# Did we all see the same movie? Avengers **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 30, 2012, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100 "2012-08-30T02:07:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/21 "2012-08-30T13:51:43Z")
Let’s see…#3 on the Top Grossing Movies of All-Time list with $1,491,800,446 brought in worldwide to date. 12 weeks after release it was still bringing in over a million dollars a weekend domestically. Yep, you’re right. Pointless plot, lousy characters, totally crappy movie. Complete waste of film stock. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the planet says you’re wrong. Very, very wrong. If your opinion was a superhero, it would be Captain Wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/22 "2012-08-30T13:59:57Z")
It was a thoroughly fun film, but pretty fluffy. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/23 "2012-08-30T14:04:54Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Let’s see…#3 on the Top Grossing Movies of All-Time list with $1,491,800,446 brought in worldwide to date. 12 weeks after release it was still bringing in over a million dollars a weekend domestically. > > Yep, you’re right. Pointless plot, lousy characters, totally crappy movie. Complete waste of film stock. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the planet says you’re wrong. Very, very wrong. If your opinion was a superhero, it would be Captain Wrong. I never said it was that bad, just that it was nowhere near as good as the hype. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/24 "2012-08-30T14:08:26Z")
I was a bit disappointed when at the end of Thor we found out Loki would be the villian. I wanted more variety. But I was not disappointed when I saw the movie. It worked well. And Loki was the villian in Avengers #1 so it made sense. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/25 "2012-08-30T15:04:13Z")
I hate Loki, I groaned when I first saw him. I guess there is some reason they don’t just kill him but it’s beyond me. He has proven time and time again that he will stab you in the back and tear apart worlds on a whim. But I still loved The Avengers. Great characters, great interactions. It could have maybe used more action but the action was epic. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/26 "2012-08-30T15:29:03Z")
> [@grude](#): > > I never said it was that bad, just that it was nowhere near as good as the hype. That’s the thing though…it really is. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/27 "2012-08-30T15:36:17Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > That’s the thing though…it really is. Some folks want the MacGuffin to make sense, not just propel the characters… ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/28 "2012-08-30T15:54:14Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > no sexual overtones whatsoever… What movie were you watching? Cap, Widow, and Maria were all objectified plenty during the movie, and Pepper’s shorts were ridiculous in her scene. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/29 "2012-08-30T16:05:03Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Let’s see…#3 on the Top Grossing Movies of All-Time list with $1,491,800,446 brought in worldwide to date. 12 weeks after release it was still bringing in over a million dollars a weekend domestically. > > Yep, you’re right. Pointless plot, lousy characters, totally crappy movie. Complete waste of film stock. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the planet says you’re wrong. Very, very wrong. If your opinion was a superhero, it would be Captain Wrong. Come off it. Popularity never, ever necessarily equals good. Avatar is the number one grossing movie and it did absolutely have a pointless plot with lousy characters and was a totally crappy movie except for a few pretty visuals. Avengers had a sense of humor about itself, which was always Marvel’s big sell against DC. It’s not a great movie in any sense of the word. The battle against faceless aliens that ended it was a waste of film stock. Nobody remembers anything about any alien dying, but everybody knows every frame of the Hulk battering Loki. Individuals reacting always win over generic movement. The original Superman heads up any good list of best superhero films because the film was made around character and Chris Reeve embodied that character, just as George Reeves had done on television. Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, and Chris Hemsworth did that pretty well in the Avengers. Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, and Sam Jackson didn’t and I’ll bet that’s where grude is coming from. I guess what it all comes down to is finding a hunk named Chris to play your superhero and everything else falls into place. ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/30 "2012-08-30T17:17:20Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Loki’s goal was to crush New York and then turn to the world and say, “I’m your god now!” He assumed after such an awesome display of power that the war would be over after one day. This is of course a terrible plan on many levels. The aliens technology is better than ours, but better enough for this to work. Besides the nuclear option, a battalion or two of the national guard would have taken the city back. Unless they were capable of spreading out from the portal much faster than they showed, even if Loki had a better plane, it would have failed to do more than take a chunk of the Eastern sea board before getting pushed back.\* I think this is part of Loki’s character flaws (not flaws as a character). He is a great schemer, but actually a poor planner. He has no more idea how to fight a war or win a battle than he does on how to rule a country or a world. > [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > SHIELD is building weapons using the energy from the Tesseract (AKA Cosmic Cube), an inherently unstable energy that almost wiped out New York in Captain America and destroyed the SHIELD base in the beginning of The Avengers. This is one thing that bugs the crap out of me. It was even worse in the original Transformers. The self righteous smugness of a living weapon who spent more time fighting than all our wars put together that we would dare try and arm ourselves against known dangers. \*Of course the best plan based on their biggest tech advantage would have been to immediately go into orbit and and start KE strikes on military targets. As far as I know neither S.H.I.E.L.D. nor any government has a space war branch. And if they did it would not have large enough presence in space to stop them. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/31 "2012-08-30T17:52:28Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Let’s see…#3 on the Top Grossing Movies of All-Time list with $1,491,800,446 brought in worldwide to date. 12 weeks after release it was still bringing in over a million dollars a weekend domestically. > > Yep, you’re right. Pointless plot, lousy characters, totally crappy movie. Complete waste of film stock. So glad you agree. Oh wait, that was sarcasm, wasn’t it? Because by your logic, Britney Spears is twice as good a singer as Nat King Cole. If you liked it, great. I thought it sucked. If aliens ever invaded my city, I’d call the landlady in Kung Fu Hustle before I’d call the Avengers. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/32 "2012-08-30T18:10:25Z")
Loki’s plan was not to rule New York or Earth. It was to return to Asgard. He succeeded at that. ---
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/33 "2012-08-30T18:11:23Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > This is one thing that bugs the crap out of me. It was even worse in the original Transformers. The self righteous smugness of a living weapon who spent more time fighting than all our wars put together that we would dare try and arm ourselves against known dangers. Captain America knows the Cube is not something to screw around with, having watched the Red Skull literally melt his face off doing so. The idea of using something that unstable as a weapon, not to mention basing all your weaponry on Nazi designs that utilized it, is understandably distressing for him. Tony Stark is the preeminent weapon designer for SHIELD and the US Military and stated in IM2 that he is very proud of having kept the peace in recent years. It has been amply demonstrated that other people having access to superior technology without consulting Stark has been a VERY BAD THING. That, plus his enormous ego, makes his objection understandable. Bruce Banner is more familiar than anyone else with the consequences of irresponsible experimentation with forces you don’t really understand. This, plus his inherent paranoia and distrust of SHIELD’s motivations, makes his response believable. Thor finds humans petty and the idea that they could be entrusted with an artifact of such immense power and that they would try to make guns out of it increases his contempt. He blames them for letting Loki get his hands on it in the first place. So, basically, everyone who objects to the SHIELD plan to use the cube as a weapon has a perfectly legitimate motivation for doing so. Are they all correct, when you consider the position humanity may be in? Maybe, maybe not. But Fury & Co. have NO evidence that the threat they’re preparing for actually exists. SHIELD, at that point, and certainly at the point they started adapting HYDRA designs, knows NOTHING about the Chutauri. The implication is really that the people that these weapons are designed to combat are, if not the Avengers themselves, then people like them, particularly Thor and the Hulk. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/34 "2012-08-30T18:16:17Z")
> [@Ephemera](#): > > What movie were you watching? Cap, Widow, and Maria were all objectified plenty during the movie, and Pepper’s shorts were ridiculous in her scene. Yeah, ridiculously HOT! Viva la Objectification! ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/35 "2012-08-30T18:24:00Z")
> [@Scupper](#): > > Captain America knows the Cube is not something to screw around with, having watched the Red Skull literally melt his face off doing so. The idea of using something that unstable as a weapon, not to mention basing all your weaponry on Nazi designs that utilized it, is understandably distressing for him. > > Tony Stark is the preeminent weapon designer for SHIELD and the US Military and stated in IM2 that he is very proud of having kept the peace in recent years. It has been amply demonstrated that other people having access to superior technology without consulting Stark has been a VERY BAD THING. That, plus his enormous ego, makes his objection understandable. > > Bruce Banner is more familiar than anyone else with the consequences of irresponsible experimentation with forces you don’t really understand. This, plus his inherent paranoia and distrust of SHIELD’s motivations, makes his response believable. > > **Thor finds humans petty and the idea that they could be entrusted with an artifact of such immense power and that they would try to make guns out of it increases his contempt. He blames them for letting Loki get his hands on it in the first place.** > > So, basically, everyone who objects to the SHIELD plan to use the cube as a weapon has a perfectly legitimate motivation for doing so. Are they all correct, when you consider the position humanity may be in? Maybe, maybe not. But Fury & Co. have NO evidence that the threat they’re preparing for actually exists. SHIELD, at that point, and certainly at the point they started adapting HYDRA designs, knows NOTHING about the Chutauri. The implication is really that the people that these weapons are designed to combat are, if not the Avengers themselves, then people like them, particularly Thor and the Hulk. I can agree with you in regards to CA and TS to some degree. But Thor? Less than 2 years ago in the movie timeline he was multi-thousand year old petulant child who wanted nothing more than a glorious war. He brought inter dimensional war to Earth with him. Forget the Chatauri. _Asgard_ has already attacked Earth at this point. Would you trust the safety of our world to the word of recently exiled and forgiven heir who has barely learned the concept of responsibility? The Asgardians have a massive amount of military power. Why? Because they are concerned with attacks from enemies (some of whom have attacked Earth in the past). On what basis should we assume that Asgardians are going to be their to bail us out the next some extra-whatever aggressors show up? Did they offer a military assistance treaty? Did they even tell us how to contact them? ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/36 "2012-08-30T18:29:38Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > This is of course a terrible plan on many levels. The aliens technology is better than ours, but better enough for this to work. Besides the nuclear option, a battalion or two of the national guard would have taken the city back. At this point, I definitely don’t think we were watching the same movie. Without The Avengers, Loki would have killed twenty million people and delivered his evil villain speech and forced Black Widow and/or Tony Stark to service him sexually before dinner. ---
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/37 "2012-08-30T18:37:41Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > I can agree with you in regards to CA and TS to some degree. But Thor? Less than 2 years ago in the movie timeline he was multi-thousand year old petulant child who wanted nothing more than a glorious war. He brought inter dimensional war to Earth with him. Forget the Chatauri. _Asgard_ has already attacked Earth at this point. > > Would you trust the safety of our world to the word of recently exiled and forgiven heir who has barely learned the concept of responsibility? The Asgardians have a massive amount of military power. Why? Because they are concerned with attacks from enemies (some of whom have attacked Earth in the past). On what basis should we assume that Asgardians are going to be their to bail us out the next some extra-whatever aggressors show up? Did they offer a military assistance treaty? Did they even tell us how to contact them? One rogue element from Asgard caused some damage in a small town. There was no indication that any other threats existed (though it’s reasonable for SHIELD to suppose that Asgard + The Hulk + The Cosmic Cube weirdness = Better to be prepared for whatever comes next). Compared to what they already knew about HYDRA’s use of the cube, some property damage in New Mexico seems pretty weak justification for co-opting unstable Nazi superweapons. There was never even any conventional military hardware brought to bear against the Destroyer – Thor basically handled the problem without any help and with fairly minimal damage. As far as SHIELD knows, a single howitzer shell might have taken out the Asgardian menace, and yet they went completely overboard, _obviously_ with The Hulk in mind, since no further threat from Asgard seemed imminent. I’m not saying that SHIELD was wrong in doing what they did, just that the other characters had realistic objections, tinted by their own self-interests and egos. It does bear mentioning that their objections and worries are almost totally justified: the cube’s power backfired on them just like it did on the Red Skull, which might have been prevented had they involved Tony Stark, and they _did_ let it slip into the hands of Loki. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/38 "2012-08-30T18:43:04Z")
I didn’t like it either (though I actually thought Loki was the only good part of it). Even independent of they hype, I thought it was poorly executed. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/39 "2012-08-30T19:18:50Z")
> [@Ephemera](#): > > What movie were you watching? Cap, Widow, and Maria were all objectified plenty during the movie, and Pepper’s shorts were ridiculous in her scene. Am I being wooshed or were you? Re-read my post…about my childhood being raped by other films. You obviously didn’t read it closely enough the first time. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100/40 "2012-08-30T19:36:02Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > No, Superman (the first with Chris Reeve) was the best\*. Avengers was the second best and the most fun. > > - if that had not been made, Superhero films would have likely continued in their B movie role. I doubt that this is true. Firstly, it’s often very presumptuous to assume that a particular historical development would never have happened if one particular person or group hadn’t done it. Also, it seems to me that the development of increasingly sophisticated effects technology would likely have been a natural boost for superhero films, even in the absence of Superman. I think it’s just as plausible to argue that a key reason for the B-movie status of superhero films was due, at least in part, precisely to the fact that it’s hard to make superheroes do their stuff without lots of money and/or visual effects. It seems like a genre that was, in some ways, waiting for technology to catch up with imagination and ambition. > [@silenus](#): > > Let’s see…#3 on the Top Grossing Movies of All-Time list with $1,491,800,446 brought in worldwide to date. 12 weeks after release it was still bringing in over a million dollars a weekend domestically. > > Yep, you’re right. Pointless plot, lousy characters, totally crappy movie. Complete waste of film stock. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the planet says you’re wrong. Very, very wrong. If your opinion was a superhero, it would be Captain Wrong. Come on, you know better than to make this sort of appeal to the masses in a thread about movies. In a thread called “Movies you hate but everyone else seems to love,” you listed _Saving Private Ryan_, _Titanic_, and _The Sixth Sense_, and said: > [@Movies you hate but everyone else seems to love](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-hate-but-everyone-else-seems-to-love/357564/5): > > Generally I dislike the work of any number of popular directors, generally on the grounds that they **suck the life out of a movie** (Ron Howard) or are **predictable if technically proficient hacks** (Spielberg, Lucas). The problem is they have **gotten worse with each movie**. _Duel_, _Night Shift_ and _THX1138_ or _American Graffiti_ were OK movies. Ever since then… Of course, when it comes to these three directors, the overwhelming majority of the planet says you’re wrong. Very, very wrong. If your opinion was a superhero, it would be Captain Wrong. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-we-all-see-the-same-movie-avengers/633100.md?page=3)