In going for a good time, old-fashioned monster movie, with none of the all-too-real terror of Wolf Creek, McLean knew he was inheriting a subgenre with strong conventions that can be the storyteller’s best friend as well as worst enemy, but he gets the balance almost perfect in every regard.

Fans lined Hollywood Boulevard near the iconic Graumann’s Chinese Theatre on Wednesday night in Hollywood, the street occupied by a huge red carpet tent lined with throngs of media and photographers jostling for position. One by one the stars of Marvel’s The Avengers arrived and made their way down, waving to screaming fans and enduring the barrage of media scrutiny about their clothes, the roles, the future of the franchise and more.

An exercise in pure plotting, it’s a classic heist movie. It tells a large story economically by showing us what we need to see and arranging the elements of the story according to where they fall, where they lie in relation to each other, and their causes and effects.