Years and years have passed since they started putting the separate Avenger superheroes on the big screen, even decades. And almost four years ago when the news came that the unified force would finally be made into a movie, hordes of geeks went into a state of hyper-excitement. That’s right, almost 50 years have passed before the ultimate super movie “The Avengers” came out May 4, 2012, and it was so definitely worth the wait.

“The Avengers” story is a combination of the stories of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk. Director Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), leader of the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization gets his hands on the Tesseract, a powerful energy source that can power the entire world and make powerful weapons. When the organization is attacked by Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Fury reactivates the Avengers Initiative, a plan to gather the world’s most powerful and intelligent beings and combining their power to become an unstoppable force for good. Among the Avengers are Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), Black Widow/Agent Romanoff (Scarlett Johansen), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), demi-god Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), and the Hulk/Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo).

The entire cast pretty much reprised their roles in the exact same way they had in the earlier movies. Downey was still the smug and carefree genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist, Evans was the determined all-American do-gooder, and Hemsworth was the honor-bound warrior. New to the group is the (and can I just say, thank God, we finally have a decent) Hulk! No, he’s more than decent, he is the best Hulk ever. Since the original 70’s Lou Ferigno, the Hulks have all just sucked. Either there was the disproportionately emotional Eric Bana or the way too skinny Ed Norton, but now Mark Ruffalo brought a good balance of emotion and action to the table. No one cared for Bana or Norton, but you wouldn’t like Ruffalo when he’s angry. Secondary characters like Black Widow and Hawkeye would have been just filler characters, but they were really made to feel crucial to the story in “Avengers.” The stealthy Black Widow was kick-ass (and her Russian wasn’t half bad, either), and stonefaced archer Hawkeye was just cool in every sense of the word. Overall, though, they were exactly the way the’r characters should have been: indestructible. (Physically, at least.)

The favorite parts of “The Avengers” are always going to be the action scenes and with good reason. Usually, action movies are filled with flashy lights and just a bunch of bells and whistles, but they get pretty boring when you really look at them. On the contrary, there were some quality fights here. I don’t know if it was the way the cameras were moving or what was being shown in hard to see snippets, but I loved every second. References to other heroes, flying monkeys, and sci-fi pop culture also presented themselves frequently (including a Lord of the Rings ref, at which point I yelped). And the humor itself was enough to sustain the movie. There was an inexorable amount of hilarious one-liners (my favorite being Captain America’s instructions, “Hulk? Smash!”), and genuinely funny scenes, including a – shall we say endearing – exchange between villain Loki and Hulk.

There are too many words I want to use to describe “The Avengers”: epic, glorious, brilliant, memorable, marvelous, etc. but probably the best word to use is fun. All kinds of people went to see it all weekend, and every single one of them clapped, cheered, laughed, and elbowed each other at the appropriate moments. Girls, boys, everyone will love it! Bravo to Marvel Studios for making yet another success, to writer/director Joss Whedon for supporting all our fan-boy and -girl needs, to Paramount Pictures for picking up the slack when FOX gave up, to the enormous cast and even bigger crew, and especially to obligatory guest star Stan Lee. This was definitely the biggest blockbuster movie of the year yet, and is simply one of the best superhero movies of all time, rivaling only X-Men First class. I cannot ait for “Avengers 2” to come out!

SIDE NOTE: Stay tuned after the movie for two post-credit scenes: one comes right after the main end credits that is essential to watch, the second comes after the long five-minute credits that isn’t necessarily important, but really, really funny, so keep an eye out.

“The Avengers” is rated PG-13 and runs for 142 minutes.