Like thousands of others, I went to see The Avengers this weekend. I love superhero movies. While part of that is my love for good fantasy and sci-fi flicks, it’s more about good triumphing over evil with a heavy dose of style.

My husband had trouble suspending disbelief with The Avengers because all the heroes were in the same place, working together. He said he loves superheroes, but just doesn’t buy The Hulk and Thor existing in the same world. I laughed at this because it’s part of what made the movie for me.

I loved The Avengers and part of the reason why is Joss Whedon (cue angelic lighting) understands the mind of a superhero. If you’ve saved your friends, your city and maybe the world more than once, you’re going to develop a bit of an ego. There’s no shame in superheroes taking pride in their work on this one. How many times have you stopped an alien invasion? What about caught a person falling from a building? Yeah, same here. But if we had, you can bet after a few times we’d start to feel we were pretty awesome. (We’d be right, too.)

But what happens when you make a bunch of Type As, who have saved the world from everything from Nazis to giant robots, in a room and tell them to work together? They get in one another’s way. They want to order each other around. They make snide remarks (mostly Tony Stark). And they even get distracted in fights in attempts to show the other members of S.H.I.E.L.D. they’re the toughest one around.

Sure, the Avengers team members eventually get over themselves and work together to put a hurting on the real bad guys. For me, though, the thought given to the character development and interaction on this one is better than we get in a lot of superhero movies*.

Plus, epic battles.

*Spider-man aside. He always has issues with feeling not good enough, being overwhelmed and feeling unworthy of the girl.