Years from now, we'll look back at The Avengers and say how it changed the game for the superhero film genre. A film adaptation of superhero comic book rarely leads to a long-lived and successful film franchise. The biggest reason is most Hollywood scriptwriters approach the superhero film as either a soap opera (X-Men, Raimi's Spiderman) or a psychodrama (the Ang Lee Hulk, the Batman of both Burton and Nolan traditions). It just gets tedious and repetitive after a while. Then you'll have audiences flock to terrible parodies of superhero flicks like Green Lantern or Fantastic Four.

Sometimes it takes a genuine comic book fan like Joss Whedon to make a compelling case for thinking out of the box and daring to make a superhero film that resembles the pulp entertainment of the actual comic books we read. The Avengers develops its epic story arc in accordance with the serialised convention of American comics. For Whedon, the group dynamics of the Avengers team doesn't exist provide a series of soap opera or psychodrama payoff but serves as a canvass to be stretched, warped, reassembled, and transformed by the ongoing machinations of men and gods alike.

The result is a superhero group that plays like a 5-man band, where every member serves an indispensable role both functionally and emotionally. You won't feel as though you're watching a parade of cameo superheroes (say like X-Men 3 or Transformers) or a film where the need to give every character equal screen time leads to a script padded with laboured, artificial subplots. Thus despite running for over 140 minutes, The Avengers feels lean and disciplined and not at all rambling.

The Marvel franchise has certainly found its ideal director in Joss Whedon, whose long career in writing pulp entertainment for television gives him a unique perspective on the superhero film genre.