History Headscratchers / TheAvengers

** . . .because he's a homicidal vigilante wanted by the police?
** If you want to get technical, he was on Cap's team during ComicBook/CivilWar, and I'm fairly sure that team is considered an incarnation of the Secret Avengers.

** A bunch of heroes didn´t decide to do it. Wolverine did, and Sue Storm followed him. And Wolverine isn´t exactly famous for giving thing a lot of thought.

Then, why did Quicksilver lost his powers during the "No more mutants" thing?

[[folder: [[spoiler:The Ivory King did WHAT?!]] ]]

Headscratchers for ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' comic. New entries on the bottom. See [[Headscratchers/TheAvengers2012 here]] for the [[Film/TheAvengers2012 movie]]'s headscratchers page. If you have been led here from '[[Series/TheAvengers [=Series/TheAvengers=]]], go away, this is just a case of unfortunate homonymy.

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Headscratchers for ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' comic. New entries on the bottom. See [[Headscratchers/TheAvengers2012 here]] for the [[Film/TheAvengers2012 movie]]'s headscratchers page.

*** Defeating impossibly powerful enemies that cannot be defeated is the entire reason the Avengers ''exist''. This is what they do, no different from any other impossible threat to the Earth. Sure, stopping the Phoenix is as impossible as stopping Galactus, but remember one very critical thing: Galactus has been stopped before. Hell, Galactus has been overpowered and chained up to the power source of a doomsday device before. Additionally, [[spoiler: the away team have already proven that the Phoenix can be hurt and, potentially, killed or contained]], which means that defeating it is entirely within the realm of possibility. Again: this is what the Avengers do. They face down the impossible, and they win. Scott's plan can more or less be summarized as classic supervillainy, having completed his descent into becoming Magneto: a man trying to harness and control [[EldritchAbomination forces far beyond his control]] for his own personal gain, ultimately oblivious to the fact that his attempts will [[EvilIsNotAToy ultimately mean the doom of everything, including himself]]. It's a classic supervillain ploy, and whining about oppression of his people every time people try to talk sense into him doesn't change that. Scott fell in love with the race card a long time ago, but screaming, "Stop oppressing me, you nazis!" when people try to tell him that EvilIsNotAToy only makes him a particularly whiny supervillain.

*** No, the problem is Cyclops's position. You might as well say the same for everything else that's ever threatened the Earth: should Ultron be permitted to wipe out humanity because, after all, if you defeat him, he'll probably just come back eventually? How about next time Galactus thinks Earth is starting to look a bit appetizing? Should everyone just "let the chips fall as they may" there? Sure, if the Phoenix is defeated, it may just come back some day. The same is true of Galactus, the Skrulls, the Beyonder, Thanos, the Phalanx, and every other celestial/cosmic entity that has ever threatened the Earth in the history of its existence. What makes the Phoenix so special, that the Avengers should just roll over and die for it?

*** You know what else exceeds Galactus in terms of its unlimited power source? The Infinity Gems. Six gemstones of absolute cosmic power that, when brought together, make one God. The fabric of the universe itself bends in submission to the Gems. The wielder of the Infinity Gems will dwarf the Phoenix in both power and scale; even a single gem is enough to make a person into a living avatar of a fundamental element of the universe. Likewise, there is no reasoning with Thanos. He desires nothing more than the absolute death of the universe, as a gift to woo his beloved Death. If the Avengers wouldn't roll over and die for Thanos or anyone else who has ever possessed the Infinity Gems, again I ask, what makes the Phoenix so special that they should? It brings the same promise as Thanos: absolute death of everything. There is no reason to believe that it will not simply purge the Earth of life, like it does to every other planet it visits. What they are doing now is a play for time; take Hope offworld and play a game of cosmic Keep Away with the Phoenix's host until a solution can be found. There has already been progress towards finding that solution, all they need is more time. It's not perfect, but it's certainly a better plan than "Let the Phoenix do what it wants, and hope it doesn't want genocide, despite the fact that genocide is the only thing it does."

*** Dear god, why would they use the ''Infinity Gems'' against the Phoenix? That's like defending yourself from a tiger by blowing up the universe. The Infinity Gems are infinitely powerful and extremely attractive and making their location known with something as flashy and public as destroying the Phoenix with them would tell everyone in the universe who's looking for them, "Hey, the Gems are here, come take them and become God Incarnate." The point was not that the Gems should be used against the Phoenix, because they absolutely should not be used for anything ever again and should remain hidden where no one will ever find them. The point was that the assumption that the Phoenix operates on a scale above anything the Avengers can face is a faulty assumption. The Avengers regularly handle things like the Infinity Gems. To the X-Men, sure, the Phoenix is an ungodly cosmic force the likes of which cannot ever be confronted or defeated, but to the Avengers, it's just another day at the office.
*** Sorry misunderstood what you said, (basically the infinity gems would be overkill). Even so, the Avengers are acting uncertain about their ability to stop the Phoenix. Not to mention in the issue Tony said they need to essentially use the power of the Big Bang to stop it. Adding the fact that they said the secret Avengers are on a suicide mission. Maybe they should use the infinity gems (if they are strong enough). Really all they'd need is the mind gem, the reality gem, the space gem, and MAYBE the soul gem. The reality gem could solo and the space gem could by some time. IF the gems are really above the phoenix in power. Otherwise you can't say this is just another day's work for the Avengers.
*** Which is worse, one Phoenix host or five of them?
**** Honestly? [[ConservationOfNinjitsu One]]. [[spoiler: Assuming in the absolute worst case scenario that none of the Phoenix's energy was dispersed in that attack, that all of it made it into the five hosts, we are still not dealing with five Phoenix hosts. The Phoenix only has x amount of power, regardless of how large x may be. What we have here is five people who are each 20% of a Phoenix host, and 20% of a Phoenix host is significantly more manageable than a fully empowered Phoenix host could ever be. Whereas before, the Phoenix's host may have been unstoppable, right now, simple application of divide and conquer could very easily win this battle.]]
**** Not really applicable in this case, the Phoenix Force can summon power from the life force of every being that hasn't been born in the universe. So that should have resulted in 5 beings with literally earth shattering power, at the expense of killing untold future generations. Great going Avengers.
**** To me this is an example of NiceJobBreakingItHero for the Avengers, illustrating that they really weren't that prepared to face off against the Phoenix. I think we can assume that none of the energy dissipated but was rather split into smaller "pieces" as so to speak and said pieces found a new host. I have a feeling that this particular event demonstrates that the Phoenix force cannot truly be destroyed. Ergo any action the Avengers took would be prolonging the inevitable. Now you have five sub-hosts to the Phoenix making the world a "better place" and preparing Hope. Not to mention the sub-hosts aren't pushovers either, particularly Colossus (Phoenix force+Juggernaut powers+Standard powers) and Magik (Phoenix force+mutant Dark Magic user). Granted Hope with the Phoenix force would have been a bigger threat.
**** According to New Avengers #29, the reason why the Fantastic Four hasn't taken a side is because they see "both sides" as having validity. Based on how Reed left the group he seems to find more faults with the Avengers.
**** The Avengers seem to be at square 1 of Cyclops and the X-men's plan. Use hope as a host to the Phoenix force, thanks to the Iron fist prophesy.

*** Or he could be invulnerable regarding that too.
**** If that was so, it would have taken only two or three lines of dialogue, and one panel, to tell us this. The writer can thus be legitimately faulted for not addressing it.
***** Or better yet, just give him a gun. I have this same gripe with Mr. Invincible of the Great Lakes Avengers. Why does he insist on being utterly useless in a battle?
***** First of all, that's Mr. Immortal. Second of all, he did once use a gun. He shot himself in the foot.****** It was [[spoiler:Skrull Pym]] who decided to keep the invulnerable guy out of the camp before it was [[spoiler:invaded by Skrulls]].** While the Initiative ''did'' have read access to power-nullifying SPIN technology, the change is permanent and they'd never be able to break his skin anyway. That aside, none of the staff members knew someone who nullified powers or could find one reasonably soon (hell, the only one I can think of is Leech, and I know none of the Initiative staff would be familiar with the Morlocks since none of them were X-Men).
*** And for that matter hunting down a power nullifier and spending what would probably be years and thousands of dollars training him would be a grossly poor allocation of resources considering the wealth of incoming recruits. They aren't going to be any worse for the wear if they're missing one guy.
**** ''And'' consider what Yellowjacket told Butterball/Boulder, that he has a bright future ahead of him in any one of dozens of dangerous professions (like search and rescue). The Initiative doesn't have too pressing a need for his talents, but some people ''do''.
**** Butterball is in the ComicBook/AvengersAcademy now, so I guess they found some way for him to become a superhero.

*** The only problem with that is that it was more the training staffs fault in that instance, since they clearly had no clue what Trauma's power was, but they forced Armory to stand next to him so he could use it. They never brought her back because that would be admitting they made a mistake.

*** This was a bit of a change from the typical Marvel depiction of Ares, particularly as he was seen in his own miniseries, all told. The issue with Wolverine is that he had always, ''always'' been depicted previously as pretty much wanting to kill Spider-Man for his sanctimonious goody-two-shoes attitude, and Spidey has hated him right back every step of the way. And Spider-Man is a notoriously poor team player to begin with. The entire team's make-up was extremely ill-advised; the real reason it happened is because Brian Michael Bendis had this idea since he was in sixth grade and nobody was going to tell him he couldn't write it.
*** "He's like a Wolverine AND a Thor". Or, to try better reasoning (not that it's hard) they wanted Hercules, but they couldn't get him due to his Anti Reg deally, so they got the next best thing in the field of Greco Roman gods who get hammered after work and beat dudes up.
*** [[http://objection.mrdictionary.net/go.php?n=3584683 Objection!]] Ares has as good strategy and tactic skills as Athena, with thousands years of first-hand experience.
**** Traditionally, Athena was the goddess of strategic, honorable warfare, and Ares was the god of mindless, destrictive war. It's a bit of an overgeneralization, but the cliche is that when you marched into battle in ancient Greece, you attributed your side (whichever that was) with being Athena's favorites and called the other guys followers of Ares (while they claimed to be Athena's favorites and claimed ''you'' worshipped Ares, assuming they were also Greeks). The Marvel Ares tends to be a little better at strategy than the classical Ares, but he's still far more LeeroyJenkins than MagnificentBastard. And Marvel's Ares may be thousands of years old, but it's never really implied that he did much of significance during the span of time between Hellenic Greece and the modern age. If he mostly sat around Olympus waiting for something to do, his skills may have atrophied; if he mostly spent it running around various battlefields in the guise of a normal soldier hacking up other soldiers left and right, he might have accumulated very little actual strategic experience and no combat experience useful in fighting anyone who isn't a normal human soldier. He may be the equivalent of an MMORPG player who only fights low level enemies that he can kill with one blow even though he no longer gains XP for killing them.

*** Except the super-heroic solution to that is to kidnap the baby and bring it up to be a good person. They actually did that as a plot in ''Exiles'' (and as it turned out, it didn't work. So they killed teenage Hitler. But they did it very deliberately and in full knowledge, not with Wolverine-style casual stabbity).
*** In the end, Wolverine doesn't LIKE killing. He tries to avoid it.
**** Except in his own comic, where DependingOnTheWriter he'll often slaughter every mook in an enemy base, just to get them out of the way. Hells, a couple of years back there was a run of stories which were basically: Wolverine meets some ordinary, human, could-be-dealt-with-by-the-police, nasty criminals. Wolverine kills the nasty criminals. The End.

*** ''Which'' other teammates? And are these teammates continually invited back into the lineup again and again, or are they people who eventually got the 'Don't call us, we'll call you'?
*** Iron Man, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, The Vision, Quicksilver, She-Hulk, Sersi, Sentry, to name a few. Also, in the early years, the Swordsman, who kept been called to the Avengers despite his criminal career which he only gave up to be killed.
*** Yes on both counts, because it apparently either takes ''multiple'' accounts of doing stupid and/or amoral things before the Avengers finally give up on anyone, especially when insanity and/or mind control come into the picture, or a massive rewrite of reality (like in Scarlet Witch's case in Disassembled, and even ''then'', the Avengers were the ones arguing for leniency, compared to some of the X-Men's insistence that she just be killed).
*** Hank Pym is responsible for Ultron, one ''the'' most dangerous Marvel villains - and is a wife beater with multiple personality disorder. In ''Marvel Universe'', Peter Sanderson describes him as "...Reed Richards without the foils for his personality, a dry, unemotional scientist with little audience appeal." He should have been kicked out long ago.
**** No foil? What does he think the flighty, romantic Wasp was?
**** To be fair, Hank Pym was insane when he hit Jan and that was the only time he ever did it. Hank Pym is just a neurotic jerkass in the mainline-616 universe. Not a wifebeater.
**** Ah. They covered this. [[ArchiveBinge This may take a while]]... It's all based on low self esteem, exacerbated by a dead ex-wife and brain-envy of Reed Richards, Tony Stark and Ultron. And the guilt of building Ultron, causing him to get his first major bout of costumed crazy. His girlfriend took advantage of this to get him to marry her. This led to low self-esteem, which led to him hitting his wife, which led to ''more'' low self-esteem, which led to near suicide, which led to him retiring to the post of MissionControl for the West Coast spinoff team, which led to a stint with the main team again. Then his powers went wonky and he split into two people ("Yellowjacket", the fun-loving side who doesn't plan ahead and acts spontaneously... and hits wives, and "Goliath" who is, well, a dry, unemotional scientist), then he had the world's weirdest therapy session, in which his wife pointed out that he was basing his life around her and that's not cool. So he wised up, re-integrated himself into one person, gave his spot to someone else, and left for a bit. His current bout of low self-esteem is because he got replaced by an imposter who was actually better at his job than he was. He seems to be responding to this by taking his dead wife's costume and getting a new improved super-scientist MO.
*** Oh, for God's sake, now you're just demonstrating exactly why he's the image boy for NeverLiveItDown.
*** It is truly unforgivable for Hank Pym to be exactly as much of a wife-beater as Peter Parker and Reed Richards
*** Hank Pym is on the Avengers so they can ''keep an eye on him''. If they kicked him out, he'd be even more dangerous, with far fewer restraints on his behavior, and no one looking over his shoulder when things go bad.

*** ...Except the problem with that is, in that case, the Marvel Universe would have to be operating in real time, which it hasn't done since the late 60's. They may say that that there's a month-to-several months difference when the comics themselves come out, but soon enough, the time-difference will be scaled down to just a couple weeks, if not days. Really, the entire first volume of New Avengers probably occurred within 6 months worth of time, if that.

*** To be a bit more specific Spider-Man doesn't hate Frank, he just doesn't like that he kills people. Which is everyone's bone of contention with him; the Punisher is a firm believer in MurderIsTheBestSolution for dealing with criminals. Considering that several of the Avengers rogues have reformed and even joined the Avengers too. Not to mention that they believe in the justice system and executing criminals willy nilly when the courts could deal with it.

*** My point is, how and why did going back in time work when it flies in the face of the established mechanics for time travel in the Marvel universe?

Headscratchers for ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' comic. New entries on the bottom. See [[Headscratchers/TheAvengers1 here]] for the [[Film/TheAvengers1 movie]]'s headscratchers page.

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* [[Headscratchers/TheAvengersFilm Film headscratchers]]

Due to size, this page has been split. For the comic book, see [[Headscratchers/TheAvengersComics here]]. For the film, see [[Headscratchers/TheAvengersFilm here]].

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[[foldercontrol]]

[[WMG:[[ComicBook/TheAvengers Comic books]]]]

[[folder:Avengers Disassembled and the Scarlet Witch: Makes no Sense.]]
* Does someone want to explain to me how 'Disassembled' even happened in the first place? Because, according to that story, it happened because, in addition to having control of reality, and that power slowly making her lose her grasp on said reality, (which I'm not so against,) the thing that actually set her off was because she had suppressed the memory of her children, and Jan (Wasp,) brought them up. But here's the thing; ''Wanda never suppressed her memories of her children.'' More then once before Disassembled, her children were brought up ''right in front of her'', including by ''the Vision'', her '''''freaking ex-husband,''''' and not once does she lose it. She ''knew'' she had children, and lost them, but never went crazy over it. The only thing I can figure is that her ever-growing powers made her forget right before Disassembled, and then Jan made her remember, and her powers took that and made her crazy enough to kill her old-lady mentor (Agatha Harkness,) her hubbie, (Vision again,) one of her best friends, (Hawkeye,) and another Avenger also, (Scott Lang, AKA. the second Ant-man,) but that's just speculation at best. Really, Disassembled was just a sorry way for the old Avengers in general to go.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Dealing with the Phoenix - which plan is ''least'' stupid?]]
* The Avengers vs. X-Men story line (thus far) am I the only one who thinks Cyclops' position is the least stupid? (Note I said LEAST Stupid, ergo it's still dumb.) Breaking it down:
** Cyclops wants to control the Phoenix: It's pretty lofty to say the phoenix can be controlled but it's not unheard of nor impossible.
** Captain America and the Avengers want to stop the Phoenix: Pretty vain if you ask me. This is an extremely powerful cosmic entity. Not something you can just "stop" any more than you can stop Galactus (the Phoenix is stronger than even him).
** Wolverine wants to stop the Phoenix by killing it's projected host: Yeah, kill the host of an entity that can come back to life (and is pretty tough in her own right no less).
*** Defeating impossibly powerful enemies that cannot be defeated is the entire reason the Avengers ''exist''. This is what they do, no different from any other impossible threat to the Earth. Sure, stopping the Phoenix is as impossible as stopping Galactus, but remember one very critical thing: Galactus has been stopped before. Hell, Galactus has been overpowered and chained up to the power source of a doomsday device before. Additionally, [[spoiler: the away team have already proven that the Phoenix can be hurt and, potentially, killed or contained]], which means that defeating it is entirely within the realm of possibility. Again: this is what the Avengers do. They face down the impossible, and they win. Scott's plan can more or less be summarized as classic supervillainy, having completed his descent into becoming Magneto: a man trying to harness and control [[EldritchAbomination forces far beyond his control]] for his own personal gain, ultimately oblivious to the fact that his attempts will [[EvilIsNotAToy ultimately mean the doom of everything, including himself]]. It's a classic supervillain ploy, and whining about oppression of his people every time people try to talk sense into him doesn't change that. Scott fell in love with the race card a long time ago, but screaming, "Stop oppressing me, you nazis!" when people try to tell him that EvilIsNotAToy only makes him a particularly whiny supervillain.
** So it would seem that it's not Cyclops' plan that bad so much as it's coming from Cyclops. Yeah the "Avengers face the impossible" but even if they are "successful" the Phoenix will return, especially considering it specializes in resurrection. So you'd just get a cycle of the phoenix returning and there being a "close call" each time the killing/containing process goes forward. Or some kind of cosmic balance event will require them to release it anyways. With Cyclops' position you accept the Phoenix is coming and you let the chips fall as they may. The Avengers are prolonging the inevitable and Wolverine is just an idiot.
*** No, the problem is Cyclops's position. You might as well say the same for everything else that's ever threatened the Earth: should Ultron be permitted to wipe out humanity because, after all, if you defeat him, he'll probably just come back eventually? How about next time Galactus thinks Earth is starting to look a bit appetizing? Should everyone just "let the chips fall as they may" there? Sure, if the Phoenix is defeated, it may just come back some day. The same is true of Galactus, the Skrulls, the Beyonder, Thanos, the Phalanx, and every other celestial/cosmic entity that has ever threatened the Earth in the history of its existence. What makes the Phoenix so special, that the Avengers should just roll over and die for it?
** Ultron was created by humans (an Avenger no less) they are responsible for his/its actions. The Skrulls aren't a Cosmic entity, Galactus and the Beyonder can be reasoned with. Not to mention the Phoenix is on a level that exceeds Galactus in terms of its unlimited power source. That's what makes the phoenix force so special. If nothing else it could be argued that killing the Phoenix force would likely have negative reprocussions in the 616 universe. If they were to contain the Phoenix they probably should allow it to take it's host instead of removing her from it.
*** You know what else exceeds Galactus in terms of its unlimited power source? The Infinity Gems. Six gemstones of absolute cosmic power that, when brought together, make one God. The fabric of the universe itself bends in submission to the Gems. The wielder of the Infinity Gems will dwarf the Phoenix in both power and scale; even a single gem is enough to make a person into a living avatar of a fundamental element of the universe. Likewise, there is no reasoning with Thanos. He desires nothing more than the absolute death of the universe, as a gift to woo his beloved Death. If the Avengers wouldn't roll over and die for Thanos or anyone else who has ever possessed the Infinity Gems, again I ask, what makes the Phoenix so special that they should? It brings the same promise as Thanos: absolute death of everything. There is no reason to believe that it will not simply purge the Earth of life, like it does to every other planet it visits. What they are doing now is a play for time; take Hope offworld and play a game of cosmic Keep Away with the Phoenix's host until a solution can be found. There has already been progress towards finding that solution, all they need is more time. It's not perfect, but it's certainly a better plan than "Let the Phoenix do what it wants, and hope it doesn't want genocide, despite the fact that genocide is the only thing it does."
** Oh the infinity Gems, you mean the things that Namor, Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Professor X, Doctor Strange, and Captain America all have in their possession? If they are so much more powerful than the Phoenix why are they using other (uncertain) means of trying to stop it? Why are Tony and Beast making special devices to contain/kill the phoenix respectively? If they haven't thought to use the infinity gems maybe it's because it wouldn't work.
*** Dear god, why would they use the ''Infinity Gems'' against the Phoenix? That's like defending yourself from a tiger by blowing up the universe. The Infinity Gems are infinitely powerful and extremely attractive and making their location known with something as flashy and public as destroying the Phoenix with them would tell everyone in the universe who's looking for them, "Hey, the Gems are here, come take them and become God Incarnate." The point was not that the Gems should be used against the Phoenix, because they absolutely should not be used for anything ever again and should remain hidden where no one will ever find them. The point was that the assumption that the Phoenix operates on a scale above anything the Avengers can face is a faulty assumption. The Avengers regularly handle things like the Infinity Gems. To the X-Men, sure, the Phoenix is an ungodly cosmic force the likes of which cannot ever be confronted or defeated, but to the Avengers, it's just another day at the office.
*** Sorry misunderstood what you said, (basically the infinity gems would be overkill). Even so, the Avengers are acting uncertain about their ability to stop the Phoenix. Not to mention in the issue Tony said they need to essentially use the power of the Big Bang to stop it. Adding the fact that they said the secret Avengers are on a suicide mission. Maybe they should use the infinity gems (if they are strong enough). Really all they'd need is the mind gem, the reality gem, the space gem, and MAYBE the soul gem. The reality gem could solo and the space gem could by some time. IF the gems are really above the phoenix in power. Otherwise you can't say this is just another day's work for the Avengers.
*** Which is worse, one Phoenix host or five of them?
**** Honestly? [[ConservationOfNinjitsu One]]. [[spoiler: Assuming in the absolute worst case scenario that none of the Phoenix's energy was dispersed in that attack, that all of it made it into the five hosts, we are still not dealing with five Phoenix hosts. The Phoenix only has x amount of power, regardless of how large x may be. What we have here is five people who are each 20% of a Phoenix host, and 20% of a Phoenix host is significantly more manageable than a fully empowered Phoenix host could ever be. Whereas before, the Phoenix's host may have been unstoppable, right now, simple application of divide and conquer could very easily win this battle.]]
**** Not really applicable in this case, the Phoenix Force can summon power from the life force of every being that hasn't been born in the universe. So that should have resulted in 5 beings with literally earth shattering power, at the expense of killing untold future generations. Great going Avengers.
**** To me this is an example of NiceJobBreakingItHero for the Avengers, illustrating that they really weren't that prepared to face off against the Phoenix. I think we can assume that none of the energy dissipated but was rather split into smaller "pieces" as so to speak and said pieces found a new host. I have a feeling that this particular event demonstrates that the Phoenix force cannot truly be destroyed. Ergo any action the Avengers took would be prolonging the inevitable. Now you have five sub-hosts to the Phoenix making the world a "better place" and preparing Hope. Not to mention the sub-hosts aren't pushovers either, particularly Colossus (Phoenix force+Juggernaut powers+Standard powers) and Magik (Phoenix force+mutant Dark Magic user). Granted Hope with the Phoenix force would have been a bigger threat.
**** According to New Avengers #29, the reason why the Fantastic Four hasn't taken a side is because they see "both sides" as having validity. Based on how Reed left the group he seems to find more faults with the Avengers.
**** The Avengers seem to be at square 1 of Cyclops and the X-men's plan. Use hope as a host to the Phoenix force, thanks to the Iron fist prophesy.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:De-power the Boulder to re-power him]]
* In an issue of Avengers: The Initiative, the leaders of Camp Hammond basically give up on The Boulder because he's incapable of losing weight or gaining muscle because he can't be worn out thanks to his powers. Thus, his invulnerability keeps him in the body of a slow, overweight weakling. However, in an earlier issue, technology that is capable of shutting off superpowers makes a prominent appearance. Why is it, then, that not one of the people on the base once considered using the ability to turn off superpowers to make Boulder no longer invincible long enough that they could get him into shape and then give him back his superpowers so that he'd be both invincible AND be in shape?
** Because the administrators at Camp Hammond are morons.
*** Or he could be invulnerable regarding that too.
**** If that was so, it would have taken only two or three lines of dialogue, and one panel, to tell us this. The writer can thus be legitimately faulted for not addressing it.
***** Or better yet, just give him a gun. I have this same gripe with Mr. Invincible of the Great Lakes Avengers. Why does he insist on being utterly useless in a battle?
***** First of all, that's Mr. Immortal. Second of all, he did once use a gun. He shot himself in the foot.****** It was [[spoiler:Skrull Pym]] who decided to keep the invulnerable guy out of the camp before it was [[spoiler:invaded by Skrulls]].** While the Initiative ''did'' have read access to power-nullifying SPIN technology, the change is permanent and they'd never be able to break his skin anyway. That aside, none of the staff members knew someone who nullified powers or could find one reasonably soon (hell, the only one I can think of is Leech, and I know none of the Initiative staff would be familiar with the Morlocks since none of them were X-Men).
*** And for that matter hunting down a power nullifier and spending what would probably be years and thousands of dollars training him would be a grossly poor allocation of resources considering the wealth of incoming recruits. They aren't going to be any worse for the wear if they're missing one guy.
**** ''And'' consider what Yellowjacket told Butterball/Boulder, that he has a bright future ahead of him in any one of dozens of dangerous professions (like search and rescue). The Initiative doesn't have too pressing a need for his talents, but some people ''do''.
**** Butterball is in the ComicBook/AvengersAcademy now, so I guess they found some way for him to become a superhero.
** The power nullifying technology in question costs half a million dollars to produce. They can be forgiven for not wanting to drop half a million dollars on a single cadet, especially when that solution is supposed to be permanent and irreversible, rendering the entire purpose (turning his powers back on after he's trained up) pointless.
* Related to the power nullifier tech and Initiative. Armory was an early character who controlled an obscenely powerful alien ArmCannon called the Tactigon. After a training accident, she's depowered and kept under watch while the Initiative tries to connect the tactigon to other test subjects. Despite the fact that every other person either cannot activate it or goes insane, nobody seems to consider reconnecting Armory to the device, even after World War Hulk and Secret Invasion, two situations where a weapon rated just below Thor's Hammer would have been damn useful.
** It was probably considered at one point or another, but the entire point of the Initiative and the SHRA was accountability for superheroes; it would render the whole thing meaningless to bring her back. That, and when they accidentally kill people ''on their first day'', you're only inviting Stamford 2.0 by keeping them around.
*** The only problem with that is that it was more the training staffs fault in that instance, since they clearly had no clue what Trauma's power was, but they forced Armory to stand next to him so he could use it. They never brought her back because that would be admitting they made a mistake.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Avengers Issue 4000 - The Marriage Counseling]]
* Why do the Avengers just sit back and let members enter the worst possible marriages. We've had Mantis & the Cotati so she could become an intergalactic brood mare. There was Ms. Marvel & Marcus, which was actually lampshaded. Lastly, they had no problem with Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne getting married, despite the fact that he'd just suffered a nervous breakdown and that she had no problem marrying him when he didn't know who he was (but she did).
** They only work together for the good of Humanity - personally, they all hate each others' guts, so they let each other get into horrible relationships purely for the schadenfreude.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The Avengers needing a killer?]]
* Why the hell did the New Avengers recruit Wolverine (aside from [[WolverinePublicity the obvious]], that is)? I mean, the excuse given in the story was that they needed someone who'll kill people. But at the time the team included Captain America and Iron Man - both of whom have killed when they deemed it absolutely necessary - as well as Spider-Woman, who an issue or so before had been boasting to Maria Hill about having a license to kill (which presumably you don't get given if you're not prepared to use it). What, exactly, does a guy notable for slaughtering anyone who even pisses him off mildly add to a supposedly iconic hero team?
** I'll see your question and raise you one: why was Ares picked for the Mighty Avengers? He isn't just the god of War, he's the god of mindless slaughter; the god of people who actually enjoy waging a war; (for strategy and basic sanity, take a detour towards Athena). Wolverine could still be handwaved as a basically decent person who became a victim of [[strike: circumstances]] twenty million different brainwashings and schemes, but for Ares, there is no in-story excuse I can think of.
*** This was a bit of a change from the typical Marvel depiction of Ares, particularly as he was seen in his own miniseries, all told. The issue with Wolverine is that he had always, ''always'' been depicted previously as pretty much wanting to kill Spider-Man for his sanctimonious goody-two-shoes attitude, and Spidey has hated him right back every step of the way. And Spider-Man is a notoriously poor team player to begin with. The entire team's make-up was extremely ill-advised; the real reason it happened is because Brian Michael Bendis had this idea since he was in sixth grade and nobody was going to tell him he couldn't write it.
*** "He's like a Wolverine AND a Thor". Or, to try better reasoning (not that it's hard) they wanted Hercules, but they couldn't get him due to his Anti Reg deally, so they got the next best thing in the field of Greco Roman gods who get hammered after work and beat dudes up.
*** [[http://objection.mrdictionary.net/go.php?n=3584683 Objection!]] Ares has as good strategy and tactic skills as Athena, with thousands years of first-hand experience.
**** Traditionally, Athena was the goddess of strategic, honorable warfare, and Ares was the god of mindless, destrictive war. It's a bit of an overgeneralization, but the cliche is that when you marched into battle in ancient Greece, you attributed your side (whichever that was) with being Athena's favorites and called the other guys followers of Ares (while they claimed to be Athena's favorites and claimed ''you'' worshipped Ares, assuming they were also Greeks). The Marvel Ares tends to be a little better at strategy than the classical Ares, but he's still far more LeeroyJenkins than MagnificentBastard. And Marvel's Ares may be thousands of years old, but it's never really implied that he did much of significance during the span of time between Hellenic Greece and the modern age. If he mostly sat around Olympus waiting for something to do, his skills may have atrophied; if he mostly spent it running around various battlefields in the guise of a normal soldier hacking up other soldiers left and right, he might have accumulated very little actual strategic experience and no combat experience useful in fighting anyone who isn't a normal human soldier. He may be the equivalent of an MMORPG player who only fights low level enemies that he can kill with one blow even though he no longer gains XP for killing them.
** There are times when killing someone is ''not'' absolutely necessary in the moment, but is likely to become absolutely necessary in the future. To put it another way: it's easy to kill Hitler. It's harder to see a tiny little baby crawl across the carpet, struggle to climb up onto its pudgy little feet, take its first unsure steps towards its mommy, and give her a kiss; and then be told that that baby will grow up to be Hitler and it's your job to kill it. Wolverine can kill baby Hitler.
*** Except the super-heroic solution to that is to kidnap the baby and bring it up to be a good person. They actually did that as a plot in ''Exiles'' (and as it turned out, it didn't work. So they killed teenage Hitler. But they did it very deliberately and in full knowledge, not with Wolverine-style casual stabbity).
*** In the end, Wolverine doesn't LIKE killing. He tries to avoid it.
**** Except in his own comic, where DependingOnTheWriter he'll often slaughter every mook in an enemy base, just to get them out of the way. Hells, a couple of years back there was a run of stories which were basically: Wolverine meets some ordinary, human, could-be-dealt-with-by-the-police, nasty criminals. Wolverine kills the nasty criminals. The End.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Do the Avengers ever actually do any Avenging?]]
* Most of the plot relating to the present-day characters in Avengers/Invaders lampshades this--the New Avengers can't do any superhero work because every other fucking superhero team is trying to capture them, and the Mighty Avengers can't do any superhero work because they're one of the fucking teams.
** And when they did try to do actual Avenging (killing the villain that killed billions of Kree) half the team went and tried to smack down the other half.
** The name was chosen just for the sake of sounding cool. Their name never had anything to do with who they were.
** You're using too narrow a definition. From Merriam-Webster: "to exact satisfaction for (a wrong) by punishing the wrongdoer." Are the Avengers bringing down wrong-doers? Then they're avenging.
** The movie brings this up: [[spoiler:Coulson]]'s implied to be saying "they needed something to (avenge)", the bracketed part implied as he's KilledMidSentence. Iron Man later [[AndThisIsFor brings him up]] before shooting [[BigBad Loki]] with a repulsor.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:You need help, Hank.]]
* Hank Pym, period. There comes a point in time when you have to say, 'Sorry, Buddy, we just can't rely on you'.
** To be fair, his track record for going insane/evil and having experiments do the same is about on par with several of his other teammates. He just gets it brought up a lot more often because the writers think he makes a good chew toy.
*** ''Which'' other teammates? And are these teammates continually invited back into the lineup again and again, or are they people who eventually got the 'Don't call us, we'll call you'?
*** Iron Man, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, The Vision, Quicksilver, She-Hulk, Sersi, Sentry, to name a few. Also, in the early years, the Swordsman, who kept been called to the Avengers despite his criminal career which he only gave up to be killed.
*** Yes on both counts, because it apparently either takes ''multiple'' accounts of doing stupid and/or amoral things before the Avengers finally give up on anyone, especially when insanity and/or mind control come into the picture, or a massive rewrite of reality (like in Scarlet Witch's case in Disassembled, and even ''then'', the Avengers were the ones arguing for leniency, compared to some of the X-Men's insistence that she just be killed).
*** Hank Pym is responsible for Ultron, one ''the'' most dangerous Marvel villains - and is a wife beater with multiple personality disorder. In ''Marvel Universe'', Peter Sanderson describes him as "...Reed Richards without the foils for his personality, a dry, unemotional scientist with little audience appeal." He should have been kicked out long ago.
**** No foil? What does he think the flighty, romantic Wasp was?
**** To be fair, Hank Pym was insane when he hit Jan and that was the only time he ever did it. Hank Pym is just a neurotic jerkass in the mainline-616 universe. Not a wifebeater.
**** Ah. They covered this. [[ArchiveBinge This may take a while]]... It's all based on low self esteem, exacerbated by a dead ex-wife and brain-envy of Reed Richards, Tony Stark and Ultron. And the guilt of building Ultron, causing him to get his first major bout of costumed crazy. His girlfriend took advantage of this to get him to marry her. This led to low self-esteem, which led to him hitting his wife, which led to ''more'' low self-esteem, which led to near suicide, which led to him retiring to the post of MissionControl for the West Coast spinoff team, which led to a stint with the main team again. Then his powers went wonky and he split into two people ("Yellowjacket", the fun-loving side who doesn't plan ahead and acts spontaneously... and hits wives, and "Goliath" who is, well, a dry, unemotional scientist), then he had the world's weirdest therapy session, in which his wife pointed out that he was basing his life around her and that's not cool. So he wised up, re-integrated himself into one person, gave his spot to someone else, and left for a bit. His current bout of low self-esteem is because he got replaced by an imposter who was actually better at his job than he was. He seems to be responding to this by taking his dead wife's costume and getting a new improved super-scientist MO.
*** Oh, for God's sake, now you're just demonstrating exactly why he's the image boy for NeverLiveItDown.
*** It is truly unforgivable for Hank Pym to be exactly as much of a wife-beater as Peter Parker and Reed Richards
*** Hank Pym is on the Avengers so they can ''keep an eye on him''. If they kicked him out, he'd be even more dangerous, with far fewer restraints on his behavior, and no one looking over his shoulder when things go bad.
* Relating to that, what the hell gives Captain America the right to kick Yellowjacket off the team for "recklessness" (all he really did was try to save the [[SarcasmMode oh-so-grateful]] Cap when he thought he was in danger) when IRON MAN has been an Avenger since day 1?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The Butler superhero]]
* Jarvis IS completely awesome, but in the end he's still human. Having an entire mansion where all the background chores is done only by one person is a bit cuckoo-bananas. ''Justice League of America'' has many stories showing the heroes doing general maintenance. I was going to suggest 'Have a staff with powers' but then the question of 'Why not bring them with when aliens invade Florida' arises. So I'm lost.
** He was able to do all the work because he was a Skrull. Well probably not but Skrulls are the new/old/new again "Superboy-Prime Punched Time".
** The Avengers Mansion has a staff. They appear on several occasions. Though Jarvis is also known to put whomever happens to be around at the moment to work, like the Guardians of the Galaxy during one of the Infinity crossovers.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:None shall pass my grabby tentacles!]]
* Grabby tentacles and stun lasers in the lawn as a security system? Weak.
** Well, anything strong enough to stand a chance of stopping high-powered supervillains by itself could easily ''kill'' a normal human who sets it off for whatever reason (possibly by accident). Or used against your own team if a villain does manage to infiltrate your base or the computer goes berserk (or both). There are good reasons not to go overboard, especially when you're a card-carrying superhero with actual super''powers'' in your own right already...
[[/folder]]

[[folder:One Avenger, Two Teams]]
* Someone PLEASE explain to me why both Avengers have Hawkeye, Wolverine, and Spider-Man. I can kind of see why Wolverine can be on both teams (since he's so used to being on EVERY TEAM EVER), but how can Hawkeye juggle the regular Avengers, New Avengers, and Mockingbird's counterterrorism group all at once? And how does Spider-Man juggle both avengers and all the shit in his life?
** Maybe Spider-Man got cloned again.
** Well, they answered your question, at least in regards to Hawkeye. He's NOT on the New Avengers team, just the main one and his team with Mockingbird. He was just hanging around with the New Avengers the first couple of issues of the new volume for old time's sake.
** While it is a bit silly for people to be on multiple Avengers teams (why not just have one really big team if half the lineup of both teams is the same?) it doesn't necessarily require that much juggling. Bear in mind that each books comes out monthly, and a given issue often continues the story of the previous issue. Sometimes six months of real world time will cover only a few hours of comic book time. Since they rarely tell us how much time passes between issues that aren't part of the same storyline, it's entirely possible any given super team only has one or two missions per month.
*** ...Except the problem with that is, in that case, the Marvel Universe would have to be operating in real time, which it hasn't done since the late 60's. They may say that that there's a month-to-several months difference when the comics themselves come out, but soon enough, the time-difference will be scaled down to just a couple weeks, if not days. Really, the entire first volume of New Avengers probably occurred within 6 months worth of time, if that.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The Secret Avengers team line-up is just plain crazy.]]
* You not only have the most famous human on Earth in your "secret" team (Steve Rogers), you also have one of the, if not THE, most famous mutants on the planet (Beast) and the most famous human in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE (Nova). One of the other members (Valkyrie) refuses to actually do any infiltration and can only speak shakespearese. War Machine is easily recognisable, hardly stealthy and has become very famous in his last appearance before secret avengers: Making international news for several days as a war criminal. This leaves Black Widow, the most famous spy in the world, and Eric O'Grady as the remaining members, which begs the question of a team of 'secret' avengers only containing two members fitting the description.
** True. This lineup looks like a standard Avengers lineup, not a super secret spy team. Guys like Wolverine and Spider-Man would fit better, oddly enough.
** Because each member brings something necessary to the team. Steve Rogers has excellent leadership abilities and is supremely skilled in combat; Beast is a genius at damn nigh everything and also a doctor, so he can treat injuries; Nova (though not in the is powerful and serves for interstellar missions; Valkyrie is basically the muscle, she's there to kick ass; War Machine is highly skilled in technological stuff and useful in long-range combat; Black Widow is a highly skilled spy and fighter. As for Eric O' Grady, well, your guess is as good as mine.
** You forgot to list Moon Knight! On the other hand, so did the writers. It is, in general, one of the worst new mainstream series. Nova was removed from the team in issue ONE, Moon Knight has shown up in under one panel per issue since the start of the second arc, Eric O'Grady regularly disappears, War Machine shows up when it's convenient, and Valkyrie just makes no sense whatsoever. On the other hand, considering how horribly inept the writers are, this is almost a good thing (seriously. If one could Butcher Moon Knight any harder...)
** That's nothing. They're putting the Hulk on the next secret avenger's team, along with a new Iron Patriot.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Geoff Johns Did Not Do The Research.]]
* The Red Zone Series, about two years before Disassembled. The BigBad is revealed to be [[spoiler:The Red Skull]] who is posing as the [[spoiler:U.S. Secretary Of Defense]]. The process in the US for getting [[spoiler: a cabinet-level position]] is not a simple one. This isn't a guard position in a warehouse. The press, [[spoiler: the opposition party, and the President's own party members in Congress]] can make the candidate's life a living hell for any number of reasons, and the scrutiny will be unrelenting. A BigBad's usual methods, say murdering a nosey reporter or stubborn [[spoiler: member of Congress, really only the Senate for confirmation]] can only slow the process down. Such candidates have been opposed historically on the most ridiculous basis imaginable. In short, the BigBad's hiding place was not one you could sneak into, even with an astounding amount of people at your beck and call, especially when the RL [[spoiler: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld]] was a known if controversial figure, whereas the text in Red Zone says no one knows much about [[spoiler: Dell Rusk, the Skull's false name]].
** While we're at it, said BigBad is generally supposed to be a rather intelligent, ruthlessly practical criminal mastermind...and yet the best name he could come up for his cover was a simple ''anagram'' of that of his not precisely obscure villain identity? That's about a [[Franchise/{{Batman}} Riddler]]-level clue to anyone at all who cares to look right there...
[[/folder]]

[[folder:But he was a good Skrull!]]
* In an issue of The Initiative, one of the members was Crusader, a skrull. There was actually some backstory about his arrival on Earth and how he wanted to be a hero. He even defeated a really powerful villain in order to save his friends and home. And what does he get in reward? 3-D Man, one of the heroes, shoots him. There's absolutely no justification beyond the fact that he was a skrull. Nobody even seems upset over this. I know that the Marvel Universe really hates skrulls, but he was on the good side. What the hell?
** It was shown shortly afterwards that several of the Initiative recruits were pissed off at 3-D Man for having shot Crusader like that, because they were open-minded enough to realize Crusader was one of the good guys despite being a skrull, since, you know, he just freaking saved them all. 3-D Man, of course, could not have given less of a crap and was basically a dick all throughout.
** Also, it was in the middle of battle, during a skrull invasion where they tried to destroy most of the US. 3-D man never saw the crusader do his heroic thing IIRC, and thought he was just another infiltrator.
** Maybe that was the whole point: showing the invasion wasn't all black and white.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why hasn't the Punisher ever been on the Avengers?]]
** . . .because he's a homicidal vigilante wanted by the police?
** If you want to get technical, he was on Cap's team during ComicBook/CivilWar, and I'm fairly sure that team is considered an incarnation of the Secret Avengers.
** And during this time, [[TeethClenchedTeamwork it didn't go well]] between the Punisher and Captain America. Cap threw him out of the team not long after he came in.
** In every comic book I've read Spider-Man and Wolverine hate him. Can't imagine that would be very good for the team dynamic.
*** To be a bit more specific Spider-Man doesn't hate Frank, he just doesn't like that he kills people. Which is everyone's bone of contention with him; the Punisher is a firm believer in MurderIsTheBestSolution for dealing with criminals. Considering that several of the Avengers rogues have reformed and even joined the Avengers too. Not to mention that they believe in the justice system and executing criminals willy nilly when the courts could deal with it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why shouldn't Iron Man use Stark resources?]]
* In Volume 3, Issue 56, an accountant rakes Iron Man across the coals for using Stark resources on an Avengers mission. Then her associate whispers in her ear that Stark recently publicly revealed himself ''as'' Iron Man, and she gets very apologetic. Erm, didn't Stark officially appoint Iron Man as his proxy years ago? Even ''if'' Iron Man was a different person, they had orders ''on the books'' that Iron Man could use Stark resources as he saw fit, right?
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Everybody hates Hank]]
So, everyone flips out at Pym for offering Loki to join the Avengers, despite the Avengers recruiting ex-supervillains since the 60's with Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch? If it were Cap or Iron Man asking Loki to join, they all would have loved the idea. But since everyone hates Pym's guts for doing [[TheUnfairSex the exact same thing every female love interest of every superhero ever]] has done, suddenly they all hate the idea.
* While I don't entirely disagree with you(I personally dislike Pym but find the hate he gets to be undeserved), I think the main point here isn't that he's trying to recruit a villain, but that he's trying to recruit ''Loki''. I have to think even Cap would get some side ways looks for trying to recruit Loki, and if Tony did it, everyone would ask if he's back off the wagon.
[[/folder]]

[[WMG: [[Film/TheAvengers Film]]]]
[[folder:HULK CATCH IRON BUDDY!!!!]]
* How is Iron Man alive? At the speed he was going, when the Hulk grabbed him, he most likely would've been thrown into another building, broken his back, been completely split in half, or crushed against the Hulk.
** The armor is ''really good''. He took similar falls in his own movies without injury.
** Pay attention to how the Hulk grabbed him. He didn't actually stop the fall; Hulk slowed their speed down by sliding down the building, then redirected part of the velocity horizontally, before finally absorbing most of the impact with his back.
** In other words, this is the most plausible fall Tony has ever survived on screen.
** Think about how many falls he takes in his various solo movies. He's probably incorporated some kind of impact-reducing tech in the suit.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Caps utility belt...]]
* What do you think he keeps in there?
** Breath mints and Dodgers cards.
** Coulson's trading cards
** All but one of the pouches have various types of ammunition because he's used to scavenging weapons, it's just practical to carry extra just in case the pickings are slim. The last one holds the soul of Rob Liefeld.
** According to the video game: C3 explosives. Cap's a fair hand at sabotage, and he carries them in case there's anything especially explosion-worthy that he happens to run across. If you watch Cap's own movie, though, you can see a scene where he just throws a satchel charge into a tank that isn't altogether unlike the utility belt he's already wearing. In the modern day, it's probably C4.
** His cue-cards from when he was a USO mascot? He may have thought himself as a dancing monkey doing those war bonds tours, but I imagine he's got some sentimental value for them, especially since his Captain America combat outfit is directly inspired by his USO costume.
** He probably just has them in case he needs them. Do you see any pockets on that costume?

[[/folder]]

[[folder:We've captured the Tesseract! That's it, movie's over.]]
* Why does the movie even happen? The BiggerBad's goal of the whole endeavour, made clear from the very beginning, is to retrieve the tesseract. Loki accomplishes this ''in the first five minutes'' of his arrival on Earth with ''zero trouble'' and it is established that cross-universe travel is relatively easy with the Tesseract in hand. Seems to me any EliteMook could have been sent to do the same job and be back home in about fifteen minutes, and not risk a bungle in some unimportant "conquer the Earth while you're at it" personal vendetta.
** Loki's deal was to get an army in exchange for the Tesseract - wouldn't you want to get the army first before you give the Tesseract away if you were in Loki's place?
** The mooks available aren't nearly so durable as Loki. He was still ambulatory after being slammed around by the Hulk six or seven times. The Chitauri soldiers were...not. Loki was sent to retrieve the Tesseract, yes, but in return he asked for Earth to rule. His bosses agreed to this on the logic that Earth would fall almost instantly at the display of Loki's power, so no skin off their noses if it takes a couple extra days to get it to satisfy Loki and make him that much more cooperative later than if you'd just bullied him into it.\\\
Plus, recall that it took quite a while for Loki to actually build the one portal he did, and he needed the Tesseract to do it with. It might simply not have been that simple to make a return trip.
** Loki had the Tesseract in hand within the first five minutes, yes. Thanos, however, did not. Opening a portal to bring the Tesseract back to Thanos would have required the Tesseract as a power source, and as such the Tesseract itself would not be able to move through the portal; it's busy maintaining the portal. Thus, the only way to obtain the Tesseract would have been to either a) have another Tesseract on hand to open another portal which, if they had one, would have rendered the entire point of coming to get the Tesseract moot, b) bring it back the long way, or c) whatever plan you have for using the Tesseract, just start it on Earth, where the Tesseract is now. Thus we arrive at the plot of the movie: Thanos intends to do X with the Tesseract, the Tesseract is on Earth, the Tesseract cannot be moved from Earth without great amounts of resources, Earth has no reason to be excluded from X that Thanos intends to do with the Tesseract, so why not just start doing X with Earth and then move outward from there?
*** Except that at the end of the movie, Thor uses the Tesseract to take himself, Loki, ''and the Tesseract'' back to Asgard, so it can clearly transport itself. There's ways to fill that PlotHole, though: maybe it's a one-way trip to Asgard and doesn't work to go to where Thanos is, or maybe this effect is something Thor but not Loki knows about or can do. The visual effects are different in that scene than when the Tesseract is opening portals, too. For the latter theory, it's more likely something that ''Odin'' knows and taught Thor so that he'd have a return trip to Asgard, after Odin spent so much power getting him to Earth.
*** It's possible the little device Thor put the Tesseract in just takes them directly back to Asgard. Possibly Odin gave it to him with a message along the lines of, "Once you've got the cube, stick it in this and you'll be brought right home."
**** Or both. The device the Tesseract is in when Thor brings Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard appears to be of Asgardian design, and we have not seen it at any point prior in the movie. The handheld Bifrost may or may not require the Tesseract as a power source (Odin having to use dark energy to send Thor over the first time suggests it does), but there's no evidence Thanos even knows of such a device's existence. Presumably, Thor brought it with him from Asgard. As we never see any such device in Loki's hands, it can't really be accounted for on Loki's end of Thanos's plan; all Loki has to work with is the portal generator that S.H.I.E.L.D. built.
**** To transport the Tesseract you need a stable doorway. Loki came through the doorway to get the Tesseract, but has no way to send it back, nor to get his part of the bargain settled. It is the energy source to open a doorway, but it can't make the door way by itself. Think of the Tesseract as the door panel of a door and door frame. You can prop the door on the frame, but if you try to push it open the door will fall on the floor. That's how Loki got through the first time. The door falls down and destroys the base it is in at the beginning of the movie. To work properly, it needs hinges to be attached in order for the door to be held open, closed, locked, or partially open for the armies to come through and to enact the rest of the plan. Selvig's device are the hinges for the Chitauri Army to come through and control Earth. The hinges are detached by the Scepter and then Thor brings a separate device from Asgard as another set of hinges so that the Tesseract is functional again to travel to Asgard. The hinges now travel with the door and door frame and return to Asgard.
** There is one theory that Loki is conning ''everyone'' and the events of AvengersAssemble are an elaborate ruse to get him back to Asgard where he can thieve the Glove of Infinity. Read more [[http://maskofreason.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/very-good-writing-why-loki-won-in-the-avengers/ here.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Whoa, that's Loki! I better run!]]
* This is minor and essential to move the plot forward, I realize, but it bugs me all the same. Erik Selvig probably knows more about Loki than anyone, thanks to his heritage. He's the first to identify him after the demigod makes his entrance at SHIELD headquarters, and Erik knows damn well how dangerous Loki is thanks to myths and being a first-hand witness to his destruction in ''Thor''. What I want to know is why, after watching TWO PEOPLE get brainwashed, did Erik allow Loki to get close enough to brainwash him in the first place?
** Because he's not an action guy. A lot of people who aren't used to being in life-threatening danger simply freeze the hell up when they're put in said danger. Simple as that.
** Selvig is an old guy who just watched Loki casually leap around the room and kill half a dozen armed SHIELD agents. He probably realizes that, at best, he might get a few steps before Loki reaches him and kills/brainwashes him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"I have grown in my exile, Odinson!"]]
* Isn't Loki ridiculously out-of-character in this movie? Murdering people at the start of the movie, and smiling while he does it; making sadistic comments; uncalled-for insults to other characters; smirking/grinning when he senses chaos and destruction happening.\\
:: In Thor's solo movie, Loki never showed any of those personality traits, '''except''' towards Thor himself, and in that case, it's arguable that Loki was just "pushed" into having that attitude and he would probably regret it after achieving his goal. He mostly [[AffablyEvil treated his enemies (Laufey and Thor) with respect while still being their enemy]]. The only person he killed (without being asked to) was an enemy of his father's. And even though he planned to destroy an entire planet, he was not doing it ''[[ForTheEvulz "cuz it's fun"]]''. He was '''never''' shown to be taking pleasure in the death/destruction that he caused in Thor's solo movie. He didn't even kill Heimdall, so I assumed he was planning to just put some kind of spell on Heimdall after his plan was complete instead of killing him. In Thor's movie, Loki was a KnightTemplar / WellIntentionedExtremist who was confused about his destiny and believed that what he was doing would be considered noble...I didn't get any of that from AvengersLoki. He was cruel/sadistic to ''everyone'' in Avengers, but he should've only been like that to Thor alone.
:: Before the movie came out, Hiddleston implied that Loki was going to be just as sympathetic as he was in ''Thor'', that he was going to be a character who we would feel sorry for because he's just looking for his rightful place in the universe. But that's not what I got from Loki's portrayal in this movie at all, only a monster.
** I think he ''did'' try to kill Heimdall. He used the freaking Casket of Ancient Winters, something with the potential to destroy worlds, on ''one person.'' Yes, he didn't make extra sure he was dead by shattering the ice but I think that completely freezing someone like that (which likely would have killed other people) is sufficient to assume that someone is dead.
** It's not very hard to believe that Loki's simply changed after everything that happened to him. In ''Thor'', Loki was just starting down The Slippery Slope. By ''The Avengers'', he's doing cartwheels at the bottom. Not to mention that he did try destroying an entire realm in ''Thor'', just because he thought I'd please his father...
** Loki ''is'' out of character in this movie--WordOfGod is that his trip through that wormhole at the end of ''Thor'' did bad, ''bad'' things to his psyche.
** Apparently, they cut 2 hours of material from the movie, so maybe there were scenes making Loki more sympathetic that were cut. I also thought he wasn't particularly like they set up Loki's character in ''Film/{{Thor}}''. I don't even think it comes down to the killing he does, because killing people is part of the [[ProudWarriorRace culture he grew up in]], but he doesn't get enough screen time for us to understand what's going on in his mind and obviously he doesn't have any real plan at all and there is not even one scene where he uses his "silver tongue" against anyone. I do like Loki very much as a character, so the movie kind of disappointed on this note. I still enjoyed it, but it could have been so much better if they had given their villain more time.
** There is actually a rather interesting theory on Loki's out of character-ness. It is thought by many fans that perhaps Loki was being at least partially brainwashed by Thanos. It is implied in the movie that the stone in Loki's staff helps perhaps increase the emotions felt by the Avengers when they start arguing and seems to be at least partially responsible for that argument in some way. If the stone did that to the Avengers, it has to be wondered what it could be doing to Loki. If it is the case that the stone is helping to increase negative emotions, Loki's out of character-ness is completely justified. Also, it is shown that the brainwashing seems to be reversed by blows to the head and after Loki was smashed around by the Hulk, he seemed to change back into who he was before.
*** I am very curious if this explanation will become canon in the next Thor movie.
*** Listen when Loki is talking with Thor the first time. He all but outright says that ''yes'', he's gone crazy. He goes on about having been "exposed to truths" and such. So yes, the movie acknowledges that Loki is indeed acting quite weird and he's lost a few marbles, backed up when Banner mentions that he's "a bag of cats". After getting the hell smacked out of him by the Hulk, he seems to relax a little bit and the Loki from the first Thor movie starts to reappear.
*** Not to mention that in ''Thor'', his eyes were green while in ''Avengers'', his eyes were blue...
**** Sadly, upon close inspection and the help of [[http://tea-kitten.tumblr.com/post/31489705669/view-in-hi-res-this-is-for-the-people-who this post]], this is not the case. Loki's eyes remain the same shade of blue throughout the entirety of both Thor and the Avengers. Any change is likely the result of lighting differences and nothing more.

** In addition to the point about the scepter, there's an easily overlooked moment when we see Loki making his bargain with the Chitauri, in which The Other tells him that if he fails, [[spoiler: Thanos]] will make him wish for something as merciful as pain, and gives him a sample thereof. Loki takes it without resistance. We don't know how long Loki has been with the Chitauri. We do know that he didn't really have a plan, so much as he had an order from his superior with a request for himself. He calls himself an ally, but his motivations are purely in subservience to the Chitauri; his "plan" consists of after the Chitauri rule the Earth, they may be so merciful as to allow him to rule it if he is a good servant to them. And for the cruelty he shows the humans, when made to suffer for prolonged periods of time, some people who have never been cruel before, develop it as a coping mechanism. He's monstrous towards his enemies because it allows HIM to make them suffer the way he did. It makes him feel powerful when he's been made to feel weak. All of Loki's behavior, from his subservient motivation, to the acceptance of pain from his masters, to the cruelty he displays and his enjoyment of that cruelty, suggests that Loki isn't really brainwashed, so much as he is ''broken'' by [[spoiler: Thanos]].
** One thing that should probably be understood, is that ''Film/{{Thor}}'' serves as CharacterDevelopment for Loki just as much as it does for Thor. It's just that with Loki it's about his descent into madness. He spends most of that movie being somewhat rational, until the end when he [[VillainousBreakdown begins to unravel]], especially when it comes to his fight with Thor. In the end, he's: been bested by his older brother once again, he now knows that he isn't Odin's real son, and there's no feasible way he can return to Asgard, not even to the way things were before he took the throne. Then we have confirmation by WordOfGod that falling down the wormhole did things to Loki's mind. The next time you watch this movie, watch him carefully. The scene in which he steals the man's eye for [[spoiler: Hawkeye]], especially. He could have had any lower level mook do that, but he does it ''himself'', and the look on his face as people run away screaming is one of pure joy. Finally, he has people's attention. Tony isn't far off when he calls Loki a diva, it's just that there's more to it than that. The end of Thor has all of Loki's plans to finally outshine his brother thwarted by that very same brother, so he wants earth to spite Thor, but also to get everyone's attention, and that's exactly what he does. It's funny, because he accuses Fury of being desperate, but Loki is pretty desperate himself.
** In addition to all the points already made about the side effects of the trip down the wormhole, Loki also had a serious Villainous Breakdown at the end of Thor - he basically tried to kill himself after Odin says "no Loki" which he apparently took as rejection, after all, and even that didn't work. Thor's solo movie established pretty well that Loki deals with issues with violence and manipulation - and now he's got even more issues, so yeah, of course he was more villainous this time around.
** Loki was noticeably sick looking during his first appearance in the film; he's sweating heavily, is very pale and has discoloring under his eyes. Those are the same severe physical symptoms that Clint had before Natasha knocked him out. Loki's symptoms lessen a bit, but he keeps the paleness throughout most of the film. His skin color is back to normal after you-know-who slams his butt you-know-when. Just putting this out there.
*** And note when they're leaving the Tesseract room at the very start of the film. Loki is bent over and appears to be limping, and Random Shield Agent rests a hand on his back and seems to be helping him walk and/or inquiring about his health.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The scepter of Conflict Ball.]]
* When the Avengers start getting annoyed with each other, why does no one think the staff of Loki (Trickster god) might be messing with them? One of them is meant to be a god, one a super soldier and two people with genius intellects.
** Because the staff may not have been doing that much - we're talking about two giant egos in the room (Stark and Thor), a massive case of ValuesDissonance (Rogers and Stark), the paranoid fears of Banner who is [[ProperlyParanoid justifiedly suspicious]] of the government and its interest in him (knowing Thunderbolt Ross so well) and is afraid to be around anyone for long and with damn good reason, all compounded by a general air of mistrust in the room due to SHIELD's shady activities which Fury hid from everyone.
** Because they're too busy being angry. They aren't ''annoyed'' with each other, they're '''furious''' to the point of Cap and Tony nearly coming to an all-out fistfight and Banner threatening to Hulk out and murder everyone. Nobody is in the right mind to stop and think things through until Banner picks up the Sceptre.
** Also, remember that at the beginning of ''Thor'', Loki hadn't turned evil yet and even Thor himself trusted him. While it's possibly that this is supposed to work on some strange metaphysical level where the Norse mythology of the Marvel movie universe is the same as the Norse mythology of the real world and lists Loki as a trickster and (eventually) a villain ev while the people of Asgard remain blissfully ignorant of that fact, it's also possible that in the Norse mythology of the Marvel movieverse, Loki isn't known as a trickster god because he hasn't done any of that stuff yet. So the Avengers would think of him as a very powerful being, but not necessarily a trickster.
*** The Norse Mythology hasn't changed. In ''Thor'' there's a scene of Selvig, Jane and Darcy all looking at a Norse Mythology dictionary thing for children (which is real, unrelated to the film and can actually be purchased). The camera zooms in on a few pages and they're readable if you watch the film on a big screen television and pause it. We see pages about Bifrost, Thor & Mjolnir and Loki up close, and Loki is described as a mischievous trickster God.
**** Also, there are other trickster gods in other mythologies, and many of them aren't cruel or evil. Hermes is one such example, and by the standards of the Greek Gods, Hermes is downright ''benevolent''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Burn all the humans! No taking out tactical targets or setting up bases!]]
* So, the Chitauri shooting at seemingly random civilians instead of trying to take out tactical targets. Are they just wasteful assholes or are they trying to be scary?
** They work for Thanos, who is the galactic grand champion at 'sacrificing zillions of minions inefficiently because he just doesn't care' and 'as long as lots of people are dying, I don't care about anything else'. Perfectly IC.
** A force tasked with invading an area and securing it before advancing outward will have a flexible or even nonexistent set of rules of engagement, permitting them to open fire on anything that moves. Plus those guys were in KillEmAll mode. Not to mention that, well, what "tactical targets" are there in the middle of NYC? I don't see any missile launchers, radar stations, or fortified bunkers there.
*** By "Tactical Targets" I mean Police units, Military forces, potential communications systems, etc. They seem to spend all of their time just rampaging around instead of actually trying to secure the area. It looked like the only advantage they had over our "puny" human infantry was surprise and those damn {{Space Whale}}s. And that first advantage doesn't last forever.
** Because they are aliens, on an alien planet (to them). They don't know what a 'tactical target' looks like on earth. They were probably shooting at anything that moves, looking for floating whales to destroy.
*** They were shooting at police. Military didn't arrive for an hour, and then we didn't see much action between the two. As for "communications systems", they can't exactly destroy every cell phone, radio, and phone line while fighting the Avengers. They initially began firing on civilian targets indiscriminately, but the Avengers got their attention before they could become more organized and spread outwards, and at that point the Avengers ''were'' the primary tactical target to destroy before they could do anything else.
**** They weren't shooting at police, at least not as a tactical action. They were merely randomly shooting at the populace and there just happened to be police officers among them. By communications, I assume the above poster refers to ''significant'' installations, such as rooftop-based antenna arrays, radio towers, et al, things that an enemy force would require to coordinate a counteroffensive (you don't see modern military shooting walkie-talkies out of soldiers' hands when there's a radio truck nearby, do you?) A tactically-savvy, intelligent invasion force would first need to establish a beachhead, mount defensive lines (such as semi-fixed artillery emplacements on rooftops) to prevent local resistance from pushing them back, and spread outwards systematically while securing territory bit by bit. At no point in the assault did the Chitauri act like they had any semblance of strategy other than "fly around randomly and shoot at anything that moves."
*** We don't see much else of what they're doing besides fighting the Avengers, so if they were attacking the police we won't see it. There were only a couple of scenes with police, one with the group that were getting blasted as the Chitauri were strafing the streets and the large group of police that Cap rallies. The Chitauri ''did'' attack that latter group, as they were flying overhead and firing, and a group tried to attack on foot before they met a bad case of Captain America. Most of the police and military were establishing an outer perimeter and the Avengers were deliberately drawing the Chitauri into the area around Stark Tower to keep them from expanding outward. (that's Iron Man's entire job in the battle, after all) As for communications equipment, again ''what'' communications equipment would they target that would have any reasonable effect on the battle? TV antennae only broadcast out, cell towers are redundant, radio towers are redundant, and personal communications equipment is ubiquitous. The Chitauri could blow up every antennae in the city and personal radios and cell phones would keep working just fine. The only people who would need large-scale,d edicated communications equipment would be the military, and that only when they start setting up a an actual military base that needs to serve as a communications hub, which they don't at that point in the film. (realistically, you're not going to look at any kind of "antennae farm" unless you have a standing military facility; prior to this, and in the field, battalion commanders and down will have dedicated radiomen with radio packs who would be hard to discern in the chaos) And the Chitauri ''were'' trying to establish a beachhead, but they had the inherent problem of the entire area around their entry point into the city being bottlenecked by a demigod, an archer who can kill them without looking at them, a flying suit of powered armor with destructive energy beams that keeps shooting down anything leaving the immediate area, a giant green rage monster smashing everything it can reach, and Captain America and Black Widow tearing up infantry on the ground, all keeping them from setting up ''anything'' coherent. They can't establish their beachhead or set up positions on rooftops in that area until the Avengers are dealt with. If the Avengers weren't present, their infantry could form some sort of beachhead, but until the highly-mobile superhumans are dealt with, they can't.
**** The problem is, they're really not doing much to "deal with" the highly-mobile superhumans. If they considered the Avengers a tactical objective, or even an ''obstacle'' at ''any'' point, they would've swarmed all of them the same way they did Hulk: a concerted attack with a bunch of sleds, out of range, peppering them with energy bolts. But for the most part, the ground combat was limited to Cap, Thor, and Tony fighting disorganized groups in ''melee combat'', and a few soldiers climbing up to Hawkeye's perch. Considering the amount of troops pouring out of the portal, then no, dealing with any Avenger other than Hulk was a very minor thing, so what was the rest of them so busy with elsewhere?
*** There's a problem with "swarming" the Avengers: They're [[OneManArmy the Avengers.]] Three of whom are incredibly mobile and impossible to pin down. They can't "swarm" the Avengers because everytime they try, the Avengers smash them to shit. The Hulk is rampaging around ripping apart their formations, Hawkeye is a single person on a rooftop who is hard to spot and using a silenced weapon (as any infantryman whose ever had to deal with a sniper in urban terrain as to just how much of a pain it is to locate and deal with one), Black Widow is only on the ground for the start of the fight and takes to the air before the Chitauri can really get focused on the Avengers, and Captain America is highly mobile on foot. Thor and Iron Man can ''fly'' and easily destroy Chitauri air units. Furthermore, as shown in TheOner, the Avengers aren't just six people fighting on their own: they're a coordinated force rampaging around through the Chitauri and supporting one another, with Hawkeye picking out concentrated enemy forces and directing one of the heavy-hitters to stomp it. The Chitauri aren't some hive-minded force with perfect coordination, and simply ''fighting'' the Avengers is an extremely difficult prospect, let alone coordinating anything against a force whose least-mobile member is hard to find, and the rest of whom are constantly moving about the battlefield and shattering any attempt at a counterattack while shattering attempts to attack them directly. And as the battle progresses, the Chitauri ''do'' coordinate and eventually begin to get the upper hand over the Avengers. They swarm Hawkeye's position and blow up his rooftop perch, they swarm the Hulk after he bashes Loki, they surround Iron Man after he crashes, and the only reason Cap isn't getting overrun is because Thor is right beside him with Mjolnir.
**** Exactly. ''Eventually''. Because by then, they HAD realized the threat. But before that? Random strafing of random civilians and an inexplicable attempt to blow up a bunch of them in a bank (tactically pointless and a waste of resources and time,) where no one could see them (so it's useless for intimidation.) The Avengers were doing a good job at keeping them contained, but the Chitauri didn't really coordinate until the team's threat made itself noticeable. It was only after suffering heavy losses, ''because they DIDN'T coordinate'', that they started focusing on the Avengers. But even that was inefficient. You say that they're impossible to pin down, but consider this: ''they swarmed Hulk''. The unbelievably agile, swat-sleds-out-of-the-air-with-a-finger Hulk. ''He'' couldn't escape their onslaught, at least not for the few seconds it was shown on-screen. ''They gave Hulk a nosebleed''. That kind of power would've liquefied Thor or the Iron Man armor, and Cap's shield can only defend from one direction. And Cap can't outrace a sled, while Thor needs windup time to get off the ground, so only Tony can fly off on his own --and without Hulk's strength and nigh-invincibility, he can be brought down relatively easily. So why didn't they do ''the exact same thing they did to Hulk'' to everyone else --the much less agile, much less strong, much less resilient, but ''just as dangerous'' everyone else? Even Tony had trouble shaking off ''one'' trooper, imagine if they had really made an effort and dogpiled him en masse or called for air support while he was on the ground. The Chitauri were {{Zerg Rush}}ing, plain and simple. Nothing wrong with that.
*** ''Because by then, they HAD realized the threat. But before that? Random strafing of random civilians and an inexplicable attempt to blow up a bunch of them in a bank (tactically pointless and a waste of resources and time,) where no one could see them (so it's useless for intimidation.)'' I was under the impression that said group of Chitauri were some kind of death-squad whose job was to kill as many civilians as possible while the rest of the army secured the area around the gate. Only four soldiers were assigned to that task, so it obviously wasn't a large expenditure of resources. (another possibility is that they targeted the civilians deliberately to pull Avengers off fighting the rest of the force, but that's iffy)
*** Why send out death squads if your intention is to enslave the planet? Dead people tend to make terrible slaves. (Unless Loki asks Hela to give him the dead civilians back and promises her a pony for her birthday or something.)
*** ''The Avengers were doing a good job at keeping them contained, but the Chitauri didn't really coordinate until the team's threat made itself noticeable. It was only after suffering heavy losses, ''because they DIDN'T coordinate'', that they started focusing on the Avengers.'' Yes, because that's what always happens when a force makes contact with an unexpected threat. The Chitauri weren't expecting the Avengers, and they had to go through their OODA loop to respond to it, which they did pretty quickly considering how badly the Avengers were hurting them at the time. Compare the Chitauri's reaction speed to real-life situations like, say, the clusterfuck involving Task Force Tawara during OIF in '03 (it took coalition troops ''days'' to properly respond to an inferior force whose heaviest weapons were ''man-portable mortars'').
*** ''You say that they're impossible to pin down, but consider this: ''they swarmed Hulk''. The unbelievably agile, swat-sleds-out-of-the-air-with-a-finger Hulk. ''He'' couldn't escape their onslaught, at least not for the few seconds it was shown on-screen.'' And it did nothing to really stop him beyond pissing him off a little bit more, at which point he got clear. Furthermore, the Hulk had stopped briefly on that rooftop, giving an organized force the window to pin him down, however briefly. The other mobile Avengers couldn't be pinned down early on for the simple reason that early on the Chitauri were still reacting.
*** As I recall Black Widow and Captain America were on that same bridge with none of the heavyweights there to protect them for a good 20 minutes only about ten of which were before the Hulk showed up and demonstrated that yes this planet can offer meaningful resistance. A half dozen of those space sleds could have turned both of them into crispy swiss cheese before any of the other avengers could have reacted properly.(Hawkeye wouldn't have noticed before it was too late because they were swarming all over the damn place anyway.) That would have killed their leadership and fucked the Avengers coordination to hell for at least a few minutes. They didn't do that though because what passes for an officer corps amongst the Chitauri is loaded with morons.
*** You recall incorrectly. They were not standing alone on the bridge for twenty minutes. They're actually on the bridge for a relatively short time fighting Chitauri infantry, and the majority of the Chitauri fliers are engaged with the much larger NYPD presence ''and'' the flying demigod, giant green rage monster, and airborne powered armor, all of which are being actively coordinated by the sharpest eyes in the world, ''and'' both Cap and Widow left the bridge well before the Chitauri got coordinated and started focusing on the Avengers specifically. Remember that at this specific point in the battle, the Chitauri don't really know that Cap is coordinating the Avengers; he's just one more human in a funny suit, and one human in a funny suit is not worth tasking any fliers over, especially when they're busy fighting much more powerful threats. The Chitauri officers aren't idiots, they just have incomplete information, Cap keeps moving around, and if the brief bit with Stark swooping in to help Cap out is any indication, Hawkeye ''is'' keeping them coordinated enough to support each other if they're getting close to being overwhelmed.
*** Did you forget that Captain America's whole thing is based around having an utterly and completely impenetrable shield he can hide behind? That ''probably'' would've made it difficult for them to turn him into "crispy swiss cheese".
**** No more difficult than one sled flying ''around'' him while he's busy defending from the front, and turning his all-American tuckus into cinders. The shield can only stop attacks from ''one'' direction, after all, and no matter how much Cap spins around to defend himself, he can always be surrounded... that is, if the Chitauri didn't have the tactical acumen of Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
*** It's not the shield, its the fact that Cap is very mobile and they're never able to really pin him down at any point. Chitauri air units are constantly being tasked to fight much more serious threats than one human in a funny suit who isn't even armed with a ranged weapon. Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man are much more pressing threats. The fact that the Chitauri eventually focus their firepower on eliminating Hulk and ''Hawkeye'', who is spotting targets and coordinating the team, shows that the Chitauri are a lot more savvy than you're giving them credit for.
*** ''So why didn't they do ''the exact same thing they did to Hulk'' to everyone else --the much less agile, much less strong, much less resilient, but ''just as dangerous'' everyone else? Even Tony had trouble shaking off ''one'' trooper, imagine if they had really made an effort and dogpiled him en masse or called for air support while he was on the ground.'' Actually quite simple: force concentration and limited resources. Look at when Iron Man, Cap, and Thor are fighting on the ground: they're only tackling infantry. This is because the sleds were concentrating on the Hulk and Hawkeye. You can't concentrate force at one point without leaving yourself strapped for manpower at another point. In concentrating firepower on the Hulk, they were pulling firepower away from the rest of the Avengers. After the Chitauri had finished dealing with Hulk and Hawkeye, they would have shifted toward the other Avengers. That's why they didn't simply "swarm" them with everything they had once they got organized. The Chitauri directed their limited resources in a concentrated strike at the two largest threats at the moment: Hulk, due to raw power, and Hawkeye, who was the observation asset who kept the rest of the team coordinated against the Chitauri and therefore served as the largest force multiplier. And even though the Chitauri were only able to direct infantry against Iron Man, Cap, and Thor, they were still able to direct enough force against them that they were pretty badly pressed until Thor smashed them with a car and Iron Man had to completely disengage and retreat. The Chitauri were ''winning'' toward the end.\\
Bringing things back to the original point of this entire argument: the Chitauri were securing the area immediately around the gate, by killing or driving out civilians and apparently sending death squads to massacre civilians. There were no "tactical" targets in the area that they could meaningfully assault, so they focused on causing chaos and delaying response times by forcing the police onto the defensive until they could bring more troops in through the gate. Then they encounter the Avengers, who are powerful enough that they can inflict severe damage to the Chitauri troops trying to drive everyone out of the area, and it was only after the Chitauri realized the extent of the threat that they finally began coordinating against them. Once they had identified the threat, they concentrated their aerial assets against the two biggest threats/force multipliers: the Hulk and Hawkeye, while infantry kept the other Avengers busy until those aerial assets could finish with the previous targets and shift to the less threatening ones. An overall reasonable scenario considering they didn't expect to fight the Avengers in the first place and had to adapt their previous apparent strategem of "cause chaos and kill as many humans as possible" on the fly to such a powerful enemy.
*** Added to this, what they did to Hulk, ganging up on him and blasting him with an overwhelming hail of fire? Yes, it's impressive and they drive him back but...that's it. Hulk comes out the other side of it ''with a nosebleed''. That's it. They fired on him in the highest concentration of the whole battle, enough to demolish the building he was on, and all they did was give him a nosebleed. He's not even wounded at all.\\\
That might very well be why they don't try it against anyone else: The one person they ''did'' try it on, it barely slowed down for more than a couple minutes.
*** Actually, we don't know. The swarm-on-Hulk shot is part of the greater scene showing everyone at their lowest, so on the one hand it's not like the Chitauri leadership (if there even was one) attacked him first, then saw the lack of effect, and decided not to try on the others (all of the shots showing each Avenger happened roughly simultaneously.) On the other, that's the ''last'' time we see Hulk in combat until Tony destroys the mothership, so we can't really say that he was "barely slowed down." For all we know, the constant barrage kept him pinned down until the troops were shut off. And again, if the attack ''gave him a nosebleed'', anyone else (except maybe Thor) would've been vaporized. The movie knows this, but the movie also wants to show the Hulk in a moment of vulnerability, so it only used the swarm attack on him. At the expense of the Chitauri's intelligence, natch.
** They are, in fact, trying to be scary. The Chitauri were led to believe that the humans would put up no real resistance; that the combined armed forces of Earth were no match for them, so they didn't need to fight strategically. Loki was convinced, and had convinced his army in turn, that humans just needed a push to go to their knees and stay there. So they came through and started shooting indiscriminately because they thought there wasn't any reason not to. The plan was "be as scary as possible, we win."
** The biggest problem with this line of thought is that it relies on what we know. The Chitauri did not have any intelligence on what they were coming into. It would be the equivalent of knowing that you have to go through an energy rift that opened in front of you. You know it goes somewhere, but you don't really know what kind of environment is on the other side or what the situation will be. Also, we don't know what kind of society the Chitauri have. If they are a warrior race where everyone is a combatant, they assume Earth is as well. We also don't know exactly how their technology works. Loki would only really be familiar with Asgardian tech, so we don't even know if the Chitauri can detect radio waves. And, since they have gone in blind, detecting radio waves as a means of determining communications targets means most of the planet is covered in targets.
*** It's still a little strange for Thor to declare that there is a higher form of war out there where having laser muskets apparently makes your grunts and their immediate commanders seem to have no idea how to actually launch an invasion.
*** You're basing a blanket claim by a demigod with hyperadvanced technology on the actions of a single independent force that had no immediate connection to the Asgardians? That's like talking to a NATO general about advanced weaponry technologies and strategies and then immediately pointing to a Somalian militia as an example of how primitive their technology and tactics are.
** Here's a thought: its a UriahGambit. [[spoiler: Thantos]] sent them off to die. Either they offended him somehow or he wanted them dead as another tribute to his lover, they were supposed to die. The objective was to kill as many people as possible (maybe everyone) and then off his trops with a kill-switch as mentioned in the below post. This explains the lack of tactics (they were delibrate) and the InstantWinCondition ([[spoiler: Thantos]] was going to use it himself).
** The important thing to remember about the complete lack of strategy displayed by the Chitauri is that they weren't here for a fight. They were here for a one-sided massacre. They employed approximately the same amount of strategy as a person pouring cement down an anthill. Per the intel they were given, there is no enemy force that can fight back against them, so just fly through, blast the hell out of everything, and the humans will bow down and cry for mercy. Quick, messy, gets the job done in an hour. Obviously, this is not what transpired, but it's what Loki promised: glorious, but ''short'' conquest against an enemy that can do nothing but ''burn''. Had they actually been expecting to have any competition at all, they might have put a lot more effort into a legitimate war strategy. What we saw was a basic shock-and-awe display of power meant to intimidate the enemy into submission.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mothership Gone = Instant Win]]
* Why do the Chitauri all just drop dead when the mothership goes boom? Were those infantry actually some kind of techno-organic remote drone? And if so, why did that one that fumbled with the grenade look so scared as it was fumbling with aforementioned grenade?
** Most likely, the Chitauri soldiers were implanted with some sort of kill-switch as a failsafe in the event of a betrayal by Loki. If Loki had decided to close the portal and keep the army for himself (since the {{Mooks}} would have no way of knowing he'd betrayed their masters), the army drops dead and leaves Loki with nothing.
** I assumed that they were biomechanical and there was some kind of killswitch (as the above poster mentioned) or some sort of other psychic link to what was on the other side of the portal.
** The 'killswitch' idea seems to be on the right track. When the mothership goes down, you can briefly see electricity bursts coming from their armour.
** That actually closes a bit of FridgeLogic for me, since on the first viewing it seemed like the grunts were killed instantly just to simplify the ending of the movie and the cleanup. But preparing for a double cross by Loki is both logical and absolutely in character for his so-called "allies."
** It's also shown they are at very least cyborgs, that nuke Tony's carrying will carry an electromagnetic pulse to wipe them out.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Spider-Man! Wolverine! Professor X! Where are you?!]]
* Not really a big issue, but what the hell was the rest of the horde of heroes that base themselves out of NY doing during the alien invasion? That is, the in-universe reason the invasion even manage to damage the city so much, considering how much the hero community in the Marvel universe seem to love Manhattan? Sure, on a meta level, they didn't because it's an Avengers movie, and they are going to show the Avengers, not the dozen other heroes that live nearby, but it'd be good to see some in-universe explanation why the major heroes based out of the Big Apple don't help.
** Most likely because the Avengers seem to live in a different universe to Spider-Man, the X-Men and other heroes, even though they exist in the same comics universe. After all, there is no mention of human mutants existing in any of the previous films.
** Yep, if we're gonna get all Doylist, there's the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which is made up of films Marvel oversaw themselves) and the rest, who are at other film-companies (X-Men and Fantastic Four at Fox, Spider-Man at Sony.) The latter won't be entering the former until they stop making money for their respective companies. ''Until.''
*** Also, keep in mind that the invasion was only taking place in Midtown Manhattan, and only lasted a few hours, tops. It's entirely believable that the ComicBook/FantasticFour and X-Men could have been somewhere else. And characters like Spidey, Daredevil, the Punisher, the Heroes for Hire, etc. are more street-level crimefighters, who may well be fighting the Chitauri, but [[TheGreatestStoryNeverTold aren't caught in the spotlight of the moment.]] So even if they ''do'' exist in the same universe, it isn't all that surprising that they aren't seen.
** Now, what about War Machine? He's a military officer of the country getting invaded by aliens, after all. I know it's a long movie, but a short cameo could've explained his absence.
*** The bulk of the film takes place over a day or two, and the invasion is only a few hours. If Rhodey's off somewhere, he would not have time to return, and would be told to stay back like apparently everyone but the National Guard was. Rhodey presumably doesn't have clearance for SHIELD, though Tony doubtless told him anyway.
*** In addition, it's possible Rhodey is still in California.
*** A comic tie-in to Iron Man 3 shows he was fighting the Ten Rings in Hong Kong. He got back just in time for some shwarma.
** Looked like a midday weekday, so Spidey probably had class. From a street sign I'm guessing he attends City College or a reasonable fascimile thereof; maybe that's where they put ESU this time 'round. Even webslinging, it's a bit of a trip from the West 130s to Grand Central, and he ''would'' get distracted by herding civilians out of danger. By the time the X-Men got everyone loaded into the Blackbird and got air clearance, the fight would probably be over. Can't explain everyone else, though.
*** Elementary my dear troper. They don't exist yet in this continuity because FOX and SONY really don't like to share. There weren't any other heroes fighting in the battle of New York because there aren't any. Or at least they have yet to become heroes.
** You asked where is profesor X? He was blown to ashes by Jean Grey the last time we saw him. Thanks for asking...
** Peter Parker hadn't become Spider-Man yet. [[Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan Where were you two months later?]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why not fire the nuke straight into the portal?]]
* Why didn't the World Security Council fire the nuke into the portal rather than ''at Manhattan'', again?
** They weren't aware of what was behind the portal. They wouldn't know the alien mothership was right behind the portal, nor that the army was a KeystoneArmy with the ship being the keystone.
*** They may also not have been able to lock the missile onto a target as small as the portal to fly through it. If that's not enough, insert whatever energy disruption technobabble you like to explain it.
** Nuclear missiles, by their very nature, are not designed to hit small targets. They're designed to hit rather...large targets. The nuke can't be targeted at the portal because nukes aren't designed to pass through fifty-meter-wide openings.
*** ''[=ICBMs=]'' can't be targeted at fifty-meter-wide openings. ''Cruise missiles'' can almost be flown through specific windows in a building; they have pretty much the same accuracy as [=JDAMs=] do. But yeah, the main reason the nuke isn't aimed at the portal is because the World Security Council simply didn't think of it. The entire point of that scene is that the WSC is going for the short-sighted, scorched-earth, 'hard man making hard choices' type quick-and-dirty solution that the Avengers exist to refute.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:How did Loki get back to Earth?]]
* When Fury asks for an explanation of how the Tesseract is suddenly activating on its own, Hawkeye theorizes that since its intended function is to open doorways to other places, someone might be opening said doorway from the other side. No sooner are the words out of his mouth than the portal opens and Loki comes through.
** In other words, he figured out how to mess with the Cosmic Cube remotely. Maybe Thanos taught him how to do it, or maybe he just figured it out himself.
** The after-credits scene in ''Thor'' shows that Loki had already created a psychic connection with Dr. Selvig before the events of The Avengers. Through that connection, Loki was making Dr. Selvig use the Tesseract to home in on his location, after which he could open the portal. Since (as evidenced by the Captain America movie) the Tesseract can be operated by psychic commands, S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't have noticed Dr. Selvig was doing this.
*** The far bigger headscratcher is why either absolutely no one else before Hawk worked this out and why he never told anyone until five minutes before its activation. Was he that arrogant that he believed his arrows would be able to defeat the kind of enemies the Tesserect could send his way?
*** Where was it indicated that only Hawkeye figured out that the Tesseract was a doorway? When he talks to Fury, he specifically says "The cube is a doorway, right?" indicating that he knows its' a doorway because ''everyone else'' knew what it was. He was simply observing everything, then the crisis came up and everyone was trying to figure out what the hell was happening, with most of the immediate, middle-of-crisis theories being that the cube was doing something, and Hawkeye threw up the theory that something on the other end was doing it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Who earns the Merch rights for Hulk Hands?]]
* Cap merch is presumably still owned by the Department of Defense, and Iron Man by Stark, but did someone just start churning out Hulk hands? What, did Tony start making them and slipping Banner a cut of the profi--wait, hang on, I have to go work that into my fanfic. (EDIT: [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8106911/1/ This]] [[http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/avengers-one-shot-the-avengers-all-meet-in-an-inn.224623/ one]].)
** I would assume that after New York was saved, since the Avengers are now known public heroes, Tony probably approved merchandising based on his fellow heroes (with their permission, of course), and he probably asked Bruce about using Hulk's likeness for any merch.
** Also, considering the Hulk Hands is basically two human hands made large and green, without any special pattern on it, any enterprising sales man would have produced some merchandise and sold it, with or without Bruce's permission.
*** Bruce Banner is surely back in Brazil, very busy escaping from SHIELD agents to be concerned about royalties.
*** Why would he be back there? He's no longer on the run. Tony's offered him a job. SHIELD was never his enemy.
*** SHIELD isn't Bruce's enemy, but the US military still is. Heck, one thing specifically established in "The Consultant" short film is that the World Security Council has no authority to order General Ross to do anything he doesn't want to do. Coulson & Sitwell even take advantage of that to manipulate Ross into keeping the Abomination out of the Avengers Initiative.
*** Presumably, after people around the world see the footage of the Hulk rescuing Iron Man and killing the invaders thereby saving thousands of lives, he has become a national hero in his own right rather than merely a dangerous creature to be hunted. There would be massive protests if the army immediately went back to hunting him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Asgardian justice."]]
* The ending scene. Yes, I know they were sore about losing the cosmic cube. But I wonder why any of the World Security Council argued about keeping Loki on Earth. If they actually read the Norse myths and knew what Asgardian Justice means? Execution is downright merciful compared to snake poison to the eye every day.
** Which in itself could be a reason to argue to keep Loki. After all, most Western nations do have laws against handing prisoners over to regimes which would torture them.
*** Technically those are ''human rights'' laws. [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman Loki's not human.]] And after the SHIELD helicarrier's experience, they may have just decided that there wasn't a prison on earth that could reliably hold him.
** Law enforcement, whether it be on the international level or the local level, is notorious for its territorial behavior. The WSC wanted to keep Loki because, as they mentioned, he's a war criminal. He's committed crimes against the Earth and as far as they're concerned, he should face justice as decided and administered by the Earth. Granted, he's arguably done ''worse'' to Asgard and the frost giant world, the name of which escapes me right now (Jotunheim, which quite literally means "Giant Home" - a helpful troper), but they don't know and likely don't care about that. Thing is, and I'm kind of surprised Fury didn't mention this; they can't exactly compel Thor to let them keep him.
*** Ironman and Thor were fighting on close enough to equal terms that a world that has Warmachine (and presumably the means to make more if they wanted) could have at least done a decent job of trying to stop Thor. It may or may not have worked but Fury didn't try and didn't try on purpose.
**** Iron Man and Thor were not fighting on equal terms. Iron Man was getting his ass kicked by Thor ''very slowly''. Notice that everything Tony does to Thor barely phases him, where as Thor inflicts serious damage on the Iron Man armor. The plan also requires Tony following the order to try and stop Thor, and we all know how good Tony is at following orders, and bringing Rhodey out in time to actually try, which, given how quickly they leave(a day, two, tops) might not have been viable as they probably didn't have notice until an hour before when Thor said "Whelp, been fun. Gonna be taking Loki and the cube back home now." Least that's how I imagine the conversation went.
*** Fury ''did'' mention that, with some understated snark:
---->'''WSC:''' That wasn't your call to make.
---->'''Fury:''' I didn't make it. I just didn't argue with the god who did.
** Well, the snake poisoning punishment was not for messing with mortals, but for insulting all the aesir at one of their banquets and killing Baldur, so chances are pretty good Loki will not face this punishment.
** The Norse myths aren't necessarily accurate. They really can't be sure what will happen to Loki in Asgard.
*** Also, they couldn't know about the poinson-dripping torture because it ''hasn't happened yet.'' Remember that Loki had never done anything to merit suspicion as of the beginning of the movie ''Thor'', and he betrays Asgard for the first time in that movie and is cast out, not being heard from again until he turns up in ''Avengers''. It's not so hard to believe that Norse mythology would be different in a world in which the Norse gods actually exist. Any myths involving Loki as a villain presumably don't exist in the Marvel movie universe (or else they were made up wholesale by the ancient Norse folk and not based on the actual exploits of the Asgardians).
*** And with the trailers for ''Thor: The Dark World'', we see that Loki's confinement seems entirely devoid of poison-dripping and is indeed rather comfortable for a prison cell. Nice furniture, at least.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:We get the universe!! You get... that insignificant blue planet.]]
* Loki's trade off between Chitauri: He gets Earth. They get the universe. The universe pretty much includes Earth. Was he aware that his actions, even if successful, would have made him a slave to the Chitauri?
** I think "''the rest of'' the universe" was implied.
** Also, Loki ''really'' didn't think his cunning plan quite through.
** From the scene earlier on where Loki is communing with the Chitauri, it definitely felt like they already had a leash on Loki, and giving him Earth was just [[ThrowTheDogABone throwing him a bone]].
** What makes you think Earth is so important, anyway? It has no intergalactic travel, no natural resources that couldn't easily be found elsewhere in '''the universe'''. It's sort of like taking over the country and giving the guy who helped you do it Utah; not something you're going to miss on the grand scale. The Earth was only important to Loki (who wanted to conquer it to spite his brother) and because it happened to have the Cosmic Cube at the time (which the Chitauri needed to rule the rest of the universe).
*** Which would make sense, [[spoiler:given that The Other didn't expect Earth to put up much of a fight - let alone involving superpowered beings - like they did against his Chitauri forces, thus his line to Thanos about "courting death".]]
*** What we're forgetting here is who the chitauri were working for. Loki isn't afraid of the Other, he's afraid of [[spoiler: Thanos. And he's right to be. If Earth is the bone Thanos is willing to throw you, you take it and thank him for it.]]
*** There might be another reason. In ''Thor'', there was a throwaway line that Fandral said that Thor himself in the past went to Earth to show off his powers and have foolish humans worship him as a God. Perhaps Loki also secretly did the same and remembered it and hoped to expand that, as it were.
**** This. Everything we've seen about Loki through the Avengers after the fall through the wormhole and dealing with [[spoiler:Thanos]] suggests he's two things: crazy and broken. Loki's problem has always been an inferiority complex, stemming from the fact that he's a cunning SquishyWizard in a culture that prizes strength, determination, and courage, and the events following Thor left him powerless, terrified, without any faith in his family ties, and possibly brainwashed to believe that bridge was burnt completely to boot. Of ''course'' he wants to rule Earth. If it weren't for the Avengers, it'd be the only realm with denizens weak and insignificant enough to the rest of the universe that he could subjugate them just because he outclasses humans on every level; it's the only way he can assert control over anything to make up for all the control he ''seriously doesn't have'' over his own life.
**** Not sure if this goes here, but in Iron Man 3, one major plot element is Tony having severe anxiety attacks and PTSD, most of which is tied to the wormhole. If a few measly seconds of that thing can turn one of the greatest minds of humanity into a pile of mental issues, imagine what a longer stretch of time in there can do to Loki.
** I just assumed he both wanted to spite Thor by ruling "your precious Earth", and missed the feeling of being a king back on Asgard.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why didn't Stark just stop right before the portal when guiding the nuke?]]
* He clearly had it guided well enough. Sure it made it more dramatic but it didn't make a whole lot of sense when the nuke guided itself to the mothership without his aid. What reason did he have for going through as well?
** Since he was in space when he went through the portal, the nuke might not have made it to the mothership without continued propulsion.
*** In space, in the absence of friction, and object with a given speed will continue in that speed forever until it hits something. There is no propulsion needed once the desired speed has been reached, the object will just keep on going. Basic high-school physics. ''Guidance'' on the other hand might have posed a problem, since the nuke wasn't guided to hit the mothership in the first place -- although it should have exploded on its own once it was over Manhattan anyway; nukes are set to explode while in air, not when they hit the ground.
**** It is possible the reason the missile didn't hit the ground was due to this particular model firing based off a timing system with it calculated based on current location and velocity. Iron Man's out of power seems to imply he never cut off overclocking his jets despite catching up to the missile. So by increasing the missile's velocity it could travel farther before detonating. In line with the rules of narrativity, the timer just happened to go off near the alien spaceship.
*** Or even worse, what if the Chitauri got a hold of nuclear weapons?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"But given that it's a ''stupid-ass'' decision..."]]
* So at the climax of the film the Mysterious World Council Of Mysteriousness fire a nuclear weapon at Manhattan. Seriously; a nuke? The battle was going quite poorly, true, but the invasion had only just started and took the US by complete surprise, so naturally the battle is in the Chitauri's favor. But the MWCM goes straight for the nuclear option. Are you serious? Nukes are ''last resort'' weapons. There are hundreds of different tactics and weapons that can be deployed that are less extreme than a freaking nuke. Even if the MWCM ordered a fleet of bombers to carpet-bomb the city, that would still be a more reasonable response than just going - "The 30-minute battle is going badly, so fuck it, nuke everything." Did these assholes even remember the Cold War?
** Being fair, it was an alien invasion, not just a couple superhumans brawling. That is kind of serious. . . especially since it was an invasion through a portal, with an indeterminately large amount of forces coming through right now. Nuking the site in a last ditch attempt to close the portal isn't ''that'' unreasonable, since if the aliens managed to get a foothold in Manhattan, it would cost as least as many casualties fighting them back off conventionally, if such is even possible. The WSC underestimated the capability of the Avengers, but only that.
** Every second that portal was open was one second where any number of Chitauri could come through. The World Security Council knows that there is an alien army of indeterminate size on the other side of that portal, an army with technology that makes most of Earth's weapons look like a joke. There are six people there to stop the invasion - the brother of the invasion's leader, a borderline alcoholic narcissist, a former assassin-for-hire, a man who hasn't seen any action since the 40's, the rage monster that wrecked up Harlem (and Culver University and the SHIELD Helicarrier), and a spy with a bow & arrow who was recently under the thrall of the lead invader. If they bet on the Avengers and bet wrong, there's a large scale alien invasion that maybe one organization and a few individuals (namely SHIELD, War Machine, and The Abomination) are going to be able to deal with, risking billions of casualties and the freedom of Earth. If they bet against The Avengers, there's a few million casualties but the Earth is safe. From their perspective, it really wasn't much of a choice.
*** Yeah, about that makes most of Earth's weapons look like a joke' thing: Which exactly? They footsoldiers were only somewhat superior to earth soldiers, their hoverbikes more maneuverable but no better armed than attack helicopters and their Leviathans, while impressive, were not invulnerable and didn't have much in the way of weapons except more mooks. And Loki had already said 'send in the rest', and the road to the flagship once Ironman was in the portal seemed clear enough, which makes a ZergRush unlikely. SHIELD could've done some mayor damage to the force if they'd just launched their fighters without nukes. Possibly it wasn't done because Fury was engineering a victory by just the Avengers. But without the Avengers, the Chitauri would probably have taken/destroyed New York thanks to the element of surprise, but it's not exactly clear how they were going to take the rest of the world with it. And since RuleOfCool didn't leave them with any weapons with decent beyond line-of-sight capability, they could've just ICBM-ed New York at a later date if it proved necessary.
**** I wouldn't even say that their footsoldiers were better than average Earth infantry- their energy rifles and plasma cannons looked impressive and were probably pretty powerful (we saw the plasma cannons blowing holes in buildings), but they were semiautomatic and fired somewhat slow moving projectiles, whereas the average American soldier has an automatic assault rifle effective past several hundred yards. We saw a guy with a bow and arrow kill a over a dozen footsoldiers, I'm pretty sure well trained squads of American soldiers with assault rifles could outclass the alien forces. Not to mention that the aliens don't use cover much, and like to run to get close in combat, which does not work against enemies with automatic weapons.
*** Those hoverbikes flew almost as well as Iron Man -- who can, when he's not hemmed in by skyscrapers, easily outfly F-22 fighter planes. We can reasonably presume that given some open sky they'd be very formidable opponents.
**** Formidable? We saw half a dozen get killed by a single SHIELD harrier jet piloted by Hawkeye using only its nose cannon, and several more were taken out by the same guy using only a bow and arrow. Modern fighter jets and helicopters could've taken them down easily, given the amount of MoreDakka the Army, Airforce, and Navy likes to put on those things.
***** Again, you miss the important phrase in there: "piloted by Hawkeye." So, the guy with preternatural aim can shoot down a bunch of them. This is not indicative of what other, vastly less skilled people can do. Also, the leviathans didn't need weapons, they had enough strength to just fly through skyscrapers. And the only thing we ever saw damage them were Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man, and even they needed to put an effort into taking the things down. I'm comfortable saying the leviathans would shrug off almost all conventional ordinance.
***** The problem with that is we never saw Hawkeye demonstrate improbable aiming skills while flying that thing- he floated around a bit and fired the cannon at passing Chitauri flyers. It didn't look like he aimed much at all, and even if he did we saw the Chitauri flyers move slow enough that realistically conventional human aircraft can shoot them down just fine. It seems like a case of ShowDontTell, since we're never given the impression that the same aircraft piloted by different people couldn't shoot down the Chitauri, just as we are never given the impression that squads of soldiers with automatic weapons couldn't take out infantry who have no sense of cover more efficiently than one guy with a melee weapon, one girl with a pistol, and another guy with a bow and arrow. Also, Iron Man killed the leviathans with conventional explosives in the form of the missiles launched from his shoulders, and some human weaponry can dish a hell of a lot more kinetic force than one of Hulk's punches (if not as fast); they could go down if conventional aircraft shot them enough times. Not to mention that we never even saw the military ''try'' to fight the Chitauri before ordering the nuke, even though the forces we saw didn't seem all that impressive and there are several places where they could've done something so as to not shatter the viewers suspension of disbelief while still putting the central role on the heroes.
****** The Leviathan was shown flying through buildings with no issue, but was stopped dead in its tracks when it ran into Hulk's fist at full speed. This lead to the shell cracking which allowed Iron Man to strike it's weakpoint for massive damage. While a missle could provide some concussive force, it wouldn't have the same type of continual stopping power that came from the Hulk standing in place with his punch. The only other time Iron Man was shown taking out a Leviathan was from inside, which a traditional fighter jet would lack the manuverability (and likely durability) to survive. The final Leviathan that was taken down required the combined effort of the Hulk and Thor, with Hulk piercing the creature with its own armor and Thor driving it in with a strike from Mjolnir. Considering that a Mjolnir strike was able to take Hulk off his feet earlier in the film, it's not hard to imagine what kind of force was needed to drive the armor shard deep enough into the Leviathan to bring it down.
** No, you wouldn't launch a nuke at the initial infantry troops and a swarm of hovercraft; you'd launch a nuke at the ''rest of the vast enemy army'' that would be coming right behind the initial invasion force. That was what the WSC believed they would be facing.
** Nobody on the good guys' side was anywhere close to within earshot when Loki ordered in "the rest." As far as any of them knew, it was a functionally-unlimited number of hostiles coming through that hole indefinitely.
** And god help us all if we have to rely on the Abomination to save us.
*** We wouldn't really need to- there were not that many aliens, and the forces we saw were easily manageable without even resorting to large amounts of armor or artillery. Just some helicopters and infantry, maybe supported by jets and [=IFVs=].
** And finally: It was simply, as Fury put it, "A ''stupid-ass'' decision". Sometimes people in power, for various reasons, make bad decisions. They may have looked like good ones to them at the time they were made, but they fall apart once you've had time to think about it. It happens in real life, it can happen in Fiction, too.
** Everyone arguing the Chitauri's capabilities and our ability to handle them is missing the point. This wasn't a conventional bomb that would turn Midtown into a big crater for the tourists to visit and leave flowers. This was a nuke. There might be a few survivors, but between the blast and the radiation, New York is effectively sterilized. According to the 2010 census, that's 8,244,910 people. Aw, too bad, if you'd tried a just a liiittle harder, you could have beat the Holocaust by a full 50%! Then comes the fallout. Which way is the wind blowing? East, to Long Island (between Nassau and Suffolk counties, approx. 3 million)? West or South to Jersey? Maybe you'll get lucky and it'll blow North, where it'll only wipe out Westchester County (just under 1 million)! Of course, regardless of wind, this is New York. Without thousands of humans working constantly to maintain, it'll flood in short order. Whoops your radioactive material in the Atlantic currents! 3% of the total population of the United States dead, the environment poisoned, and let's not even talk about the collapse of the world economy thanks to the annihilation of one of the world's great financial centers or the destruction of countless irreplaceable artifacts. That's kinda petty in comparison. Could it have been avoided? Could all those people have been saved? Could the aliens have been defeated some other way? Never know now, will you? Of course the WSC had no idea of the Chitauri's numbers or capabilities. That's the whole reason you ''save the nukes for later''. Fury was right. It was a stupid-ass decision.
*** It was a stupid ass decision, but not for the reasons you say. No, one nuke isn't going to end life on this planet. Unless it was a really, *really* big one, it wouldn't even end all life in New York City. Seriously, stop treating nukes as magic weapons of ultimate doom.
**** ...I don't know who you think said that a single nuke would end all life on this planet. Anyway, no point in arguing when instead I can bring fun and interesting educational aids! [[http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html This one]] shows the effects of the pressure wave, while [[http://www.carloslabs.com/node/16 this one]] shows the effects of the heat blast. Neither makes any allowance for radiation. I've set both for 1 megaton, but I've no idea if they'll stay that way. Feel free to play with settings, depending on how large a nuke you think the WSC would use. For comparison, "Tsar Bomba" was the largest nuke ever tested, and it was approximately fifty megatons.
***** That wasn't a conventional nuke. It was one of the Phase 2 tesseract warheads. The ''largest'' one.
****** I'm going to call "Citation Needed" on this one. Where is that suggested?
******* FreezeFrameBonus. Tony puts a wireframe image of the Phase 2 'big bomb' on the monitor right after Cap slams the Phase 2 gun down on the table. Its the exact same shape as the warhead fired from the plane.
****** Except Tony, the pilot, Fury, and the WSC all refer to it as a nuke.
**** In shorthand, yes. But when he first mentions it, the WSC guy refers to it as part of Phase 2.
*** It makes you wonder if the WSC was also brainwashed by Thanos.
*** The WSC guy never makes any mention of the weapon being used, Fury is the one to say "Nuclear Strike". The missile that Tony puts up on the Heilcarrier screen is a ICBM of some sort not a air launched weapon like we saw (specifically a JSOW albeit one without wings and with a engine). So I have to say that it being a Phase 2 nuke is pretty unlikely. Given that the JSOW is not actually a nuclear weapon this is only speculation but the usual warhead for American cruse missiles is the W80 with a maximum yield of 150kt and a minimum of 5kt. One would hope the WSC would dial the yield down to the lower levels. So while many people would be killed the destruction would not be on a regional scale.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:We'll just leave Loki outside the restaurant. He'll be fine.]]
* The denouement is kind of... weird. So they have [[spoiler:Loki pinned down and surrounded by very angry heroes, and the Tesseract is back under their control. So they take the time to... wash up, dress nicely in civvies and drive out to Central Park, just casually strolling to a sunny plaza, in plain view of the public, to send Loki and Thor back home? (And as hilarious as the second stinger is, ''that'' means that they cuffed and gagged Loki, stored him somewhere, had lunch, and ''then'' did the above.) Isn't that a rather carefree attitude to dealing with the insane genocidal overlord?]]
** [[spoiler:Loki had just been Hulk Smashed. Perhaps it took him an hour or two to be able to stand up without falling over - so they went and got something to eat while he recovered]]
** [[spoiler: The Shawarma stinger gets even funnier if you picture Loki shackled and muzzled just off-screen, staring enviously at the Shawarma and trying not to fall asleep like everyone else.]] It doesn't make it any less silly, but RuleOfFunny.
** Maybe that's where they [[BrickJoke got him his drink.]]
** It was Shawarma, your argument is invalid.
** [[spoiler: But seriously, they handed him over to SHIELD, then they went out for Schwarma, then went to their respective home bases and got cleaned up. Then they retrieved him and took him to a good spot to say their farewells. The danger of Loki was over, three of them have enough power unarmed to give him a serious hard time, it's not that big of a deal.]]
** The scene where [[spoiler: everybody rides off into the sunset]] may not have even been on the same day as the final battle. They very well could have [[spoiler: detained Loki and spent a day or two tying up loose ends before going their separate ways.]]
*** [[spoiler: Considering the change of clean clothes everyone has at the end, save Loki and Thor (for obvious reasons), it's almost a sure thing that it was at least a day after, leaving plenty of time for shawarma chronologically.]]
** [[http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8f6h3SYB41rvya9ro1_500.jpg Hope this clears it up.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Bullet to the chest. Ow, that stings.]]
* How did Fury survive being shot? Bulletproof vest?
** Yes. He even pauses for a second to remove the flattened bullet and show it to the camera.
** Dude, [[CrazyPrepared he's Nick Fury]].
*** Or a reasonable facsimile thereof - a Life Model Decoy... but that's just WildMassGuessing.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Selvig and the secret off switch.]]
* The portal: How was Loki's scepter the way to stop it, and how the hell did that scientist guy get un-brainwashed?
** The scepter stopped it because the shield around it was pure Tesseract entry, and the scientist put a backdoor in - it can't defend against its own power, so the scepter can penetrate the shield and disrupt the portal. He was probably not totally brainwashed to begin with and then managed to snap completely out of it.
** Also, when they first attacked Loki atop the tower, the scientist was thrown back fairly violently; if [[GetAholdOfYourselfMan percussive maintenance]] can work to snap Clint out of it, there's no reason it couldn't work on the scientist too.
*** And hell, it seemed like even Loki "snapped out" of his state when the Hulk [[CurbStompBattle beat the holy fudge]] out of him.
** Including a shut off switch seems like exactly the kind of thing a responsible scientist like Selvig would do when designing a device that could fail disastrously, brainwashed or not.
*** I am now picturing him convincing Loki they needed a shut-off switch by saying that while he more than likely fixed the implosion problem, there was still a chance he was wrong and the thing would blow up and take them with it if they didn't have a shut-off. Probably in an overly cheery voice with a lot of technobabble, knowing Posessed!Selvig.
** I forget what hit him, but he got hit. They even foreshadowed it when Black Widow freed Hawkeye. Apparently Loki's brain washing fades away if you get knocked out.
*** He got blasted back by the rebound of the energy from Tony's blasters when Tony tried to blow up the Tesseract and hit his head as he fell, which knocked him out.
* It's most likely that the conversation was never that detailed: Loki told Selveig to build the device, probably adding something along the lines of wanting his best work, and Selveig did exactly what any scientist would do: he built in safeties because if he didn't, it wouldn't be his best work. Also, don't forget that Loki was ignorant of at least some of the device's specifics, or he wouldn't have needed Selveig to tell him about the iridium.
** Are we sure it was ''Selvig'' who put the failsafe in as opposed to Loki? We never see it happen so it's possible that Loki in a moment of GenreSavvy put in an override should he be betrayed by the Chitauri. Granted, they'd probably be able to make another gateway eventually, but in the meantime he gets to rule Earth (or so he assumes).
*** Selvig says he put it in, and Selvig built the machine. Loki isn't seen working on any of the technical aspects at any point.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Now "the other guy" and I are one.]]
* How come for Hulk's second appearance he seemed somewhat more in control?
** The very end of the Hulk movie implied that Banner had learned to control the Hulk.
** Plus, his "I'm always angry" line probably supports this. He's learned to, at least, control his anger to a point where he can use the Hulk as a means to stop whomever or whatever's angering him.
*** Then why couldn't he control it on the Helicarrier? Was Black Widow in any way a source of his anger? Was the ship itself?
*** Him transforming on the Helicarrier had nothing to do with ''anger'' and everything to do with ''stress''. Remember, in this continuity it's mainly his heart rate that leads to Hulking out--and when the giant airship you're on starts buckling at the seams, your heart rate's going to skyrocket.
**** Because he didn't want to. S.H.I.E.L.D. shanghaied him into their service, lied to him about their plans for the remarkably dangerous weapon they hired him to search for, he was suspicious from day one that they really wanted him here for the Hulk (and Stark's remarks supported this), and then despite repeated insistances that this would not happen, Widow stormed into his lab and demanded he turn himself over to be removed from the situation because of the Hulk. Everyone was screaming at each other and fighting over the sceptre, and less than a minute before the explosion, he had already been threatening to Hulk out. When the explosion finally ripped through the Helicarrier, Banner found himself trapped with Widow, the one who coerced him onto the ship in the first place and then demanded he leave. At that point, Banner was officially fed up with everything, and followed through on his previous threat of showing everyone what the Hulk can do.
*** He was very clearly trying to control it during that whole sequence. Saying he didn't want to stop the Hulk from coming out is entirely false, because he is actively trying not to Hulk out, and that's clear on screen.
**** As someone who has lived with the same kind of pent-up anger, and had his life destroyed by it on a few occasions, I recognize the inner struggle Banner's going through in this scene. He isn't fighting with the Hulk; he's wrestling with himself. Where previous Hulk transformations before he learned to control it were a snowballing effect of "You have reached the point of no return, Hulk now," this time is different. On the one side, Banner ''himself'' is livid to the point of wanting to Hulk out and start smashing everyone. He explicitly stated as much just before the Helicarrier was attacked. On the other, the rational parts of his mind are trying to calm his anger. Thus, we see him wrestling with the Hulk; the Hulk being his "rage monster", as Stark so eloquently put it. He fights it until Widow starts talking to him and trying to calm him; her being the centerpoint for his entire experience with S.H.I.E.L.D. thus far, her voice was the last thing he needed to hear. His emotional side latched onto her voice, as evidenced by his echoing roar of her words to him, and this tipped the emotional struggle in favor of "F everyone, rage now." It's not so different from the other times he's Hulked out, but the struggle itself was a more controlled representation of his mindset. In short: just because he can control his anger, doesn't mean he can't ''give in'' to it.
**** I would also remind everyone that Dr. Banner was injured and slightly messed up in the head at the time. I would say that not just stress, because that could be managed, but ''pain'' and stress. Anger alone he can deal with. Stress alone he could probably deal with. Pain is a source of contention, but add all three together? Anger at S.H.I.E.L.D plus the effects of the scepter, the stress at being in the Helicarrier, being attacked ''and'' being blown out of the floor knowing that you're being attacked and probably are going to Hulk out '''and''' the pain from the ppercussive force of the explosion and being blown an entire story down were just too much to deal with...and then the person who was stupid enough to put you in that situation in the first place has the nerve to say she can get you out with all that going on? Yeah, no. That's just the final straw.
*** The Hulk also responds to threats to Banner's life. Banner says as much; the Hulk prevented him from committing suicide, and Tony theorizes that the Hulk saved Banner's life when he was exposed to gamma radiation that would kill anyone else. The explosion was a clear and obvious threat to Banner's life, and coupled with ''all'' the other things that were stressing and threatening and angering him, that was all that was needed to trigger his transformation, at which point the Hulk targeted the first thing in line of sight that he perceived as threatening Banner: Natasha. Then Thor intervened, and the Hulk shifted the perceived threat to Thor. Then, when the escort pilot shot at him, the Hulk shifted to target that threat as well, destroying the plane. Once there were no immediate threats remaining, the Hulk calmed down; note how he actually managed to ''grab the pilot'' as he ejected, but instead of smashing him to paste, he just tossed the man aside. Once he was thrown from the exploding plane, the Hulk deliberately aimed his fall to not target any civilian populations. The Hulk was, essentially, an automated defense system targeting what Banner perceived as threats to his safety, and from there attacked anything that attacked him, and once all threats were gone, he switched off.
** He didn't fight it. Notice that the second transformation went by apparently painlessly and took seconds whereas the first one took a while and was not a pleasant experience. Treating The Hulk like a separate entity leads it to act that way, accepting it leads to more control. This was hinted at in [[TheIncredibleHulk The Incredible Hulk]]. when he fought The Abomination.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Thou hast fooled ''the God of Lies''!]]
* How was Black Widow able to trick Loki into revealing his plan to use the Hulk? It seemed to me like she just guessed.
** She's a really good spy and good at gathering information, Loki is [[SmugSnake really arrogant.]] He mentioned Banner more than once, and Black Widow realized Banner was the key to the plan - he's already a big risk, due to the fact that he's one frustrated rage away from destroying half the carrier, so it's not too big a stretch.
*** She's using the exact same technique we see her using on the Russian guys earlier in the film - remember when she says to Coulson over the phone that the Russian's about to tell her everything? Look at his reaction to that - he had no idea he was being played until that moment - and Loki is at least ten times as arrogant as that guy.
** OP here. No, I mean, I remember that scene, and I don't remember him mentioning Banner.
*** When Black Widow refers to Loki as a monster, he replies that she was the one who brought the real monster. That could only be a reference to the Hulk.
** I think, as a TheTrickster and ManipulativeBastard, he shouldn't have fallen for that at all.
*** It's hard to say who played who in that scene. It immediately appears as though the Black Widow was able to pump Loki for information by manipulating him, but that information almost immediately resulted in the Hulk getting free and Loki getting what he wanted.
**** Just my opinion, but it seemed to me that they both got to each other in different ways, so it was more a draw than anything. I think Loki was counting on tipping Widow off on the fact that the Hulk was the card up his sleeve while also causing her to run out of the room crying. Loki gets played, however, because he underestimates the shit out of her, because she's a human woman who he sees as weak. He has a look of genuine surprise on his face after she looks up, completely composed. In the end he does get what he wants, but he doesn't get there as flawlessly as he'd hoped.
** It's feasible that the Black Widow could use her understanding of human psychology to get surprising amounts of information from a human, but how much could she possibly know about ice giant psychology? Also, humans tend to have a knack for human psychology, since they can just imagine what they'd think in a given situation. Understanding alien psychology requires the much more difficult AwesomenessThroughAnalyses.
*** Asgard, Frost Giant, and human psychology are all pretty much the same thing by all observed evidence. There's no indication that there's any real difference going by their behavior.
**** Still, Loki is the ''god of mischief and lies'', and is very possibly thousands of years old (though this raises the question of whether Asgardians actually take that long to mature, or if Thor's friends are much older than he is and the gods spoken of in Norse mythology are precursors to the characters in the film rather than the same people). Not only that, he knows about her issues and past; she knows nothing about him to use as manipulation. She should not have been able to outmanoeuvre him or think ahead of him, especially not ''easily''. It doesn't make her look badass, it makes him look ridiculous.
**** "God of mischief and lies" does not mean "completely infalliable" especially when he's on a mad power trip. Indeed, one of the best ways to defeat a powerful opponent at their own game is to pretend to be entirely inept at it to lure them out. Loki isn't some invincible being of infalliable manipulation in the MCU.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Red Skull, courter of death.]]
* I'll admit, I'm not a huge comic book nerd, and when I saw the movie I didn't know who Thanos was, But is it really such a stretch to assume that the BiggerBad actually was Red Skull from ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger''? I believe the page for that movie speculated that he had been PutOnABus rather than killed.
** Even if the lighting in the scene makes it difficult to discern red from purple, the chin is all wrong and the Skull's prominent cheekbones are missing. Thanos' face is flat and wide instead of angular and sunken.
*** FWIW, I and several other people thought that was a skrull at the end there. The dark lighting makes it tricky.
** Yes, yes it is a stretch. A very big one. Just compare a picture of Thanos from Wikipedia and the shot of the BiggerBad's face. Also, Kevin Feige confirmed it was Thanos.
** I actually thought this for a split second, then I noticed the chin and the line about "courting death" clicked. But honestly, it would have annoyed the hell out of me if that had been the case; I can see Loki being a pawn for Thanos. I cannot see Loki being a pawn for Red Skull.
** Could it be that in this continuity, Red Skull was transformed into Thanos? If just a little Asgard magic could turn a man into Red Skull, a buttload might have altered him even further into Thanos. He'd have 70 years to complete his transformation into what we saw.
** This seems unlikely. Though Marvel made a CompositeCharacter in ''Iron Man 2'' from two b-list villains (Crimson Dynamo and Whiplash), combining two very different a-listers like Thanos and Red Skull just doesn't feel right. Also, Schmidt's... condition was caused by unfinished SuperSoldier serum having a bad reaction with his pre-existing psychosis and god complex- Asgardian {{magitek}} had nothing to do with it.
** You're missing the entire point of this being Thanos. He's way worse than anything we've seen before in the MCU. Having him be Red Skull/related to Red Skull in some way would make literally no sense, and have very little purpose, beyond some tenuous connection to Cap, which is simply unneeded at this point.
*** Well, RedSkull at his worst is someone who can give Thanos a run for his money, in the comics if not the MCU- he's definitely more ''evil'' than him in many ways. [There are rumours that ''the Other'' is actually the Skull, transformed somehow- if true, then he probably ''knew'' that Earth would repel Loki's invasion and has been manipulating both Loki ''and'' Thanos all along, though it would be a case of DidYouJustScamCthulu at best as Thanos is obviously a ''lot'' more powerful and the Other might go the way of Mephisto in the ''Infinity Gauntlet'' by the end.
*** Yeah...just gonna come right and say that rumor's pretty stupid sounding, and reeks of wishful thinking WMG at the absolute best, that doesn't make any logical sense except for someone's odd need to make '''everything''' connected to everything else.
* Right before the Thanos reveal, the "mysterious figure" the Other speaks to rises from a throne. There's a closeup on his hand... but it doesn't look like Thanos' hand. It's human-sized, pink, bare, and has some kind of armor on the forearm. Whose hand is it? Thanos hands are HUGE, gloved, and his face is EXTREMELY purple, even in the dim lighting. Small continuity error? It looks more like a closeup on Loki's hand from an unused scene that was reinserted here.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Of Pepper and her bare feet]]
* Why was Pepper barefoot in both of her scenes in Stark Tower?
** To show how comfortable and intimate she and Tony are at this point in their relationship, since the Stark Tower penthouse is probably their home in NYC.
*** Still, at the end of the movie they're overseeing the ''rebuilding'' of the tower after it got wrecked in the invasion. Not exactly a private moment, since there's construction workers behind them fixing up the place.
** Also, [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19137_6-artists-whose-weird-fetishes-defined-pop-culture.html Joss Whedon directed.]]
** Actually she wasn't barefoot in her last scene. If you look carefully she has on pale pink ballet flats.
** Robert Downey Jr. is really short; Gwyneth Paltrow is really tall. One of the biggest wardrobe problems in the Iron Man movies was how often Pepper runs around in heels as part of her business/formal attire, when RDJ already needs two or three inches of height to put them eye to eye. Since she didn't ''need'' shoes in that scene, it was probably just the easiest thing to do.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"I've got red in my ledger, and I want to wipe it out."]]
* When Clint asks Natasha why she's so eager to fight Loki, she says, "I've been compromised. I've got red in my ledger, and I want to wipe it out." What does she mean? She only broke down in front of Loki to trick him. Even if her distress was genuine on some level, that doesn't seem like being compromised. Is she talking about what happened to Clint?
** Her being compromised was referring to her DarkAndTroubledPast before being a SHIELD agent.
*** But the word ''compromised'' implies that you were following the rules to begin with, so it doesn't really apply to Natasha's life before she joined SHIELD. Besides, what has that got to do with Loki?
**** The "red in my ledger" was her debt to Clint. Clint had a new enemy in Loki, and that meant that Natasha has the same enemy. As for being compromised, she's not a fan of owing anyone something so big.
** I got a different interpretation from it. Since by this point she's supposed to be "over" her DarkAndTroubledPast, I thought she was being metaphorical: "I've got red on my ledger" means that "I harmed someone else again." In this context, it means that she feels responsible for taking Banner out of his steady, peaceful life and putting him in a terrible situation: she brought him into a position where he could find out about SHIELD's conspiracies, she brought him to a position where he could be manipulated by Loki, and she brought him to a position where he ended up losing control of [[InsistentTerminology The Other Guy]] and she nearly died because of it (look at how [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness uncharacteristically ''shaken'']] she is after the Hulk slams her into a wall.) So now that she knows firsthand what the Hulk really is, she wants to get back at Loki for her indirectly making Banner's life a mess again. The "I've been compromised" part refers to how this amazing, collected, efficient super-spy was reduced to a cowering mess for a few minutes, and she deeply resents that.
** Loki really did get to her, thus she felt compromised. She was acting as much when she seemed not fazed by it as she did when it seemed to have totally crushed her. Loki makes it very clear that he knows that the "red in her ledger" is mostly the blood of innocent people. That's not a thing that sits well with a person who's just been teamed up with [[IncorruptiblePurePureness Captain America]]. Being attacked by the Hulk is as much a "I hope people don't see me like that because of the things I've done" moment as it is a "I'm totally out of my league" moment.
** It may be a bit of both sides. When Natasha says she's been compromised and wants to balance her metaphorical books, she's referring to her debt to Clint and the position that him being captured and brainwashed puts her in as a SHIELD agent. However, she's not motivated ''only'' by her debt to Clint; she's also done things prior to joining SHIELD that she feels guilty over. Loki, armed with information he received from Clint, drags the subtext into text and calls her on it, mocking the idea that repaying her percieved debt to Clint would make her feel any better about the things she did before her conversion. This would also be why she uses the line again later on when talking to Clint.
** I was sure she was talking about being ''emotionally'' compromised. Despite the fact that she got info out of Loki, she really did break down, she just played it for all it was worth to make her reverse interrogation of [[ManipulativeBastard Loki]] more convincing. When she's talking to Clint after he wakes up, she looks like she was admitting her breakdown. This made her uncomfortable about her past, since she seems like [[TheAtoner an atoner]].
** My thought was that she was referring to Coulson. Clearly they are friendly, as evidenced by their phone call early on. The whole point of Coulson's death (or "death," depending on who you talk to) was that it gave them a reason to fight together - something to avenge. We saw how the effects on Thor, since he watched it happen, as well as Steve and Tony. Up until that point, Natasha had just been acting based on the orders she was given, which is necessary in her line of work. But by taking Coulson's death personally, she became emotionally compromised and thus became more willing to do things like disobey SHIELD orders and steal a plane.
** "Compromised" is, among other things, spy-code for "in love". She was telling Hawkeye that she loved him (which is obvious to anyone with eyes), and that she was going after Loki for what he did to the man she loved.
*** "Compromised" is a general term for having you effectiveness impaired in some way and it doesn't mean specifically that she is in love with someone it just means that she has somehow been handicapped. In this case it refers to the guilt she has regarding her past that Loki unexpectedly hammered her over the head with. She isn't confessing her love to Hawkeye she is dropping her mask and confiding in her friend about how unsure and shaken she is and explaining that she wants to help bring down Loki because it might help make up for the horrible things she has done. In all likelihood she is going to [[ChronicHeroSyndrome keep doing things like this]] in an effort "erase the red in her ledger" (the blood of innocent people) even though she knows that no matter how many innocent people she saves it still won't erase what she's done. It's actually rather heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The greatest of sorcerers shall never use his tricks.]]
* Why didn't Loki use more of his magical abilities then just the doppelganger illusion trick?. If he'd bothered to use it on someone other then Thor and some frightened citizens he probably would have managed to have avoided be smashed by Hulk and could have possibly made a clean get-away.
** Loki is shown to have a big hubris. The fact that his forces were losing the battle pissed him off and he was hoping to reassure himself by talking down the Hulk, calling himself a god.
** It would do one well to think about this: Loki sees the entire human race as ''beneath'' him. Which means, in his mind, Thor is the only one who is a WorthyOpponent for much of the film, and therefore the only one who he uses his full spectrum of powers on.
** They also make a point of demonstrating that Loki's true advantage is his ability to talk his way out of most situations. Something he fails to realize won't work against a giant green rage monster. They further highlight this advantage when he's not only "cuffed", but muzzled when Thor takes him back to Asgard.
*** Where exactly does he actually talk his way out of a situation? I don't remember a single instance.
**** More importantly, there's no point where it would really help, save at the very end when he was fighting the Hulk. Every other time, he was under control of the situation and things were going according to plan. And against the Hulk? He was injured, tired, and in the throes of a clear VillainousBreakdown due to the plan going awry.
**** It's actually kind of subtle, but it's implied that what the scepter does for Loki (besides shooting...power beams, or whatever) is take his power to manipulate people and magnify it tenfold, which is why it allows him to ''literally'' control Selvig and Hawkeye. Therefore a great amount of his success early in the movie is due to his ability to be a ManipulativeBastard.
** According to the director's commentary, at one point Loki was supposed to use his doppelganger power on the Hulk. It would have been a subtle callback to a line Banner had earlier, about how he could smell crazy on Loki. The Hulk would have been confronted by multiple Lokis, and sniffed out the real one since the illusions wouldn't have a scent.
** I don't think we've seen anything to suggest he actually ''has'' any other powers in the movies.
* While we're on the subject of Loki's "unused arsenal," whatever happened to the ice casket? From what I remember it was still in his possession by the end of ''Thor'' and Loki seems to have the ability to store items in limbo until he has need of them. Wouldn't the ice casket have come in handy at some point (like, with ''any one'' of the Avengers)? Then there's also Loki's natural abilities as a Frost Giant (causing severe frostbite with touch alone). He has a "silver tongue" and an enormous ego, true, but how could he possibly forget the other weapons he had at his disposal, especially towards the end?
** You're mistaken. Loki left the casket in the Bifrost bridge when he froze it. He didn't have it on hand when he was fighting Thor or when he fell off.
** On second thought, he probably still hates his Jötun form and thus would never, ever use these abilities, even if they would be an advantage.
*** Yeah, it's probably this. He's pretty hellbent on proving himself as an Aesir, an equal to Thor, and using his Jotun powers would negate that and just highlight his status as an outcast once again.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Absorbing shields and magical hammers]]
* Thor is the superpowered God of Thunder with a hammer of incredible strength and density. Cap was on poor footing and was being struck by this man from a jump with a shield. How in the hell is he alive right now!?
** ...the shield made out of a metal that can withstand anything?
*** To elaborate on that; the shield isn't simply made out of an indestructible material. If it was, Cap would have been flattened underneath it from the force of the blow. The shield is made of a material that actually ''negates'' all force thrown at it.
** They make a subtle point of this in Cap's own movie. Bullets fired at the shield fall straight down at his feet rather than bouncing off.
*** If natural Vibranium, really ''negates'' all force, then how does it relfects repulsor beam? Causing a giant shockwave after clashing with the hammer is one thing, absorbing the power of the bomb's blast is same thing, Tony's beams - what?
**** If natural Vibranium really ''negated'' all force, even the shockwave would be too much. The power from Thor's Hammer would have been absorbed. Instead, it was redistributed. That's something we see a lot of in Cap's shield; ''redistribution'' of force, rather than negation. Complete force absorption would also cause the shield itself to fall to the ground after impacting with a person or object, rather than ricocheting around the room. Reflecting Stark's repulsors was just another application of the redistributing effects that Cap's shield seems to have more of than negating. Despite the initial scene in Captain America of bullets falling directly to the ground after being fired into it, the shield appears to reflect force more often than it absorbs. This is less of an issue in the comic, where the shield is a vibranium/adamantium alloy, so the fact that it reflects everything can be taken as a property of being constructed from the hardest material in existence rather than one of the vibranium, but the films lack any such justification.
***** Basically this. When Thor hits the shield (and directly at that), all that vertical force gets diffused and redirected horizontally; resulting in that huge shock wave that leveled all the trees around them. The real question is why Thor would use such obviously lethal force on a human opponent. The only reasonable option that comes to mind is that, aside from already being upset with Loki's actions, his anger at "mere humans" keeping him from his brother was being augmented by Loki, similar to what he did in the Helicarrier.
* Unless you're talking about the Ultimate Avengers animated movies Cap's shield has no Adamantium in it, it's an unknown iron alloy that's blended with Vibranium in the comics. Adamantium is an inferior (relatively speaking) steel alloy developed from the attempt to reverse-engineer Cap's shield. It's the interaction of the Vibranium with the iron alloy that allows it to have the strange properties that it presents (after all the shield is frequently shown striking humans from behind to the neck without instantly beheading or paralyzing them then slicing right through some stonework or steel right afterwords).
** I'm not sure where this statement comes from. In the original comics Captain America's shield was a unique and impossible-to-replicate adamantium/vibranium alloy, superior to any other form of adamantium.
*** As I recall, it doesn't negate or absorb ''all'' force anyway. In the comics, it's something like 95% of the force is negated/absorbed. Once, Cap uses the shield to survive a drop from a plane, letting it absorb the impact--but it still hurts like hell because apparently 5 percent of the force of being dropped out of a plane is still quite a lot.
**** Exactly. In the movies the shield negates some of the force thrown at it (so a bullet is stopped cold and falls to the ground) and redirects the rest (explaining the deflection of repulsors and a blow from Mjolnir). This trait is seen in Captain America's solo film. Cap is able to block HYDRA weapons with the shield, but when he's off balance, he gets knocked down. When Bucky tries to block a HYDRA beam, he gets thrown backwards out of the train. It's the combination of Steve's super soldier stats and the shield's properties that let him stand up to attacks no ordinary person could.
*** [[http://marvel.com/universe/Adamantium Adamantium]] was created as an attempt to duplicate Captaim America's [[http://marvel.com/universe/Captain_America%27s_Shield shield]]. The shield is a Vibranium alloy, and is NOT Adamantium. In fact, Adamantium is a metallic resin, and not an alloy.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Avengers Assemble!! ...for something, we don't know yet.]]
* What specific event was Fury gathering the Avengers for? How many of are there actually on the roster anyway? It bothers me because with Ironman specifically told he wasn't on the team, Banner was so not on the team that he was in hiding, Thor not specifically tapped and worse on another plane of existence I'm not impressed at all by who's left. Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye are the only Avengers officially on the team at the start of the movie. They would have been hard pressed to annoy something as "minor" as Hulk's rampages. They would have gone down fighting but that's about it. It's not a very good plan. If on the other hand he had some vague clue as to the nature of the threat they were facing a good plan might have been to explain this to Tony and get to work on getting those military Ironmen from 2 back online and in mass production. Sure they didn't do well against two human piloted Iron Men (who in reality should have gotten spanked fighting a few dozen bots with shared vision. It's amazing the things you can dodge when you almost literally have eyes in the back of your head) but they could probably fight those stone guys rather well.
** He probably wasn't gathering them for any specific event, but with all these superheroes showing up lately there was always the chance that someday they would meet some vastly superior foe, the Avengers Initiative was set up to prepare for that day. The prequel comic also explains that the Avengers Initiative was never completed, because the WSC thought it was a waste of resources and wanted SHIELD to focus on studying and weaponising the Cosmic Cube.
*** This is pretty much confirmed when Fury says the Avengers would be gathered to "fight the battles we never could."
** Actually, I literally can't think of anyone that was part of the Avengers Initiative. Captain America wasn't available when they started planning it, and it seemed pretty clear to me that nobody planned for Black Widow or Hawkeye to be part of it. They're SHIELD agents, not heroes.
** The Hammeroids were knockoffs made with Hammertech, possibly intended primarily for display. They are clearly much less durable than the IM and WM suits, and do really not show any signs of networked AI. By that point, Vanko had already gotten into his suit and left Hammer inc, so he couldn't coordinate them either. The weapons the drones have are shown literally bouncing off the more durable suits, even at point-blank. Nonetheless, the two were nearly overwhelmed until Stark used his laser.
*** It's not entirely that they're knockoffs. They're assembly-line units intended for mass production. It's the difference between spending $1 million building ONE amazingly powerful combat system, versus spending the same million building 50,000. The former is going to be drastically superior to any single unit of the latter, because the latter are constructed with cheaper, easy-to-reproduce parts, while the former has state-of-the-art everything. The real threat of the Hammeroids was simply the fact that they were numerous; Iron Man could rip apart ONE, but how well could he handle a thousand? That's the inevitable tradeoff of mass-produced soldiers.
** Keep in mind that, historically, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has already dealt with one power wielding weapons/technology beyond mortal ability: HYDRA. The threat that HYDRA alone represented would likely mean that they would want to ensure a strike team to deal with something like that, especially when it's based on a piece of alien technology whose owners might come looking for it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"And we are hopelessly outgunned."]]
* I know this is partially a problem with all comics but why is the US government made out to be the bad guys for trying to develop weapons? If the facts in ''Iron Man'' are to be trusted Stark has sucessfully privatised peace. It's a good thing he's on our side since if he wanted to take over there doesn't seem to be much we could do to stop him. Hulk has torn through entire batallions and just a brief encounter with Asgard shows just how weak the Earth is. As Fury says we are hilariously out gunned and it's just dumb luck that none of the other planets that want to invade have any extraordinary groups. We should be learning to stand on our own two feet and defend our planet, not depend on a very small group of people who might turn on us, might die, and might be too few in number. If Loki had been capable of opening multiple portals at multiple locations on Earth things would have turned out very differently.
** I don't think they're made out to be particularly bad. In both Iron Man 2 and Avengers Tony is learning how to be a team player, and at least SHIELD now is on good terms with him, so I doubt he won't be willing to help them when he can.
*** And on reviewing the IronMan movies, the army isn't the problem. The bureaucrats in Washington and the officers with more medals than sense (and who probably haven't seen live combat for decades) are, along with the tendency for weapon shipments to go missing and fall into enemy hands.
** The Avengers point out that building new, stronger weapons does nothing but create an arms race. Because SHIELD was using the Tesseract to build new weapons, they were seen as a bigger threat, and so that actually increases the chance that they'll attract the attention of strong baddies, causing a positive feedback loop. And honestly, it doesn't seem to me like Earth is all that outgunned. One nuke was able to take out the entire enemy battalion. Also, the fact that the super secret council was willing to bomb one of the largest cities in the world without even attempting a smaller, controlled strike shows what a bad idea it is to develop even stronger weapons. WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer, everything starts to look like nails, and so developing super strong weapons means that they're more likely to try to just solve everything with increasingly larger explosions. That's bad for everyone.
*** And the Avengers is very very wrong on that point. Loki flat out admit that he wasn't attacking because of the Tesseract, he was attacking to spite Thor. Even sans an army Loki could have done a lot of damage. I honestly don't think Ironman and Captain America could have taken him if he wasn't throwing the fight. The Super Secret Council is just a silly story telling device to make it seem like wanting to be on equal footing with say the Frost Giants is inherently evil. Having a hammer doesn't make you evil. What is the moral reasoning behind 300 million (or 6 billion depending on if you want to debate that America isn't the entire world) should be 100% dependent on 5 people for their safety and freedom? I know comics do a terrible job of expressing this since the X-men always come through and the military is at best slightly more effective than sweating on a fire and at worst actively either starting the fire or throwing gasoline on it so it's easy to get in line but still we need to be able to fight back. Also an arms race with whom exactly? All of the alien races we're aware of in Marvel (or DC for that matter) are so far beyond us that unless the Tesseract is a lot more powerful than is displayed they'd be no more threatened by us developing the weapons Hydra developed in WW2 (how have we failed to recreate that?!) than America would be of Ethiopia developing a battleship.
***** They pointed out why it is bad. Human society is not advanced enough to be trusted with weapons like that. The Tesseract produces weapons Earth is not ready to have. Thor stated weapons on that level would only attract the attention of other powers that would either want the Tesseract for themselves or view Earth as a threat. Another point is how soon would the weapons designed to defend Earth start to be used to threaten neighboring countries in the name of "national interests." Then you get in the question of preemptive strikes. The World Council panicked and was willing to blow up all of Manhattan to stop an alien invasion that was still containable. How long before Earth found its way to other worlds and decided to nuke Jotunheim due to a past invasion? How long before humans decided to start invading other worlds? The Jotuns proved they cannot be trusted with such power and had it taken away, their world destroyed in the process. The Asgardians have proven their society has advanced enough to be trusted with such power.
**** ^ It's explicitly stated that the Tesseract has enough power to blow up the Earth. And Thanos wants the Tesseract so he can ''conquer the entire universe''. It's really freaking powerful, if you know how to use it properly. If Earth's neighbors discover that humans have the Tesseract ''and'' they're actively trying to weaponize it...you can see why they'd get nervous.
**** Shield is able to reproduce the Hydra weapons. Remember the "Phase 2 Prototypes" Fury mentions? Remember Widow's gauntlets?
**** So what? Our best response to discovering that there are all these aggressive alien species with superior forces is to huddle in a corner, not develop other weapons and pray to Thor that none of them ever notice us or feel threatened by us? That's naive, especially after a couple of these aliens visited Earth and got into a tangle that S.H.I.E.L.D was completely unprepared for and without the provocation of our having already developed these super weapons. Thor also dismisses the notion that humanity is not advanced enough when he says the Asgardians pretend at being superior but battle like nasty animals playing at war. They're technologically ahead of us but culturally, Thor is starting to realize we've left them behind. If we were as bad as them, we'd have laid waste to our own planet by now.
***** Keep in mind though, that at that point Thor still considers Loki as being "of Asgard". Aside from him, the Asgardians don't seem particularly violent, and indeed came to our defense during the Frost Giant invasion. They see themselves as a peacekeeping force throughout the Nine Realms, and Thor sees that Phase II will only increase tensions between Asgard and Earth. Fury, of course is more concerned with the defense of this planet and is pretty justified in wanting Phase II weapons to counter the Asgardians, the Chitauri, and even heroes like Hulk and Iron Man.
** Its not "You're bad for making weapons!" Its "You're bad for ''not telling us everything'' when you ask for our help." Also keep in mind that, of the six Avengers, four of them have their own reasons for not liking it: Bruce distrusts SHIELD in particular and the government in general, so ''any'' secret they keep is bad. Cap has fought enemies with Tesseract-based weapons before, so he's automatically leery of SHIELD's attempt to make the Electric Boogaloo of Hydra's arms program. Tony is automatically leery of advanced weapons development in general because of his experiences, especially when its based on similar principles to the technology he's developed. Thor is leery because he automatically thinks the SHIELD Tesseract weapons were intended to be used against Asgard. Black Widow doesn't care.
** This troper saw it as "making THESE weapons were bad", not weapons in general. Tesseract-based weapons would end up bringing more trouble than they would solve. Other weapons, or a more careful progression, would be fine. If Fury had his way, the Avengers Inititive wouldn't have been a snarky rag-tag of a couple of supers, but a more numerous better-trained force of supers backed by supernormals and SHIELD Agents weilding awesome Stark tech.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hulk was just half the plan.]]
* Why is everyone saying that Black Widow outsmarted Loki? The plan that he wanted Hulk to come out and destroy the Helicarrier. That, and more, happened. Isn't it possible that Loki, Master of Lies, etc., let the information slip to her on purpose?
** Look at Loki's reaction when she thanks him for his "cooperation." It's along the lines of, "Wait, what?" The information might have been too little too late, but she made him think he had really gotten to her, when she was playing him for information without him realizing it, which means she got the better of him.
*** Loki's low opinion of her is particularly clear when he insults her with a misogynistic slur (degrading her based on her sex as well as her species). It's probably safe to say that he assumed that she, as a human woman, was not capable of outsmarting him.
** She did outsmart him, and went to warn everyone about this... the problem is, "everyone" was much more interested in butting heads and insulting one another to ''listen''. As they say, spotting a trap is one thing, staying out of it is quite another....
** What advantage would it give him to slip her this information?
*** What he wanted ultimately was for Bruce to get pissed off and trash the helicarrier. Before he revealed the information, Bruce was pretty much chilling in the lab with Tony. It is only when SHIELD realised that Loki is after the Hulk that they start asking Bruce Banner to get into a secure containment unit, which in turn made Bruce get really agitated. As he said himself, he was one step away from showing his party trick.
**** But in the movie there was a huge difference between the Hulk being "summoned" by Banner and the Hulk coming out by itself, due to injury and the like. I do believe "showing his party trick" would have been a conscious transformation into the Hulk, rather than the devastating involuntary one.
***** None of the characters knew the voluntary/involuntary change thing at that point. SHIELD was already on the edge (see how they recruited him and what they build to cage him in) and Loki gave them a push over it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Influencing Selvig]]
* So when exactly does the post-credits scene in Thor take place? And how Loki apparently was there, influencing Selvig's mind or something while Fury was showing him the Tesseract. So then at what point did he meet the Chitauri, before or after this? And assuming he had found a 'secret path' to Earth, why did he need the Tesseract portal to get back again?
** And how exactly does his mind-controlling work anyways? He apparently needs to tap people's chests with his spear. Why did he need to do it to Selvig when he did it without anything in Thor?
** The way I understood it, the wormhole he took most likely sent him to the Chitauri world, and from there, he projected himself into Selvig's mind, but he couldn't physically enter Earth at that time.
*** I take it that the scepter didn't give Loki totally new powers, so much as it augmented his own capacities. Presumably, Loki can already influence minds in various ways; the scepter just allows him to do things like cast his mind across cosmic distances, and inflict lasting domination with a touch that doesn't require continuous concentration.
*** Theory has it that the gem in his staff might have been the mind gem which actually does augment mental capabilities. I assume that he got it from our BiggerBad and when his image showed in the mirror in the post credits scene he was projecting himself and using his own skills of suggestion over 'lessor creatures' to influence Selvig. It also revealed that Selvig had been acting off for most of the time he'd been working with the Tesseract. So if Loki had been controlling him for all that time its no surprise he looked worse for wear when he arrived. Projecting and controlling a person from long distance for that long would probably take a toll on anyone.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:What did Banner mean by "I'm always angry."?]]
** That he's managed to control his anger enough that he can voluntarily transform into the Hulk whenever he needs to. Hence why he smiled at the end of ''The Incredible Hulk'', and why his Hulk transformation during the New York battle was seamless and not as painful as the transformation at the Helicarrier.
** Exactly what he said: he is always angry. If you pay attention to his behavior throughout the film, Banner always has an attitude in his voice, his eyes reveal barely-constrained rage, and there are moments like when he screamed at Black Widow when she was first recruiting him that seem like they should have triggered a transformation, but didn't. He's made peace with his rage and incorporated it so thoroughly into his personality that it ceases to be a trigger and becomes a control mechanism.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Good thing this missile was on timer.]]
* Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't missiles detonated internally or remotedly on approach to target rather than on impact? Stark managed to divert the nuke mere meters from the wall of the building, so shouldn't it have exploded?
** Air-to-air weapons are proximity-detonated. Nuclear weapons travel a certain distance and explode, unless they impact an object.
** Wasn't even a nuclear weapon to begin with. It was an AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon, a non-nuclear demi-cruise missile used by the US Air Force and the US Navy. Typically loaded with a standard warhead or submunitions. It was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but Tony's HUD even identified the weapon by name.
** The pilot even mentions it has a timer and the timer shows up on Tony's HUD. It wasn't proximity, thus.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"There's only one God, ma'am..."]]
* Some friends of mine were claiming that Captain America's claim of there "being only one god and that he doesn't dress like that" (like that of Thor and Loki), was him being a FlatEarthAtheist in regard to the possibility of some mythologies and religions having their deities actually exist, and that he was being biased thinking only the Christian God was real. But doesn't the Captain make a good point? I mean how can we conclusively say that these powerful entities are really gods and not SufficientlyAdvancedAliens pretending to be such, there has to be a line drawn where we can call a being powerful enough to be a god. What makes a god in a comic book continuity?
** I think your friends lack an understanding of Christianity. A major part of Christianity is that your God is real, and all the other Gods are false. Cap is a Christian who grew up in the 30s. He will definitely be less than pleased to hear someone refer to a planet filled with thousands of these "Gods."
** Well, first off, it was more than likely just a joke meant to further point towards Captain America being a FishOutOfTemporalWater. Saying something like that in the 40s would have been a lot more normal than saying it these days. But more to the point, it's outright stated in Thor that humans once worshipped the Asgardians as gods, so it is sort of a hard situation. Anyone who heard about Thor and Loki growing up would have heard about them as gods in myths. So being presented with them as very real beings makes things a little confusing. Furthermore, what Natasha says is that they're "basically gods," not that they ''are''. She probably wouldn't want to fight one-on-one with Thor, or maybe even Loki. The both of them have powers that go well beyond what humans are capable of having. That isn't to say they are ''always'' more powerful than humans though, just that, in movie canon, the only way to get a human close to the strength of those two involves either: A. ridiculous amounts of money and genius know-how (Stark), B. some kind of scientific experiementation done on purpose (Rogers), or C. scientific experimentation that goes awry (Banner). Which means even if Thor and Loki aren't gods, the fact that they seemingly have these powers naturally means that they'll probably still be referred to as such by some.
** Cap is simply saying that having enormous power is not enough to make you God-with-a-capital-G. You need to have a moral component too that Loki is obviously lacking.
** Cap is saying that he's a Christian. This line is being terribly overthought.
*** Actually as far as the Marvel Comic Book continuity goes Captain America is right, there is only one true all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present being, God with a capital G, the big guy upstairs, and His name is quite simply The One-Above-All. The Living Tribunal is the most powerful being in the Marvel Universe and whose role is to judge the universe and to prevent it from being destroyed, and when asked by a mortal if he was God the response was that there was someone even greater than The Living Tribunal. The One-Above-All '''is''' the Marvel Universe's God, He created it, but they tastefully don't mention which God He is so as not to offend people's religious perspectives only that He is the Supreme and Almighty God.
**** To clarify further Captain America is not absolutely right. In the MU, Thor and the other Asgardians among the Olympians and what not are classified as gods. Its just there are levels considered beyond godhood. The-One-Above-All would fit the monothestic definition of god, but is generally regarded as beyond gods. It has also never been confirmed to be the same as the Judeo-Christain God. If anything, later stories have implied the Judeo-Christain God is more in line with someone like Odin than the One-Above-All.
**** The DC Universe has God under the name of The Presence, and He is heavily implied to be the Judeo-Christain God. The One-Above-All is never given such implications and is simply stated to be God without any explanation as to which God He is supposed to be. Though if these characters had to be any God the Judeo-Christain God would make sense because in our cultural perception that God is viewed as an entity who is all-powerful, all-knowing, present in all of space, and is ultimately immortal and timeless, and who we can relate to on a personal and moral level in that He judges mortals for their crimes against His laws but chooses to love and save them anyway. That God invokes images of the big guy upstairs, the one above all that everyone eventually and ultimately answers to, the Supreme Being of the universe who created everything and whom no one can be likened onto. Every other religion either has multiple gods that can defeat their head god if they worked together or the entity known as God is too impersonal, God in the sense we are talking of is both personal and has no equal so He works better as a character in a fictional story and He is special because we are filled with that religious and superstitious awe when He is mentioned.
**** Well, if you want to get really technical, then yes, Cap is right; Stan Lee does not dress like that.
**** It's funny that you mentioned Stan Lee, because God appeared to Spider-Man as an old man in one comic story. It would be funny if Stan Lee was God in the Marvel Movie continuity.
***** It would explain why he keeps showing up in all the MCU movies as different people.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Dr. Banner, put down the scepter."]]
* Why DID Bruce pick up the Scepter, during the argument prior to the attack on the Helicarrier? This is the only thing that boggles me.
** I assumed that to be a subtle inclination that Loki was manipulating Banner to bring the Hulk out.
*** Not just Banner. The way the camera turned the scene upside down with the sceptre in the foreground while everyone screamed at each other in an almost out of character fashion ("You humans are so petty. And tiny!") seemed to imply that the scepter itself was subtly manipulating everyone in the room by heating the already existing tensions to their breaking point. Cap and Tony very nearly came to an all-out fistfight, Thor lost all of his respect for humanity and then immediately regained it after the fight was ended, Banner threatened to turn into the Hulk (subtly threatening to MURDER EVERYONE, etc.) By allowing Black Widow to manipulate him into revealing that the Hulk is the big danger he's planning, Loki set off the chain of events that would result in a confrontation with Banner right there in the room with the sceptre. Banner picking up the sceptre was just an extension of the already homocidal rage he was in (by his own admission, he is always angry), just like Cap goading Tony to "put on the suit" to find out whose dick is bigger.
*** When the Scepter touches someone's chest, it can almost completely override their brain. It makes comic book sense that it would be able to subtly manipulate people in its immediate vicinity as a secondary effect.
** You can see the scepter having an obvious effect on a few of the characters if you look closely. Stark is wiping his face and opening his mouth like he's both exhausted and feeling a hell of a headache. Thor's eyes are squinting when he makes the "puny and tiny" remark. You can also see the moment when Banner grabs the scepter, when he turns his body slightly and his arm moves a bit, right before Fury and Natasha both unclip their sidearms.
** Actually, while it ''looks'' like the sceptre is influencing them, its not totally clear and it could be that the camera is focusing on it just to emphasize that Loki is using it for something (namely, for his men to lock-on to the Helicarrier). Banner grabbing it might just be a sign that he is on the verge of Hulking-out (which is why everyone around him freaks out...well, another reason they freak out). Given how quickly everyone gets over their issues, and that none of them ever assume that the sceptre had been affecting them....at the very least, its ambiguous enough that it could be either.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The Widow's Bite]]
* Someone mentioned Black Widow's gauntlets as an example of Hydra-based weaponry...what, exactly, do they do? We see them powering up with all these blue lights, but she seems to mainly use firearms or hand-to-hand combat throughout the fight. So what gives? Do they boost her punching power? Tasers?
** They're supposed to be tasers that stun opponents when she punches them, giving her WaifFu a bit more oomph.
** In the comics, Widow's gauntlets also shoot out stun lasers as well, though I don't recall an instance where she used her gauntlets in this manner.
** You see her use them twice against the Chitauri, most noticeably on the one she grapples right before she has Cap toss her up onto the hovercraft.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hold still, Coulson, I need to borrow some blood...]]
* So, where did Fury even get the blood to put on [[spoiler:Coulson's]] trading cards anyways?
** Two fairly obvious sources: Whatever blood was being stored in the medical section of the ship, or [[spoiler: Coulson's bloody corpse]].
*** Or it's not blood at all. Notice that it never dries and turns brown. That's not the sort of detail that Whedon is likely to overlook.
*** It can take 4-5 days for blood to turn brown, and they looked fairly dry to me the second time we see the cards. It would be much easier for Fury to take the cards out of Coulson's locker and squirt some blood on them than to go to all the trouble of digging up some fake blood (from where?) and smearing them up with that.
** Fury probably spilt ''his own'' blood on the cards - he's BadAss enough.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:You've conquered Earth. Now try to keep it.]]
* Loki needed the Cosmic Cube and the Chitauri to conquer the Earth...how the hell was he going to keep it when they took the cube and left?
** He appeared to have presumed he wouldn't need them. Remember his speech in Stuttgart, where he said it was humanity's "natural inclination" to kneel before the powerful. Once mankind was conquered, he presumes, they'll be beaten and wouldn't rise up again. Not the brightest plan, but he is convinced it would work.
*** Also, its possible his deal involved keeping the army as his once they'd conquered Earth for him and he had given over the Tesseract. Granted, there would be little reason for Thanos not to just take back his army anyway, if he so chose. . . but then again, there's also the chance Loki was planning on backstabbing Thanos once he had control of Earth.
** Tony brings this up when he confronts Loki in his tower. "There is no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top." Loki is extremely arrogant and fails to take into account that humans are ''really good'' at [[MugglesDoItBetter building weapons to fight people/creatures stronger than us]].
** He probably wasn't thinking about that at all. Loki's behavior throughout the film isn't really indicative of a brilliant Chessmaster. It's indicative of a broken slave. Loki's entire plan ultimately amounts to, "If I do good by my master, then maybe he'll be merciful enough to let me have this planet." He's not here as Loki, the Great Schemer, to take over the world in the name of Loki. He's here as Loki, Thanos's Broken Puppet, to take the Tesseract back to Thanos in exchange for a token gift of a single, meaningless world from Thanos's conquered universe; a world that will probably overthrow and destroy him even ''if'' he succeeds in giving the Tesseract to Thanos. Hence why there is no version of this in which Loki comes out on top; either he remains Thanos's whipping boy forever, or Thanos is merciful enough to grant him just enough sovereignty to let the humans slaughter him. That's not a plot hole; that's the entire point, and ''everyone'' calls him out on how terrible his plan is throughout the film.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Avengers, can you hear me now?]]
* Minor nitpick, but during the final battle and a few other scenes where the group is split up, how could they all hear each other? I couldn't see any obvious way for anyone besides Fury and Iron Man to communicate without physically being next to a person.... Did I miss really tiny earphones or whatever?
** They were all wearing radios. You can see an earpiece in Hawkeye's ear and Cap's ear when his mask is removed. Thor and Hulk don't seem to be communicating much with anyone else at all; they mostly seem to just be running around obliterating things. Black Widow's earpiece is there, but mostly hidden by her hair.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Cap's sneak to Stuttgart]]
* I've only seen the film once, so I might be missing something, but how exactly did Cap land in Stuttgart to deflect the blast from Loki? He jumps in front, without any visible parachute, so to be dropped from the height where that was possible Loki would have had to notice a plane. Did Cap just sneak in behind and hide in the crowd or something, thinking he could blend in?
** Dropped over a nearby building from where he Parkoured and did his BigDamnHeroes when shit got real.
*** ^This seems the most likely explanation. Cap might have asked to be dropped off on the roof of a nearby building where he was close enough to survey the whole area but not be seen. That would give him plenty of time to spring into action when it's clear Loki intended to kill the old man.
** The most likely explanation is that, yeah, the jet dropped Cap off nearby and he legged it over there, because Loki was in the middle of the crowd and they couldn't go all minigun on him. Cap arrived, got Loki's attention, and then Black Widow could bring the jet around once Cap was close enough to Loki to challenge him and let the crowd run for it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Unworthy... again.]]
* After Loki drops Thor out of the Helicarrier, why does Thor need to go looking for his hammer? It seems like he temporarily lost the ability to summon it. He tracks it to where it fell, flexes his hand above it, but has to actually bend down and pick it up before he can fly to New York. It almost seemed like Mjolnir was judging him "not worthy" again, at first.
** Less that Mjolnir judged him as "not worthy" than ''Thor'' judged himself as "not worthy." He was tricked by Loki, Son of Coul died while he could do nothing, and overall he got his ass kicked. Thor's not feeling up to snuff after the incident on the Helicarrier, so he's got to psyche himself back up until he feels he's worthy of taking up Mjolnir again and going back after Loki.
*** Yeah, it looked less like Mjolnir wasn't cooperating and more like Thor wasn't entirely sure he'd be able to pick it up, and had to work up to it a bit.
*** Remember the ''last'' time Thor lost Mjolnir and he proved unworthy. He seemed so completely traumatized by being unable to pick up the hammer. Any possible suggestion that he was unworthy once again would be enough to make him hesitate to pick it up.
** One other thing to remember about this whole situation: Thor indirectly started all of it. When Fury points out that Thor was the reason why Phase Two was initiated, Thor then points out that SHIELD's efforts to study the Tesseract to respond to the threats that Thor dragged into their awareness directly led to Earth being targeted. Coupled with this is the fact that Son of Coul died in front of him, he failed to stop Loki's scheme, and possibly-fatal damage was dealt to the rest of the team that was attempting to stop Loki's schemes. And Thor's monologue about bilgesnipes shows that he is feeling deeply guilty about dragging war to Earth. After going through all that effort to learn and become worthy once more, he ''really'' isn't certain if he's worthy now when confronted with his mistakes. So he hesitates, because even the slightest chance that his errors resulted in no longer being worthy of the hammer is utterly ''terrifying'' to him.
** Alternatively? Maybe the dude just [[BoringButPractical had his bell rung]] after falling 20,000 feet in a plexiglass cage. Concussive blows to the head, as evidenced by the tremendous upswing in concussion awareness from 2010 on, can be very disorienting. He was probably clearing the cobwebs as he spotted the hammer and wandered over to it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"What? Rock of Ages giving up so easily?"]]
* So, Cap and Iron Man "capture" Loki in Germany, Thor shows up and takes Loki away, and Thor, Cap, and Iron Man fight it out for a few minutes. During their fight Loki...just hangs around. He doesn't run or try to escape, he just stays right where Thor left him. And yes, I know getting "captured" by SHIELD was all part of Loki's plan. I'm not an idiot. What I'm wondering is why the heroes didn't immediately go "Hey, this guy had a golden opportunity to escape but didn't take it. He's probably up to something."
** They do. Steve points out that it was way too easy, and in a separate conversation Fury says he has a feeling Loki is the only one who ''wants'' to be there. They just can't very well let him roam around loose after killing eighty people in two days. They take the best precautions they can by locking him in the Hulk cell, and Natasha goes in to talk to him specifically to (in accordance with her usual method) trick him into dropping a clue about what he's up to. No, it doesn't turn out all that well, but they are visibly making an effort.
** Loki can't fly or move at greatly superhuman speed. If he bolts, Thor and Stark, both of whom ''can'' fly, will run him down immediately. He knows this. They know it.
*** He probably could turn invisible, though. This doesn't change that Loki wanted to be caught, and everyone there realized it. But really, what were they going to do? Not take him in?
*** I don't think he could have even turned invisible, at least not based on the evidence so far. In ''Thor'' it was established that he could use magic to hide from Heimdall, but nowhere did he hide himself from anyone else.
**** In ''Thor'', he wandered around inside the facility where Thor was imprisoned without anyone noticing him. If that isn't invisibility, I don't know what is.
**** It wasn't so much invisibility as clouding men's minds. Think of how he was dressed and that he often uses illusion to get things done. Loki uses this more than once in ''Thor'' and ''The Avengers''. He uses his mental abilities (or assumed abilities) to enhance this. When - or if - anyone were to look at him he would appear as just another properly credentialed and appropriately dressed person that is just there to do... whatever another nameless face would be there to do. It is only when Loki chooses to reveal himself that he drops the illusions and people can ''see'' him.
* Given Loki's personality and the keen interest with which he watches the fight, one of the reasons why he didn't wander off may well have been that he wanted to see if these guys could kick Thor's ass. Not as good as doing it himself, of course, but still fun to watch.
** Fun to watch and also gives him a measure of what he's up against. There's a tactical advantage in knowing what your enemy is capable of that needs to be considered.
*** Good point. He knows Thor's capabilities inside and out, which makes Thor the perfect yardstick to use for measuring Cap and Iron Man: "Hmm. That shield allows a mere human to survive a full-on hit from Mjolnir. Could be a complication..."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Power at 400% capacity."]]
* When Thor is fighting Iron Man and zaps him with lightning, the suit somehow gets charged up to 400% capacity. Whether this was referring to the suit's overall power or just the repulsors, it would have come in handy in the final fight. Thor still very much has control over lightning and could probably easily have given Stark an extra boost, regardless of distance, albeit a little less destructively overall. It seems like a missed opportunity, especially since a) Stark was beginning to lose power by the end, leading to his big hero moment and not-death, and b) even when fighting the Chitauri footsoldiers, a shot like that would have come in handy. Thor obviously probably didn't know about the lightning's effect, but Stark could have directly told him to do it anyway. They do have communicators, after all.
** When there's a 400% surge in any electrical device, you run an extreme risk of short-circuiting something. In the fight with Thor, Tony was on the ground, and even after absorbing the blast he discharged it again pretty quickly. In New York, he would be in the air with a nuclear device on his back. If he shorted out then he would have plummeted to his death, and New York would have been nuked. Not worth it. Besides, this was a callback to something Captain America said about laying down your life for the greater good.
** The actual boost given by the blast from Thor's lightning seemed to have little overall effect on the Mark VI's performance. It was either expended too quickly or otherwise not exceedingly useful. Furthermore, it would require Thor standing in place for a few moments and Stark recoiling for a few seconds, neither of which they have time for. They're too busy fighting the legions of Chitauri.
*** When I was watching the movie I assumed the 400% charge was supposed to explain why Iron Man did as well as he did against the mighty Thor.
** Well, for starters, there's the reliability of this device. Stark himself seemed surprised that the suit ''absorbed'' the discharge well enough to feed the power supplies. He even goes "Huh, how about that?" when Jarvis tells him. If the Mark VI had such an unexpected effect that its own designer couldn't account for it, then messing around ''too much'' with it might be a risk he's not willing to take.There's a difference between "Hm, I have a brand new suit to replace my battle-damaged one, I'll have to skip testing because we're about to fight a war here" and "Wow, this thing reacted in a way I never saw coming, and I can't tell if it will happen again, yeah, let's use it in the middle of an alien invasion!" Even if the arc reactor could take the overload, what if Mark VII's power conduits couldn't take it? And as a rule of thumb, it's generally not a good idea to ''overload your power supplies to four times their capacity'' if you can help it, much less do it repeatedly, ''much less'' if you're messing with the power core that powers your armor and, uh, keeps you ''alive''.\\
But beside that, even if they had agreed to exploit this ability, there simply wasn't much of an opportunity to do so. When Stark is a) boosting the missile into the portal, he's probably moving too fast for Thor, who is pretty busy with his own battles, to get a bead on with a bolt of lightning (and if the bolt happens to conduct ''into the missile'' it runs the risk of activating its detonator.) And if they were to team up and b) use it to fend off footsoldiers, that would be a huge waste of both combatants' tactical potential, since it would need them to remain within line of sight of each other, while Thor took time every few moments to "recharge" Stark. Since the latter was taking mooks well enough with his regular blasts, why waste his and Thor's time setting up the single-shot supercharged ones?
** The bolt of lightning supercharged the Reactor, but the armor isn't built to incorporate anything like that. Tony never seems to take advantage of the supercharge in the fight with Thor because weapons don't work that way; at no point does Tony display any kind of variable "use any amount of power I want" effect with the Repulsors. Every time he fires them, they seem to have the same effect; using a set amount of power. If the armor isn't built with a "drain all the power from the reactor" weapon, then Tony can't really do much beyond continuing to work at maximum efficiency for longer. All other weapons beyond the Repulsors don't appear to use the Reactor, such as his one-off laser weapon that fires from a cartridge, and thus would be completely unaffected by the supercharge. Furthermore, take a look at Tony's chassis after the bolt hits him; being struck by lightning supercharged the Reactor, but it DESTROYED the chassis. Again: this is not a feature incorporated by the armor, and even though it had a mild positive effect on a single part of the armor, it doesn't look like it did anything good to the rest. Maybe with time, Tony might be able to figure out a way to weaponize this effect, but as it stands, the only armor he would have had a chance to build any such weapon into would have been the Mark VI, which he had with him on the Helicarrier, and he isn't wearing that armor in the finale.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The Tesseract experiments]]
* I'm curious about the nature of the experiments SHIELD was conducting with the Tesseract. By the time the movie opens, they have a dedicated lab with complex machinery, and the cube itself is aimed at what looks like a landing platform[=/=]gate installation. This platform even has some shielding apparatus and (IIRC) a seat or chair of some kind. It was even a happy coincidence that Loki arrived ''on'' the platform when he opened the portal remotely. But nothing in the ''Captain America'' film suggests that the Tesseract is anything but a cosmic power supply (the only witness to its teleportation abilities was frozen for 70 years, he probably didn't know what was happening, and the Pegasus lab was already in place and experimenting by the time he was thawed.) So if the installation ''was'' indeed a gate platform, when did SHIELD learn that it could be used to create wormholes, and were they already planning to send an expeditionary force through them?
** Maybe Nick Fury's a big Stargate fan.
** The post-credits scene in Thor implies that Loki is manipulating Selvig's mind. He could have planted the idea in Selvig's head.
*** Here's my theory. Nick Fury's learned from recovering HYDRA documents that the Tesseract comes from Asgard. Perhaps he's trying to use it as a portal to summon Thor.
** Keep in mind that Red Skull saw the Tesseract as nothing more but a power source he could use to crush his enemies, not considering its other usages, and that SHIELD likely did a lot more research upon having the thing in their possession.
*** It's unlikely the Red Skull saw no other use for the tesseract than a power source. More likely he just didn't have the tech in the 1940s to do anything but extract and store energy from it.
* While we're on the topic of the Tesseract, something's been bothering me since the ''Captain America'' movie. [[RedSkull Ol' Reddie]] calls it "Odin's crown jewel," and we do know from ''{{Film/Thor}}'' that the Aesir have been to northern Europe many times before and so Odin probably used a cube in view of the locals. But isn't it odd that Odin would leave such a valuable trinket on Earth, presumably after a Jotun incursion, and forget about it? Now, in the comic books, the Cosmic Containment Units are neither the creation of Asgard, nor exclusive to them. Maybe the same applies to the movies, and maybe the Tesseract is one of many and isn't really Asgardian tech but just a tool the Asgardians are familiar with?
** I was under the impression that the people in the church in First Avenger were the descendants of the people Odin saved in Norway. Perhaps Odin left them the Tesseract for some undisclosed reason and it's been protected generation to generation.
** He didn't leave it there, he ''hid'' it there. Earth was the last place anyone who wanted a tesseract would go hunting for it.
** Alternatively, it was ''stolen'' and he didn't ''know'' where it was.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hulk's hairy chest]]
* Bruce Banner has a hairy chest the one time we see him with his shirt off, but the Hulk has no chest hair. Where did it go?
** I had the same question watching ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk'' when Banner had stubble.
** Actually, the Hulk does. Watched Avengers for the second time last night, and I distinctly remember noticing that his chest had hair during the fight in New York.
** Original poster here. I took a search for it myself during my rewatch of the movie, and it seems it's hard to see because Banner's hair is grey and as the Hulk his chest has stretched so much. Couldn't spot any except for one shot, right before the Hulk smashes Loki.
** They may have changed the Hulk's model before the film, but [[http://comicbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ew-avengers-2.jpg this cover]] definitely shows some.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:SHIELD's forces are engaged! ...at, ah, something...]]
* Where and what exactly were the SHIELD security forces doing during the attack on the Helicarrier? Despite visibly present escorting Loki to his cell, and at the beginning grabbing rifles from a weapon rack, for the rest of it they are completly absent, not showing up to defend the bridge from the mercenaries or securing Loki's cell or dealing with the damaged engine or even play helpless bystander to the Hulk rampage.
** They were presumably doing damage control and attempting to repel the rest of Loki's minions throughout the ship. Hawkeye's presence would also allow Loki's troops to bypass most of the SHIELD defensive positions through his apparent knowledge of the Helicarrier's inner workings. The troops attacking the bridge didn't need to do much more than keep attention locked on the entryway until Hawkeye could flank them and use his USB arrow. The SHIELD troops are thus likely running around inside the ship trying to find the intruders and thus being completely out of place to repel the attacks on the bridge.
** If you listen carefully there's a line where Fury (or somebody) says the intruders are wearing SHIELD uniforms. That's how they were able to move about the helicarrier so freely.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Are you ever ''not'' going to fall for that?"]]
* I know it was probably all part of the big plan, but it still baffles me that Loki didn't send a double to be captured in his place when he was watching Iron Man, Thor, and the Cap beat the crap out of each other. Especially since, ahem, Thor falls for that trick all the time.
** His doubles are intangible and don't seem to last very long. The whole thing would have fallen apart the moment any of the Avengers tried to touch him--you know, to put cuffs on him, guide him to the ship, etc. There is no good reason at all why he would or should have done so.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why flock to ''The Avengers'' but not to the other films?]]
* I have a headscratcher regarding something about the film in real life. Idk if this is so off topic that its asking to be removed but im going to try anyway because i dont know where else to talk about this: I am one of the few people i know who actually went out of their way to make sure that i saw Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, And Captian America "Before" seeing the avengers. Now it does not surprise me that there are still plenty of people who did not do that, What does surprise me however is the sheer amount of people who were super excited to see The Avengers, but never and still to this day had or have any intentions or interest in seeing the others five films(or simply some of them). Unless the draw of the film for these people is something other then the heroes themselves, how can you say you are so psyched to see this film but couldn't give a crap about all the others. One would think that the same kind of fans would flock to all six films. I'm guessing that Iron Man is only cool when hes a member of a team, but if he fought alone its boring? Not likely, my math would say that you combine four uninteresting heroes, and you get a movie that is four times as boring as any by themselves. Example:if they made a crossover between Star trek, Stargate, Mortal Kombat, and King Kong. i wouldn't care one speck because i dont care about any one of those individually. But for some reason the rest of the world seems to have thrown this logic out the window when it comes to the Avengers. Seriously, what gives?
** People will flock to whatever is popular. They're excited for the Avengers because it's a big blockbuster action movie that's gotten high reviews and strong word-of-mouth. I did the same thing to watch all five films and it helped boost my enjoyment of Avengers tremendously, but the average movie goer isn't gonna want to sit down and put in that dedication for the flavor-of-the-month cinema experience. (On a side note, while I found the 2008 Hulk film decent, it's understandable that people wouldn't want to go back and watch that one, since it lacks both Mark Ruffalo and the "fun" style the Avengers is going for. There also isn't a whole lot in it that's relevant to the story of the Avengers, barring the Hulk's origin that most people already knew, and a one-off joke about Harlem.)
** People like big fun movies starring a ton of good, attractive actors, especially when it's one of the two biggest event movies of the year. Also, group chemistry counts for a lot in movies, and that's the whole appeal of the Avengers.
** Original poster: perhaps my complaints are mainly directed at the people i personally know. Just about every case is that of a person who i know for as fact would have enjoyed all the other films based on what i already know about them. Heck most of them had seen a few of the films. But for some reason the value of the film series as a whole is just so non-existent weather you enjoy these kind of films or not. I mean its one thing to have never seen any of them and then go see the Avengers because your an avid movie goer and everyones saying its good, But its a whole nother thing to see a few and then have that kind of attitude. I mean if we were to all be honest, a good chunk of its popularity comes from its "build-up". In that respect its no different then what made the final Harry Potter film a box office hit. And in retrospect(or at least in my opinion) the whole idea of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is so much cooler then the average movie series because since the films arnt literal sequals to each other, every connecting bit is all the more intriguing. Thats why i was confused when you said "Go Back" and watch the hulk because in my mind, the average person who even finds the avengers the least bit interesting would have already seen the hulk anyway. I guess all i can say is im confused as to why i didnt find more people like me who saw the six films as an acctual series. Because at the very least, we can say that The Avengers can thank its success on opening weekend to the fact that its part of a series. Its just the way the cookie crumbles
** I have only seen Thor and the two Iron Man movies besides The Avengers and I'm not fussed over seeing the others. The reason I was excited over The Avengers and went to see it was because of two particular characters; Thor and Loki (mostly Loki). I'm a huge norse mythology fan and that was why I got into these films in the first place. I might watch the others one day but it's not a priority.
** Original Poster Again: While i understand that sure, there were going to be plenty of fans who may have not gotten the opportunity to see all the others and/or people who expected themselves to enjoy some more then others and thus set varying priorities, but overall i guess the best way to put it in perspective is simply by saying this: i expected there to be just as many fans who had seen the Avengers and none of the "previous films" as there were fans who went to see Harry Potter And The Deathly Hollows Part 2 who hadnt seen all the previous films. Simply put, there were a lot less then i expected, thats all im saying
** It's worth mentioning that JossWhedon was prominently involved with this movie, where as he was not so much with the precursors. And if this site is anything to go on, he has a pretty rabid fanbase of his own.
** People like a good CrisisCrossover. It's as simple as that. ''Freddy Vs. Jason'' made three times as much as the previous Jason and Freddy movies combined. ''Alien Vs. Predator'' was more successful than any ''Alien'' or ''Predator'' film up to that time. It's actually surprising this isn't done a lot more, especially with superheroes: everyone wants to see their favorite superheroes fight. I'm a Thor fan; my buddy's an Iron Man fan; we both buy tickets to the Avengers to see who kicks who's ass. Not to mention every other film up to this one functions as a giant advertisement for this movie. There is no mystery to it whatsoever; it was a guaranteed formula for massive success.
*** The answer, if there can be one here, is both complex and simple. The simple answer is that everyone has different tastes, likes, and reasons. The complex answer is all about the simple answers. It is the same reason some people read The Avengers comic but won't or don't read the corresponding team member books. Sometimes it is as simple as the hype. People did not jump on the hype train for the previous movies but ''The Avengers'' made so much money and everyone talked about it so much it was one of those movies people ''had to see''. After the fact, some people just do not have the time or want to spend the effort or money to see the tie in movies. Personal choice is our human right. Maybe if Loki had his way we would all have been forced to watch every movie... or just all be slave labor for some nefarious scheme of his. Or dead.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:No shawarma for you, Loki!]]
* When exactly does the end stinger take place? The one where all six heroes are eating in that demolished restaurant. It looks like it must take place immediately after they've captured Loki, but before Thor and him return to Asgard, judging by how everyone's dressed. If that's the case.... where was Loki being held while they were all eating?
** Maybe SHIELD came and picked Loki up, and Tony went "Hey guys, shawarma now, let's go."
** He went with them for shawarma, but he was in the bathroom in that shot. After being whipped into the floor by the Hulk, all he wanted was to whimper and go crawl under his bed at home, so they took pity on him and let him come along to have lunch with everyone.
** Popular consensus is that he was either stuffed into the trunk of Tony's car, or tied to a parking meter outside.
*** Another popular theory is that he was hidden under the table.
*** Just offscreen, with Mjolnir sitting on his chest.
*** ^That is my new canon. [[SincerityMode Thank you.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Reflecting beams off the shield]]
* A minor one, but in the Captain America movie, it was established that the shield he has absorbs vibration and displaces it, so how on earth did he reflect Iron Man's beam in the huge battle with the chitauri? That was WAY too perfect to be a displacement.
** Maybe it reflects because it's a beam, not a solid object or blow.
** Well, if the beam was a laser, and lasers are light, then it should work. We know the shield reflects light instead of absorbing it because it's not pitch black.
*** The beam was not a laser, it was Tony's hand repulsor jet -- it had kinetic energy, and lots of it.
**** Repulsors have been defined as force blasts, magnetic beams, or particle beams, DependingOnTheWriter.
** Honestly, the shield is very inconsistent with how it works in both the comics and the film. If its able to just shrug off a hit from Thor (or in the comics, the much stronger Gladiator), then it should absorb the force Cap puts into it and not even move when he tries to pick it up, much less be thrown and ricochet. Heck, it should probably just stay where it was and drill a hole through the planet as the latter spins through the void of space.
*** The last point would never happen since that is a physics misconception - there is no such thing as a stationary point in space. As far as the shield's general properties, I think it is envisioned sort of like a super-airbag. An airbag dissipates most of the energy of any hit upon it, but is not itself difficult to move around.
*** I think it just absorbs impact directed against it, not kinetic energy in general.
** In the Captain America film it is said to absorb energy and does so, but at the same time the shield is highly elastic in that he can bounce it off of things. So maybe the properties of Iron Man's beam caused it to be affected by the elastic rather than the absorbent properties of the shield.
** RuleOfCool
[[/folder]]

[[folder:All About the All-Tongue]]
* Medium one here. Loki speaks the All-Tongue which is understood as anyone's native language- so why didn't Natasha hear it as Russian? She spoke ENGLISH to him during the reverse interrogation.
** "Loki speaks the All-Tongue"...What?
*** [[HandWave It's a magic Asgardian thing.]] Natasha probably heard it as English because she chose to use English. Being such a master Spy, she's mastered countless (or at least, a lot of) languages and has to be able to speak fluently and without accent, like a native. Likely that the All-Tongue was aligning itself to her current mask.
*** A magic Asgardian thing that, as I recall, is not mentioned once in either this or Thor. If it's something from the comics, then it does not necessarily have anything to do with the movies.
*** I don't recall any specific mention of it in the movies, but the "All-Tongue" can be inferred from the Stuttgard scene, where the German citizens and Captain America can all understand what Loki is saying perfectly. Apparently everyone hears his speech in the language they're most comfortable with.
*** Being a very intelligent WWII vet who believed in studying for the job, its very believable that movie Steve speaks German, and Tony is a super genius businessman who probably knows a few languages already. OTOH, All Tongue is as good an explanation as any.
*** The movie was made with an English-speaking audience in mind. Therefore, the ''audience'' would hear the All-Tongue as English. FridgeBrilliance, mebbe.
**** Further, this "the audience hears the All Tongue in English" meta-theory would explain why Selvig doesn't talk to Loki in Swedish or the crowd in Stuttgart doesn't hear him speaking in German, which are the next questions reasonably asked once the the Black Widow bit is brought up.
*** I'm not disputing either the All-Tongue theory or the possiblity that Loki is speaking German whith the audience hears as English (or, for that matter, the theory that the gem in Loki's scepter is the Mind Gem which could be translating for him as well) but I just want to point out that it is ''very'' common for Germans to speak English. This Troper was in Germany for a week and a half and literally didn't meet a single German who didn't speak at least a little English (I'm sure there ''are'' Germans who don't speak English, but it's not implausible that a group of wealthy Germans would all speak at least enough to kneel when he ordered them to - for that matter, any that had no idea what he was saying would still be afraid of the guy throwing magic around and kneel when everyone else did).
*** There's no indication the All-Tongue exists in the movie universe, and in the Stuttgart scene it's pretty obvious Loki was speaking English to the Germans, as the old German guy who challenged him had a very obvious German accent. If they were both speaking German, and we only heard it as English because of TranslationConvention, he shouldn't have had any accent. So there probably is no All-Tongue, and Loki had simply learned English during the events of the first ''Thor'' movie, but he didn't bother to learn German because he wasn't going to spend that much time in Germany. He knew, as mentioned in the post above, that most Germans would know enough English to get what he's saying.
*** ''If they were both speaking German, and we only heard it as English because of TranslationConvention, he shouldn't have had any accent.'' [[JustAStupidAccent Not always]].
**** Not always, true, but accent and the lack of any reference to the All-Tongue, combined with the fact that the movie also had a lengthy dialogue in Russian in which TranslationConvention wasn't used at all, makes it much more logical to think it wasn't used in the German scene either, and Loki was speaking in English.
*** ''The Avengers'' wouldn't be the first Marvel movie to have a double standard about what gets subtitled and what doesn't. Take the previous film, ''Captain America: The First Avenger''. We had subtitled Norwegian dialogue, yet also scenes with only Germans that had them speaking English. I'd be willing to bet they were speaking German during those scenes, even if TranslationConvention had been previously averted.
*** Another possibility is that Loki, whether speaking the All-Tongue, English or German, speaks with an English accent (as does Thor) and that the old German, whether he heard German or not, responded in English because he believed Loki to be an Englishman. Perhaps he thought addressing Loki in Loki's own language would make a stronger impression. Multilingual people use different languages in different situations to serve different purposes.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mark VII Benefits]]
* What exactly is so special about the new armor Tony changes into during the final battle?
** Aside from being better-armed, it is not completely mangled like the Mark VI was.
** Yeah, the armor he's changing out of is the armor he's been wearing the whole movie: The one that got a little beat up fighting Loki, and then got banged up fighting Thor, and then got crunched during the trip through the Helicarrier's turbines...just take a look at it when he's on his way to Stark Tower, it's had seven kinds of crap beaten out of it and you can tell it's starting to putter out.
** In addition to the fact that it's presumably better armed as mentioned above, it also has jets built into the back. If you recall from previous films, Tony uses his repulsors as flight stabilizers. The Mark VII's jetpack allows for Tony to fly and fire his repulsors simultaneously, allowing for better aerial combat (that flying really fast is more or less his only combat option while in midair has been an issue in both Iron Man 1 and 2).
** It also has the very handy ability of being able to fly itself to Tony's location & deploy itself around him.
*** It's important to note in all of these cases, however, that JARVIS outright says that the suit isn't ready for deployment. Despite all of the improvements - jetpack, infinite laser power, chest jets (how very convenient, Mr. Stark...) - it's a gas guzzler. The whole exercise was akin to Tony's use of the Mk. I arc reactor to power the Mk. III at the end of the first Iron Man film. When seen this way, it's easier to see the Mk. VII as the backup it was intended to serve as rather than an AssPull.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Our guest is being eye-shanked! Let's leave him to die!]]
* I know I've already posted one Headscratcher, but upon seeing the movie again, I have another one: so in the museum, no one thought about trying to stop Loki from shanking the scientist in the eye? Later on, it becomes blatantly obvious that Loki is far more powerful than them, and it makes sense that only one person attempts to rebel in that situation. In the museum, I have a hard time believing that no one in that grouping thought they could conceivably just tackle the scrawny guy away.
** The vast, vast majority of people aren't going to be able to act the way you think they should. Especially high class types that would be there. The whole idea of violence is foreign and frightening to them.
** He was also half-carrying half-dragging a struggling grown man with one hand - even if there was someone who was able to stay calm enough to think about a course of action, they knew perfectly well he was stronger than he looked. And for what it's worth, Loki's actor, Creator/TomHiddleston is slender, but very tall - even if not for the whole "god" thing, Loki would be a lot harder tackle than you're probably thinking. Not to mention trying to take on someone with a large pointy object will probably get you stabbed unless you can knock it away immediately, and again - this was a room full of civilians who were probably way too panicked to be effective.
** There is an interesting phenomenon in which the more people are witness to an event such as a murder, rape, or mugging, the less likely it is that any of them will do anything about it. The reason for this is that when a single person sees something terrible happening and nobody else is around to see it, their mind immediately kicks to, "I have to do something. I have to stop this. I have to help." However, when a group of people sees such an event, their minds instead click to "There are a lot of people here. Someone will do something."
** My theory? Loki was using his staff to create panic. We've seen that it has ConflictBall abilities when it started escalating the argument in Bruce and Tony's lab, to the point that Bruce nearly hulked out and was out of it enough to pick up the staff. Loki is also seen waving his staff briefly over the crowd before he attacks. Note the music doesn't stop, when any smart musician would stop playing in shock. Add that to the fact that Loki whacks a guard out cold as his entrance, and you have a very confused, frightened crowd.
** I think the bigger question is why the guy himself didn't struggle more. It took Loki a moment to bust out the eye-digging device, and the guy didn't make much effort to get away before it was jammed in his eye socket. He probably wouldn't have been able to escape anyway, but he didn't really try.
*** He was paralyzed with fear. The man is a civilian; it's easy to say from an outside perspective what he ''should'' have done, but a lot of untrained and inexperienced people who've never actually been in a fight before will, in the heat of the moment, freeze up. It's not an uncommon reaction, especially since he didn't know Loki was going to kill him; the untrained civilian, in his position, often jumps to "Do whatever he says, give him whatever he wants, and you'll get out alive," as a course of action to avoid having to fight.
*** Plus once you've had your ass suddenly slammed onto a big slab by a guy with super-strength, you're going to have to take a few seconds to figure out what the hell just happened.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Then why do I feel like Loki's the only person on this boat who wants to be here?"]]
* Why would Loki want to be captured anyway? If he had been manipulating Banner from the start, like Black Widow asserts, then he would have no need to be on the boat-plane in order to cause some carnage via the Hulk. Also, given that Loki can poof his scepter away, why would he bring it back to surrender it?
** VERY simple answer: What did HawkEye need to get the Iridium and have Selvig create a stable portal? A Distraction and an eyeball. Loki was DISTRACTING Fury/the Avengers. During the time he was on the Heli-carrier messing about, his goons secured the iridium, installed it in the device and installed the device at Stark tower using the ARC reactor. Everything Loki did in Stuttgart and on the Helicarrier was just messing around to keep his enemies occupied until his plan (bringing the Chitauri army to earth) reached an unstoppable state. Everything from him walking into the opera to him walking onto the jet HawkEye brought was ALL distraction.
** As noted further above, the scepter seems to have some kind of effect on people in proximity to it. That seems to have been part of ThePlan. Plus, Loki's presence could further destabilize the rest of the Avengers (after all, his whole objective is to turn the Avengers against each other to destroy them from within). Furthermore, being captured and handing over the scepter allows for Hawkeye and his goons to track it down to the Helicarrier and assault it, upload the virus, and try to crash the entire airship. So Loki was running two gambits at once: get aboard the Helicarrier and try to manipulate Banner from the inside, either personally or through the scepter, and lead his goon squad to the Helicarrier to assault and bring it down. Both require getting the scepter onto the Helicarrier, which is easiest if he lets himself be captured.
** The problem is that clearly Loki can manipulate people from quite a distance, given he was manipulating Banner from where ever his hideout was. Couldn't he just have manipulated Hawkeye into coming to the carrier either way, given his manipulation? If the scepter can only control people within a certain distance, how could Loki manipulate Banner while he was in South America? Clearly it doesn't need to be that close to have an effect, giving Loki no reason to actually be on the ship to enact his plan.
** How, when and where was he manipulating Banner before arriving on the hellicarrier? And Banner was in ''India'' when he first appears in the movie.
** When the hell did Loki ever manipulate anyone from a distance? Even the mind-controlled subjects operated under his command on their own without direction from him unless they were face-to-face. He's never shown directly telepathically controlling anyone.
** Right before Hawkeye and his goons attack the carrier, Black Widow tells Banner that Loki was controlling him the whole time, with something to the effect of "you didn't come aboard here of your own will".
*** In addition, if Loki CAN'T do anything from a distance, than he not only had no way of knowing that the Hulk was on a helicarrier, but also had no way of knowing the Avengers even existed, making it impossible for him to form his plan in the first place.
**** We don't really know how much of Loki's plan was conceived ahead of time. He didn't go to Germany to fight Captain America, he went there to provide a distraction while Hawkeye stole the mineral they needed for the device. In both the Thor film and this one, Loki's plans consistently seem to be somewhat framed out in advance, but [[XanatosSpeedChess with a large degree of improvisation]] as he goes. Loki may not have even known the Avengers existed until Cap and Iron Man showed up in Germany, and he did not make any remark about the Hulk until after he locked eyes on Banner as they were taking him to his cell. That Widow flipped out about Loki having planted Banner on the Helicarrier all along doesn't actually mean that this is true, especially when Loki is a MASTER of rolling with the punches, coming up with something really clever in the heat of the moment, and then playing it off like he always meant to do that from the start. We don't even know for certain why he "allowed" himself to be captured; perhaps he was trying to destroy the Avengers, or perhaps he just saw Cap, Iron Man, and Thor fighting each other, realized how that was going to end, and went, "Shit, I better think of something clever before they come back and pick me up."
*** She meant that Banner was coerced into coming with her via his desire not to Hulk-out near his friends/neighbors/patients in India.
**** No she didn't. She knew he was doing fine in India, and may have actually been less of a threat there.
***** Not what I meant. Once Natasha had lured Banner into the shack, the SHIELD strike team (or even Nat herself, if she'd panicked) firing on Banner would've unleashed the Hulk. Banner's knowledge of ''that'' scenario is the reason he came peacefully, since he realized his only other option at that point was smashing everyone.
****** She says, I believe, "You're not here because I batted my eyelashes at you". Given that when she was trying to convince him her main point was 'we need to save the world', I'm pretty sure that's what she was referencing. Banner didn't go to SHIELD because of a petty or small reason, like Natasha being pretty; he went because the whole world is in serious danger.
*** ''In addition, if Loki CAN'T do anything from a distance, than he not only had no way of knowing that the Hulk was on a helicarrier, but also had no way of knowing the Avengers even existed, making it impossible for him to form his plan in the first place.'' That.....logic just does not compute, man. How does "not having remote telepathic powers over his mind-controlled men" equal "doesn't have basic intelligence-gathering ability"? He can learn quite a bit about the Avengers just by looking at the news and noting who are the most powerful people on the planet. Youtube alone would give him plenty of information on the Hulk, and Google would tell him quite a bit about Iron Man, he already knows about Thor, and he also has ''Hawkeye'' and everything he knows right there at his disposal. Loki even explicitly tells Natasha that Hawkeye has already explained a great deal to him about their mutual adventures, so it stands to reason that he'd know about the Avenger Initiative from Hawkeye as well, and put together a plan based on that. Hell, the first thing Loki would have done after mind-controlling several important members of SHIELD would be to ask them for everything they know about SHIELD and its plans.
* FreezeFrameBonus - as Hawkeye's Quinjet is approaching the Helicarrier, we briefly glimpse an image of Loki's scepter on a digital display. ''They found the Helicarrier by tracking the energy emissions from the scepter''. That's at least part of why Loki let himself be captured; so that they could find the Helicarrier and thus disable SHIELD's command-and-control at the critical moment, just before the portal opens.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Sir, I'm afraid my protocols are being overridden."]]
* It is shown that SHIELD is able to completely override Jarvis when Tony's being obstinate with them. So why is Tony relying on Jarvis to hax their computers to find out just what SHIELD is up to?
** Overriding =/= defending against a hack.
** In ''Iron Man'' 1, Fury didn't "override" Jarvis; he disabled the security detection, probably by force. In ''Iron Man 2'', SHIELD demonstrates no override-esque behavior, at least not with regards to Jarvis (house-arresting Tony himself might count as an override of sorts, but it didn't really work, & they never touched the computers). At the beginning of ''Avengers'', Coulson doesn't override Jarvis's AI, but rather he just hijacks the one elevator; Jarvis even sounds like he's annoyed by the intrusion. When Tony first starts his hack, no one but Banner & Cap notices, & when Tony's messing with the consoles on the helicarrier bridge, he's annoyed at the primitivity, both of which imply that Jarvis is vastly superior to [=SHIELD's=] non-Asgardian technology; they probably ''can't'' override him.
*** There's likely a big difference between Jarvis' default capabilities and what it can do once Super-Genius Stark has prep-time modified it for a specific purpose. In other words this is a display of Stark's prep-time ability, not Jarvis' power.
** Also, who says ''Coulson'' did the overriding? Pepper was standing right next to the controls, and she wanted to let Coulson in. And she did say she was going to get Tony back for that 'twelve percent' comment. *g*
** It is most likely simply a case of preparation. Stark Tower is an established facility which SHIELD would have infiltrated at some point during its construction or afterwards with a backdoor of some kind in case they needed to override the computer systems. SHIELD wouldn't have expected Stark to just waltz in and start hacking into the Helicarrier. More importantly, Stark never figured out that SHIELD had access to the Stark Tower network enabling them to override his stuff, whereas when Stark hacked into the Helicarrier's network, ''they catch Stark in the act''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Did you mourn?"]]
* Thor saying that he mourned, ''they'' all did. Who did? The ending scene shows the entire Asgardian Royalty having a huge feast.
** This one was already brought up; that's how they mourn, by celebrating the good memories they had of the deceased.
** The ancient Norsemen used to have a week of mourning that would seem more familiar to us, followed by a memorial feast in which they celebrated the life of the dead person. I'd bet good money that the feast at the end of Thor is Loki's memorial feast, and considering he's the god of mischief I'm pretty sure he got in some epic pranks in the teenage years, so of course everyone was laughing and having a good time - they were remembering Loki fondly. It's actually kind of heartwarming, all things considered.
** For what it's worth, at every funeral I've been to, most of the stories concerning the deceased actually were pretty funny.
*** However much a person is disapproved of, people think well of them at their funeral. Case in point, at my Great-Uncle's funeral, all anyone talked about was how much he loved the football (soccer) and his gardening and his stupid practical jokes. No mention was made of his tendency to lock small children in the larder.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"''You want me to put the hammer down?!?!''"]]
* Didn't Thor's attack on Captain America seem grossly out of character? I mean Iron Man was antagonizing and taunting him from the getgo, so Thor being less than patient with him is understandable. But then along comes Cap who promptly breaks up an pointless fight and then respectfully tells Thor to stand down. Thor then responds by leaping upon him with an attack force powerful enough to ''level an entire forest''. I mean WhatTheHellHero? Thor's arc in his solo movie was about learning a warrior's patience and refraining from violence unless absolutely necessary. Thor could tell that Iron Man could take punishment, but he had never met Cap before and had no idea how strong he or his shield was, and especially considering how civil Cap was acting towards him, why was Thor so eager to ''kill him''?
** Nope. Thor was perfectly in-character to respond to such a perceived challenge. Remember that he also has his blood up at the moment from fighting Tony, and Cap ''did'' tell him to drop Mjolnir, which is something of a sore point for Thor considering the last movie. He also didn't really seem to be striking with force that he would perceive as being lethal; after all, he's been trading blows with Tony back and forth and hasn't done much more than batter the Iron Man armor around, and he's likely to perceive Cap as being just as durable.
** As said above, Thor could have easily taken it to mean that this blue-and-red clad mortal was telling him he was unworthy of wielding Mjolnir. It wasn't so much that Thor's out of character as it was Cap unknowingly hitting Thor's BerserkButton.
*** Alternately, it had nothing to do with worthiness to wield Mjolnir. Thor is a warrior born and a creature of pride. Cap told him to put down his weapon. While Cap may have meant it as, "Put down your weapon and lets discuss this reasonably," Thor took it as, "Put down your weapon and surrender; you cannot win this fight." To a warrior's pride, this is a direct challenge and demands a response of brute force.
** Well then why did Thor immediately stand down after his attack on Cap backfired? All of the sudden he's willing to cooperate because one attack didn't work? His lightning bolt attack on Iron Man didn't work either yet he kept on going with him.
** Because Tony insisted on continuing to attack Thor. Additionally, Thor could see his blows were damaging Tony. But Cap's shield took the whole blow without even a scratch, only rebounding it and blowing apart half the forest. If the rest of the battle is just going to be having your own blows reflected back on you, and the guy reflecting them doesn't want to fight, then there's no point in continuing to battle.
** And/or the concussion (and the destruction it caused) was the slap in the face that awakened him to the fact that he was berserking again and had nearly smashed a man to goo for trying to be a voice of reason. He probably wasn't too proud of himself.
** Also, look at it from Thor's perspective. He's busted his ass to come back to Earth and bring his wayward brother home - presumably, this is the first time they've had any sort of a fix on Loki's location since the Bifrost exploded. He's got his brother in hand, he's talking to him to try to stop whatever he's got planned - and then this armored shmuck blindsides him and tells him to screw off. And then said shmuck's friend comes in and issues (as said above) what could be interpreted as a direct challenge and insult. Far as Thor knows, these two are ''working'' for Loki. It's only after he realizes that these two aren't trying to take him out that he really slows down. The DropTheHammer moment probably helped, though.
** Even in spite of all these answers, I still find this scene to be dripping with FridgeHorror. It's in character ''to a point'' for Thor to be hotheaded and a bit of a Shoot First Ask Questions Later CowboyCop type, but I thought his attack on Captain America was a bit excessive even for him. It's true, he doesn't know who they are, and yes, telling him to put down Mjolnir is definitely a BerserkButton for Thor; as evidenced by Tony's cut short line "Bad call! He loves that hamm-" before Thor smacks him aside. However, despite this reasoning, it's somewhat troubling that he was immediately willing to use lethal force against Cap. Because not only does he have ''no way of knowing'' that the shield is indestructible, he also has no reason to know that the shield is Cap's weapon - shields are generally defensive only. There is nothing in Cap's other hand - ie, Thor essentially attempted to ''murder'' an ''apparently unarmed'' man [[WhatTheHellHero just for a perceived insult!]] The argument can be made that Thor thought Cap would be as strong as Iron Man, but there's the little fact that Tony is ''clearly'' wearing heavy armor and Cap isn't. Thor may not be the smartest superhero, but he knows that Unarmored Human + Forest Leveling Hammer Strike = Gory Death. He knows that most [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Midgard-made materials]], including probably the metal used to make most shields, cannot withstand a strike from Mjolnir either. To really drive the point home, imagine that, instead of Captain America, a police officer had asked him to "put the hammer down." There's little doubt he would have splattered that cop into goo! That would have taken Thor beyond WhatTheHellHero and straight to MoralEventHorizon. Would audiences have continued to side with him after he brutally murdered a police officer in the line of duty? And made worse by the fact that Cap himself, unlike a cop, is carrying no obvious weapon! FridgeHorror, indeed.
*** Captain America had just smacked both him and Iron Man with that shield, so Thor knows Cap doesn't use the shield merely for defensive purposes, and he's probably got a certain idea of how strong the shield is what with it bouncing off his head and all. Cap also just jumped from an impressive height (meaning the fallen tree he just threw the shield from, not the plane) with no trouble, so he's obviously no ordinary Midgardian. Yes, Thor is certainly being a hothead in attacking him, but Cap's already demonstrated that he's tougher than the SHIELD agents he got into a smackdown with in ''Thor''.
*** Tougher, sure, but he's also demonstrated he's ''not'' as tough as Iron Man, who would have just flown himself off of that tree. And even if Thor did get a sense of the Shield's offensive power and durability when Cap harmlessly bonked him with it, could he really have known about its unique property of absorbing/dissipating energy? Even if he somehow reasoned the Shield ''was'' indestructible, he should have understood that putting a bunch of force onto it would have simply gooshed the person underneath it. No, he made his attack fully understanding that it was a very heavy attack against someone nowhere near his [[PowerLevels power level]]. Sure, he was pissed, but the situation is similar to a Navy SEAL shooting a child ten times for calling him a nasty name and hitting him with a dodge ball. Maybe the real headscratcher isn't ''why'' he would do that, but ''how'' in the name of Odin he was still worthy to pick Mjolnir back up afterwards.
*** Mjolnir doesn't have an on-off switch. ''Film/{{Thor}}'' showed that in order to prove unworthy of Mjolnir, Thor had to do something bad enough to piss off Papa Odin so that he would strip the worthiness from Thor. Thor already proved perfectly willing to slap around Frost Giants for a mere verbal slight and still could wield Mjolnir during the battle, so it's quite clear that Mjolnir needs Odin himself to make the call on whether or not someone's worthy.
*** That's not quite accurate. Thor's assault on the Frost Giants in his own movie came ''before'' Odin placed the enchantment on his hammer, and indeed was ''the very reason'' he was deemed to be unworthy to wield it any longer. When Thor was once again deemed worthy during his battle with the Destroyer, Odin was ''comatose'' and not capable of making the call himself... And in {{Film/The Avengers}}, after Coulson's death, Thor notably hesitates before picking the hammer up again, as if worried his failure in the Helicarrier has caused him to be unworthy again. The strong implication in these cases is that Mjolnir is an EmpathicWeapon, and that ''the hammer itself'' decides who is worthy to carry it. Do you really think Thor would have continued to be worthy after he obliterated one of the greatest heroes of World War II simply for mouthing off to him? Because the fact that he didn't actually ''succeed'' in doing so doesn't mean he didn't ''try.''
*** A challenge ("Put the hammer down.") was issued. Thor answered that challenge. The fits the old Norse and Asgardian mindset to a tee. Thor never lost the ability to use the hammer because he answered a challenge, he lost the hammer because he launched a reckless attack that endangered his homeland and pissed off Poppa Odin. Whatever enchantment binds the hammer clearly doesn't deem him unworthy just because he answers a challenge and strikes with potentially lethal force. If he'd struck another person with lethal force for a challenge and lost Mjolnir, you might have an issue with inconsistency here, but there hasn't been a case like that after Odin's enchantment was placed.
*** Somehow I doubt that interpreting an attempted PeaceConference from an ''obviously'' much less powerful being as a "challenge" and responding by murdering that being fits in with the Asgardian mindset. Old Norse, maybe, but even then I'm not so sure. Admittedly not immediately firing Thor and finding a worthier Thunder God is not technically "inconsistent" with the hammer's earlier behavior (since the only "decision" we've seen it make was to reward Thor's HeroicSacrifice by returning to him) but it's still quite a bit ridiculous given his outrageous actions.
*** Why would it be ridiculous? '''We don't know the conditions of the enchantment placed upon Mjolnir.''' All we have are the observed effects: Thor's ability to wield the weapon was stripped from him by Poppa Odin for an action that placed Asgard itself under threat, and was returned to him for an act of selflessness. Beyond that, the terms and conditions of the hammer's judgment of what makes its wielder worthy are not defined. Going by observed behavior, attacking someone who issues a challenge, even unintentionally and with peaceful intent, does not violate the enchantment.
*** I fear you have completely missed the point I was trying to make. As I stated, the issue is ''not'' with any perceived violation I have of Odin's established rules for Mjolnir. As you said (and I mentioned before), we know almost nothing of what makes movie-Mjolnir tick. Presumably more will be revealed in later films, but until then, all we really know is that it likes [[HeroicSacrifice heroic sacrifices.]] That's it. I never said Mjolnir was acting out of character... what I find to be ridiculous is the fact that what Thor does in this scene is emphatically ''not okay'' in any philosophy that I'm aware of. I don't care if you think you've been challenged, you don't just kill someone you know is weaker if you're supposed to be the hero. That's why I thought Mjolnir ''might'' think Thor is unworthy afterwards... because on no planet is that something a supposed "hero" is supposed to do. I get that he's a hothead, and a warrior, and he was pissed, but his actions are something that would horrify even Frank Castle here. ''Thor's'' actions were definitely out of character, because for all his faults, he is still supposed to be one of the good guys. Imagine if he did what he did to a cop? Or a soldier? Or a child? Or ''anyone'' without a [[AppliedPhlebotinum phlebotinum]] shield? There is no real difference between any of these squishy earthlings to a PhysicalGod, really. This is ''not'' what heroes do, I don't care how "hotheaded" they are. Do you really think Odin would be cool with this? "How was your trip to Earth, son?" "It was okay. I met their greatest war hero." "Yeah, what was he like?" "I don't know. I brutally murdered him." "Uh... I'm taking your hammer away." My issue isn't with Mjolnir acting against previously established rules, it's with it violating rules it probably ''should'' have. Now, with that said: Mjolnir was originally taken away for Thor acting in a way that threatened all of Asgard... how is murdering a legendary Earthling any different? I know Asgardians don't think much of humans, but in a world of Bruce Banners and Tony Starks, we could certainly find a way to get into Asgard and kill everybody there if we wanted to. The Hulk alone could wreck pretty much any Asgardian with the exception of Odin or Thor, and Iron Man could probably get him there if he wanted to... So in a way, Thor's actions ''did'' threaten all of Asgard, because as Thanos learned, fucking with Earth might be a ''really bad idea.''
*** "Someone you know is weaker"? I'm sorry, did I miss the scene where Thor gets a full dossier on Captain America, complete with his fighting ability, relative strength and toughness, and affiliation? No, no he did not. He knows that this person, whoever he is, has just ''hit him in the face''--a direct attack--and then ordered him to put down his weapons. Further, the guy that Thor was going blow-for-blow with stopped and listened to him. In Thor's terms, Cap is asking him to surrender, and has demonstrated that he is willing to fight. You're saying Thor is acting out of character based on knowledge that Thor does not and cannot possibly have.
*** It seems you are operating under the assumption that Thor has ''no'' common sense, ''no'' deductive reasoning abilities, ''no'' experience with this planet, and ''no'' intelligence whatsoever. These are behaviors more in common with the Hulk. And I don't remember even Hulk ever doing anything this over-the-top; even when he kicked Tim Roth into a tree for taunting him he didn't ''leap up into the air'' to come down on him, he just booted him aside. Thor should be aware, at a bare minimum that a) he's on Earth, b) most inhabitants of Earth are human, and c)humans are extremely weak compared to him. And what you refer to as his "blow-for-blow" fight with Iron Man was anything but... Tony's suit is getting ''wrecked'' and Thor is ''fine''. There is no way Tony was going to finish that fight without help. So Thor knows that even ''tough, heavily armored'' humans are no particular match for him. He doesn't need your so-called "dossier" on Captain America to understand that attacking Cap is akin to kicking an angry chihuahua. The dog may be willing to fight, and it may be annoying, but it's harmless and killing it is ''not cool.'' And what you refer to as Tony "listening" to Cap is simply Tony criticizing his actions ("Bad call!"). I read somewhere that Thor was supposed to use that heavy attack against ''Iron Man,'' and that Cap was supposed to ''jump in between them.'' If true, this would have made sense, but presumably they changed it because that's exactly what Cap does with Loki in Germany and they didn't want him doing it twice. I would have been okay with their replacement scene if Thor had just tried to ''punch'' Cap, or if Cap had demonstrated his ability a bit more and maybe hurt Thor, but as it stands in the movie, it simply reeks of a badly-written AssPull.
*** This whole argument amounts to you assuming--entirely erroneously--that Thor has access and complete knowledge of everyone's capabilities involved, as well as all the hindsight that you have as a viewer. He does not.\\\
Here is everything that Thor knows about the situation: Whoever these people are, they managed to capture Loki, a godlike being who Thor himself has fought on even terms. Whoever these people are, one of them just fought a protracted fight with Thor and demonstrated considerable strength and ability. This dude in the blue hit Thor in the face with a weapon, the metal man stopped fighting when ordered--ergo, Cap is his commander and Thor is from a place where AsskickingEqualsAuthority. The blue guy then tells Thor to surrender, with a tone that makes it clear that the blue guy is willing to fight for it. There is no plot hole here. You've made one up because you seem to think everyone involved has all of the knowledge that you, as the viewer, do.
*** No. Again, no. My assumption isn't that Thor knows everything the viewer does, it's that Thor ''isn't'' a villainous idiot, which is what you seem to believe. He enters a situation he knows very little about, yes, but while this seems in your mind to justify him randomly breaking into any facility he wants to and smashing whoever stands in his way without bothering to learn the details, his actions are simply dishonorable and unheroic in this instance. He's a BoisterousBruiser, yeah, but here he's acting as a BloodKnight. Which I don't think Thor is supposed to be, hence my problem. You may have personally taken away that Cap appears to be Iron Man's leader, but this isn't supported in the movie, since all Thor sees is Cap hit Tony and Tony yell at Cap. You may believe that Thor thinks that Iron Man and Cap are physical equals, but this also isn't supported in the movie, as Thor knows Tony has armor on. We obviously fundamentally disagree on what knowledge Thor should have, because I definitely believe he would have to be aware that Cap is a powerless rag doll compared to him, and you seem to think he wouldn't be able to figure that out, but maybe I'm just giving Thor the benefit of the doubt here. Still, it seems like you're just stretching really hard to cover something that was just plain written poorly.
*** And now you're putting words in my mouth and outright ignoring the explanations we've given. You've only made it clear you're much more interested in whining about something you personally don't like than you are in actually discussing this. Your arguments are baseless assumptions apparently conjured up simply to support your point rather than being based in anything that happens in any of the movies.
*** I'm sorry if it seems that way, because that is not my intent. I do understand where you're coming from, but I just don't agree. You are correct in the fact that I do not like this scene, because regardless of what knowledge he did or did not have, Thor is in my opinion acting very un-superheroic. I want to like this scene, I want it to make sense to me, but it simply doesn't. Thor at the end of the day supposed to be a hero, and I can't see his actions as something a hero would do, no matter what he thinks is going on or how pissed he is. For all of his anger issues, he's supposed to ultimately be a caring guy who likes humans and wants to help them, and I can't reconcile that with attempting to kill humanity's most treasured hero. I think it's utterly inconsistent with his character as established previously. I don't believe you're being quite fair in saying my assumptions are "baseless," they are certainly based on what I've seen in the movies, but we obviously don't agree on that.
*** Again, you're assuming he knows more than he does. As you point out, he ''does'' have anger issues, and Tony's spent the last 10 minutes pissing him off. You ever been pissed off? Yeah, it makes you do things you wouldn't otherwise, including lash out for a slight. Trying to kill humanity's most treasured hero? Thor doesn't know that. There is no conceivable way that Thor possibly ''could'' know that. But you're treating it as a definite given that Thor ''has to'' know that. Again, he's known Cap for all of 10 seconds, and Cap's first action toward him was to throw a shield in his face and order him to surrender. Thor is already ''very'' pissed off at this point, so yes, when someone smacks him in the face and tells him to surrender, he's going to lash out.\\\
Your arguments are baseless assumptions because you're putting Thor's actions through a filter of knowledge and understanding that Thor does not and cannot have in that scene. How can you find inconsistency with him attacking one of the heroes when he just spent the entirety of the previous scene trading blows with one of the heroes? As far as Thor's concerned, he's just continuing the fight he already had going.\\\
Thor is a hero. But even heroes make mistakes sometimes. If they didn't, there wouldn't be a movie.
*** I can accept most of that. \\\
*** But, just to be totally clear, let me break down why I thought his attack on Cap was too much, based on that scene and that scene alone, without any of the background discussion: he ''was'' fighting Iron Man, who was being a right dick to him, but if you watch the scene, Thor is taking the fight very slowly. He slams Iron Man down, but then although he readies his hammer, it looks like he's prepared to walk away if Tony stays down. Iron Man blasts him, he blasts Iron Man back. Iron Man blasts him with his 400% blast, then slams him through a bunch of trees. Now, they're wrestling, but Thor still sticks to mostly punches and kicks. He's clearly taking it ''easy'' on Iron Man, and even after Cap shows up and bops him with the shield, Thor is still willing to talk to him ("I've come to put an end to Loki's schemes!"). Then, when Cap says "put the hammer down," he's suddenly ''really'' pissed, much more so than he ever was with Iron Man, because he was being ''careful'' with Tony up to that point, and he doesn't seem to deliver any hits he doesn't think Tony can take, or hit Tony with anything Tony hasn't hit him with first. Yet, when Cap shows up, not wearing similar armor, he's ready to take the fight to the next level? Is Mjolnir really such a huge BerserkButton for him that he's more angry about it than Tony making fun of his outfit, his mom, and whatever else? That a mention of it makes him suddenly willing to kill a stranger, where up to that moment he just wanted to give Tony a minor beating? His anger is focused on Cap, not Tony here, and he even knocks Tony aside (relatively) gently. It just doesn't sit right, it seems really excessive for a hero to attack Cap like that, hence why I think it's an inconsistency with the writing, born of a last-minute change, rather than an in-character moment for Thor. I hope that makes sense.
*** It does, but I think you're missing a couple key points. Thor demonstrates an escalating amount of force when he fights Tony. Let's say his first hit is 1 strength. Tony gets up from that, so Thor hits him with 2 strength. And so on, so that by the time Cap intervenes, Thor's at 5 strength. By the time Cap shows up, Thor is riled up--even if he's going relatively easy on Tony, he's ramping up his strength and aggression. The reason he flips out over Mjolnir isn't that his hammer is a berserk button so much as, in his agitated state, he interprets it as Cap telling him to surrender. Surrendering is a big thing--it changes the situation from Thor being able to work things out as a peer and fellow warrior to them having a position of power over Thor, him being their captive. So with his blood up, having ramped up how much of his strength he's using, he's told to surrender, he lashes out at someone he sees as another enemy. Because he's already angry and in a fighting mood, he doesn't think to dial down his strength.\\\
Now, as to Cap's power and strength, Thor has no way of knowing. Just looking at him, he can't tell (Thor doesn't look any stronger than Cap). All he does know is that Cap is on the same team as Tony--this would lead Thor to believe that they're on a similar tier of ability and power, just like someone would assume that Volstaff could probably take a similar amount of punishment as Thor. For all Thor knows, the reason Cap isn't wearing a hulking suit of armor is that he doesn't need it. And when Thor does attack--and mind you it's a heavily-telegraphed attack with a big wind-up and plenty of time for Cap to just ''move''--Cap stands his ground, which is going to indicate to Thor that his target is pretty sure he's going to come out of it alright.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"No. You brought the monster!"]]
* How did Loki know who Banner was or even who the Hulk was? SHIELD didn't start thinking about getting Banner's help until the Tesseract went missing, so Hawkeye wouldn't know. I can't think of any reason for Hawkeye to tell Loki about the Hulk. And if I remember right, there didn't seem to be much time between Banner being recruited and Loki being captured for him to learn that it happened. Or did they build the Hulk-resistant cell before they knew they needed it (since it would have taken a long time to build), so Hawkeye did know about that?
** The Hulk was always part of the Avenger Initiative. You can see data on him in ''Film/IronMan 2''. On top of that, Hawkeye has a very good reason to tell Loki: he's ''being mind-controlled'', and Loki already asked him about more obscure things like his history with Black Widow. If he knows enough about Barton and Romanov's relationship to know the details of her career, he'd easily get useful information about the Hulk.
** There's not really any reason to believe that Loki knew anything about the Hulk until he was on the Helicarrier and saw Banner with his own eyes. He may have been briefed on the Hulk by Hawkeye in the same conversation where he learned Widow's history. Throughout Thor, Loki's plan seems to heavily involve one part planning, and [[XanatosSpeedChess one part adapting to whatever is happening around him]]. He's a very quick on his feet and clever enough to make the finer details up as he goes along. His actual plan on the Helicarrier seemed to be using his staff to manipulate everyone's emotions until they slaughter each other, possibly made up on the fly when he watched Stark and Thor tear each other a new one. There's really no reason to believe he knew Banner was even involved until he was brought through the corridor, locked eyes on him, and went, "Ooh, I have an idea for THAT." Further, there is actually some evidence that he had no idea about Banner's presence, given that immediately after discovering him on the Helicarrier, Loki '''''could not shut up about it''''', ultimately tipping his hand out of eagerness for what had just dropped in his lap.
*** This is the most likely explanation. Keep in mind that Loki's plan didn't hinge on the Hulk, Black Widow simply guessed that was what his plan was because he kept talking about the Hulk. His plan had been to get captured and let SHIELD take him to the Helicarrier, and then use that to let Hawkeye and his squad of SHIELD-hating commandos board the Helicarrier and try to do as much damage as possible. And Loki likely knew precisely what SHIELD would do if they captured him because he had a mind-controlled Hawkeye right there to tell him what they would do.
** He said "You brought the monster". Remember who brought Banner in to find the Cube?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Kid Loki]]
* Does anyone have any idea of what Loki's childhood was actually like? If the deleted scene is anything to go by, Thor doesn't really appreciate his talent for sorcery. I don't subscribe to the RonTheDeathEater versions of Odin and Thor, but I'm not convinced that Loki was totally deluded and psychotic throughout his childhood, either.
** Loki wasn't deluded and psychotic throughout his childhood. It's only during the events of ''Film/{{Thor}}'' that Loki starts with the evil schemes. From all indications, he was treated like a member of the family, Thor loves him as a brother, Frigga and Odin loved him as a son, and the Warriors Three and Sif all considered him a friend. Maybe an annoying friend who is a little too prone to pranks and mischief, but there's no indication that he's even disliked until he starts up his plotting in the movie.
*** Even when he did start up his plotting, he seems to have started it with the good of Asgard in mind. By all indications, Loki honestly believed that Thor as king would be the doom of Asgard, at least at first. He didn't really turn into a WellDoneSonGuy until he discovered the truth of his heritage and the fact that he was adopted, and past that, he was desperate to earn the love of a father he didn't believe he had. "Deluded and psychotic" didn't really kick in until after whatever horrors [[spoiler: Thanos]] put him through to mold him into an obedient slave, which despite his protestations otherwise, is exactly what he was throughout Avengers.
*** Thank for the answers, but I'm still a little curious. Does Asgard attach a stigma to male sorcerors? And was Loki's jealousy of Thor completely unfounded?
*** Probably less that they attach a stigma to male sorcerers as Asgard expects its men to be burly manly men like Thor and Odin, so while Loki is plenty clever and good with magic, he doesn't have the traits that Asgardians put most value on. It's like high school--Thor is the captain of the football team, Loki is captain of the debate team.
*** That helps. Thank you.
** Fun Fact: The Real Life Vikings did in fact believe in sorcery and they did in fact attach a stigma to men who performed it. While female sorcerers commanded immense respect and authority, male practitioners were hunted down and tortured to death for dabbling in something traditionally reserved for women. Given the MCU's very broadstrokes interpretation of Asgardian society, it's not hard to imagine Loki being shat on his whole life for practicing sorcery.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Apparently I'm volatile, self-obsessed, don't play well with others..."]]
* Why is Tony Stark's Iron Man a member of the Avengers instead of Rhode's War Machine? In Iron Man 2 Shield accepts Iron Man the technology into the Avenger's Initiative but rejects Stark the person for being... well Stark, instead choosing to retain Stark as a consultant. But come the events of the Avengers movie Agent Coulson recruits Tony into the team with no reason given for why they changed their mind. If Shield like the idea of an Iron Man on their team but didn't want to deal with Stark, wouldn't Rhodes had been the much more logical choice? A disciplined member of the US Military with access to an Iron Man armor that had already shown his ability to use in combat. It seems odd that the film universe would set up some dynamic between the usefulness of the Iron Man armor versus the reliability of Stark the person but then A) never acknowledge it again and B) ignore that a person that doesn't have that dynamic has already been established to have existed in that universe. I mean I know why they did it from a narrative standpoint because Iron Man was the hero character and War Machine the sidekick character (Popularity power and all that) and a tale of a character becoming more mature is more interesting and allowed for my team internal conflict that a character that started off that way, I just can't figure out an in universe reason for it.
** The simple answer is that they didn't. Stark wasn't brought in to be an Avenger, he was brought in to be a consultant; the Avengers Initiative had been scrapped before Loki stole the Tesseract. This is stated several times. Like Banner, Stark's actual role on the Helicarrier was to track down the Tesseract. He was left with the files on everything that had transpired to this point. The idea was that Stark and Banner would locate the Tesseract and then Cap and Widow would go in and retrieve it. Stark took his own initiative when he showed up wearing the Iron Man armor in Germany rather than simply reporting directly to the Helicarrier, and from there, events simply snowballed. Ultimately, if all they needed from him was to be an armored war machine, they probably would have gone with Rhodey, but they needed to technical brilliance that only Stark could bring to the table.
*** ^This. Rhodey may be more stable and, at least initially, more of a team player, but he isn't a genius engineer (at least not on Stark's level) and since he didn't design, build, and maintain the armor himself, he isn't intimately familiar with it. Furthermore, the War Machine armor doesn't belong to Rhodey; he stole it in Iron Man 2 from Stark, but that doesn't necessarily mean he got to keep it.
*** There's also the matter of Rhodes being an US Air Force officer. S.H.I.E.L.D. is a global initiative. Aside from Stark's greater strategic value, it's probably easier for them to go straight for the unattached ''civilian'' than to go to the Air Force and deal with all the red tape involved in getting Rhodes commissioned to Fury's response team. Heck, he might even be involved in some remote peacekeeping assignment ''with'' the War Machine armor during the events of this film.
*** ^ Yes, he is. The Iron Man 3 comic book tie-in explained his absence. He was in China at the time of the attack in New York, and he did get to keep the modified Mark 2 suit, until Tony replaced it with a better one himself.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Loki - a rapist?]]
* A certain part of the exchange between Black Widow and Loki bothers me. Most people have taken a specific line from there and declared it a threat of rape. I definitely think that the line, "No, I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you! Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear!" was meant to be evocative of something more than just a death threat, but I think it cheapens a villain when he has to be written as a rapist to show that he's just that evil. I remember a similar issue arising from a piece of Loki's dialogue in the ''Thor'' film about Jane, and I feel conflicted about the matter. Did Whedon really intend for "rapist" to become a facet of Loki's character?
** Director's Commentary on the DVD reveals that while Loki may or may not have intended to be implying a rape threat, his language was deliberately intended to be harsh and cruel towards Black Widow's gender. Joss Whedon calls attention to the fact that as a Norse god, gender equality isn't exactly an extolled virtue in the society that Loki comes from. The Thor film corroborates this; Thor makes a point that people laughed at the idea of a ''woman'' becoming a great warrior until Sif proved them wrong. Thor may have supported her, but their society as a whole seems to be very strongly patriarchal, and as such, Loki using Black Widow's gender as an avenue to psychologically attack her makes perfect sense if he comes from a civilization that views the notion of a woman in a combat zone as laughable.
** The implications in Loki's threat to Widow have nothing to do with rape (as far as we know, maybe she ''is'' terrified of being raped). It is a statement about how intimately Barton knows her and how he would know every possible way to bring pain to her both physically, but more importantly, emotionally. I don't think Loki would even think about raping her (or having Barton rape her) as that is probably something even Loki, in his clearly psychotic state, would find 'beneath him'.
** Would this even have been a question if it had been, say, Cap he was threatening? However, Loki's threat works all the better because it is inclusive of rape without being specific: he'll learn every possible degradation for her, then do them in order reverse survivability, whether rape is included or not.
** My read on that scene was not that of a rape fear (which seems to me to only be a fear of women on the internet (see Jezebel's website), and past survivors. The women I've encountered have never even mentioned that as a fear until it was brought up (and sometimes not even then. Being that Natasha is a trained spy with "red in her ledger," my guess is that she's killed someone slowly before, and that she might fear being killed that way. It may not have even had to do with her being a woman. I think his remark about killing her "in every way you fear," would have worked on Cap, or any of the others just as well.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Genocide on ''Earth''?]]
* Did Loki attempt genocide on ''humanity''? The invasion to NYC was a definitely a hostile takeover, but from what I remember, he just wanted to rule the Earth.
** If he clearly said "to rule them", as he said many times, then he wasn't intending a complete extermination.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Stark Tower]]
* This has been bothering me for weeks. They mention somewhere in the movie that Loki either knows or will soon know about Stark Tower and how it is being powered by a prototype arc reactor. Someone even mentions that that is Loki's most likely target. So why not go there to head him off? Why go through the rigmarole of half the entire movie to get to the spot that was already mentioned beforehand?
** Getting there wasn't the problem. Getting the Tesseract to work was the problem. They couldn't put the Tesseract up on Stark Tower until they had a working portal generator.
** Uh, no? They ''didn't'' know that Stark Tower was Loki's target until Tony had the lightbulb moment where he realized Loki would use the tower. As for why Loki didn't go there first, he needed to take out the Avengers and SHIELD lest they interfere, and the Tesseract-powered portal device did not need him there to personally oversee its construction.
** Why didn’t Tony have that "lightbulb moment" earlier on the bridge, when they were discussing Loki’s portal? The arc-reactor powered Stark Tower had ''just begun operation'' the day before as “a beacon of self-sustaining clean energy”, probably the most high-profile energy source on the planet at the time. Being the genius that he is, Tony would’ve figured: "The only major component he still needs is a power source...of high energy density......son-of-a-bitch, STARK TOWER!" And the movie ends there.
*** Because, as they point out, Loki could use any reactor on the planet if he wanted to. It's only after he discerns that Loki wants to ''show them'' his victory, from deliberately letting himself be caught so he could strike fear into them, that he's able to guess he wants Stark Tower.
*** I mean, literally, the very next line is a discussion on how they could use ''any'' reactor. What makes Stark's reactor particularly unique compared with any other reactor on the planet? The only difference between the Stark Tower reactor and any other equally useful reactor is the giant "STARK" written on the side.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Regarding Jane]]
* I know it's because in RealLife, NataliePortman was pregnant and couldn't make the filming of ''Film/TheAvengers.'' But is there any in-universe reason Thor doesn't go to see Jane so she know he's safe (and to know that ''she'' was safe!). Do they meet off-screen or something? They had a small sweet romantic thing going on in ''{{Film/Thor}}'', but it feels like Jane was very much ignored in this film.
** Yes, there is a reason. He didn't have time. He was sent to Earth to find Loki and bring him back to Asgard, and the events of the film meant he couldn't get away. On the Helicarrier, he's seen looking at a picture of her as Coulson explains that she's safe. It would have made Thor look bad if he ignored his brother's actions and threats to go off and see her.
*** Forget Jane, at least we know she's safe. What about poor Darcy? Being a (admittedly minor) friend of Thor's could put her in danger too. So what's S.H.I.E.L.D. doing to keep her safe?
*** Darcy is Jane's assistant and coworker. Presumably if they sent Jane on "assignment" somewhere Darcy would come with her.
** Another reason is Thor isn't exactly inconspicuous. They have to assume that he's being watched, and if Thor goes to see her, he pretty much invalidates any and all security SHIELD could give her. And afterwards Loki might still have agents around, so there's that.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Priorities Loki, Priorities.]]
* Okay, so after getting thrashed by Thor and rolling off of Stark Tower during the final battle, Loki spends the remainder of the fight...joyriding around the battlefield like a teenage frat boy, shooting up random junk because...it's fun I guess. He just leaves his precious scepter, his principle weapon, just laying there for the rest of the fight. Even after it's apparent that Thor, nor any of the other Avengers are anywhere near the tower, he doesn't even make a token effort to go back and get it. Seriously, what the heck?
** At that point, it was of no use to him; he just wanted to destroy things, and I don't think he was aware that it could be used to close the portal.
** The scepter shoots energy beams and mind-controls people. That's...it. The former is handled in even greater capacity by his flying sled thing, and the latter has little utility in a battlefield where the only ones worth mind-controlling are actively trying to punch his face in. He leaves the scepter because it's really not worth recovering.
*** Except that, issues of usefulness aside, the scepter is essentially Loki's symbol of authority. He's presented as being so desperate to be a king and rule over others that he jumps on Thanos' offer to leave him Earth while Thanos gets everything else. Someone like that is not going to be willing to part with the vestment of his power just because it isn't useful at the moment, to say nothing of leaving a powerful weapon lying around where any of his enemies might pick it up.
*** Except that, nope, Loki does leave the scepter lying around. In fact, a significant part of his plan ''hinged'' on leaving the scepter for the enemy to pick up and study and possibly use. The scepter is just a tool, and if he doesn't need it he'll leave it behind. He doesn't need it to look authoritative, and there's never an indication that it is viewed as a symbol, either by Loki or the Chitauri.
** It's kinda hard to drive a sled with just one hand, while the other carries a spear just for looking authoritative. At that distance, who would see it?
*** Also bear in mind the escape scene. Loki is free, sans scepter, Coulson shows up, then he surprise stabs Coulson. Its entirely possible Loki can *summon* the scepter to him, whenever he really wants. He chose not to retrieve the scepter, because he was too busy strafing the city and trying to distract the Avengers, and if he really needed it, he could summon it. At that point in the movie, the only time he would really need the scepter is after his air-bike was destroyed, at which point he had a few seconds of villainous breakdown followed by Hulk puny god-ing him.
*** Seems possible. After all, Thor can summon Mjolnir.
**** That's a quality of Mjolnir, not one of Thor's powers. Of course, there's nothing saying that Loki's spear couldn't be given the same quality, or that Loki couldn't use magic.
* Well, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m3NpkeTOmk this deleted scene has been revealed]], and from the sound of it, what happened was that Loki forgot about the scepter as he led his army through New York. Once the Other's comment caused him to remember it, he started flying back to Stark Tower to get it, and encountered Black Widow on the way.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:What happened to the scepter?]]
* When Thor and Loki return to Asgard, neither of them has Loki's scepter on them (Thor is holding Mjolnir and one end of the Tesseract device, Loki is just holding the other end of the Tesseract device). So where is it? Since Black Widow had it last, did she turn it over to Fury so that SHIELD would have another piece of Asgard tech to try to reverse engineer since they no longer have the Tesseract?
** Probably. Why let a criminal have such a dangerous weapon? (Minor nitpick: The scepter is Chitauri tech, not Asgardian.)
** Yep. The scepter, like pretty much any piece of Chitauri tech, was appropriated by SHIELD. Thor kept the Tesseract because it was dangerous, but since the Chitauri attacked Earth, humanity was justified in keeping all of their tech to glean their secrets.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: When does Hawkeye become an Avenger in Tony's eyes?]]
* So Tony and Loki are up in the Tony's penthouse engaging in a bit of snark to snark combat. Tony rattles off the people Loki is up against as "Your brother the demi-god, a super soldier... a living legend that kind a lives up to the legend, a man with breathtaking anger management issues, a couple of master assassins...." Errr a couple of master assassins? It seems that Tony that is referring to Black Widow and Hawkeye here but at this point as far as Tony knows Barton is just a brainwashed SHIELD agent. He doesn't know that Black Widow has undone his brainwashing and doesn't know that Barton has agreed to join Captain America and Black Widow on the mission to take out Loki. There's no reason for Tony to see Barton as one of the "Avengers" at this point. It seems odd that given what Tony knows about Barton at that time he would include him in such a list, especially since he doesn't refer to Nick Fury or Maria Hill in the list.
** He could have heard that he got unbrainwashed any time after the Helicarrier battle. Plus he was given a folder outlining the other other Avengers, likely Barton (and Black Widow) was included as a candidate. Also, he knew Barton was coming to fight with them because Barton was flying the Quinjet following him. He does briefly speak with him after re-suiting up, suggesting he already had prior connected with him via radio. As for Nick Fury and Maria Hill, he knows they're not coming because they're not on the Quinjet, they were trying to leave without them knowing, and likely they two were not included on the candidate folder.
** Also, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment when Coulson gives Tony the info on the Avengers, you see Hawkeye and Black Widow in what we can only assume was [[NoodleIncident that one time in Budapest.]] Tony might not have known ''where'' Hawkeye was initially or why he was gone, but he knew he was part of the initiative. This is also pretty much the only time that each person's name is shown on-screen.
** Maybe at some point between the GearUpMontage before the final battle.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why does Loki leave Fury alone?]]
* Why didn't Loki either brainwash or vaporize Fury in the movie's opening scene? Fury was obviously the most authoritative figure in the room. Neutralizing him as a threat would have taken Laufeyson all of 5 seconds and probably prevented most of his problems.
** He dodged the first shots after Loki arrived. Then he felt like monologuing for a while. Finally Hawkeye shot him for Loki and he figured that was it until he saw again in the helicopter.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Hulk's Cage vs Mjolnir]]
* So Thor takes a whack against the super-thick glass and manages to crack it. A couple of machine arms do... something. They looked like they were releasing the cage, or getting ready to. There is a very large crack in supposedly unbreakable glass and Thor just ... sits around and waits until he is tumbling over himself to bust out of the cage? Why didn't he try again earlier?
** The cage could be designed to fall if the prisoner hits the glass too hard. Thor probably noticed the machine action and figured that if he kept swinging he might cause the cage to fall. He probably decided it was safer to not try again.
*** That just adds to the confusion. If Thor assumed the cage would drop and didn't want to risk it, that's fine. But since LOKI is standing right there, ready to press the button, Thor must have known he was going to fall anyway. It would be much simpler to just bust out right then and there.
** It took the entire force of Thor ramming himself and the hammer into the already cracked glass to break it. Another standing strike by Thor would have just made the crack bigger, but not enough to break out, and yes, drop the cage. Also, remember that Thor is in disbelief that his brother would actually try to kill him like this. He was probably denying the inevitability of Loki actually dropping him in those moments, though not believing it.
*** Not to mention that at no point does Thor stop wanting to avoid fighting Loki and talk him into calling off the invasion and coming home with him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Loki's Scepter VS. Tony Stark]]
* The implication is that Loki's scepter doesn't work on Tony because of Tony's arc reactor. We even hear a clunk. However, the arc reactor doesn't ''replace'' Tony's heart, it ''powers the magnet'' that keeps the piece of shrapnel away from Tony's heart. Hence Tony still ''has'' a heart and should still be brainwashable. Unless you're going to tell me that having Vibranium going through your bloodstream makes you immune from brainwashing. Or maybe the arc reactor puts enough space and/or insulation between the scepter and Tony's heart that it's "out of range".
** It's because it's blocked from reaching it. Too much metal to go through.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Thor, go to Stark Tower!]]
* How did Thor know to go to New York? He had no way of communicating with SHIELD or the other Avengers. He just flies up and BAM! goes to New York?
** By then the huge light beam-portal had opened. He just had to see it in the sky, follow it, and he'd be there. He can fly faster than Iron Man, as his first scene shows. There he caught Loki, landed with plenty of time to dialogue, and it took Tony five minutes to catch up with him.
*** This is probably it. Hulk fell off before Thor did, and he reached Manhattan in time for the battle. (I think a deleted scene said he was in Jersey) So I imagine Thor could've seen the bright lights.
** Thor arrived at the same conclusion Tony did, because Thor knows Loki far more thoroughly than Tony. If Stark, someone who just met Loki a couple of days ago, can figure out his plan, then Thor, who has known Loki for thousands of years, can easily figure out where he would go.
*** That makes absolutely no sense. Nowhere is it mentioned that Thor even knows what Stark Tower is, where it's located, or even where New York is. Banner had the benefit of a security guard to at least point the way. Mjolnir may be magical but it is not all-knowing, Thor could not possibly have known what Stark Tower is and that that was Loki's goal.
*** If Thor could have figured it out by deduction, then he would have figured it out as soon as he arrived on Earth. It makes more sense that he just saw the portal's opening in the distance.
** It's possible that Thor called Heimdall before he took off. In THOR he calls to Heimdall from New Mexico and expects a response. Granted, he was near the Bifrost's marker, so Heimdall would have had to be watching Thor and Loki the whole time.
*** Heimdall sees all. Thor can call to Heimdall from anywhere he wants to and be heard. The problem here, however, is Thor receiving any kind of response from Heimdall. Calling to Heimdall in the film just gives him an order to open the Bifrost, which he does. There being no Bifrost and with no evidence that Heimdall has any way of communicating back to Thor, the ability to be heard at any time from any place by Heimdall is completely irrelevant.
*** Thor managed to find Loki when Loki was in the air being transported by people that Thor couldn't have been communicating with. Thor probably just has something--either intuitive sense or some tracking device given by Odin--that just lets him find Loki.
*** He probably got the location from Heimdall.
**** I have an extension on the theory above. Remember that scene where Loki and Thor are talking to eachother after Thor snatched Loki from the plane? At one point in that scene you see two ravens flying by. Those are probably Odin's ravens. They could've served as communication of some sorts between Thor and Heimdall.
**** That's an interesting theory. I'm not sure it's correct, but the fact that they're in the film during that scene is likely not a coincidence. In ''Thor'' they're sitting near Odin during the coronation and are seen again in Odin's room while he sleeps. Comic-verse wise, Hugin and Munin travel throughout the nine realms and report their findings back to Odin. You could think of them as highly intelligent messenger birds.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Iron Man's Knowledge of Asgardians]]
* So early in the movie, Coulson gives Tony SHIELD's files on Cap, Hulk, the Asgardians, and the Tesseract. Tony spends a day or so doing homework, then shows up in Germany to help capture Loki. On the Quinjet, he seems to know it's Thor landing on the jet, and his first response is to open the doors and try and blast him out. However, Fury tells the Council that SHIELD's intelligence says Thor's not a hostile. What's going through Tony's head that makes him want to attack even before Thor takes Loki? Also, does he believe he can win if Thor and Loki are serious about escaping?
** Tony doesn't know who's on the plane. He just knows somebody showed up without warning and displayed aggressive behavior. He responded accordingly. It isn't until after he confronts Thor in the woods that he really has any idea of who Thor actually is.
** There's a line of dialogue in the scene specifically to answer this question -- "Whether he kills him or lets him go, either way, we lose the Tesseract." Whether or not Thor's there as Loki's ally ''or'' his enemy ''doesn't matter'' -- if Thor helps Loki escape, executes him, or drags him back to Asgard in chains, in ''all'' of these options SHIELD loses the chance to interrogate Loki as to where the Tesseract is (or who he might have given it to) and what he's doing with it. Which was the entire point of them capturing Loki in the first place.
*** Additionally, the simple act of showing up unannounced on a military transport in-flight carrying a dangerous prisoner is, in and of itself, sufficient reason to open communication ''with weapons drawn''. Even if Thor did nothing else after that but come inside and ask if anyone wanted tea and crumpets, the way he arrived merits a "be prepared for a fight" response until further information is acquired.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"How will your friends have time for me, when they're too busy fighting you?"]]
* Why would Loki think Tony could do anything against the Avengers if he was mind-controlled? Tony himself says the armor was trashed, and Loki didn't know about the Mark VII. For all Tony's a supergenius, he couldn't do much fighting at all without the armor.
** For all Loki knows, Tony has an entire armory with hundreds of suits of armor just waiting to be taken out of mothballs (which isn't actually wrong). The Iron Man is a weapon and Tony Stark is a man who builds weapons; even if, like Loki, you don't fully understand how the thing works, it's not hard to assume that he's got a few copies lying around.
** Loki has to know on some level that his enemy wouldn't just waltz up to him after ditching his weapons if he didn't have another in reserve. He knows enough about Stark to locate his home base in New York, and he's had a briefing from Hawkeye. SHIELD knows that Tony has a bunch of armors, so would Hawkeye. It would have been idiotic of Loki to assume that the man famous for building armors would only have one.
* Along this same line of thought, why didn't Loki try to brainwash another Avenger, such as Hulk or Thor? With either of them on the side of the Chitauri, there's no way the Avengers could have won. I can see Thor resisting magical brainwashing due to being an Asgardian, but Hulk is still human, right? Even a weaker member, such as a mind-controlled Captain America would help Loki out, sparing extra Chitauri units and demoralizing the remaining Avengers.
** With Hulk, he never actually encountered him in person until he was, well, smashed. Though it was hinted he was influencing Banner on the Helicarrier from a distance. With Cap, his encounter with him was when Loki was intending to get beaten and then caught. After that, he either didn't have his staff on hand or was imprisoned during other meetings.
** Equally, Loki doesn't know why he couldn't brainwash Tony. All he does know is that it 'usually works': he doesn't seem to understand how. For all he knows, the Avengers have found some way to scepter-proof themselves. If they are immune to his brainwashing, then trying it could be a distraction that would allow the intended victim to get in a fatal blow.
*** In the comics and for the most part we can assume Hulk has the same powers that he had in the comics, Hulk is immune to any form of brain washing so I think that covers the scepter. When the Battle of New York happened it was Loki's final part of the plan so he probably didn't think he need anyone else beside Hawkeye.
*** The Hulk is not immune in this film, hence how Loki can influence Banner enough that he unknowingly picks up his scepter.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why Didn't Iron Man Destroy the Leviathan Chasing Him?]]
* The first Leviathan that came through the portal chased Iron Man around the city until he regrouped with the Avengers. They began growing increasingly nervous as it flew toward them, prompting Hulk to do the famous, "I'm always angry" megaton punch to take it down. Now, here's where it gets funky. As it falls toward them, Tony fires a single missile and blows it up. That's it. It's gone. One missile blew it up. So why didn't he fire that missile beforehand? Hulk's punch couldn't have softened it up that much since Tony went on to fly into the mouth of another Leviathan and blow it up from the inside with a few explosives. At another point, Thor killed two at the same time by channeling electricity from the Chrysler Building. The last one we see dying at the end of TheOner, died when Hulk shoved a piece of metal into its scalp and Thor fried it. The things seemed easy enough to destroy (for superheroes) so why didn't Iron Man kill the first one sooner?
** It's possible that Tony had a limited amount of missiles of that strength, and didn't want to use it up so early in the fight.
** If you look closely the first Leviathan gets shot in a spot where its armor had just fallen off. Currently it was too armored for the missile to penetrate. Hulk's punch ''did'' soften it up.
** Tony firing the missile at the first one wasn't to destroy it. It was to make it not flip over and crush everyone else. Thor didn't "channel electricity from the Chrysler Building," he just perched there while he called up ''the power of a goddamn thunder '''god'''''. Tony blew up the second one because its insides aren't armored. The last one was killed by the efforts of the Hulk ''penetrating its armor'' before Thor--once again, a ''PhysicalGod''--slammed it deeper. It took the full effort of them working in concert--that's not "easy" at all.
*** Also, expanding on the one Tony killed himself, his Jonah play was a desperation effort that fired off a ''very'' large quantity of the weapons he had at his disposal, and the effects of being inside the Leviathan as it exploded ''trashed'' his armor. That Leviathan kill took Tony out of the fight.
**** No, it didn't. Tony was still fighting after that. He didn't get thrashed until he took the nuke into the portal.
**** Barely. We see him on the ground, his armor wrecked, struggling to fight off Chitauri footsoldiers. He did fly up after that to catch the nuke but it was clear he was rapidly growing weaker.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Thor's Punching Power]]
* When Thor's fighting Iron Man in the woods, he slugs him in the face. The blow turns Tony's head to the side, but doesn't scratch the armor. Later, Thor punches the Hulk in the face and spins him around almost 360 degrees. Still later, Thor brawls with Loki and pummels him repeatedly but doesn't really move him, though he does cause some visible damage by the next scene. Why does he affect Hulk more than Iron Man? Why does he affect Loki less than either of the others, at least with individual blows?
** Did Thor have his hammer when he punched Iron Man? Because he definitely had his hammer when he gave Hulk the 360.
*** No, Thor didn't have his hammer in either of the instances I'm referring to. He punches Iron Man after they land from flying to a mountain and back, and he punches Hulk before he summons Mjolnir, shortly after tackling him through the wall.
**** People don't always hit with the same strength? It depends on the situation and what you want to do.
*** It might have to do with momentum. He was probably charging at Hulk when he punched him in order to save Black Widow, while he was merely standing for the punch to Tony. As for Loki, Thor was initially holding back because he didn't want to hurt his brother, until Loki stabbed him.
**** It also has to do with the person receiving the punch. As I recall, the Hulk was focused on Black Widow; Thor caught him by surprise, and so he didn't have a chance to brace himself for the hit. Iron Man and Loki were both facing Thor and ready for a brawl.
***** OP here. Possible FridgeLogic may follow, with much verbosity. As was mentioned, Thor was holding back against Loki at first by virtue of not wanting to hurt him. This could possibly also extend to Iron Man and the Hulk. Thor punching Iron Man does almost nothing, but mere seconds later he dents the helmet and sends him flying away with a headbutt, which AFAIK, tends to not hit as hard as a punch. Thor also tries to reason with Banner at first, encouraging him to calm down. Even after he summons Mjolnir, he doesn't seem to be trying to subdue the Hulk so much as distract him. It's possible that Thor is holding back against pretty much everyone in the movie, except the Chitauri. Even then, if Thor went around slamming his hammer down like in Jotunheim, (and also when he helped Hulk kill that one Leviathan) he'd cause all sorts of collateral damage to the city. The idea of Thor holding back also fits in with his character development in his solo movie, and Odin's talk of "a warrior's patience."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The portal]]
When the portal is opened, the far end seems to be in space, where there's no air. This end of the portal was on a planet with pressurized air. This would cause [[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Sqrt%5B2*1+atm%2F%28density+of+air+at+room+temperature+and+sea+level%29%5D 917 mph]] winds. Perhaps the aliens are capable of moving against that, but iron man fell through it with nothing beyond the force of gravity. Also, the only reason he went in in the first place was to steer the nuke through it. He could have just brought it to somewhere in the general vicinity and the wind would have sucked it through. I think it would have sucked a few buildings through it too, although it's harder to work out as the strength of the wind would decrease with the square of the distance from the portal.

Everyone only seems to use one side of the portal. This seems odd, as the aliens could get their armies through twice as fast if they used both sides.

The nuke was set off before the portal was closed, and it wasn't all that far away. It should have burned down the buildings under the portal, assuming they were still standing after the hurricane-force winds it generates.
* A) It's a magic '''SCIENCE!''' portal. There's no reason it can't have some contrived techno-babble reason why it doesn't suck air through it.\\
B) What in the world are you talking about, "one side of the portal"? It's a door. You go through and end up on the other side. Trying to use both "sides" of a door at the same time makes no sense.\\
C) Depending on how big the Chitauri mothership was, the nuke might have actually been quite a large distance away from the portal. With no air in space there's nothing to carry the shockwave back to Earth, and again, there could be any number of techno-babbly reasons why the heat and radiation didn't travel back through the portal.
* A) There's no evidence that they're in a vacuum. The Chitauri can breathe in that environment, after all.\\
B) There's no evidence that the portal works that way. All indications are that it is one-way from one side.\\
C) The nuke's blast is clearly not passing through the portal by the time it closes and therefore would not have affected the city.
** If the portal was one-way, Iron Man and the nuke wouldn't have gone through. Asgardian magic science seems the best answer.
* The portal is artificially created by a sophisticated machine with force field capabilities. It was probably engineered to avoid issues with the pressure differential, so the Chitauri invasion could go as smoothly as possible.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Make a move, Reindeer Games."]]
* In Stuttgart, Tony aims every single weapon the Mark VI has at Loki. This includes not just the repulsors, but the smart bullets, the "Tank Missile" the explosives used on the Hammeroids, and presumably the cutting lasers. For some reason, Tony forgets that he has these 10 minutes later while fighting Thor, only using repulsors and physical blows. Why?
** Because they're ''brawling''. It's the superhero equivalent of an angry fistfight. Tony generally only resorts to his heavier weaponry when he absolutely ''needs'' to, and his repulsors and fists were doing a perfectly adequate job at pummeling Thor. Note how during the battle against the Chitauri, he reserves most of his non-repulsor weaponry for critical moments because he wants to conserve his ammunition. He's not going to fire off his heavy weapons during an angry brawl with Thor unless he absolutely has to.
*** Not to mention that he doesn't seem to want to actually ''kill'' Thor. The lasers, the missiles, the bullets, they're all pretty much guaranteed to be lethal. He knows Thor can take a repulsor blast because Loki did.
**** I'm not so sure Thor would definitely be killed by Tony's best weapons, but with his main ones being ineffective and Thor getting progressively more pissed off, he could have tried something different, since he had to stop Thor or lose the Tesseract.
**** When Tony showed off all his weapons it was not with the intent to use them all, but to show them all off as a show of force. Think of a cat arching it's back and its fur rising to make itself look bigger. That was basically what Tony was doing. Would he have used all those weapons? Maybe. But from a character stand point, Tony is not an aggressor, he is a defender, so if it had come down to it, he probably would have done the same thing to Loki as he did to Thor. That is he escalated force ''as necessary''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"The humans slaughter each other in droves...."]]
* Loki declares that we're slaughtering each other in droves, but Tony claims in ''Iron Man 2'' to have "successfully privatized world peace." Is Loki just trying to get in Thor's head? And if he is, wouldn't Heimdall and thus Thor by proxy know that he's lying?
** Loki's way older than modern humanity and likely is pooling all our history into one big lump. To him it may look like just a long timeline of war, with Tony's efforts being one brief recent peace that will soon be replaced by more war again.
** Tony "privatizing world peace" is a case of Tony relieving tensions between major superpowers. Brush wars and localized violence are still going to happen. The fact that SHIELD still exists and is still working on mundane, human threats like Russian arms trafficking indicates that there's still plenty of violence in the world.
** You are taking the line ''way'' too literally. He's referring to the effect the private market and private citizens are having on working toward world peace. Its worth remembering also that due to the success of the Avengers it is now a franchise which means that 1) there is currently a confirmed sequel 2) we can assume that it will also mean new Marvel superheroes given how sequels are nearly always designed to be bigger ''and'' it will give the studio an excuse to sell more merchandise. In other words a universe that contains Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, Nick Fury, Thor and potentially the X-Men, Spider Man, the Fantastic Four and the Punisher I think any hope of World Peace is pretty ridiculous.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Is Loki Really More Powerful?]]
* This is sort of a meta-question, but why do some feel that Loki is more powerful in this movie? His Chitauri sceptre didn't seem any more powerful than Gungnir in terms of blasting ability, his throwing knives have apparently lost some of their oomph, and he gets beaten down by anyone Iron Man level or above. Sure he has an army now, but in THOR he was the King of Asgard with access to a planet-busting superweapon and the Odinspear. It seems like the only thing he can do now that he couldn't do better in THOR is control minds. Yet even Tom Hiddleston claims that Loki is a lot more powerful and dangerous in this movie. http://collider.com/the-avengers-tom-hiddleston-interview/155958/
** "Power" is a nebulous concept. Loki's power in the first movie came from thin lies and opportunity. His power in this film came from control over an entire army gifted by Thanos himself. "Power" in this case comes from the capacity to be a threat beyond what only Thor could handle.
** I agree with the previous post about power being a more nebulous concept, but also, if you simply mean physical (and magical) power, it is entirely possible he has gotten stronger. Take into account his absence after falling through the worm hole. Further consider what we do not know about what happened to him with ''the boss'' and what changes to both psyche and physicality he might have endured. Plus there is a line he spouts to his brother Thor about how he has seen things his brother could only dream about. Perhaps he has not just ''seen'' things. As for "anyone Tony-strength" being able to take him down... keep in mind Loki is playing a role here. As has often been indicated in various sources, it is entirely possible Loki has been taking a dive this entire time. So one could say he let Tony beat him down. As for the Hulk, well Loki was not exactly prepared for the pure brutality of Hulk, nor the absolute strength he wielded. Aside from Hulk, Loki took all the blows of The Avengers in stride if you pay attention. And now... he won't underestimate the Hulk, so beware.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Loki's invulnerability]]
* Loki seems nigh immortal in this movie, having things happen to him that would have killed a human a hundred times over. Is that natural to him? It seems like Frost Giants weren't all that hard to kill in Thor.
** Loki was raised as an Aesir, and is wearing his Asgardian clothes. When Thor was depowered, his Asgardian clothes was taken from him, so maybe it's a case of ClothesMakeTheSuperman. The raised-as-an-Aesir part may play into having altered his physiology; maybe Asgardians have a really good diet/training/augmentations that cause them to grow more durable.
** Actually, the Frost Giants are extremely tough. Consider this. Loki is basically a runt Frost Giant. He's obviously not as strong as Thor, so he's probably about as strong and durable as your average Asgardian. In THOR, it was difficult to tell exactly how physically powerful Asgardians and Frost Giants were since they mostly were in other worlds. In the Avengers, we see how Loki stacks up against more measurable adversaries. He no-sells bullets and Captain America's blows. He gets thrown around by Iron Man's repulsors and by explosions, but is otherwise unhurt. Only Thor and the Hulk are capable of causing him visible damage. Presumably, if you took one of the Frost Giants from Thor and subjected them to the attacks Loki tanked, they would handle them just as well, if not better. This retroactively makes Thor slaughtering dozens of Frost Giants much more impressive.
** But we see Frost Giants be immediately disintegrated from one shot from the Destroyer. Later Loki gets shot with a reverse-engineered Destroyer beam and he's fine, albeit humiliated.
*** What makes you think the reverse-engineered weapon is going to be anywhere near the same strength as the Destroyer itself?
*** Especially when observed effects from the weapons in question wildly differ. One emits a short, bright burst that knocks Loki through a wall. The other is a massive beam of energy that blows apart buildings and vaporizes Frost Giants. There's a tremendous difference between the two.
** Also, it's fully possible Loki's half-Aesir. It goes back and forth in the comics, but he is occasionally referred to as a "half-giant," and in Kenneth Branagh's commentary for Thor, he describes the casket scene as Loki discovering that he's "at least half-Jotun," which opens the possibility for the MCU.
** It's occasionally mentioned in the comics that, after Thor and Odin, Loki's actually the third strongest and most durable asgardian. He's stronger than an ordinary frost giant or aesir because he uses magic to enhance his strength and durability. In DungeonsAndDragons terms, he's permanently cast bull's strength, bear's endurance, and stoneskin on himself.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Cap's tactical expertise]]
* Cap is meant to be the tactical mind of the operation, except, is he? He might tell everyone what to do, but does that truly make a difference? The Avengers are doing fairly well before any plan is made, and even after the plan, some forget about it (Thor doesn't bottleneck the portal for long) without it making a difference. Not to mention that his plan seemed to have been fight the aliens, with the frankly obvious need to close the portal completely eluding him. It felt like it didn't matter what the plan was, because with such powerful individuals following it, almost any plan would have worked.
** Not quite. Everyone was ''holding their own'' before Cap made his plan. But what he was ordering was for everyone to work together to ''contain'' the Chitauri and keep them from getting any farther in the city. Anybody who could fight at long range like Hawkeye or Tony were kept in the air so they could keep the area surrounded. It would have been wasting their potential to let them keep fighting on the ground. That's what they were all doing before Cap's plan, and they were winning at it ''currently'', but it would have either got them overwhelmed faster by a huge ZergRush or some of the smarter aliens would have used the ground troops to distract the Avengers while they fly off to wreak chaos wherever they want. With Cap's plan, none of the aliens got very far. Listen closely to him [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM8ZIX1ctyk HERE]], you'll notice almost all their orders are about keeping the Chitauri in one place.\\
\\
Also, Cap didn't forget about closing the portal. He had heard from Tony that it was surrounded by an unbreachable shield. Note that the first lines of his plan are "Until we can close that portal..."
** Thor is the only person who actually breaks off from his part of the plan at first, and the breakdown of the overall tactical plan comes naturally as the Chitauri overwhelm the Avengers with sheer numbers. Remember that the first casualty of any battle is the plan.
*** Precisely. The idea was to buy time and minimize damage to the city until they could figure out how to close the portal, which is exactly what Black Widow does. Since Selvig only wakes up a couple of minutes before she reaches the tower, Cap's plan worked about as well as it could have.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Should I try Miss Potts, sir?"]]
* Just a small nit-pick; when Tony called Pepper at the end, she was on a plane. Why is her phone even ''on''? I know it's a private jet, but still, it shouldn't be allowed even then.
** Actually since the end of last year most commercial aircraft now allow cellphones on aircraft as the fears of them effecting equipment are now largely considered overrated. They are still banned on take off and landing though.
** Dude, that's Tony Stark's personal plane. It probably has its own communications satellite.
[[/folder]]


[[folder:How does Mjolnir not weigh down the Helicarrier?]]
* Mjolnir can't be lifted or moved by anything besides a worthy person's grip. In the Thor movie, a pickup truck tethered to the handle by a chain succeeds only in tearing the truck apart. Mjolnir doesn't seem to damage anything it's simply set on, but it's uncompromisingly heavy. On any of the occasions it was set down in the SHIELD Helicarrier (most obviously that brief moment where it pinned the Hulk's hand to the floor), why didn't it present its unmovable problems to the whole craft?
** For the same reason it doesn't rip a hole to the center of the planet when it is set down due to the planet's insane speed while orbiting the sun. Whatever magic is involved with the hammer, said magic is smart enough to make it only impossible to be lifted by someone actually trying to pick it up. When it is set down on a surface, it stays rooted to that surface. If it was completely immobile, the moment Thor set it down it would cut a hammer-shaped hole in the surface of whatever planet it was on.
*** OP here: I didn't think it'd cut a hole in the helicarrier, either. I thought it'd just be incapable of doing anything besides dropping, with Earth as its reference point. The helicarrier itself, being a vehicle (and not a valid reference point for Mjolnir's immobility) wouldn't be able to move it.
*** Why? Observed behavior indicates that it doesn't work that way. Mjolnir can be set down on a surface and it will not hinder that surface's movement. (that and an object that small capable of stopping the Helicarrier from moving ''would'' slice through the ship regardless; basic physics re: concentration of force) If Mjolnir can be set on the planet's surface without damaging the planet thanks to the massive amount of kinetic energy involved in its orbit, then it can be set on the surface of a moving vehicle without hindering that vehicle. If someone tries to lift it using that vehicle, then they're not likely to succeed. If the hammer is set on that vehicle by Thor, it could move it (as there's a tacit implication that it is Thor's will that the hammer be transported by the act of putting it down). Whatever magitech that is involved in Mjolnir, its smart enough to recognize when it is being transported and when it is being lifted.
*** That's probably the most plausible explanation I've seen for it so far. I'm basing my observations right now solely off the MCU and how Mjolnir has been portrayed in it. I can't think of any times besides the helicarrier where Thor set his hammer down on something that continued to be able to move after he did so. Accordingly, I didn't really know how to conceptualize it in the helicarrier's case. Are there any other times it's transported like that, and I just don't remember them?
** Mjolnir isn't particularly heavy. The enchantment isn't "It's really heavy, except for to those worthy." It's that the hammer cannot be moved and wielded by someone who isn't worthy. I.e., it can't be moved by ''conscious effort''.
*** OP still here: I didn't think Mjolnir to be particularly heavy, but what threw me off was that it's been demonstrated that machines can't move the hammer either. Does it just know whether someone is trying to move it, and it locks up when they are? And when it's just being moved around without anyone trying to keep track of it, it's fine? Hopefully none of the SHIELD crew running the ship learned that Mjolnir was on board.
*** All indications from observed behavior is that when the hammer is set on a surface, it cannot be moved from that surface without Thor's own hand. If it is set on a planet, it remains rooted to that spot despite the planet's orbit. Since the Helicarrier is moving, the hammer stays rooted to that spot on the Helicarrier.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How did Cap get away with breaking into the helicarrier armory?]]
* Obviously, he waited until no one was around, but there must be some kind of video surveillance or something. We see security cameras in the hallways when Loki is being escorted to his cell. There must be at least one looking at the armory door. It's an important place to look.
** Maybe Tony's virus caused the cameras to shut down. I'll have to rewatch the scene to see if the editing allows for said break-in to occur with the virus being activated.
*** Tony's virus was already in effect by the time Cap went off on his investigation, but the virus was supposed to just break into SHIELD's encrypted files, not disable systems around the ship. That seems like something people would notice, and Tony didn't expect Cap to go do that anyway.
** "Sir, I've got Captain America going into the armory." "And?" "He's breaking into the armory." "And?" Uh..." "It's ''Captain America'', Lenny. If he's breaking into the armory, he's got to have a good reason to do so."
*** One would think they'd at least tell Fury (or Hill, or whoever's running things at the moment) what's going on. Also I want to meet Lenny now.
*** Lenny is probably aware that Loki has ''mind control'' powers, and ''anyone'' acting suspicious is potentially working for him.
*** But Loki's been locked up all this time. People were just talking to Captain America not too long ago, and he didn't display any signs of mind control like blue eyes or such.
*** It doesn't really matter, they can't just sit there and do nothing while someone breaks into the armory. Even if it's Captain America and they're not going to stop him, they should at least let someone know. Which I'm pretty sure would quickly get back to Fury, who would really rather Cap not find the HYDRA stuff they have stashed there.
** First off, it isn't the ship's armory, it's labeled as "Secure storage 10-C." In other words, a cargo area, one of no doubt many on the ship. It's only carrying weapons because they evacuated the SHIELD ground facility's Phase 2 research materials onto the carrier. So there's no reason for it to have extra security. And someone may have noticed and tried to alert Fury, but he may have already been on his way to confront Tony by then.
*** This is probably the best bet I've seen for it. You're right about the secure storage part, I hadn't actually looked at the scene in a little while. Misspoke with the entry title. I didn't think the storage room would have extra security, the actual armory required a retinal scan for Coulson to enter. I just thought it'd have the same surveillance as the rest of the helicarrier, which would still be enough to see Cap breaking in. It would put Cap's break-in chronologically quite a bit ahead of his discussion with Tony and Bruce, though. Like, at least a few hours ahead. The sun had time to come up, after all.
*** It's Captain freaking America. Who's going to stop him? Even if someone had seen him, (and presumably someone or many someones had to have seen him walking through the halls with that gun), why would they question him carrying the gun or breaking into the storage? They might have made note of it and told higher ups, but in the end Captain America is a living legend and living legends tend to be able to get away with stuff that regular folks wouldn't.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How did Cap survive getting shot with a Chitauri laser blast?]]
* We clearly see in the final battle that Captain America takes a Chitauri laser blast square in the gut, but simply takes it as if he took a gut punch and then stands up all okay and "ready to go another bout." How did he survive a laser blast? Is his uniform laser proof? (I doubt that, though, as it shows a tear with some blood on it after he gets shot). Does his super-serum give him some measure of laser-proofness?
** Why are you assuming the blast is somehow instantly fatal? Nothing shows that it is, any more than a gunshot would be. Possibly his uniform has some kind of armor in it, like kevlar.
*** This is probably a big part of it. The Chitauri infantry weren't using HYDRA disintegration bolts. The energy weapons they were using, in fact, are weaker than any we've seen from anyone else (compared to HYDRA's Tesseract weapons, Iron Man's repulsors and the Destroyer's beam). Cap was hurt when he got hit, but between the relatively weak impact, his uniform's protection (seeing as the WWII one was a carbon weave, this one was probably quite a lot better), and his being a super-soldier, that wasn't going to keep him down for long.
** Cap is explicitly superhuman. The fact that he managed to survive being frozen in the Arctic for sixty years and can knock down punching bags with such ease that has to keep dozens of spares, plus can go toe-to-toe with Loki and hold his own shows that he's not a baseline human. He withstood the shot because he's tougher than any normal human.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: "What are you prepared to do?"]]
* When Nick Fury and Thor are talking about Loki, Nick insinuates that they could probably coerce Loki into talking if they put him through enough pain, and Thor asks him, "What are you asking me to do?" And that's pretty straightforward. He's just saying like, I'm not going to torture my brother for you. Fury's response is a little confusing, though. He answers with, "I'm asking, what are you prepared to do?" Which seems a bit on the cryptic side. I don't really know what he was getting at there.
** The conversation starts with Fury asking if Thor could make Loki talk. Thor responds with doubt, saying he's unsure whether pain would be effective on Loki. Fury counters that a lot of guys think they're tough enough to hold out until the pain actually starts. Thor asks "What are you asking me to do?" "I'm asking, what are you prepared to do?" In other words, how far would you (Thor) be willing to go in order to extract information from Loki. Fury knows if Thor won't play ball, then SHIELD has one less chance to locate the Tesseract.[[/folder]]

[[folder: The portal again]]
* The portal is supposed to be a great big door in space, essentially. The bottom side opens to New York, and the top side opens to... Wherever the Chitauri are coming from. So if you were flying around in New York, and you approached the portal from above, what would happen? What would even be up there? It's never elaborated on in the movie, and it was bothering me the whole time I was watching stuff go through it.
** I figured the top side is just covered by cloud and doesn't lead anywhere if you try to pass through it.
*** It becomes one of those portal physics things. If you can pass through it like that, then if you go halfway through and turn around, part of you will be in New York and part of you will be in Chitauri space. And you'll be cut in half, I guess. That kinda thing.
*** We never see it from the other side, so who is to know, but perhaps the other side is crackling energy of some kind. Think of the Star Gates and how they only are seen from one side. The other side might even be dangerous (or lethal) to try and pass through.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: "There are always men like you."]]
* Not a plot thing, but considering [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything the]] [[ANaziByAnyOtherName overtones]] of that old man's response... what are the odds that he's old enough to have eagerly thrown his lot in with [[AdolfHitler guess who]], validating Loki's claims to an extent?
** FridgeHorror, man. Fridge. Horror.
** All that means is the old man is OlderAndWiser, proving that humans are capable of learning and growing, becoming better and greater as individuals and as a people. Besides, all that comparison really proves at worst is that people will bow down when the alternative is death and they have loved ones who would suffer if they don't bow, IE, a proof that extortion and holding loved ones hostage works, rather than that we intrinsically desire it.
** There is also the entirely likely possibility that he was a ''victim'' of the Nazis the first time around. Remember, the first country they invaded was their own. And wasn't there WordOfGod somewhere that the old man was intended to be a Holocaust survivor?
** Just throwing this out there: Creator/VincentPrice draft-dodged enlisting in WWII by lying about being colour-blind. When the Red Scare flared up in the fifties he risked black-listing by refusing to testify against some of his fellow actors since ''"I was afraid to stand up against injustice abroad, now I must have the courage to stand up against it in my own country!"'' [[TheAtoner People can change.]] Frankly, if anything, it make a more interesting story if the man was a former Nazi.
*** OP again. Remember, the only reason Hitler was made Chancellor was because the Nazis were sweeping elections. And even if {{Black Shirt}}s for Loki's hypothetical regime are few compared to Germans who eagerly supported fascism, there will always be ''plenty'' of [[LesCollaborateurs opportunists and cowards]] who won't be making a stink.[[/folder]]

[[folder: Stark's Analysis of Loki]]
* When Steve and Tony are trying to figure out where Loki is going to try to open the portal, Tony comes in with the realization that Loki made it personal.
-->'''Steve:''' That's not the point.
-->'''Tony:''' That is the point. That's Loki's point. He hit us all right where we live. Why?
-->'''Steve:''' To tear us apart.
-->'''Tony:''' Yeah, divide and conquer's... Great, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants. He wants to beat us, he wants to be ''seen'' doing it... He wants an audience.
Is Tony just free-associating here or something? He lands on a critical aspect of Loki's personality, but he started off with the notion that Loki is making the fight personal, which doesn't have anything to do with wanting everyone's attention. His thought process doesn't make any sense. It feels a little contrived.
** Remember the last villain that Stark had faced at this point was Vanko, who did something very similar. He could have lived a good life selling the technology without Stark ever knowing--but instead, he went after Stark openly, made it personal, and made it public. Tony's seeing the same kind of thing here. Loki could have done things quietly and never got on the Avengers' radar until it was too late--but instead he puts on an act in Germany to get their attention, then makes sure to make it personal. As far as Tony could see, the only reason Loki would do that would be to rile them up for a direct, showy confrontation.
*** It's the connection between making it personal and making it public that confuses me. Do those normally go hand in hand?
** He also combines it with what they know about Loki. Loki loves to grandstand, he makes big proclamations, he loves dramatic statements and declarations. He ''is'' a diva. Everything about him is a huge, showy ego that is demanding he prove himself to everyone: humanity, his brother, Thanos, etc.
*** It is the way Tony's brain works through a problem. He was just thinking out loud basically. He may have skipped a few steps, and ''not shown his work'', but in the end he came to the correct conclusion. Like any super genius engineer would. Also, I got the impression he was not so much coming to a conclusion as he was bouncing ideas off of the other super genius in the room (Banner). Since no one questioned his conclusion, and in fact agreed with him, it seems he was right, so he went with it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Iron Man counterpart to Loki]]

* Film/IronMan is [[Film/{{Thor}} Loki's]] GoodCounterpart. Very clever, but has little idea of how to fight beyond AttackAttackAttack? DeadpanSnarker? Narcissistic? A total diva who's all about presentation and self-aggrandisation? Prone to equally spectacular self-''destructive'' behavior? Bitterly jealous of the blond, nobler teammate who [[WellDoneSonGuy his father liked better]]? A big difference, of course, is Tony's experience in Afghanistan, which drastically changed his worldview. Loki is very close to a version of pre-Afghanistan Tony Stark GoneHorriblyWrong, albeit with far more jealousy and SiblingRivalry.
** Losing the battle at the end of the Thor movie, falling into the portal, and being spat out into space and entering into the service of Thanos is pretty much Loki's Afghanistan.
*** Hoo boy. First off, Tony even in his selfish phase didn't go around trying to kill his father in his sleep, or his "perfect brother" Steve, or millions of innocents. Although he was a manufacturer of weapons, he honestly believed he was contributing to his country's self-defense. He remained best friends with the genuinely straightlaced Rhodey from high school/college, and he cared enough about other human beings to pick up enough redeeming traits to win the heart of the very smart and unique Pepper Potts. Tony was an immature and irresponsible extrovert who still gave a damn about strangers, not a psycho-in-the-making.
*** Point of fact; Loki didn't really try to kill Odin. He set the "assassination" up so he could save Odin and be the hero. He also didn't see the Frost Giants as innocents. The Warriors Three and Sif apparently considered Loki a friend. Loki considered himself more responsible than Thor, not less. He was also content to leave Thor be until Heimdall let the 3 and Sif through, forcing his hand.
*** Loki clearly intended to kill Odin, and possibly Frigga, in that bedroom if Thor hadn't interrupted. Loki was immediately certain that Odin had mercilessly killed his innocent Frost Giant parents the moment he realized he was of their blood, and from then on his adopted family and Asgard--the place he had grown up in--were no longer worthy of his love or protection. The Warriors Three may have considered Loki a friend, but they did not seem to be particularly close to him, and vice versa; in fact, did not seem to have that much trouble turning on him when he became the enemy, and Loki in turn saw no qualms in trying to kill his former "friends" immediately after his [[FaceHeelTurn Face Heel Turn]]. Yes, Loki thought himself more responsible than Thor, and also better than him, and also everyone else. This arrogance facilitated his descent. His hand was never really "forced" throughout the movie; he plotted and planned most of what he reaped. To wit, this troper cannot see Tony Stark doing ''anything'' as heartless as the things Loki does in "Thor"; Tony Stark, remember, has a heart.
**** Eh... I'm not sure I agree there. Loki knows his father is Laufey (the Frost Giant who was straddled over Odin poised to kill him) and I took it as a way for Loki to be able to get Laufey alone so he could kill him himself. Loki clearly loves Frigga, embracing her and protecting her, and at the end of the movie Loki is still seeking out Odin's affection, or at the very least his approval, made clear by the "I could have done it, Father! For you!" It's only when Odin replies with a "No, Loki", a clear sign of disapproval and, to Loki, anything but love and acceptance, is what breaks his heart and turns the mischief god against his adopted father, ultimately, in the end.
***** Agreed: It's clear that Loki's motivations (however twisted his methods) are to prove that he's a true son of Asgard and Odin, just as much as Thor is: by saving Odin's life, killing Laufey, and protecting Asgard from the frost giants once and for all.
***** And the movie makes it appallingly clear that Loki does /not/ think that he is better than Thor; he's extremely jealous of all the love and attention his older brother gets, which gives the impression that being treated worse is not anything new to him, even before he finds out his origins. And Loki genuinely thought he was doing the right thing, from his perspective; kill the race that his realm is constantly under fire from. Thor wanted to go to war with the Jotun, and Loki is following in his footsteps. Sure, the dude is definitely misguided but I think 'heartless' and 'evil' are getting a little out of hand... [[spoiler: in the Thor movie, anyway.]]
****** This reminds me of a post where people were [[TheWoobie woobifying]] ''Hitler'' because of a short gif of him acting nice. All his evil is justified because of this and that. The entire point of this is: Tony is ''not'' Loki pre-''Iron Man'' in ''any way, shape, or form''. Tony is flawed, yes, but not to the point to that he, for example, thought genocide was a good solution to anything. One was a formerly selfish rich brat, and the other a murderer-in-the-making.
******* Not justifying his actions; just saying that it's almost like Tony is what Loki could be if he hadn't become a {{Smug Super}}, {{Obliviously Evil}} {{Manipulative Bastard}}.
******** No, not even ''remotely'' alike. Tony is damaged, but not to the extent Loki is. Two completely different people, even pre-Afghanistan. Would Loki have had a guy like Rhodey as his best friend, or a girl like Pepper who admired him? No, because his personality, already dark at the beginning of ''Thor'', would not have precluded it. He has very little in lieu of a conscience. And Tony Stark has always, ''always''--both in the movies and the comics, even in his darkest hours--had one.
*** Would he have had a guy like Rhodey as his best friend? You mean kinda like how he and Thor were very affectionate and loving toward one another? A girl like Pepper who admired him? You mean kind of like how he was as friendly with Sif as with everyone else? Loki was one of the guys at the start of ''Thor''. He was a trickster, yes, but everyone seemed to like him and enjoy his company.
*** Even at the beginning, in order to frame Loki's StartOfDarkness, he's shown to be standoffish even with the Warriors Three; in an early scene they're sitting together trading jibes, and he's brooding by himself. He doesn't even talk until Thor tries to convince him to join them. The Sif-Pepper and Rhodey-Warriors Three comparisons in regards to their respective narratives and their relationships don't hold water. Rhodey and Pepper would've fought like hell to get through to Tony if he ever decided for some reason that genocide was a great idea to make Daddy Stark happy. The Warriors Three take Loki's [[FaceHeelTurn transformation into an enemy]] without blinking; they barely bother to reach him using their alleged bond of friendship. The only one who bothers is Thor, who Loki stabs and nearly kills--multiple times!--for his efforts. I frankly cannot see Tony heartlessly stabbing Rhodey or Pepper--multiple times--while they pleaded for him to see reason. I realize this is all very subjective, but from a mainstream, non-fangirl perspective, Loki =/= Tony Stark.
*** The mainstream, non fan-girl perspective jab is completely unnecessary (and untrue, since there's clear support of Iron Man going on in the "arguments"). And the movie makes the parallels between Stark and Loki so blatant that, at the end, Stark figures out where Loki is by realizing that Loki would do what he (Stark) did in the first place (that is, a gigantic monument to himself).

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Expert on the Tesseract?]]

* So, after one night's study Stark becomes an expert on the Tesseract? How? Simple, it's made of the same new element that he re-created in Iron Man 2 that he carries a chunk of in his chest. The new element that he made with instructions from his father. Who, along with being a founding SHIELD member, also studied the Tesseract. Which is what gave him the knowledge to pass on to Tony for how to make the new element.
** Or, alternatively, Tony ''didn't'' become an expert in the Tesseract, he became an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics. That's what Maria Hill observes, and Tony's response is that he did the reading. He's also, as he reminds us many times, a genius, so doing the reading over the course of one night was enough. For the record, Bruce contributes ably to his conversation, and all efforts afterwards to find the Tesseract, and ''he'' has no reason to be up on Howard Stark's supposedly Tesseract-related new element.
** In that conversation, Tony mentions that a copy of Dr. Selvig's paper on the Tesseract and his theories on how to extract energy from it was in the briefing packet that Coulson gave him. Bruce presumably got his own briefing after arriving on the Helicarrier. So both scientists on the Avengers have every reason to be as familiar with Dr. Selvig's research on the Tesseract as Dr. Selvig is -- SHIELD, and therefore they, have copies of all of Selvig's notes right up to the day Loki abducted him.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Humanity without Avengers]]

* Even without the Avengers, humanity could have still beaten the Chitauri. Black Widow and Hawkeye both took down a large number of enemies thanks to nothing more than their training. And what was the weapon that ended the threat? Not Mjölnir, not the Iron Man Armor, but a nuke!
** Unlikely. SHIELD, our best defense against an alien invasion, was woefully unprepared. Fury even states in the beginning of the movie that they need a response team because Phase II wasn't ready. Remove the Avengers from the scenario, and Loki brings down the Helicarrier, and opens the portal with no one to oppose him until the US military gets there. By then Loki and the Chitauri have a foot-hold. The World Security Council probably nukes Manhattan, but there are still untold hordes of Chitauri ready to pour through the portal with no way to stop them, short of more nukes. If Loki manages to survive, he could probably rig up another portal at any nuclear reactor on the planet. He might also start brainwashing world leaders into working with him. And most importantly if you remove the Avengers, then Earth has no defense against [[spoiler: Thanos]].
** The first troper would like to point out that the Chitauri were useless against the non-powered members of the team despite having the numerical and technological advantage, so humanity would have probably been able to hold out until Phase II was completed. Also, Loki would have probably not survived the nuke. You may be right about [[spoiler: Thanos]], but we can't know until he becomes the BigBad of another film.
*** The Chitauri were useless against the non-powered members? Black Widow was exhausted and injured from fighting the grunts and she left the streets before the fighting became thicker. Hawkeye had the roof he was on destroyed. Captain America nearly got blown up by one of their bombs and would certainly have been killed if Thor wasn't there helping him out. Tony Stark, the guy who makes the best weapons on planet Earth, was severely pressed by the Chitauri on multiple occasions. Earth's biggest Badasses were barely keeping it together. Our only chance is to nuke them. At best, we win while causing massive nuclear damage to ourselves and turning Manhattan Island into a wasteland. Worst case scenario, Loki survives, and starts running around turning our resources against us while the Chitauri wreak havoc in our major cities.
*** Fine. I was wrong abut them being "useless". If the fight had kept going then the {{Badass Normal}}s would have eventually been worn down by sheer numbers; you're are right about that. But that would be all the Chitauri could do. What happens when humans come in the thousands and tens of thousands? Loki can't keep sending soldiers forever to one day exhaust humanity. Even if we don't beat the Chitauri because HumansAreWarriors, we could easily hold out long enough to finish Phase II if Loki dies in the nuke attack, which he likely would, and we grab the Cube.
**** The problem is that we don't have an upper limit on Chitauri numbers. There could only be a few hundred thousand, there could be millions or billions. As for Phase II, we don't know how far along SHIELD is into the program. They've got a few prototypes, only one of which has been shown to work (The Destroyer gun) and possibly the reverse-engineered Item 47 line. The whole point of assembling the Avengers was that we didn't have weapons capable of fighting Asgardians/aliens. Maybe a nuke would kill Loki, but IIRC, the Iron Man Mark VII was supposedly able to withstand a nuclear blast. If it could, then Loki likely can too. The guy does survive enormous explosions (the Bifrost's destruction) and falling through wormholes. It's not inconceivable that he could survive a nuke.
***** They wouldn't have the Item 47 line by the time of this battle. Item 47 was recovered after this battle took place, after all. They'd need time to reverse-engineer it. Just figured that was worth noting. The Phase 2 prototypes were never shown, so the only one we know they have is the Destroyer prototype gun.
**** I think you are overestimating Loki. Anything we would consider a "large explosion" is miniscule compared to nuclear weapons. Even if he does survive the explosion, we have no idea how resistant Asgardians are to radiation. If, worst case scenario, he gets out of the explosion perfectly healthy, he is still wanted by the entire human race. As for your points about how many Chitauri there are and how far SHIELD is into Phase II, you're right: we have no idea. We could have the advantage, they could have the advantage. It is impossible to determine who would win based on that.
**** Equally, you might be underestimating Loki. He's a really tough bastard. There's a possibility, however slim, that he could survive. If he can, being hunted by a race of people who can't harm him while he has a mind-control scepter won't end well for us. Sure, we have a decent shot against the Chitauri we saw on screen, but without the Avengers, we'd have to fight a brutal conventional war or turn Manhattan and its surroundings into a nuclear wasteland. That's the best outcome the war could possibly have.
**** Hawkeye's exploding arrow and the beatdown that Hulk gave Loki were enough to give him a few scratches. If the force and the damage recieved by Loki were in proportion, it would definitely be enough to kill Loki. After that, all we have to deal with is the [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy Chitauri]] army.
**** Ever tried falling through a wormhole? It's pretty much impossible as far as we know. Yet, we can build nuke-resistant blast doors. I'm not saying Loki has great odds of surviving a nuke, but there's no absolute certainty that he'll die. As for the Chitauri, the ground troops aren't the problem. It's the flyers that are much faster than our helicopters and much more maneuverable than our jets, and the Leviathans, which will shrug off just about anything we can throw at them short of nukes. If the Chitauri try and conquer the whole planet based on what we saw of them, of course they'd lose. But the the forces they showed were ''perfect'' for urban warfare. There's no way we'd win a conventional war against them in New York when they have the element of surprise, air superiority (I'd like to see a non-SHIELD pilot fly through the skyscrapers of Manhattan without getting shot down by the flyers, or crashing into Leviathans and buildings) and PhysicalGod Loki fighting for them. And there's no way of telling what other capabilities they might have.
**** Thank you for editing my post; I really needed it. One of the diffrences between the film Asgardians and the comic Asgardians is that the film Asgardians are not PhysicalGods, but instead are SufficientlyAdvancedAliens. Any magic we see them perform is really just very advanced technology. What is the trope for that? They might not survive the wormhole by themselves, but just have the technology necessary for it. Seeing as we have technology that can withstand nukes, but not wormholes, I imagine they are very different. Even if we can’t beat the Chitauri air support and Leviathans by shooting them, all the Chitauri seem to be at least part technological, so EMP’s could solve a lot of our problems.
** See the trope PyrrhicVictory. Defeating the Chitauri through a terrible war of attrition, even if it turns out that there are, say, mere hundreds of thousands as opposed to a space-spanning empire of quadrillions armed with WMD of their own, would probably still not exactly have been much fun for whatever percentage of Earthlings survived.
** You can always assume that there were billions of them waiting, but that seems extremely unlikely. Tony and Thor both seemed to think that the Chitauri would lose hard if they actually tried to conquer the planet "Do you really think this will end with your rule!?" / "There's no scenario here where you come out on top", and Loki looked to agree a bit with that brief pause. Their tech is extremely unimpressive; their flyers are slow, lightly armed, and fragile, and don't even armor the pilots. The Leviathans have no weapons and are vulnerable to explosives. Their infantry have no tactical sense and weapons that appear to only be on par with human rifles. And yet, the Other considered humanity's defeat of this force to be something that essentially marks them as a superpower. As was said, it would be costly (New York is arguably the most important city in the world right now, one you definitely don't want to be fighting a war in), but we could do it. "We" as in the United States, or hell, the New York National Guard if Loki's "send the rest" line means anything. But then we wouldn't have a movie... oh, and New York would be a ruin and millions would be dead, with millions more displaced. And Loki surviving a nuclear weapon is completely laughable, given that bullets at least sting when they hit bare flesh, and simply being slammed into a floor at somewhat slow speeds took him right out of the fight. A MOAB would be enough to obliterate him.
*** Not sure that's what Thor/Tony meant. Thor could easily have been referring to the senseless destruction the Chitauri were causing at the behest of [[spoiler: Thanos]] and Tony even admits the Chitauri might overwhelm the Avengers. If it gets to that point, the Avengers kill Loki, not "the normal humans of this world will beat you down Loki." I've covered above why specifically in New York the Chitauri flyers are deadly. The Leviathans may not carry weapons but what do we have that can handle one flying into us? They're only vulnerable to explosives on the inside and their armor shrugs off everything Tony Stark has got from the outside (a guy who has a suit of armor which can and has wiped the floor with tanks and fighter jets 3 upgrades ago), and he is badly pressed by the Chitauri on multiple occasions.
*** There is a slight problem with that thinking: The Avengesrs movie didn't cover the tech humanity actually has. For example [[http://youtu.be/UBTbhSFfuNM this]], and [[http://youtu.be/K2yRhVXKEXU this]], and [[http://youtu.be/IrY_E2S54jo this]], and [[http://youtu.be/wa_vuX5_oAk]]. Then there are also things like [[http://youtu.be/JPdfWeXMMk0 this]] and [[http://youtu.be/1fCZvOHd5dg this.]] I think humanity could handle the Chitari.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Containment Cell]]

* The containment cell for Hulk (and later Loki) on the flying fortress is set to drop from the ship to the Earth on the press of a button. This is seen as a threat, but it's clear that none of the characters intended for this dome are in much jeopardy from such a fall which wouldn't be much different from falling from a very tall building thanks to terminal velocity.
** Additionally, this has the added effect of possibly freeing the trapped individual and dropping the entire contraption (including frenzied captive) onto a civilian area.
*** It's not the fall that kills you. It's the steel and glass on all sides of you suddenly shrapnelizing upon impact with the ground, turning into a spiky deathtrap of twisted metal and powdered glass on all sides of you that impales, rips, and shreds your body to pieces. Given that it was built for the Hulk, if it was just the fall alone, the cage would simply open the floor and ventilate the Hulk into the air; much cheaper to build for something that can't fly. That was the entire suspense with [[spoiler: Thor's descent: it wasn't that he needed to get out before he hit the ground, it was that he needed to get out of the cage before what we explicitly watched happen to the cage, happened with him inside of it.]]
** Why is anyone assuming that the fall was intended to kill the Hulk or an Asgardian? The dropping-cage trick is clearly a failsafe in case the cage isn't strong enough to actually hold the captive in question, as evidenced by the fact that hitting the walls causing it to start dropping. Its there to make sure that if the cage can't hold them, it can at least dump them out of the Helicarrier well before they break free and begin tearing the place apart.
* The ejectable cage on the helicarrier is useless for its intended purpose, when you think about it. It's designed to contain the Hulk. Obviously it's occupied by Loki, but even without Loki on board they'd have to keep Bruce in it 24/7 for it to be effective - they'd never herd him in there after he transformed. And if Bruce was in the small, bare-bones cell full-time, he wouldn't be much help as a scientist.
** That's because the cage had nothing whatsoever to do with them needing or wanting Bruce's help as a scientist. The cage is just to contain the Hulk, and was built well before they ever considered bringing Bruce in for his mind.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Loki in post-credits Thor]]

* So, if Loki took control of people with his scepter, what was he doing in the post-credits scene of ''{{Film/Thor}}''?
** He didn't have control of Selvig at the time; he was just psychically "hitching a ride" and seeing through Selvig's eyes.
** I took it as that he "planted an idea" inside him, save technique he later used to set everyone against each other on the Helicarrier.
*** Whose to say Loki only has one form of mind control available?
** Way I see it, Loki was ''Possessing'' Selvig, but the scepter let him brainwash him instead, the difference being that you can only possess one person, the scepter let him control masses and let them keep their skills. That or just hitching a ride.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mind Control failed, why don't you just shoot him?]]

* When Tony's arc reactor prevented Loki from brainwashing him, why didn't Loki [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim just blast him or use the staff to stab him in the throat]]?
** Tony mentions just a few minutes earlier that Loki's plan is to take them all down in the public eye. Having Iron Man in his control would allow Loki to grandstand a little more and get more attention, but leaving Tony's dead, armorless body on the floor of his own tower just doesn't have the same affect. Especially since Tony is the most widely known Avenger in-universe. Steve hasn't been in the public eye for 70 years, Hawkeye and Widow are part of a government organization and not bound to be known by many people, Thor is a god whose only other activity on earth has been in a very small town, and Hulk is considered a villainous monster by everyone. Tony has had the most time in the spotlight, has political ties and is considered to be pretty much the people Champion. Taking him out in public would have been much more satisfying for Loki long term than just shooting him.
** Because he threw Tony out the window. When Loki realized his staff wasn't working, he decided to go for the tried and true method of "throw the prick off a very high object and let gravity do the work." Since his staff had already failed against Stark, he just cut out the whole thing and used gravity as his weapon of choice.
** What the OP is referring to is ''after'' the scepter failed to take over Tony, why did Loki toss him out the window instead of just blasting or stabbing him with the same scepter? Basically, because he's enraged. Being humiliated like that probably robbed him of his more rational thoughts and he went for a personal physical assault, and he wanted to get Tony out of his sight as soon as possible.
** Loki has never seen his sceptre fail. By his own admission, "This usually works." Stark had the upper hand over him in a way he didn't really understand; the sceptre being a weapon given to him by the Chitauri, it's likely that he didn't really understand anything more about it than the basic "point and shoot" and "tap the heart, take over a person" bits. When the sceptre tinked harmlessly against Stark's arc reactor, Loki was taken aback. By his reasoning, he was standing in a room with an enemy combatant who, just a few minutes ago, had been threatening him and now, when the time had come to put his abilities where his mouth was, had actually managed to strip Loki of one of his strongest weapons. He was enraged by Stark's snarky dismissal of his failure, while at the same time panicked over finding himself at a disadvantage and not knowing why. So why throw Stark out the window? Because at this point, for all he knows, Stark has out and out beaten him. Not knowing why his weapon failed means that starting a prolonged fight with Stark in the middle of his tower where he holds all of the cards and could have a million hidden weapons that Loki would never know about would be a terrible idea. Throwing Stark out the window was his way of CuttingTheKnot, removing a dangerous situation he knew absolutely nothing about long enough to find the time to gather his thoughts. He exited the room shortly thereafter, and did not return inside until the Hulk smashed him into it.
*** Not to mention when Loki starts throwing him around, Tony's (strangled) response is to tell Jarvis to "deploy" the suit. Never mind traps. Loki was quite familiar with Iron Man's ability to go toe-to-toe with a god, and he had just witnessed Tony ''casually walk out of a suit'' after landing on his tower. It's Tony's home turf, and a toss in the wrong direction could have put Tony in range of another suit. Since the glowstick failed, he didn't want to risk a stab or neck snap not working. Cue window toss. Of course, the suit Tony was looking for is able to follow him down, and the rest is history.
** Maybe he mistakenly assumed Tony was some kind of robot. He is called "Iron Man", after all.
*** more likely he wanted to give Tony some time to think about why he was going to die.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Gravity in a wormhole]]

* If Stark was in space after directing the nuke, how was he ''dropping'' back into the wormhole back to Earth? There were no indications of him using any type of reverse thrusters and the push off from the nuke didn't seem to have any force to it.
** Gravitational pull from the portal? It's open in Earth's atmosphere, not too far up from the tallest skyscraper in the area, and unlike most "explosive decompression" situations, Earth is a celestial body with a very strong gravitational pull compared to, say, a spacecraft. Being as close to the portal as he was, Stark might as well have just been in Earth's stratosphere.
*** He was, at most, a kilometer or two off the top of Stark Tower, lower even than cruising altitude for commercial aircraft. Earth's gravity definitely had a hand in it.
**** Consider we do not know how the portal works. Perhaps it has some kind of inherent pull of it's own and Tony was not that far from the opening. My own observation was that he looked to be pulled much slower on the "space" side of the portal and once on the Earth side, he started falling faster.
**** Actually just after he loses all power in his Suit, parts of his shoulder armour are ejected and it pushes him back. It was probably the recoil of that ejection which pushed him back into the portal. In space, where Gravity doesn't interfere, Newton's third law really shines.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Custodian and Banner]]

* The custodian who found Banner said that "you came down big, green and buck-ass nude" and "I didn't think they'd (the old clothes) fit you until you shrunk back to normal size". ''How does he know that the Hulk can turn back to human?''
** This is well after the Hulk was a known phenomenon, you know. Remember all the news reports and stuff from his own movie?
*** None of them ever caught Hulk reverting to Bruce though, or his secret would long be blown.
*** ...what secret? Banner hides in third world countries from United States Army pursuit that has, at one point, engaged him in the middle of a university in broad daylight. There are detailed S.H.I.E.L.D. reports on his whereabouts, news reports of his battles, he broke Harlem, and even a random janitor in the asscrack of nowhere knows that he's an ordinary man who transforms into a giant green rage monster. At what point is it even ''hinted'' that Banner's identity is a secret by the time Avengers rolls around?
** Or he just really didn't want to see a naked Hulk.
*** This is just a misinterpretation. He wasn't aware that the Hulk was going to shrink. What he was saying was, he didn't think the old clothes would fit him, until suddenly, Hulk turned back into Banner. "until you shrunk back to normal size" isn't what the man was waiting for, it was what actually happened.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:War Machine?]]

* Where the hell was War Machine when the army of aliens were invading?
** Not in New York. The final battle takes place over, what, 30 minutes or so? That's really not a lot of time to mobilize someone that previous films have established as being based primarily on the other side of the country. Plus, War Machine is military, and military means ''bureaucracy''. When they launch War Machine, they'd want it to be with a flight of fighter jets and support, all of which takes time to assemble and launch.\\\
And that's presuming the military keeps War Machine as an option, considering what happened in Iron Man 2, with it being hacked and all.
** Assuming that both the War Machine armor and Colonel Rhodes are still a part of the military, he probably got orders from his CO to stay away from New York, since the World Security Council had orders to nuke Manhattan.
** Rhodes seems to be stationed in California, which is several thousand miles from New York. If anything, he was probably getting suited up for an all-out armed forces strike should the Avengers (and nuke) have failed. We can already see the National Guard rolling in towards the end of the battle, so the rest of the military wouldn't have been far behind.
** The ''Prelude to Iron Man 3'' comic tie-ins reveal that Rhodey was on a mission in China during the Chitauri attack. Tony ''did'' call for his assistance but he couldn't arrive in time. He ''did'', however, arrive during their shawarma excursion.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Thor to Earth?]]
* How did Thor get to Earth? He smashed the Bifrost to smithereens in ''Film/{{Thor}}''.
** Loki asks the same question, and implies that Odin used dark energy to conjure a means of transport for Thor. As the next Thor film is entitled, "Thor: The Dark World", this question will likely be addressed more fully there, with Loki's line being foreshadowing.
** The whole thing is actually a nod to contemporary cosmology and astrophysics. A passage between worlds/dimensions would be a wormhole. You need negative energy density to stabilize a wormhole. Dark energy is the force that (hypothetically) accelerates the expansion of the universe, i.e., creates negative energy density. Thus, lacking the Bifrost, Odin had to muster up large amounts of dark energy to force open another passage.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Where's Darcy?]]
* Here's a question (that may even lead to a little fridge horror), Coulson assured Thor that Jane Foster had been moved to a safe place after what happened to Selvig. So why did he not mention Thor's third human friend Darcy Lewis? Is she being looked after by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as well? If so, why wasn't she mentioned?
** She was Jane's assistant, in Thor. It could very easily be assumed that she still is, given that only a year has passed. Hence, where Jane goes, Darcy goes. Doesn't explain why Coulson didn't specifically mention her, because Thor would have no way of knowing that, however.
** Why would he mention her? Why would she even be in danger? Does Loki even know who she is?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Point-Blank Archery]]
* There were a couple of times where Hawkeye chose to fire an arrow at point-blank range. Two times in his fight against Black Widow (she dodged both), and once during TheOner at a Chitauri that was climbing up the wall (he didn't dodge). But why bother to fire them? Getting an arrow out of the quiver and pulling back on the bow costs time and gives your opponent a warning. In the first two times, Black Widow saw both coming and dodged. In the last instance, it cost him an arrow that fell down the building with the alien, which he meant he had to physically hit another alien who almost nabbed him when Clint reached for his empty quiver. For Black Widow, wouldn't it have been better just grab an arrow and try to stab her with it, and for the climbing Chitauri trooper, to kick him off the wall?
** Yep, it would have been easier. But he is emphatically ''not'' a melee fighter; Black Widow usually handles the close-range stuff. He screwed up, that's all.
** Despite what Legolas may have taught you, arrows are ''really'' bad melee weapons. They don't have much weight to them, the shaft is relatively fragile, and the overall design is really not that great for thrusting in general with your hand. They're only really effective as an extreme emergency weapon when you're grappling (where any sharp thing that can be stuck in a person will suffice) or fired from a bow. Stabbing someone with an arrow is not going to do anything close to the tissue damage as shooting them with that arrow, which is why Barton switches to a knife when fighting Natasha as the fight wears on.
*** Oh I know it wouldn't have killed her, as I work on an archery range and handle arrows on a regular basis. But it would have at least pierced her skin if he stabbed at her face, allowing him to follow up with his knife as she reels back from pain. There might also be more damage if he had equipped it with one of the trick arrowheads, such as the superheating one he used on the Chitauri flier.
** Well, I meant "Yep, he should have just kicked the bad guys off the roof," but that too.
*** Joss actually mentions in the film's commentary that he found it hilarious for Hawkeye to shoot a guy at such close range.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Our biggest guns couldn't touch it...."]]
* During the Battle of New York, an exhausted Black Widow points out that closing the portal ASAP is their best plan. Cap notes that "our biggest guns couldn't touch it." At this point, the only ones who've tried to breach the portal device's energy shield, or attack Chitauri coming through the portal itself are Iron Man and Thor. By now, Cap has studied SHIELD's files and has personally witnessed the three big guns of the Avengers in action. Where does the Hulk fit in Cap's estimation? I can understand Thor being considered the biggest gun overall, but surely the physically strongest member of the team should be above Iron Man on Cap's "list".
** Easiest answer is simply that Cap made a generalization without much thought behind it. Generalizations happen.
** This also presumes that you could tell the Hulk to stop fighting the alien army and start punching a piece of the scenery instead.
** The Hulk is groundbound. The portal is probably not above his maximum jumping range (assuming there is such a maximum), but then you run into the second issue: the Hulk's power is punching, and while that works dandy against a wide array of other problems, you just can't punch a hole no matter how strong you are.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"Escort six-zero, proceed to 'Wishbone' and engage hostile. Don't get too close!"]]
* This has bugged me since I first saw the movie on opening day. Hill orders one of the F-35's flying alongside the helicarrier to fire at the Hulk to get his attention, and she specifically says "Don't get too close!" The gun on an F-35 is a GAU-22/A, a four barrel version of the GAU-12/U Equalizer. The GAU-12's effective range is 12,000 feet - just over 2.2 miles. The GAU-22/A is supposed to have a longer effective range than that. So, why did that pilot fly about 50 feet away from the window, right where the Hulk could reach him? He could have been at least mile away from the Helicarrier and STILL hit the Hulk!
** Maybe you ''need'' to be point blank to hurt the Hulk.
** Considering that even at point-blank range, it only pissed him off, I think that might be right. Besides, it was an emergency situation. The jet didn't have time to fly too far away.
** That's probably the effective range for strafing a stationary target on the ground, something like a tank or a bunker. Not the range for hitting a moving, agile, man-sized target ''within'' another target. He only wants to hit the Hulk, not the rest of the Helicarrier and the people inside it.
** The order was not to Hurt the Hulk but to Get His Attention. Imagine what would happen if said pilot was shooting from a mile away? The Hulk would feel something hitting it's skin, would look around and wouldn't find anything he could punch in the face. So pissed off by the bullets he'd start tearing the place up. With the plane so close Hulk had a target to focus on, target which got him Out of the Hellicarrier so he wouldn't be able to destroy anything more. Remember that hurting or killing the Hulk is never an option because he is just too damn tough. The best you can hope for is to get him somewhere remote where he won't have anything to destroy, will calm down and revert into Banner.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Who does SHIELD answer to?]]
* Fury is the director of SHIELD, and he appears to answer to a mysterious Council of shadowy people. But who exactly is in charge of SHIELD? In ''Iron Man'', it seems that it's a department of the US Government, but if that were the case then it would answer to the President. Where does it get the funding for its own military hardware, research facilities, and access to a nuclear (or nuclear-type) weapon? I don't think any government would be happy about an organization with the apparent authority to carry out military operations and deploy weapons of mass destruction on its own territory.
** If the Pentagon couldn't figure it out, then likely neither can we.
** The shadowy people are the World Security Council. Despite them being shadowy, their names and which countries they represent are clear on the screen, so they've got some kind of official sanction.
** Considering the multinational nature and reach of the organization, it's probably a division of the UN, possibly originally started by the US government (which would explain why they provide so much money and materiel).
*** Can't possibly be connected to the UN. They actually succeeded in fulfilling their goals (I'm only half joking). It could be multi-national due to the World Security Council or a domestic US agency due to what S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for. I still highly doubt it would have anything to do with the UN, though. Too many countries involved for things to go well in that case.
*** Definitely multi-national. In ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' they are shown to have jurisdiction and agents operating in China.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Guess what, New York was about to be nuked]]
* I understand that an alien invasion would be a news topic for months, a new group of superheroes would be so as well, and an event that combines both should be "the bomb" in all the media. But, once things settle up a bit, there's a more mundane thing that had happened and the media would surely discuss: that, in the middle of the fight, someone fired a nuclear missile to New York. Sounds like a source of much political controversy: who fired that missile? With which authority? I'm sure that if the people of New York realize that, if not for Iron Man, they were going to be atomic dust, they would go after someone's throat. And it's unlikely that such detail would be easily kept as classified information, because it was Tony Stark the one who was involved in this. First, he's a public figure and journalists know where to find him, he won't "dissapear in the night" as the others. Second, he has a monumental ego, and "I saved everybody by taking an atomic bomb in the air, changing its course, and leading it to the alien starship at the other side of the portal" is too much to resist (he could not resist to say that he was Iron Man, after all). And third, he's not a military man and he's not in good terms with those guys: if they beg him to keep the secret to save their asses, it would be perfectly expectable from him to say it out loud and let them face the consequences of their actions. They tried to nuke New York and failed, now taste the wrath of New Yorkers...
** Your question isn't very clear. What are you asking?
** In short, how will the people react to the detail that someone (and not the aliens) would have nuked them, and they were saved just by a contrived circumstance?
** They weren't told. SHIELD is keeping it secret, so that they can blackmail the WSC to make sure they don't do that again.
--->'''Agent Hill''': Oh, and as for the matter that's... not "in question?" Where you morons tried to nuke New York? Well that's on the record. As in we recorded it. We do that; we’re S.H.I.E.L.D. So if you’re thinking about coming after Nick Fury, ever? Think really, really hard.

[[/folder]]

[[/folder]]

**** Sadly, upon close inspection and the help of [[http://tea-kitten.tumblr.com/post/31489705669/view-in-hi-res-this-is-for-the-people-who This post]].]], this is not the case. Loki's eyes remain the same shade of blue throughout the entirety of both Thor and the Avengers. Any change is likely the result of lighting differences and nothing more.