In the hands of your average director, The Avengers could have been ridiculous. There are long stretches of conversation where superheroes just talk to each other in small spaces, loads of complicated special effects, and the film is a whopping 2 hours and 22 minutes. On top of that, The Avengers is charged with bringing together three heroes from their respective blockbusters, and giving them some sort of likable chemistry together with new characters we don’t know all that much about.