I loved the Tony/Pepper scenes. Love Gwyneth. Their chemistry is great.
What makes the movie worthwhile is that the characters are charming as people and the dialogue is smart and fast. Downey doesn't dominate either as Stark or in terms of his (considerable) talent - Rogers and Banner are great and very specific. Romanov is surprisingly vulnerable, but you could say that about most of the characters including Loki. The two who get short shrift, really are Clint - we don't learn anything worthwhile about him - and Thor, who remains a dullard despite Hemsworth's evident talent (or maybe Hemsworth sees him as a stolid bore and that's what he's going for).
Samuel L. Jackson is just Samuel L. Fucking! Jackson, which is cool.
Paltrow was great. Interesting how she was always barefoot so she didn't tower over RDJ.
I thought that was just Whedon's foot fetish manifesting again.
Yeah, Hawkeye was underused and, really, it'd be hard to know where he came from if you weren't watching Thor very closely he didn't get nearly as established in the MCU as BW did.
Yeah, but then what we saw of him didn't make him out to be very interesting, anyway. I mean, he spent half the movie as a more or less silent slave to Loki.
I also agree that Thor was under used in this movie to some respects. A "dullard" I don't know if I agree about that the most "dullard moment" he had was during the arguing scene when everyone may have been under some influence of Loki's scepter. Other times he was pretty good. I just think his character got reset-buttoned as nothing in this movie really changed his character, his status-quo or anything. He came and then he went.
Yeah, when he was arguing with everyone, that was a bit silly. His mouthing off about humans was something that might have made more sense in his own movie, before he learned humans were worth protecting and all that. But, I guess we can chalk it up to the scepter.
It's too bad his best line ("He's adopted") is so out-of-character. I don't think he cracked wise the rest of the movie.
CA emerged as a leader of the team, Tony learned that he's capable of self-sacrifice (the ending echoing the argument he and Cap had), Banner learned more to accept and control The Hulk, even BW dealt with her issues somewhat and worked more into the "soldier role." Hawk, I dunno, way underused so not much changed with him.
Good summary. I wasn't sure if Chris Evans had the charisma to work as leader in a team with such strong personalities, but I think it actually worked better in that he is so forthright and earnest. The people around him know he doesn't have some hidden, self-serving agenda--what you see is really what you get.
I really enjoyed Loki's portrayal here, too. He wasn't your standard villain, doing evil for evil's sake. Seemed he was caught between his own ambition, thirst for revenge, and powers much more dangerous than himself. Although one wonders why he was so afraid of the Chitauri when they turned out to pretty much be chumps.

I dunno, maybe they're more powerful in their home dimension.