I liked it

Good to see many references to Avengers, Extremis, etc.

I wish DC would do that in Arrow. Mention the battle of Metropolis from Man of Steel, or something.

Why did we get a zillion characters at once? Give us 4. Build.

Where is this 'self congratulatory' ?
I personally thought it was a good first episode. I'm not a total comic nerd so I'm not going to nit-pick about shit most will.
I'll have fun with it since I dont watch anything else at the time

It was no more than Firefly, and a fraction of the characters from something like Game of Thrones. I don't think that was the issue.

I'm not nitpicking anything. The show was incompetently filmed. It looks cheap and overlit. There was no through line to the episode--it was a pile of shit that happened. The direction was lifeless. None of the jokes landed.

Most of the humor was pretty groan inducing for me.

Well, that was a royal mess.

I'm not talking about having just 4 people on the screen. I'm talking about the need to focus on just a handful of people and explore the others in subsequent episodes.

Apparently the revolution was getting people who had never seen a network show to watch one.
The show is exactly what I expected, a few cool moments and a bunch of groans.

Few pilots wow me. Not surprised this one did not. I will be patient with it, as I am watching it with the kids.

What the fuck did I just watch? felt (and looked) like an episode of Heroes. In fact I thought the black guy WAS the black guy from Heroes.

Word has it the Pilot script is one of only a couple that were OK'd by Joss, apparently several other early episode scripts were not and he took a break from doing what he does to fix them (was on Deadline)

It was clean, decent fun. Wife said it wasn't very exciting, but will give it a couple more eps to pick up steam. Enjoyed seeing Lola in action at the end.

Whaddya expect?

I thought it was OK. Didn't pull me in like Heroes. Big Ming-Na fan so will give it a couple more tries.

Few more years, we'll prob get the same type of network show for Star Wars.

The cgi was just atrocious. Don't they usually blow their wad for the pilot?

Marvel's notoriously cheap.

people expected a 100 million dollar looking tv show every week? Not amazing but not 'a big pile of shit' like many have said.

I liked it overall. Wasn't perfect, but definitely had everything I look for in Whedon effort. Nowhere near the disaster that was the first episode of Dollhouse.

Says the DC apologist.

Exactly. Surprised so many people here are being this venomous. I thought it was fun. Don't see it lasting that long. I personally see it doing well enough to stick around for a second season at which point Marvel will realize it will serve best as something to help them build to Avengers 2 . They say not to expect too many faces from the movies, but expect that to change. If this makes it to a full season, look for a series finale in May 2015 that will act as a lead in to the movie.

if the ratings end up dropping, i can see them having some of the big characters show up in sweeps month

I've never seen DC being accused of being cheap. That's a new one.

Whereas The Avengers was scored by the same musician who created the soundtrack for hits such as Stuart Little and had cinematography provided by the esteemed auteur of hits such as "Sahara," while Thor: The Dark World will be shot by the guy behind the hit movies "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "Palookaville," and the next Captain America will be shot by the guys behind the hit NBC sitcom "Community"

Terrible. I'm out after one episode.

Says Kramer Morgenthau shot Thor: The Dark World, who shot an episode of Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, and the movie The Express. But the more important part is got into the industry as a Real Sex camera operator, I hope it was for the tantric class with the elderly people.

And you can't really diss the cinematographer of Avengers, he was (deservingly) nominated for shooting Atonement a few years ago (and the very well shot We Need to Talk About Kevin). I don't know what went wrong with The Avengers to give it that made-for-TV look, but the guy definitely has skill.

Whedon insisted shooting 1:85 basically for the big hero shot where all the characters are in the same shot & everyone is perfectly framed