The Avengers and Their Holes
I loved Marvel’s The Avengers, it’s my new favorite film of the year, and even though I know great things are still to come this summer and during the holiday season, I don’t expect The Avengers to get displaced. I haven’t been this happy with a movie since the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, and memory may be unfairly inflating that one.
But you don’t need my review to tell you that The Avengers is awesome. I already tweeted about it, and a goodly portion of the infosphere here on planet Earth is resonating, positively thrumming with happy thoughts about the film.
So… let’s take potshots at it! Everybody else is talking about their favorite moments, so let's talk about those other bits. Just because I loved the film doesn’t mean there weren’t some problems. Obviously this exercise will involve spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the film yet, don’t read past this paragraph.
Seriously. Just don’t. Don’t do it. I’ll even put a horizontal bar here below which you should not read, lest you subject yourself to spoilers.
- Throughout the film the chosen method of transportation is hover-jet. Cool! They’re fast, maneuverable, and very believable. Why, then, does Nick Fury show up to our inciting emergency in a helicopter?
- Loki’s staff lets him mind-control people, right? Seems to me he should have walked right up to Nick Fury and claimed him alongside Hawkeye and the others. It would have saved him a lot of trouble later, I’m sure.
- An explosive the size of my thumb took out a house-sized chunk of a flying aircraft carrier, and we’re not talking about a small house. Allowing for comic-book physics, it’s obvious Tony Stark has been selling the Good Stuff under the table to Hawkeye.
- I’m not sure where exactly that flying aircraft carrier started the movie, but within maybe half a day’s time it goes from within striking distance of Stuttgart (Cap and Natasha hop a hoverjet to go get Loki on a moment’s notice), to somewhere over the eastern seaboard of the United States (Banner can ride a motorcycle from his impact crater to midtown Manhattan inside of maybe an hour.)
- Speaking of Banner, how did he know where to go? I’m guessing gamma emissions make him itchy, so he rode towards irritation. (Note: I forgot that he and he alone saw the screen indicating the position of the tesseract just prior to the engine failure. That explains it.)
- If Natasha can drop invaders with handgun rounds, those invaders aren’t going to get past the Hudson river, much less the Mississipi. After watching Black Widow shoot, I’m confident my friends in the National Guard can take care of business. All I’m saying here is the aliens had worse intel than they thought. Forget facing The Avengers – they need to fear the local gun club.
- Thor’s lightning seemed to be doing a real number on the incoming folks. Why’d he leave that position? Stark would have been pretty effective there, too – especially since Thor could have kept him charged up. I’ll chalk that one up to “bad decisions in the heat of battle,” the sort of thing that any green soldier will… umm… oh. Thor. Right.
- Who arms a tactical nuclear missile with a timer? I’m admittedly no expert here, but I expected milspec GPS. Of course a timer lets Stark grab the missile and speed it up, buying him time to fly it past its intended target and up to a new one. Or it would have if Stark hadn’t been out of juice, explicitly telling Jarvis “save the rest for the turns.”
- I’d complain about Loki’s plot, but Banner justified it perfectly when he said “that guy’s brain is a bag of cats.”
Have fun poking your own holes in the comments section below. I’ve only (!) seen the film three times, so I’m sure there are things I missed.