Sevenfold avenged.

[uvula_fr_b4]

OK, OK, OK: I've got more than a few quibbles with the six movies featuring Marvel Comics characters that led up to the box office record-breaking colossus that is Marvel's The Avengers (particularly the 2003 Hulk, directed by Ang Lee and starring Eric Bana as Dr. Bruce Banner, and Iron Man 2) -- quibbles which essentially boil down to (a) a lack of respect for the personalities of the characters and (b) an absurd urge to present said super-fellas as quite a bit less super than they are in the comics -- but, just as with the Borg, resistance is futile: The Avengers (can we just dispense with the "Marvel's" part of the title?) is, IMHO, the best Marvel-related movie featuring super-powered characters, period. (I'll still give the nod to The Incredibles for being the best superhero movie; although, I gotta admit, it's a close call.)

How much did I enjoy The Avengers? Well, two pieces of evidence tell the tale:

1. For the first time ever, I am seriously contemplating watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer from start to finish. Previously, my longest exposure to Joss Whedon's oeuvre was the first two or three episodes of the late -- and apparently unlamented -- Dollhouse; I am now interested in seeing more of his work, particularly in light of his rep for giving the best lines and action sequences to his female characters. Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow ain't the Natasha Romanova that I know and love, but she ain't chopped liver either.
   
   
2. Despite my burning, raging, and manfully-throbbing desire to see Ridley Scott's Prometheus -- the sort-of prequel to the very first Alien movie (which Scott also directed) that opens in the U.S. on 8 June, and which has been promoted by a series of "the future is now" video clips on the Web -- I didn't think of the FREAKIN' AWESOME! trailer for it that played before The Avengers once the movie started. Well, after ten or fifteen minutes into the movie, anyway.
   

I also didn't think of the forthcoming (U.S. release date: 3 August) The Bourne Legacy movie starring Jeremy Renner, who played a very-different-from-the-comics Clint Barton/Hawkeye in The Avengers, even though I quite liked the first three Bourne movies and loved, loved, LOVED Renner in The Hurt Locker.

That's how much I feel for this movie, to paraphrase a cheesy song from the late 1970s by Ambrosia.

I've gotta see it again before it leaves the theatres. Maybe I'll take my youngest.