As I have previously mentioned, the attributes of the Hawkeye character seem a bit ridiculous in a movie with stars who fought the Nazis, are thunder gods or have armor that would make the Mobile Infantry of Robert Heinlen’s Starship Troopers wet themselves. This is not a detriment to the movie, how\ever, as they managed to still make him seem cool (mostly for what he accomplished with such a handicap), and also removed him from the team for most of the film. Basiclly, Whedon & Penn wrote around an obstacle they were stuck with by who knows how many years of comic books. I reiterate and stand by my objections to the absurdity of the bow and arrow, and there is absolutely NOTHING the man does that could not have been done better with a gun. Even the grappling hook arrow – Batman has guns that do that. A large part of what he did effectively might make him impressive about a guy who ran around doing shit with arrows the way Batman sticks to a bat theme. In this film, he was only useful in certain situations because there was not two of any of the real heroes (though they seem to have forgotten about the second Iron Man from the second film of that nature, as well as the fact that Tony Stark owns more than one suit of the same – you’d think the military would have some guys whom might handle a battlesuit as good as, if not better than, an alcoholic tool, and Tony could easily install some sort of disabling feature if he feared misuse). Also, the name Hawkeye is not particularly associated with archery. The other major fictitious character known as Hawkeye is so named for his accuracy, with a RIFLE (which is the source of another of his nicknames). This movie, however, seems to have a problem with the concept of rifles, which are only the most effective weapons in the history of the most violent species known to science. Everyone used either ridiculously ineffectual-in-real-life weapons, like pistols or bows or enormous, over-the-top science fiction weapons like something out of Men In Black. Actual rifles are only used once or twice, and not effectively, despite there being tons of them lying around in the background. They can rig up guns that duplicate the powers of Asgardian robots, but they can’t find a combination Barret .50 cal-and-crossbow/slash tiny missile/grenade/grappling hook launcher to make Hawkeye more plausible? At least once, he fares worse in a fight because of the inadequacies of a bow in close quarters combat, because you need both hands to use it, and it’s very easy to see if it’s not loaded, allowing an adversary to grab it with impunity.

In short, I was right about the ridiculousness of an archer on a superhero team, but they kept it from dragging down the movie or the character. His other weaponry is no more effective, such as his deployment of the world’s most useless hand grenade. Based on the proximity of an ordinary human to it upon explosive, that grenade has an effective lethal radius of about six inches.

Another issue I had was when a trailer showed a flying aircraft carrier. I thought that was going to be something ridiculous pulled out when the bad guys appear to be escaping by flying away or else sending a threat through the water, and to the surprise of some of the heroes, Samuel L Jackson or the chick in pants says “Oh, yeah?!” and flips a lever and boom, the ship takes off. They did NOT do that, and moved right into that aspect early on. However there is still the issue of a flying aircraft carrier at all. I am still undecided whether the very concept is the logical extension of the principle of an aircraft carrier, or simply enormously redundant. I mean, the point of a carrier is to add more effective weapons to a ship. Rather than large, inaccurate or non-versatile guns, they use planes which go wherever you want and have more uses, and can aim better. However, a plane is merely a weapons delivery system. If you can get the SHIP out of the water and over land, why bother putting planes on it? Why not just the really big guns that very large ships were built to house in the first place?

Of course, there is also the question of whether the benefits conveyed by flight merit the risks inherent in the abrupt cessation of flight, which is probably why there will never be flying cars available to the general public, or why they have to use narrow flight lines in futuristic movies. A large part of the penultimate crisis in the film would not have occurred if they did not insist on making their aircraft carrier fly for no apparent reason.

Then there is the issue of energy. You can’t help but wonder, given how much of the dialogue in the film is given to the discussion of new sources of energy, whether being able to take a carrier into the stratosphere is cost-effective. With all the aerodynamic qualities of a brick, the engines on that thing must provide 100% of all the lift AND thrust. Whatever they are using to power THAT, is what they should be reverse engineering to civilian and industrial specifications, rather than poking away at dangerous interdimensional-warping, alien-invasion-inviting, tesseract cubes for cheap or clean power sources down the road. Also, it’s one thing to lose a nuclear reactor on the bottom of the ocean when your aircraft carrier sinks. When your flying carrier crashes, what is that power source going to do? Go all Hiroshima on whoever is unlucky enough to be living under their flight path? Leak glowy crap all over the local environment?

What is more, they might have actually sabotaged the very coolness of their flying aircraft carrier concept, by proposing something even better right at the moment they are preparing the carrier to take off – their preparations to fly the ship are misinterpreted by some of the Avengers to lead them to believe the ship is submersible! THAT is a lot more in keeping with the whole point of aircraft carriers, and makes them even more badass. An aircraft carrier that flies is something you have time to toss ICBMs at before it gets over your presidential palace. An aircraft carrier that emerges from under water to start throwing planes at you when you didn’t realize anything was there – BADASS!

Another minor quibble is that in attempting to convey to Captain America that someone is very smart they tell him he’s like Stephen Hawking. When Steve Rogers draws a blank, having been frozen for most of Hawking’s career, the other party is at a loss for words and ends up saying just that he’s smart. First of all, most people don’t use Stephen Hawking as a touchstone for intelligence. The name that is still used as synonymous with genius is that of Steve Rogers’ contemporary, EINSTEIN. Who in the world thinks of Stephen Hawking as the most recognizable genius in human history, and decides that a man who lived in Einstein’ day would not know the name of any others?

Finally, the Hulk ran into a problem that the first Ghost Rider film had, IMO. Namely his human alter-ego seems to believe that releasing the super-powered version is the worst thing in the world and on a par with playing midwife to the Antichrist, without adequate evidence to the contrary. For all that the Hulk seemed to be out of control initially, whenever the plot required it, he was perfectly well behaved and not at all inclined to humorously sucker-punch teammates.