Avengers: spoilery question about the end

Speaking of the Hulk’s rage, are there any significant plot holes that people were able to identify? Stark knowing the Hulk would show up and be cured is a potential one, but again, he’s a genius, so whatever.

To me, a bigger one is that Stark didn’t realize until much too late that Loki would be using Stark tower as the power source for his dimension gate. It was telegraphed so hard to the audience, that Stark seems stupid for not realizing it until he did. I don’t recall exactly, but in my memory, the conversation went like this:
“He’s going to need a huge power source to use that tesseract thing. Speaking of huge power sources, have I told you about the one powering my new tower, which is off the grid and thus completely undetectable? Also, the tower has terrible security. Anyways, want a blueberry?”

They did wrap the conversation in a veneer of “green energy, secret government weapons, blah blah”, but Stark still seemed a little slow on the uptake there. If I want to, I can assume Loki was clouding his mind with the staff to make that part work though.

I also did notice that Thor went and got some battle armor somewhere between falling off the helicarrier and getting to the final battle. But, the new armor was cool looking, so whatever.

Less plot holes and more my-brain holes, there were a couple things that I was upset with myself for not seeing coming:

  • Opening scene with Black Widow kicking ass. Oh, right, it’s Whedon. Of course the one female character is going to get a standalone ass kicking scene.
  • Coulson’s death. Oh right, it’s Whedon. Coulson is the audience insertion character, and we just started learning about his personal life. Of course he’s going to die.
  • Stark building becoming the Avengers building with only the big ‘A’ left. Duh. Should have noticed the typeface was the same as the movie logo.

Heh, that was actually shown on screen. Or at least the beginning was. When he gets up and dusts himself off after the Hellcarrier battle, he puts his hammer to the sky, lightning and whatnot comes down and you see the armour assembling link by link over his arms, before we’re quickly whisked away to another scene.

I loved the movie overall, so don’t think for a second that I’m not a huge fan, but I still have problems with the invading aliens. Like Alistair in the other thread said: it’s a bunch of aliens on flying motorcycles trying to conquer the world. For once, I’d have liked to see an alien invasion plan that actually looks halfway competent.

My advice for would-be alien conquerors of Earth:

One, you do not conquer a planet by having your advance force terrorize the unarmed civilian population. That has no strategic value and is a waste of time. Instead, you gather your forces around the portal and its generator to establish a perimeter. Then you identify threats to your position and move forces in to nullify those threats. Yes, this includes the Avengers, but it also includes enemy aircraft armed with weapons of mass destruction capable of annihilating your entire force!

Two, when occupying a hostile alien world, be sure to employ overwhelming force. The aliens did not display overwhelming force in any way. Their weapons seemed strictly limited to visual range. Where were the alien equivalents of bombs, cruise missiles and artillery? In fact given that the aliens appeared vulnerable to the Black Widow’s handguns and Hawkeye’s arrows, it seems likely that a conventionally equipped US military would be more than capable of repelling the invasion without any superheroes even if it would take some time for them to organize and deploy their forces.

Three, if the enemy has nukes and you do not have weapons of at least equivalent potency, I’m sorry but you lose. In fact, if your large and imposing capital ship does not even have any forward screening elements as part of its fleet or defensive systems capable of detecting and intercepting incoming hostile protectiles at all, it does not appear to me that you have any sort of technological edge at all. Remind me again why you think you have a chance in hell of invading a planet whose combat ability exceeds yours in every way?

No aliens, your invasion plan did not fail because humans were a tougher nut to crack than expected. It failed because your species sucks at fighting period. Expect to be invaded by Earth forces within a few months.

I don’t disagree, but to devil’s advocate for a minute:

It looks like the aliens might have been more like the Zerg than the Protoss, technology-wise. Their troop carriers are basically flying whale-monsters. It could be that they’re basically primitive (they can fly through space not because of tech but because they’re space-native), but were given energy weapons by Thanos as pawns in a bigger game. If they only have organic tech, nukes might be far beyond their understanding.

Also, they had the big mothership just on the other side. Maybe they were just sending scouts until the portal was big enough for the mothership, and then whoomp, Manhattan flattened, human enslavement time.

They also don’t answer why they even want to bother with Earth. There’s an unspoken acknowledgement in comic universes that Earth is both a) insignificant compared to some of the super awesome galaxy-spanning space empires, and b) totally the awesomest planet with the best heroes ever. It never made any sense. There’s a general hand-wave about something something human potential something something, but it’s never been convincing.

This part I think the movie does answer. The aliens don’t want Earth. They want the Tesserect / Cosmic Cube. Loki wants the Earth, and he wants it because he’s vain and he knows that Thor loves Earthlings. So the aliens are offering Loki an invasion army in exchange for the Tesserect, which is a terrible deal, but that fits perfectly well with Loki’s personality.

They were comic book aliens. I don’t think there needs to be any further explanation. Their invasion plan was as half-assed as Loki’s plan for revenge. Megalomania doesn’t need logic.

Actually, that’s a good point. The whole thing is a fit of pique between brothers.

Something else that occurred to me: Loki made a big speech about whether dropping Thor would kill him. But, in retrospect, that was just posturing. Thor routinely falls from as high when he throws his hammer. And besides, Loki really has no desire to kill Thor. He just wants to torture him a little. It would be no fun if Thor died. So, Loki had every expectation that Thor would escape or even if he didn’t, that he’d just be beaten up a bit.

Also I’m sure they point out that Loki wants them to be there to see his victory when they realise he’ll be at Stark tower.

Thor routinely lands from a relatively high speed flight when he throws his hammer. That’s pretty different from coming down uncotrolled while rattling around in a big metal cage. In terms of physics, it’s all about the velocity that the cage would crash down at, versus what forces Thor can normally take.

Haha, you tried to apply physics to comic books.

Thor’s flight ability is pretty poorly defined. Technically, I think that he just straight up throws his hammer, and it pulls him along (i.e. no brakes), but I think that’s gone the way of Superman’s “leap tall buildings”, he can probably straight up fly these days, and jut throws the hammer to take off / dramatic effect. Sort of like the Hulk, actually, who can superjump, but can’t fly. He just uses the smart Banner-brain to always calculate where to land.

Anyways, that was kind of a one-off joke. The important part is that Loki is just being dramatic. He’s pretty sure Thor will escape, or even if he doesn’t, that it’ll just hurt him a lot without killing him.

That was my interpretation too: Hulk was just in battle-mode, so he was lashing out at anyone nearby.

My interpretation of the secret behind Hulk’s seeming control was that he is okay being out of control, as long as he has something to focus his energy on. When they were on the helicarrier, in a small enclosed space with a bunch of friends around, he was understandably worried about losing control. In the middle of New York with a bunch of malevolent aliens attacking, just point him in the right direction and stand back.

By the way, as much as I hope there is a decent Hulk film with Ruffalo, I have to agree that he is much, much better in a movie with others than by himself. Out of all the superhero movies, I have been the least impressed with the Hulk ones, by far. Imagine my surprise when he turned out to be the best thing in Avengers!

Ghost Rider? Cat Woman? Elektra?

Which implies that the alien invasion army is very likely deliberately half-assed.

“Loki will give us the Tesseract if we send an ‘army’ to invade this backwater planet? Fine. Send a cruiser, maybe a dozen death worms, and a few hundred troops.”

“No, we’re not wasting any TC bombs for this. Just deploy wherever the portal opens and destroy a city or two. That should be enough to get him to hand it over.”

Thor’s flying is magic. So he does fly by throwing his hammer and letting it pull him through the air, but the process doesn’t necessarily obey any particular laws of physics.

As for the original question about Thanos: There are many comic book stories and villains, particularly from the past decade or two, that would lend themselves well to the movies. Thanos isn’t one of them.

Galactus is an interesting character, and look how he and the Surfer got butchered (I’ve never been able to get all the way through that FF movie). Some of the cosmic stuff is just too big or silly to work in a movie. Thanos isn’t even interesting in the comics. He’s just a plot device to give the most powerful heroes something to bang up against.

Avengers was so good, maybe that’s why seeing Thanos at the end was such a disappointment for me.

Ha, that’s awesome! Thor flies by hurling his hammer through the air and then essentially forgetting to let go? Does he scream “ohshitohshitohshit” the entire arc of his trajectory?

It sounds like fly fishing, you cast the line and it drags the fly along for the ride. It sounds like an efficient way for Thor to travel, he can aim it right where he wants it for one thing. For another, he works best with his hammer at hand, I know he can summon it but how much better is it when it’s there already?

Yikes! Sorry, didn’t mean to imply that! I meant that, of the superhero movies related to the Avengers (both Hulks, Iron Man 1 and 2, Thor, Captain America), I thought the Hulk movies were the weakest of the bunch.

Not quite. Here’s how Thor flew in the comics from his debut through the 80’s, after which I stopped reading. First, he’d whirl Mjolnir in a circle so fast that it was just a blur. Then he’d release it momentarily as if to throw the thing. Then he’d catch his now-flying hammer, which pulled him along for the ride. Note, however, that Thor can steer at will while flying, so the initial trajectory isn’t binding and it also never runs out of the initial impetus.

Does any of this make sense from a physics standpoint? Nope, it’s pure comics magic.

That makes more sense, and I won’t argue your point much except to say that I only count the second Hulk movie as part of the Avengers story because it’s the only one with direct tie-ins (Stark’s cameo at the end and the use of super-soldier serum). I’d rank the 5 precursor movies to The Avengers as follows based purely on how much I enjoyed them:

Iron Man
Thor
Captain America
The Incredible Hulk
Iron Man 2

The Ang Lee/Eric Bana movie would take 6th place on this list if I included it.