Super Unheroic

All the superheroes—Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and a couple of others—end up on an invisible aircraft carrier that flies through the sky. They catch Loki. Then the superheroes punch each other a lot instead of being friends, which seems pointless, since they can’t actually hurt each other. Loki escapes. We spend 20 minutes watching the superheroes try to save the flying aircraft carrier from crashing (which could have been avoided by not getting on a flying aircraft carrier in the first place). Eventually, New York is threatened by alien aircraft that look like giant caterpillars—which look suspiciously like the alien aircraft that attacked Chicago in Transformers 3. Spoiler alert: The feuding superheroes stop feuding! They get together as a team!

There’s a good line or two, a good performance or two (Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr.), and a couple of funny moments when the Hulk punches people unexpectedly; certainly I’ve seen worse than The Avengers. But as far as superhero movies go, it’s nowhere near as fun as Iron Man, nowhere near as powerful as The Dark Knight, and nowhere near as touching as Spiderman 2. 

So there.

John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic.