelling characters are the Hulk and Iron Man. The Hulk is great here. But, and this is going to earn me zero comic book geek points, I find Ang Lee's Hulk monster more appealing. In that movie, you can knock him on his ass and shoot him up. He takes a second or two to shake it off and then he comes back for more. The "Hulk smash" scenes in that movie are intense and real. In "The Avengers", he's just another indestructible super-thing. Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner character is much preferable to Eric Bana's, though.

Robert Downey Jr. is once again perfect as Tony Stark. He wisecracks and outsmarts plenty here and is the one who holds the whole thing together.

Captain America seems a bit under powered being that Thor is effectively a god. They try to add a superpower for Cap with the shield, but he's relegated to fighting with the other second-tier Avengers crew. Speaking of Thor, he misses out on a lot here. Like Superman, he's just too powerful.

For as many characters as there are, everyone has their moments. The story does feel a bit under told, but the movie is so viscerally exciting and bombastic that the lack of clever or emotionally impacting moments can be forgiven. This is an ideal summer blockbuster.