I like to hang out with dudes - they say what they mean, they like to have fun, and in a pinch they have a penis

Been watching: Walt Disney's Marvel's Joss Whedon's Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Avengers Assemble for the first time since the 3d outing in the cinema, and while some of the 3d stuff now comes across as superfluous - though still visually impressive - like the Black Widow/Hulk running into the screen, arrow POVs or tracking shots of NYC in the finale, it's interesting to note the change in the traditional Hollywood action movie narrative by shifting the usual slow middle hour of the film to the front to BOLLOCKS I AM ONLY NOW GETTING THAT MARK RUFFALO LOOKS LIKE BILL BIXBY IN INCREDIBLE HULK escalate from sci-fi-tinged espionage in the Nick Fury scenes to the more outre superheroic visuals as each character is (re)introduced old-school Marvel style before the big fights kick in.
The NYC invasion obviously dominates the film more than the easy-money throwdowns like Thor/Iron Man, Thor/Hulk or Arrow Man/Token Woman, but for some reason the stupid stuff everyone else was complaining about at the time only struck me during this rewatch, like the film really trying far too hard to make Arrow Man seem as interesting as the others (although fair play I think this was a problem first time around for me, too, exacerbated by his thin character and unconvincing face turn at the end of the second act) by giving him context-specific arrows that do literally anything te scene requires, or that the alien army's plan of invasion isn't to establish a beach-head but to run at everything in multiple directions shooting and screaming and all doing their own thing while their enemies do the sensible stuff like team up and establish a perimeter to create a bottleneck/killzone at the single extremely narrow and vulnerable point of entry to US airspace, or that the nuke for some reason waits until it hits something before detonating like it was a rocket rather than a nuclear weapon, and the aliens deus ex off-switch was old hat in 90s cartoons but I suppose it puts a definite endpoint on the invasion if they all drop dead rather than have to be mopped up by the national guard for weeks afterwards in various hidey-holes.  Well, I enjoyed or didn't notice all that stupidity first time around, anyway, so my takeaway here is that I need to buy a 3d tv as clearly 3d stops me noticing/caring about these things.
"The Avengers are dangerous!" epilogues were admittedly a bit self-parodic, but it was nice to see the post-credits stuff finally, and my biggest gripe is really that the film doesn't have much of a definitive soundtrack theme for the team.  Not essential, but would've been nice if they went to the trouble of a bit of aural branding.