Saw it Friday and enjoyed it, thanks for the tip!
I never go to see a sci-fi/action movie these days unless it’s been approved by the SDMB Nerd Squad, and you guys haven’t let me down yet.
I flippin loved it, thought it was amazing. My questions related to the ending:
[spoiler]When Iron Man redirects the missile into the portal, why does he go with it? It seems to me that, given his maneuverability, he could have directed it toward the portal, given it a friendly pat on its bottom, and flown away. It’s not like nuclear missiles are designed to turn on a dime.
Also, it was weird to me that earth’s gravity worked through the portal and pulled Iron Man back through the portal to earth, but maybe that’s due to my insufficient understanding of portal physics :)[/spoiler]
I actually appreciated how un-flashy Cap was.
“That’s exhausting.”
Well it’s really an easy answer-- they don’t exist in the universe of the movies.
The only other hero character in the movie-verse at this point is War Machine. Who I was surprised didn’t warrant a mention.
yeah, I get why he wasn’t in for story reasons–The movie was already straining at finding room for all the characters–but he should have got something.
“Also, find Colonel Rhodes”
“He’s unavailable, director Fury. He’s still recovering after the Bhutan incident.”
Rumour is that there will be about 45 minutes worth of deleted scenes on the DVD. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that as one of them
[spoiler]I’m not sure what the actual turning ratio of a real-world nuclear missile is, but considering the one in the movie was launched by a plane that had just taken off from a flying aircraft carrier, I’m prepared to allow that they have nukes that are nimble enough they can use them for skywriting, if they wanted - and that Tony had to hang on to the thing for dear life to prevent it from pulling a U-turn and planting itself in the middle of Manhattan.
Once it was through the portal, presumably its guidance system shorted out - they’re in another dimension, after all. I’d be surprised if it could figure out how to get back to New York from Floaty Rock World.[/spoiler]
I was surprised they didn’t at least have a throw-away line to explain why War Machine wasn’t on the scene, too - just have Fury bark, “Get Col. Rhodes to fly point on Airforce One!” or something.
But I think there are supposed to be more super characters in the world than the ones we see. At one point, Fury is explaining the logic behind forming a team like the Avengers, and he says something like, “There are more and more people like you [superheroes] in the world, and we need someone who can fight them.” The Fantastic Four and Spiderman might not exist in this version of the Marvel universe, but it seems clear that there are other known super-powered people out there.
For all we know, Spidey was busy protecting Brooklyn from the onslaught.
Not having all the superheroes show up was kind of a thing from the Comics, IIRC. You’d have Galactus threatening to destroy the world, and only the Fantastic four opposing him. Where was spider-man or Iron man?
This was such a great film! I especially loved all this little funny parts they threw in so it wouldn’t have been a total serious slogfest in the last half hour.
I think the line was that they are finding more superpowered people in the world. Which makes sense if you think about it. For a long time, Captain America was the only superhero in this world, but in the last decade they’ve had Iron Man, The Hulk, and Thor, plus all the super baddies they’ve fought, show up. So this team is all they know of right now, but they’re sure to find more.
I think Spider-Man lives in Manhattan. But yes if he exists in this universe he was probably just fighting aliens elsewhere in the city. Since this was the Avengers’ first adventure he would have no reason to think “Alien armada is attacking the city, I had better make my way to Avengers Tower so I can get some backup.”
He is from Manhattan, but since the fight in The Avengers was happening in Manhattan, I was trying to give Spidey an alibi. 
That’s going to be tough to swallow, considering the ending and Thanos showing up in it. Just his existence alone brings in all kinds of questions about other heroes, unless they’re going to do a severely redacted version of the Infinity Gauntlet for Avengers 2.
Another thing that I’m nitpicking about, with regards to the nuke. It blew up at exactly the right time, right when Iron Man launches it against the alien mothership. Considering that it was originally supposed to destroy the portal, that means the air force set its timer off by about 30 seconds! It should have blew up right when it got near the portal
Christopher Robin Davies:
I could swear he lives in Forest Hills, Queens. Or is Manhattan a known ret-con for the new Spidey film coming out this summer?
I saw it twice this weekend. Hated it the first time; loved it the second time. Let me 'splain.
On Saturday I brought my daughter, neice and nephew out to see it in IMAX 3D. We’d all been anticipating this movie for a long time. Since about 1977 for me, but I digress.
When we got to the theater, the girl at the counter said something like, “It’s about 95% sold out right now, so you may not get seats together, and they may be up front.” Who cares, says I, it’s The Avengers, here, please take my $60 fucking dollars for four tickets.
Now my first question is this: why do they even bother putting seats where we got our seats. We were indeed in the front row, all the way to one end. I had to crane my neck up to see the top of the screen, and tuck my chin to see the bottom of the scree, and everything on the right side of the screen may as well have been in the next county - in fact, I think it was.
From the angle we were at, the perpective was completely skewed and the 3D glasses didn’t work on anything on the right side of the screen. It was like watching the movie through gauze over your eyes – you could sort of make out what was going on, but you had to guess at a lot of it. I could tell I would really love the movie from the first 10 minutes, but I was completely put off from the experience. Lesson learned – unless I can get a little further than 10 feet away from a 60 foot wide, 30 foot tall screen, I ain’t going.
Then I paid $6 for a single ticket at my local movie house to see it again on Sunday. Loved it. Best superhero movie ever made, for my money.
I’m not sure if I’m willing to up the limit on my credit card so I can see it again at the IMAX … but I might.
Loved it. On the ending
[spoiler]Am I wrong to doubt that nuclear missiles are launched with a timer that sets it off after X seconds regardless of where it happens to be when those seconds are up?
That seems like stupid design as opposed to “blow up when you get to where we told you to go.”[/spoiler]
The nuke had a timed detonator. It’s possible Iron Man boosted its speed with his own and dragged it to the portal quicker, thus allowing a margin of time for it to reach the Chitauri(sp?) mothership.
[spoiler]I took the timeing (2:30 seconds to impact) to be more of a ETA and it was supposed to go off at a particular spot - or when it hit something - just happened to be that the something it hit was the enemy mothership.
might be a fanwank, but thats how I took it.[/spoiler]
Responding to a few points about the ending:
[spoiler]
Maybe, but portals are weird no matter what you do with them. It’d be even weirder if gravity didn’t work through them.
As for the missile guidance, it was probably GPS-guided, and set to fly to a specific location, then blow up on impact. When Stark sees that his phone call to Potts has failed, he knows that he’s out of reach of Earth satellites, and thus the missile’s guidance system can’t take it back.
What I don’t understand is how that incapacitated Stark. He was through the portal and the portal closed before the blast front hit him. He was hit by the radiation, of course, but surely his armor is protected against that?[/spoiler]
[spoiler]It’s unlikely to have been timer-detonated. More likely the warhead would have been set to initiate when the onboard guidance system determined it was at the preset target location. Presumably a nuke intended to wipe out an invading army would have been intended to go off while still in the air, ideally centered over the alien forces, so they would likely have set the point at being basically right under the portal opening. Which means it should have gone off anyway, as Iron Man was steering it into the portal.
What it would not do is go off on contact, that only happens with ground-penetrating weapons intended to take out hardened structures, which this wouldn’t be. So there’s no reason for it to have initiated when it hit the alien base - it should have just smashed harmlessly when it hit. So yeah. Shouldn’t have worked as shown at all, unless they accidentally loaded a ground-penetrating weapon on the plane by accident.[/spoiler]