Movie Review- The Avengers (2012)

There has been a lot of buzz about this movie, and for good reason. The Avengers has been anticipated by Marvel fans for four years now since the end credits of Iron Man. 
The Avengers revolves around the Norse God Loki's plot to use the tesseract (that blue cube thingy) to bring an extraterrestrial army from the other end of space to conquer Earth and make all humans subject to Loki's rule, since he can't be king on Asgard. The first half of the movie focuses on the differences between each of the team members and their struggles to find common ground. Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Steve Rogers (Captain America) in particular butt heads a lot, mainly because of the fact that Stark is a narcissistic jerk and Rogers is a selfless hero who puts in everything he's got.
If I told you any more than that, I would spoil most of the movie.
The Good:
I thought that there would be little time for any character development due to the fact that there are six or seven main characters and to the nature of the massive plotline. But there were some serious team-building experiences here, and you could see each of the characters begin to overcome their differences to act as a cohesive unit. The action didn't get too caught up in itself like most movies of this nature; when there was a serious moment one of the characters would often crack a joke that would lighten up the rest of the team and the audience. There were a lot of inside jokes for Marvel geeks like me, and there were also jokes that everyone could understand and laugh at. The special effects were amazing, and the action scenes were definitely action scenes. Not only was the storyline good, but it also improved the rather rushed and poorly done storylines of the movies Thor and Captain America.
The Bad:
The plot was good, but at times it felt a little too much like the plot of Transformers 3, which I hated. The climactic battle scenes of the two movies were very similar, but the one in the Avengers benefited from the jokes that would lighten the mood throughout the sequence. Loki was an okay villain but he could get a bit tedious sometimes, especially with that bratty I am the Rightful King type of attitude that he always had. The director also had a minor case of redshirt syndrome, I think.
The Rating:
The Avengers gets 4.25 stars. The bad was bad, but not bad enough to subtract too much from the overall awesomeness of the movie. Definitely worth the four years it took to get it out there. Highly recommended, and well worth the wait.
After you finish watching the movie, stay after the credits. Not just the first line of credits, but the second one as well. Don't ask why. Just do it.

Book Review- Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole (2012)

Shadow Ops: Control Point is the debut novel of Myke Cole; a former soldier and government civilian that served something like three tours in Iraq. Ace, the publisher, decided to publish this book in mass market paperback (the small kind) only.
Control Point starts off at the beginning of a mission to take down a couple of kids that have manifested illegal magical talents and are destroying a public high school. The main character, Oscar Britton, is one of the men involved in this assault and is having second thoughts about using the full might of the military to take down two high school aged kids. The night after the mission he manifests an illegal magical talent himself and is forced to go on the run. But unfortunately, this guy is no Jason Bourne. He has no idea what he's doing and ends up killing several people before being caught by the military. He wakes up in a secret facility, where he is told that his crimes have been pardoned by the president under the condition that he will use his magic and become a mercenary under the orders of the government.
I can't tell you much more without giving it away, but I will tell you that he is taken to a magical world where little creatures the military calls goblins rule, and where the U.S. Army is fighting to take control. The problem is that goblins manifest magical skills twice as much as humans, and they are greater and more numerous than the Americans stationed there. The conflict of the novel focuses primarily on Britton's struggles and doubts about whether or not he should be a killing machine for the government.
The Good:
Oscar Britton is a very human character, and he is supported by several other well done characters. You can tell from the first page of the book that Myke Cole knows a thing or two from his long service in the military. The battle scenes are very well done, full of action but never to the point where you begin to get annoyed. He integrates magic into the combat scenes very well. The thing I really liked about the combat scenes is that people actually die. He doesn't just kill redshirts, he kills people you've come to know and even like. That's something you don't always see in a book like this. You can feel the friendship between Britton and his fellow teammates growing throughout the book, and the villains aren't blindly evil. They have reasons behind their motives, and sometimes those are very good reasons.
The Bad:
Oscar Britton was human, but sometimes he's TOO human. His flaws were easy to see, and sometimes they got annoying. I liked that he questioned the motives of his leaders instead of being a mindless soldier, but it got annoying sometimes that he questioned every order he got. He can't seem to get over the fact that his job  in the Shadow Coven involves killing people under orders, even though before that he was in the military before that. Killing under orders is pretty much the main idea of the military, isn't it?
The thing that really irritated me is that the relationship between him and Theresa, an attractive woman with healing talents to boot, never really developed. It was just kind of there. Cole could have done a better job on that, I think.
Honestly, the doubts and unwillingness of Britton to kill under orders didn't bug me a ton. I can understand why he tried to avoid killing people. It's just that he questioned it SO MUCH.
Overall, it was a very well-done thrill ride. A book like this would make a very good military urban fantasy action movie. The pace was fast but not so fast that you couldn't keep up.
The Rating:
This book gets three and a half stars. It was good, but I felt that the negative elements dragged it down a little bit. All things considered, it was pretty good for a debut novel.
Before you go and read it, I have to warn you that the military men really talk like they're in the military. If you're younger than sixteen or seventeen, the language might be a little heavy.