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.
Agreed, I found him useless too. I was particularly scandalized by his arrow that plugs into a mainframe and hacks it. That made me groan out loud. They tried to add a superhuman component subtley ... at one point he shoots backwards and kills an alien flying by. It was impressive but actually beyond his capabilities. At best, he's a superb marksman but he still has normal human senses.
You should add black widow to this by the way - she was equally useless. This time she was a master interrogator too, but ultimately a well trained operative with fighting skills is as useless as hawkeye. She was totally unimpressive shooting aliens with her guns in the street while Thor was conjuring up lightning storms and Hulk was destroying aliens en masse. Captain America comes close to this level of uselessness, but he barely evades criticism.
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?
The cloaking device bothered me more than the flying aircraft carrier. Apart from that when I saw it fly I assumed they'd extrapolated an energy source from the tesseract. Red Skull managed it by using the tesseract to directly power his flying superfortress.
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?
I hated this too. Most of the world's great physicists agree that if you had to name the top twenty physicists alive, Hawking would not be on the list. Of course, Rogers might have known about Einsten so they needed a substitute and were low on world renowned geniuses.
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.
To be fair, he is utterly uncontrollable and massively destructive. They also wanted to show Banner's struggle with control, and it seems like he only mastered the Hulk at the end.
I still think its one of the best superhero movies ever made, if not the best. I have very little to say about it that is negative. I think its a masterpiece, and the humour was exceptional. I thought Iron Man was so funny.
Wheel of Time board admin
Fan of Lanfear
Fan of Lanfear
This message last edited by Sidious on 05/05/2012 at 08:32:29 AM
I'm pleased to report The Avengers offered both entertainment AND justification (spoilers seperated)
05/05/2012 04:33:39 AM
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Spoilers about archery, aircraft carriers etc
05/05/2012 04:34:45 AM
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Re: Spoilers about archery, aircraft carriers etc
05/05/2012 08:29:33 AM
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The Heli-Carrier is well established in the Marvel Universe as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s base of operations.
05/05/2012 12:12:57 PM
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Yup, they couldn't get away with not having the Heli-Carrier.
05/05/2012 01:17:58 PM
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Re: Yup, they couldn't get away with not having the Heli-Carrier.
07/05/2012 08:35:53 AM
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Re: Spoilers about archery, aircraft carriers etc
06/05/2012 03:51:23 PM
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Yeah, Black Widow's reaction was a little... weird
07/05/2012 06:26:26 PM
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Re: Yeah, Black Widow's reaction was a little... weird
08/05/2012 01:21:24 PM
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Not really, that is the nature of The Hulk.
09/05/2012 02:22:08 PM
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Re: Not really, that is the nature of The Hulk.
09/05/2012 03:13:53 PM
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It depends on which interpretation of the Hulk they are running with.
14/05/2012 01:50:44 PM
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Haven't you missed the point of the helicarrier?
07/05/2012 09:18:31 PM
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Yes, what have bombers done without fighter screens over the last 100 years?
12/05/2012 05:44:32 PM
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Got shot down a lot, in major confilcts against foes with air power.
12/05/2012 08:38:00 PM
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I thought the disparate power levels were unintentionally hilarious (spoilers)
07/05/2012 03:14:34 PM
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Re: I thought the disparate power levels were unintentionally hilarious (spoilers)
07/05/2012 11:23:39 PM
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Hawkeye does basically state as much to Black Widow. They're made for a spy movie.
14/05/2012 11:20:53 PM
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???
15/05/2012 01:36:39 AM
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I was just continuing the discussion. Could've replied to same one as you, yeah. *NM*
16/05/2012 01:16:08 AM
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What was up with the Hulk? (spoilers)
07/05/2012 06:35:06 PM
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I think it's just one of the many many plot holes.
07/05/2012 08:20:06 PM
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Regarding Coulson's role in the Marvel movies going forward *SPOILERS*
14/05/2012 11:15:12 PM
- 594 Views
Re: Regarding Coulson's role in the Marvel movies going forward *SPOILERS*
15/05/2012 01:50:52 AM
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Re: Regarding Coulson's role in the Marvel movies going forward *SPOILERS*
16/05/2012 01:18:34 AM
- 743 Views