Is that part of the narrative strategy, to make our heroes rail against the comic villain, the buffoon, expending themselves before unleashing the real villain of the piece? It might sound trivial, but again, the relative power of the characters is telegraphed by their mode of transportation, and Nick Fury will have the last laugh in this regard.Natasha meets Capt America. Did I miss something? Finally it gives us Thor, who has incredible power but feels it’s best to withhold it. They dance around it so much that Bruce finally threatens to let it out, just as a tease, just “to see what you’d do.” What Natasha would do is instantly pull a gun, the love scene over, the dance done. Capt America meets Bruce Banner, and both characters seek to put the other at ease: Capt America brushes away concerns about Bruce’s alter ego, and Bruce tries to relate to Capt America’s naivety. Dear readers, I’ve worked on many a comic-book movie, none of which ever got near production. Why does Loki act so out of character? Our assumption (and the assumption of his teammates) is that in his time away, Bruce has achieved some sort of inner peace — he has managed to shed his anger and he’s living in a state of zen tranquility.With this line, he flips our understanding on its head. In the ensuing incredible shot, we see a virtual tag-team of heroics as Black Widow pilots, Iron Man teams up with Capt America to zap, Hawkeye pierces (100 internet dollars to those who understand that as a MASH reference), Hulk pulverizes and Thor hammers. The goal is not “to free Loki,” although that happens. Superman as an idea is tremendously powerful and appealing, but if you spend too much time dwelling on the physical aspects of what exactly Superman is and how he might affect the world, that is, if you ask what if Superman were real, the story becomes about something other than the idea. Tony Stark’s megalomania, Steve Rogers’s patriotism, Bruce Banner’s out-of-control alter ego, Thor’s unruly kin, everyone has contributed to the problem at hand.The metaphor mutates but does not disappear: SHIELD’s Tesseract-powered weapons are simply a metaphor for what we already have: weapons that humanity has actually developed in order to deal with super-powers, real-life super-powers. (In my analysis of The Avengers, and the preceding Marvel movies, have done a great job of “grounding” their characters. The Avengers is, in many ways, a cautious love story with multiple partners, the question being, can our love outlive our conflicts, can it outlive our flaws?Now we check back in with Nick Fury, who, it turns out, is answerable to some sort of council. Coulson, a man who wields enormous power in his own right, is, on another level, nothing but a fan. The little girl, in her helplessness, plays on Bruce’s good nature and feelings of sympathy and gets him to go to an empty house. This, in screenwriting, is called “getting into the scene as late as possible.” We don’t know what everyone is running from, we only know that they are running. In this moment, the Avengers become their own worst enemies. Or rather, first we meet a little Indian girl, who dashes through a slum in search of Dr. He never goes all out over board like he does in Avengers, and I find that to be a plot point, a hint for the future. It was causing them all to become angry and irrational.
So we have a chain of command in just a few short seconds: there is a mysterious “boss” somewhere, to whom Mr. Bigrobe reports, and Mr. Bigrobe, for some reason, can’t go to Earth to get this all-important Tessaract himself, so he is sending an “ally.” The ally, we then learn, is not traveling to Earth alone.