Headscratchers / The Avengers Film Archive 1

Archive for headscratchers for The Avengers film. See here for the main headscratchers page, and here for more recent questions.

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.

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?

We've captured the Tesseract! That's it, movie's over.

• Why does the movie even happen? The Bigger Bad'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 Elite Mook 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 Plot Hole, 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 Avengers Assemble are an elaborate ruse to get him back to Asgard where he can thieve the Glove of Infinity. Read more here.

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.

"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 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 "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 Knight Templar / Well-Intentioned Extremist 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 Avengers Loki. 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—Word of God 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 Thor. I don't even think it comes down to the killing he does, because killing people is part of the 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 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, 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 Thanos.
• One thing that should probably be understood, is that Thor serves as Character Development 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 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 Word of God 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 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.

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 Values Dissonance (Rogers and Stark), the paranoid fears of Banner who is 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.

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 Kill Em All 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 Whales. 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 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 The Oner, 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 Rushing, 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 Uriah Gambit. 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 Instant-Win Condition ( 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.

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 Fridge Logic 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.

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 Fantastic Four 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 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. Where were you two months later?

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 Keystone Army 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.

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.

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: This 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.

"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. 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.

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 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, 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 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 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 Squishy Wizard 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.

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?

"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 Zerg Rush 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 Rule of Cool 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 More Dakka 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 Show, Don't Tell, 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! This one shows the effects of the pressure wave, while 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?
            • Freeze-Frame Bonus. 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.

We'll just leave Loki outside the restaurant. He'll be fine.

• The denouement is kind of... weird. So they have 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?
  • 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
  • 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 Rule of Funny.
  • Maybe that's where they got him his drink.
  • It was Shawarma, your argument is invalid.
  • 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 everybody rides off into the sunset may not have even been on the same day as the final battle. They very well could have detained Loki and spent a day or two tying up loose ends before going their separate ways.
    • 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.
  • Hope this clears it up.◊

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, he's Nick Fury.
    • Or a reasonable facsimile thereof - a Life Model Decoy... but that's just Wild Mass Guessing.

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 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 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 Genre Savvy 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.

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 The Incredible Hulk. when he fought The Abomination.

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 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 The Trickster and Manipulative Bastard, 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 Awesomeness Through Analyses.
    • 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.

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 Bigger Bad actually was Red Skull from Captain America: The First Avenger? I believe the page for that movie speculated that he had been Put on a Bus 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 Bigger Bad'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 Composite Character 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 Super-Soldier 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, Red Skull 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 Did You Just Scam Cthulu 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.

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, 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.

"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 Dark and Troubled Past 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 Dark and Troubled Past, 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 The Other Guy and she nearly died because of it (look at how 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 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 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 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 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.

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 Worthy Opponent 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 Villainous Breakdown 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 Manipulative Bastard.
  • 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.

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.
    • Adamantium was created as an attempt to duplicate Captaim America's shield. The shield is a Vibranium alloy, and is NOT Adamantium. In fact, Adamantium is a metallic resin, and not an alloy.

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.

"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 Iron Man 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. When All You Have Is a Hammer…, 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 WW 2 (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.

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.

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 Bigger Bad 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.

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.

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.

"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 Flat-Earth Atheist 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 Sufficiently Advanced Aliens 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 Fish out of Temporal Water. 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.

"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.

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 Waif-Fu 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.

Hold still, Coulson, I need to borrow some blood...

• So, where did Fury even get the blood to put on Coulson's trading cards anyways?
  • Two fairly obvious sources: Whatever blood was being stored in the medical section of the ship, or 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 Bad Ass enough.

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 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.

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.

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 Big Damn Heroes 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.

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 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.

"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..."

"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.

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. Ol' Reddie calls it "Odin's crown jewel," and we do know from 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.

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 The Incredible Hulk 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 this cover◊ definitely shows some.

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.

"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.

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 Joss Whedon 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 Crisis Crossover. 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.

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. Thank you.

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, Depending on the Writer.
  • 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.
  • Rule of Cool

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?
    • 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. Fridge Brilliance, 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 Translation Convention, 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 Translation Convention, he shouldn't have had any accent. 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 Translation Convention 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 Translation Convention 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.

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 Ass Pull.

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, Tom Hiddleston 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 Conflict Ball 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.

"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 Hawk Eye 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 Hawk Eye 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 The Plan. 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 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.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus - 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.

"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.

"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.

"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 What the Hell, Hero?? 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 Berserk Button.
    • 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 Drop The Hammer moment probably helped, though.
  • Even in spite of all these answers, I still find this scene to be dripping with Fridge Horror. It's in character to a point for Thor to be hotheaded and a bit of a Shoot First Ask Questions Later Cowboy Cop 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 Berserk Button 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 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 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 What the Hell, Hero? and straight to Moral Event Horizon. 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! Fridge Horror, 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 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. 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 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 Empathic Weapon, 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 Peace Conference 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 Heroic Sacrifice 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 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 phlebotinum shield? There is no real difference between any of these squishy earthlings to a Physical God, 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 Ass Pull.
    • 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 Asskicking Equals Authority. 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 Boisterous Bruiser, yeah, but here he's acting as a Blood Knight. 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 Berserk Button 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.

"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 Iron Man 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 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?

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 Ron the Death Eater 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 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 "Well Done, Son" Guy 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 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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Regarding Jane

• I know it's because in Real Life, Natalie Portman was pregnant and couldn't make the filming of The Avengers. 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 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.

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, 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.

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.

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 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 Gear Up Montage before the final battle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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 The Oner, 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 Physical God—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.