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== [[The Avengers (Filmfilm)|Film]] ==
* Why would Loki want to be captured anyway? If he had been manipulating Banner from the start, like Black Widow asserts, then he would have no need to be on the boat-plane in order to cause some carnage via the Hulk. Also, given that Loki can poof his scepter away, why would he bring it back to surrender it?
* For Thor being a hotblooded warrior prince he was pretty underused in the final battle. Considering how extreme he was in the fight against the frost giants in his namesake film, Thor should have had more scenes fighting along side the Hulk. I don't mean he "needed more screen time", actually his lack of it up until the action scene at the end could be interpreted as fridge brilliance. He knows how to work on a team and he already learned his humility lesson, therefore he doesn't require the same character development as the others. The issue is his relative (to his own film) poor showing in the battle scene, which could be interpreted as a violation of [[Show, Don't Tell]], an example of [[Character Derailment]] and/or maybe a bit of [[Conservation of Ninjitsu]].
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** It's not very hard to believe that Loki's simply changed after everything that happened to him. In ''Thor'', Loki was just starting down The Slippery Slope. By ''The Avengers'', he's doing cartwheels at the bottom. Not to mention that he did try destroying an entire realm in ''Thor'', just because he thought I'd please his father...
** Loki ''is'' out of character in this movie--[[Word of God]] is that his trip through that wormhole at the end of ''Thor'' did bad, ''bad'' things to his psyche.
** Apparently, they cut 2 hours of material from the movie, so maybe there were scenes making Loki more sympathetic that were cut. I also thought he wasn't particularly like they set up Loki's character in ''[[Thor (Filmfilm)|Thor]]''. I don't even think it comes down to the killing he does, because killing people is part of the [[Proud Warrior Race|culture he grew up in]], but he doesn't get enough screen time for us to understand what's going on in his mind and obviously he doesn't have any real plan at all and there is not even one scene where he uses his "silver tongue" against anyone. I do like Loki very much as a character, so the movie kind of disappointed on this note. I still enjoyed it, but it could have been so much better if they had given their villain more time.
** There is actually a rather interesting theory on Loki's out of character-ness. It is thought by many fans that perhaps Loki was being at least partially brainwashed by Thanos. It is implied in the movie that the stone in Loki's staff helps perhaps increase the emotions felt by the Avengers when they start arguing and seems to be at least partially responsible for that argument in some way. If the stone did that to the Avengers, it has to be wondered what it could be doing to Loki. If it is the case that the stone is helping to increase negative emotions, Loki's out of character-ness is completely justified. Also, it is shown that the brainwashing seems to be reversed by blows to the head and after Loki was smashed around by the Hulk, he seemed to change back into who he was before.
*** I am very curious if this explanation will become canon in the next Thor movie.
** In addition to the point about the sceptre, there's an easily overlooked moment when we see Loki making his bargain with the Chitauri, in which The Other tells him that if he fails, {{spoiler|Thanos}} will make him wish for something as merciful as pain, and gives him a sample thereof. Loki takes it without resistance. We don't know how long Loki has been with the Chitauri. We do know that he didn't really have a plan, so much as he had an order from his superior with a request for himself. He calls himself an ally, but his motivations are purely in subservience to the Chitauri; his "plan" consists of after the Chitauri rule the Earth, they may be so merciful as to allow him to rule it if he is a good servant to them. And for the cruelty he shows the humans, when made to suffer for prolonged periods of time, some people who have never been cruel before, develop it as a coping mechanism. He's monstrous towards his enemies because it allows HIM to make them suffer the way he did. It makes him feel powerful when he's been made to feel weak. All of Loki's behavior, from his subservient motivation, to the acceptance of pain from his masters, to the cruelty he displays and his enjoyment of that cruelty, suggests that Loki isn't really brainwashed, so much as he is ''broken'' by {{spoiler|Thanos}}.
** One thing that should probably be understood, is that ''[[Thor (Filmfilm)|Thor]]'' serves as [[Character Development]] for Loki just as much as it does for Thor. It's just that with Loki it's about his descent into madness. He spends most of that movie being somewhat rational, until the end when he [[Villainous Breakdown|begins to unravel]], especially when it comes to his fight with Thor. In the end, he's: been bested by his older brother once again, he now knows that he isn't Odin's real son, and there's no feasible way he can return to Asgard, not even to the way things were before he took the throne. Then we have confirmation by [[Word of God]] that falling down the wormhole did things to Loki's mind. The next time you watch this movie, watch him carefully. The scene in which he steals the man's eye for {{spoiler|Hawkeye}}, especially. He could have had any lower level mook do that, but he does it ''himself'', and the look on his face as people run away screaming is one of pure joy. Finally, he has people's attention. Tony isn't far off when he calls Loki a diva, it's just that there's more to it than that. The end of Thor has all of Loki's plans to finally outshine his brother thwarted by that very same brother, so he wants earth to spite Thor, but also to get everyone's attention, and that's exactly what he does. It's funny, because he accuses Fury of being desperate, but Loki is pretty desperate himself.
*** Listen when Loki is talking with Thor the first time. He all but outright says that ''yes'', he's gone crazy. He goes on about having been "exposed to truths" and such. So yes, the movie acknowledges that Loki is indeed acting quite weird and he's lost a few marbles, backed up when Banner mentions that he's "a bag of cats". After getting the hell smacked out of him by the Hulk, he seems to relax a little bit and the Loki from the first Thor movie starts to reappear.
** In addition to all the points already made about the side effects of the trip down the wormhole, Loki also had a serious Villainous Breakdown at the end of Thor - he basically tried to kill himself after Odin says "no Loki" which he apparently took as rejection, after all, and even that didn't work. Thor's solo movie established pretty well that Loki deals with issues with violence and manipulation - and now he's got even more issues, so yeah, of course he was more villainous this time around.
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** I think "''the rest of'' the universe" was implied.
** Also, Loki ''really'' didn't think his cunning plan quite through.
** From the scene earlier on where Loki is communing with the Chitauri, it definitely felt like they already had a leash on Loki, and giving him Earth was just [[Throw the Dog Aa Bone|throwing him a bone]].
** What makes you think Earth is so important, anyway? It has no intergalactic travel, no natural resources that couldn't easily be found elsewhere in '''the universe'''. It's sort of like taking over the country and giving the guy who helped you do it Utah; not something you're going to miss on the grand scale. The Earth was only important to Loki (who wanted to conquer it to spite his brother) and because it happened to have the Cosmic Cube at the time (which the Chitauri needed to rule the rest of the universe).
*** Which would make sense, {{spoiler|given that The Other didn't expect Earth to put up much of a fight - let alone involving superpowered beings - like they did against his Chitauri forces, thus his line to Thanos about "courting death".}}
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**** Just my opinion, but it seemed to me that they both got to each other in different ways, so it was more a draw than anything. I think Loki was counting on tipping Widow off on the fact that the Hulk was the card up his sleeve while also causing her to run out of the room crying. Loki gets played, however, because he underestimates the shit out of her, because she's a human woman who he sees as weak. He has a look of genuine surprise on his face after she looks up, completely composed. In the end he does get what he wants, but he doesn't get there as flawlessly as he'd hoped.
 
* I'll admit, I'm not a huge comic book nerd, and when I saw the movie I didn't know who Thanos was, But is it really such a stretch to assume that the [[Bigger Bad]] actually was Red Skull from [[Captain America: theThe First Avenger]]? I believe the page for that movie speculated that he had been [[Put Onon a Bus]] rather than killed.
** Even if the lighting in the scene makes it difficult to discern red from purple, the chin is all wrong and the Skull's prominent cheekbones are missing. Thanos' face is flat and wide instead of angular and sunken.
** Yes, yes it is a stretch. A very big one. Just compare a picture of Thanos from Wikipedia and the shot of the [[Bigger Bad]]'s face. Also, Kevin Feige confirmed it was Thanos.
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*** And to make it clearer: you want to know why he would brainwash people by poking their chest? Because ''the thorax is the center of mass of the human body.'' It's easier and instinctive for two human beings standing face to face to poke in the chest than to poke them anywhere else. For instance, when a person is annoyed and pushes someone back, or jabs them with a finger, they do it by pushing or jabbing right in the center of their chest, not their stomach, not their shoulder, not the side of their head. It's a very natural action. Touching someone's head is harder because you need to raise your arm (or in this case, the tool in your hand) higher, which takes longer, and if the person is facing you you need to "aim" (even if just a fraction of a second) because there's all sorts of stuff on the face that you don't want to touch, making the forehead or the skull a more awkward point of contact. And since all the scepter needs is to make physical contact with the person's ''body'', it doesn't matter ''where'' it touches --and apparently clothes are not enough of a barrier, or the sharp tip penetrates those clothes, but the metal of the reactor is alien enough to the body ("alien" as in "foreign object") to prevent such contact. Loki could've very well spent the movie poking people in the forehead, but that's a more delicate, deliberate action than just poking them in the chest (and it would have prevented the "Performance Issues" scene later on.) The "poke people in chest, take control of them" plot device has a very simple, natural explanation and we're all being forced to overthink it because of a ''more'' convoluted theory (that the arc technology responded to the scepter's energy despite ''the scene itself'' showing zero evidence of this.) But hey, maybe if Loki hadn't gone furious over the failure, he would've poked an unprotected part of Tony, like his head (or his back, or his ''ass'') and taken control of him that way!
**** It didn't just have to be the chest; it had to be the ''heart''. Loki mentions it implicitly when he hijacks Hawkeye at the start of the film. Stark's heart is physically inaccessible.
**** I'm sorry, but Loki said to Hawkeye "you have heart. I'll need that." In no way did he say that he has to access the heart - which also would make very little sense unless mind control works by pumping mind control stuff into the blood stream. And while the arc reactor doesn't glow when Loki pokes it with his Blowstick of Destiny, there is no evidence that it should glow if it DID prevent. Of course, if it did glow, we could be certain that the technologies were interacting, but at the present time, we have no evidence as to what the exact explanation is. But you can't just dismiss the theory that the Arc Reactor COULD be preventing the mind control shenanigans with [[New Powers Asas the Plot Demands|technology-protectiveness]]. After all, the theory makes sense because it works as a [[Chekov's Gun]] for further movies. Hey... no one ever said that a Chekov's Gun isn't allowed to be blatantly obvious.
*** You can't "just dismiss" it, no. But there's no evidence for it. When the arc reactor does stuff of any kind, it glows, or there's a sound, or ''something'' to indicate that there's some kind of reaction happening. This is all wild speculation that flies in the face of the very, very simple and obvious explanation that we see in the film. ''That'' is the objection. That it turns a quick gag into this needlessly complicated connection that isn't necessary or hinted at.
*** Also, narrative doesn't work that way. An author's ultimate goal is to get information across to the audience, so the audience can understand the events --whether it is a novel, a film, a play, or even a video game. How do they get information across? By ''showing'' or even ''telling'' the audience what is happening. The act of show or tell ''draws attention'' to an element in the narrative, however minor, however throwaway, however unimportant it may be to the primary plotline. Even if it's there just for worldbuilding or character setting, and even if it's just a throwaway line or interaction for fans to speculate upon, ''it must be there to begin with.'' In the first ''[[Iron Man]]'' movie, Tony is injured in the convoy assault, and he rips his shirt to show a rather impressive vest --pointless in the grand scheme of things, but it was shown because the script wanted us to know he's a cautious man. Was it a [[Chekhov's Gun]]? Nope! The movie could've gone through just the same without that scene. In the second one, we find out that the new and improved arc reactor core makes Tony's tongue taste like coconut. Important? No. Funny? Hell yes, and that's why he stated it. Maybe a later movie will say that the coconut taste will have serious repercussions, but so far, it's just a quirky quip. In the ''[[Incredible Hulk]]'' movie, we find out that the Army has been trying to replicate the Super Soldier serum and tested it on Blonsky. For all the movie cares, they could've just called it Chemical X and nothing would have happened, but they DID make the connection to Captain America because the author ''specifically intended it'' in order to build a greater universe. In ''[[Thor (Filmfilm)|Thor]]'', we're shown that the Bifrost pathways have a very specific look and effect. During the movie itself? Neat eye candy. Within ''[[Captain America: theThe First Avenger]]''? Flashy eye candy. Between the two movies? Immediate [[Continuity Nod]]. Hell, during the latter movie, ''every single scene'' involving the Tesseract or a Tesseract-related object shows unusual reactions, cosmic effects, and even an "audible glow" whenever the cube is perfectly idle but out of its container, because they want us to know that, even when it's not doing anything, the thing is power given form. And also in this movie, we're given a shot of Bucky strapped to an experimentation table so we can speculate that something was done to him, even if it's not important for this particular movie. So, see? Everything above, from the tiny and almost pointless detail of the taste of coconut to the huge connection between the Bifrost and the Tesseract, is ''stated'' by the narrative, and ''then'' people are free to speculate. It doesn't need giant flashing signs saying "Getcher [[Chekhov's Gun]] here!" It just needs to ''be there in the first place''. Otherwise, people could be free to speculate about ''nonexistent'' things. Maybe Hulk is green and has dark green blood because he's part plant --there's no evidence for it, no, but there's no evidence against it either. Maybe Hawkeye's not that good an archer, and his arrows have tiny little air flaps and engines that guide them to their target, we just don't realize it because the camera never zooms into the other end of the arrow. Maybe, maybe, maybe. And we would never end speculating about things that were never, however vaguely, stated in the story. And that's ''exactly'' what, since the term was first coined, the role and purpose of [[Chekhov's Gun]] is: to ''specifically, and explicitly, draw attention to some seemingly unimportant aspect of the plot so that its importance comes to light when it is revisited later.'' The very item that coined the term shows this: it's a rifle above a mantelpiece shown in the first act, and which must be used by the third act. What you're saying about the arc reactor interacting with the Tesseract energy in the staff is akin to Chekhov showing the rifle in the third act without ever showing it in the first. But again, the scepter failed for a very simple, very concise explanation that ''also works as a joke''. And what did the creators draw attention to, after an entire movie (Captain America's) of showing the specific ways Tesseract energy reveals itself? ''A metallic clink.'' Just like a [[Pocket Protector|Bible stops a bullet]] not because of divine intervention, but because it's a hella thick. And until a new movie comes out and retcons it, then yes, we CAN dismiss the theory because there's no evidence to support it, and some evidence that directly contradicts it. Like I said before, this theory is forcing us to overthink everything when the movie just wants us to focus on the concise and witty.
 
* I'm curious about the nature of the experiments SHIELD was conducting with the Tesseract. By the time the movie opens, they have a dedicated lab with complex machinery, and the cube itself is aimed at what looks like a landing platform/gate installation. This platform even has some shielding apparatus and (IIRC) a seat or chair of some kind. It was even a happy coincidence that Loki arrived ''on'' the platform when he opened the portal remotely. But nothing in the ''[[Captain America]]'' film suggests that the Tesseract is anything but a cosmic power supply (the only witness to its teleportation abilities was frozen for 70 years, he probably didn't know what was happening, and the Pegasus lab was already in place and experimenting by the time he was thawed.) So if the installation ''was'' indeed a gate platform, when did SHIELD learn that it could be used to create wormholes, and were they already planning to send an expeditionary force through them?
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*** It's unlikely the Red Skull saw no other use for the tesseract than a power source. More likely he just didn't have the tech in the 1940s to do anything but extract and store energy from it.
 
* While we're on the topic of the Tesseract, something's been bothering me since the ''[[Captain America]]'' movie. [[Red Skull|Ol' Reddie]] calls it "Odin's crown jewel," and we do know from ''[[Thor (Filmfilm)|Thor]]'' that the Aesir have been to northern Europe many times before and so Odin probably used a cube in view of the locals. But isn't it odd that Odin would leave such a valuable trinket on Earth, presumably after a Jotun incursion, and forget about it? Now, in the comic books, the Cosmic Containment Units are neither the creation of Asgard, nor exclusive to them. Maybe the same applies to the movies, and maybe the Tesseract is one of many and isn't really Asgardian tech but just a tool the Asgardians are familiar with?
** I was under the impression that the people in the church in First Avenger were the descendants of the people Odin saved in Norway. Perhaps Odin left them the Tesseract for some undisclosed reason and it's been protected generation to generation.
** He didn't leave it there, he ''hid'' it there. Earth was the last place anyone who wanted a tesseract would go hunting for it.
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* Bruce Banner has a hairy chest the one time we see him with his shirt off, but the Hulk has no chest hair. Where did it go?
** I had the same question watching ''[[The Incredible Hulk (Filmfilm)|The Incredible Hulk]]'' when Banner had stubble.
** Actually, the Hulk does. Watched Avengers for the second time last night, and I distinctly remember noticing that his chest had hair during the fight in New York.
** Original poster here. I took a search for it myself during my rewatch of the movie, and it seems it's hard to see because Banner's hair is grey and as the Hulk's chest his chest has stretched so much. Couldn't spot any except for one shot, right before the Hulk smashes Loki.
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