The Avengers

Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chirs Hemsworth), the Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) band together to defend the world from the dreams of conquest of Thor’s rogue brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and a warmongering alien race called the Chitauri; the focus of their conflict is a source of infinite energy called a Tesseract, stolen by Loki, coveted by the Chitauri, and the key to the defense of Earth. Writer-director Joss Whedon (working from Zak Penn’s story and the Marvel Comics characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby) is back in top form, and the movie is tremendous fun—lighter and faster than Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, and feeling an hour shorter.