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Director Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity) does a better job than most others in the past ten years bringing a superhero franchise to the big screen. What makes The Avengers work are character and humor, the elements from which Whedon has constructed a downright rabid cult empire. None of the ensemble cast get slighted in screen-time and Whedon does an admirable job giving all the actors something to work with.

My interested gravitated most toward Hulk’s character, due largely to Mark Ruffalo’s performance, one that seems so much more appropriate than Edwared Norton’s in the last film iteration of the big green guy. Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) gets most of the laughs, but Whedon keeps him from stealing the show and has written the character to be a lot more tolerable than he was in the first Iron Man (his snarkiness started to annoy me in that one).

As much as I appreciate Whedon’s attention to character and humor, The Avengers does fall short in another unexpected way. The story (by Whedon) is surprisingly unoriginal, a weakness somewhat obscured by his decidedly tertiary treatment of it. I’d be hard pressed to explain the plot to you. I’m not sure who the bad guy, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), is, or what exactly he’s doing. And he’s not a particularly strong threat to our heroes. We’re supposed to be more intimidated by what he unleashes upon the world, which, as cool as it may be, is uncomfortably similar to the visceral stylings of Michael Bay’s Transformers 3. And Loki’s magic sceptre/sword thingamabob is utilized more than once as an all-too convenient plot device.

All through the film, I got the feeling Whedon hedged all his bets on character and said, ‘to hell with story.’ Not that it’d be easy to have it both ways here. The Avengers are a motely crew with a blend of human prowess, genetic enhancement, and mythic God-like powers. If you tried too hard to cement them in a cogent universe, much less a strong narrative, maybe it’d be doomed to disintegration. But if anyone could do it, I’d like to think Whedon was the one.