The Avengers (movie) - Aliens vs. US Military *open spoilers*

Cafe Society
1

I re-watched The Avengers last weekend and one of my complaints about this otherwise excellent movie is that the alien army seems rather toothless. Sure the dudes are big and scary looking, and they have some kind of energy weapons, but they can apparently be killed with small knives. At one point in the movie, Hawkeye runs out of arrows and easily konks out 3 of the baddies with nothing but his bow. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Hawkeye is just some normal guy? And aren’t most bows like his made out of lightweight materials like carbon fiber? I don’t think he’d be able to konk out 3 half-trained Marines with M-4s.

The alien army didn’t have any advanced targeting systems (their hit rate is worse than storm troopers). The big flying lizards don’t seem like they’d hold up against a single air to air missile (or the cannon on an A-10, for that matter). The US military is coordinated and has excellent battlefield intelligence. M-16s would be incredibly effective at killing the aliens, and the alien strategy of “drop in from the sky and smash things in an unorganized manner” wouldn’t work very well against the US Army.

In fact, the only thing the aliens had going for them was the element of surprise, but that’s mostly because Nick Fury was wasting all of his time prepping The Avengers instead of being responsibile and letting the joint chiefs do their job.

2

I assume that the battle was designed to be a terror attack to frighten the humans into doing what Loki wanted. After NY was in submission, he’d have gone on TV and crowed, maybe.

Also, it’s not like they were done sending aliens, maybe the plan was to send twenty million of the skiffs and ten thousand worms. Without nukes that might be tough to beat.

3

I think Lobohan has it: the attack on NYC wasn’t a military operation, it was a terrorist attack. The purpose was to go out and kill a shitload of civilians. When Loki needed to take out a military target (the helicarrier), he used a very competent and disciplined strike force to do it. Presumably, once the US army is mobilized and deployed (which is going to be well after Loki’s finished laying waste to New York), a different mix of alien units and tactics would be employed to take them on.

4

Loki also counted on the portal staying open. We see several more of the flying eel troop transports on the other side as well as the giant command ship looking thing. who knows what was out there that we DIDN’T see.
Sure the military scrambles some jets and sends in troops but the portal would just keeps pouring out aliens.

5

The other thing to consider is that nuke the shadowy council types tried to drop on the city. There’s no way that a schemer and manipulator like Loki didn’t foresee that happening. It’s possible that the entire attack (at least, that phase of it) was orchestrated to convince the US government to nuke its own largest city. How that would have played into Loki’s plans isn’t clear, because he got taken down before his plot could progress that far, but one possibility is that he planned to use the lack of confidence in our leaders caused by the deaths of millions of citizens at their hands to convince people to look to him for protection - especially if the nuke fails to stop the “invasion.” It’s not like the general public knows that he was the one who ordered the invasion, after all. After NYC is a giant, radioactive crater, and the alien force moves on to, say, Chicago, suddenly Loki shows up, publicly offering to stop the threat in return for being made King of Earth. He “defeats” his own army, we all bow down to him, and he passes the tesseract on to his own shadowy council off in floaty rock land.

6

Disagree about your characterization of Agent Barton’s skills. He rather easily mows through a lot of SHIELD agents in the movie and it’s clear he’s supposed to be the best of the best. I think he could take out a whole platoon of Marines if he needed to, at least as he’s portrayed in this movie. He and Romanov were included because they are the best of the best.

7

Unless they can send them through a lot faster than they showed, there was no way for them to win without a lot more than what we saw. How would they hold NY against air assault? Did they have a city sized shield generator they could bring through? And if they did bring through 20 million aliens, how would they feed them? Did they expect the whole world to roll over ala Superman II?

8

Plus they were cannon fodder. Just hit with a lot of them and have them cause as much damage as possible and no one cares if they get killed. The main attack force was still in the wings.

9
  1. We don’t know that the aliens need to eat. 2. When you are an invading army that dominates the world, you eat (if you need to). The people you’re dominating are the ones who go hungry.

I would imagine they’d set up anti-aircraft emplacements after the shock and awe portion of the attack was over, and even if they didn’t, they’d certainly be a match for any conventional aircraft in the city.

I’d think that assuming the skiffs don’t need power (or that their sci-fi power-plants are long lasting) just one of them could wreck a small town in a few minutes. Multiply that by 20 million and I don’t see how we have a reasonable chance to stop them.

10

…unless somecrazyhow they are all daisychained to a single powersource that can be cut off. which would make them totally useless in any practical capacity.

11

I don’t think they were powered by the ship, I think they were controlled by it. Yeah, it’s kinda dumb, but it keeps the end of the movie from being clean up and hunting for three weeks.

12

I’m a fan of the theory that Loki knew the attack was going to fail, and that the failure of the attack and his subsequent capture were his plan all along. Loki didn’t want to rule Earth, he wanted to be taken back to Asgard where he’d be safe. He probably told the aliens that Earth would be under-defended and easy to conquer.

13

I don’t think so. Loki very much wanted to rule. The aliens wanted the tesseract, which Loki promised them in exchange for Earth.

You know, I really hated that plot device. It was very reminiscent of The Phantom Menace. The Avengers is better than that; it shouldn’t have to rip off deus ex machinas from a substantially worse movie. I know that it’s a convenient way to definitively show that the day is won, but it was already clear that they had turned the tide of the battle. Loki was down, the portal was closed, the mothership destroyed, civilians were being evacuated, local law enforcement was being coordinated, and the Avengers could efficiently eliminate the remaining invaders. The droid army doesn’t need to fall over once Anakin blows up the space doughnut.

14

It may have been his plan to kill Thor and the rest of the Avengers. The alien attack was designed just to draw the Avengers into a battle where they could be killed. Loki had a plan for escaping with the Tesseract before the bomb landed.

Is any of this in the movie? No. But it makes sense.

15

The aliens (at least what we saw of them) wouldn’t have stood a chance against the U.S. military. One nuclear bomb ruined their whole day.

The aliens come to this very conclusion themselves. At the end of the movie one of the alien commanders says something along the lines of “The humans are stronger than we thought. We can’t rule them. To fight them is to court death.”

16

Heh, we were joking about that when we left the theater. That the Avengers pretty much spent the last part of the movie saving the aliens from being conquered by the humans. If the portal had stayed open, a joint NATO/Chinese army would be setting up an occupation of the alien homeworld by now.

I mean, if your getting your butt kicked by a guy with a bow and arrow, a chick with a handgun and a third guy that jumps around and bludgeons your guys with a shield, your probably going to be in trouble when the actual army with their actual weapons shows up.

17

honestly the only part i found unbelievable and just too over the top about avengers is the fact Scarlett Johansen is not married to me.

it’s a travesty on par with Phantom Menace.

18

In the commentary track, Joss Whedon apologizes for how lame that was.

19

I return to my own thread with contentious and pointless comments!

If I’ve learned anything from video games, it’s that when there’s a massive skill imbalance between enemies, increasing the numbers just means more moogs to mow down. Maybe the army would run out of bullets if there were 20 million alien soldiers, but mostly that just sounds like more targets. More soft, squishy targets.

Gah, this hadn’t even occurred to me! This just makes the moog army seem even more pointless. Loki had already demonstrated that he could run a competent, deadly military operation, and then he turns around and sends in the zerglings.

Loki, of course, would have been at ground zero for the nuke; Asgardians’ ability to survive thermonuclear blasts isn’t entirely clear to me, but if they can, then the whole movie seems a bit silly.

Jeremy Renner from Hurt Locker could take down Jeremy Renner from The Avengers, as far as I’m concerned. But you’re right, I’m picturing actual marines, not ineffectual movie marines. Shield agents are sort of like storm troopers in this movie as well, whereas in real life I’d expect g-men to be at least nominally competent.

This being a PG-13 movie written for mass-market appeal, and me generally having faith that Joss Whedon knows his audience, I’m going to take the plot at face value. Loki wanted to rule the earth, he hired an alien army to take it over, and he planned on paying for the army with the tesseract.

[QUOTE=SecretaryofEvil;15594010The aliens come to this very conclusion themselves. At the end of the movie one of the alien commanders says something along the lines of “The humans are stronger than we thought. We can’t rule them. To fight them is to court death.”[/QUOTE]

Good point!

I know, right!?

“Sorry guys, I know that was lame, but…” I assume he had a good reason? Or did he blame the execs for ruining his movie like he’s apt to do?

20

I also found the invaders to be a bit lame. The local population could have taken the grunts down with sidearms and cooking utensils, never mind the military. The snake things were another matter though, and would have had everyone running for cover.