AVENGERS: Grade, Reviews, Discuss, DVD & Sequel **SPOILERS**

[Mr Light]

Well, the Red Skull had the Cosmic Cube but all he could do was make weapons out of it rather than remake creation. Then when SHIELD got it they couldn't do much with it, because they were working with the level of technological advancement. But I would imagine the study of it is what enabled their other breakthroughs like getting the Helicarrier to work. Maybe getting their hands on the Cube and the Destroyer led to a common breakthrough.

[davejames]

CaptainCanada wrote:

---

When you think about it, nothing he sees here is really that much more advanced than all the retro sci-fi gadgets HYDRA had in his movie's version of World War II. Less advanced, in some ways, since everybody is still using bullets instead of lasers.

Yeah I would have liked to have seen more of his reactions to the modern world too. Not so much with regard to technology, but just the radically different society and culture he now finds himself in.

I'm sure we'll get a lot of that in the Cap sequel, but I really think it would have given him more dimension in this movie as well. Because as is, it kinda feels like he's just along for the ride.

[The Borgified Corpse]

Trekker4747 wrote:

---

Which is odd, since Howard Stark recovered the Tesseract you'd think SHIELD, Stark Industries or the US Government would have been able to figure out how it works and duplicate Red Skull's work considering they had 70 years to do it in.

Which is why I think introducing the Asgardian technology in CA was sort of a mistake as for the MCU it sort of muddies things a bit when you scrutinize them. Inside of a year SHIELD is able to take the Asgardian Destroyer, reverse-engineer it and not only duplicate this wildly different technology but also militarize it in comparison to the original. But in 70 years they couldn't take the Tesseract and make radically new technology or harness it's power to make ultimate free energy when they've already got their hands on Hydra's weapons and research as well as have the most brilliant minds in the world working with them on it? Including Howard Stark and eventually Bruce Banner, Tony Stark and Erik Selvig.

Sort of seems odd.

Not to mention it seemed like Dr. Zola was cooperating with the SSR, and he seemed to be the real mastermind behind Hydra's technology.

But then, I'm always bemused by scientists in the Marvel movies refusing to write anything down or allow others to build on their work. It seems like Tony Stark won't allow anyone else access to his research on miniature Arc Reactors. Howard Stark discovered a band new element but seemingly wrote no notes on it. He only left cryptic clues disguised in the model of the Stark Expo. Strangest of all, the Army didn't insist that Dr. Erskine share the formula for the super soldier serum with the rest of the SSR?

Trekker4747 wrote:

---

Rogers, "sort-of" makes a "comment" on modern technology. Fury "bets" Rogers he hasn't seen everything when he gives him the mission dossier. On the bridge after the Helicarrier achieves flight (and is cloaked) Rogers walks by Fury and subtly hands him a $10 bill. (Also looked to be a vintage $10 bill, too.)

No, it was definately a newer $10 bill. It had that slight reddish tinge that the new ones have.

Admiral James Kirk wrote:

---

Who wouldn't want to see Avengers vs. X-Men?

Me. With all of the fear and antagonism towards superpowered mutants in the X-Men universe, I just don't think they would fit in with the rest of the Marvel superheroes. However, I would like to see Spider-Man or Daredevil join the Avengers.

46379.1 wrote:

---

Apparently he didn't filmed a single word from that original screenplay.

Anyone know how his plot was different?

USS Mariner wrote:

---

For Thor 2, "PUT ON THE DAMN HELMET!"

Supposedly, the helmet is REALLY uncomfortable.

[CaptainCanada]

The Borgified Corpse wrote:

---

Strangest of all, the Army didn't insist that Dr. Erskine share the formula for the super soldier serum with the rest of the SSR?

Or what? They need Erskine's cooperation; he's got most of the cards there.

[Trekker4747]

Eh, I can buy that even with the notes and research maybe only "certain people" can make these things work. Dr. Erskine may have "shared the formula" but it could also be like when your grandmother bakes her famous cookies. There's more going on there than the numbers on a piece of paper and it takes a special touch, nuances and being able to judge the relative humidity to determine how much flour is really needed.

Erskine just had the "knack" for making it work and it was something no one else was able to duplicate even with the formula and H. Stark's technology.

And H. Stark seemed to purposefully hide the secret to the new element to revolutionize the arc-reactor specifically as a legacy for his son to take on.

So, I can see how specific people's techniques and such aren't able to be duplicated or recreated but here we've got SHIELD/the US Government and H. Stark with the Tesseract and all of Hydra's weapons and they can't figure out what to do with it over the course of 70 years?

(I guess to be fair, the Hydra factory was destroyed in the process which may go along the same thing that happened with Erskine and H. Stark and the new element. It was a missing piece to a puzzle and it couldn't be duplicated.)

[Skywalker]

In the official tie-in comics, Erskine tells Phillips that the formula for the serum exists only in his head. He never wrote it down so that others wouldn't misuse it. That's why nobody's ever managed to successfully duplicate it after Erskine's death.

I agree that it seems odd how the SSR/SHIELD never cracked the Tesseract despite having it for seventy years. Maybe it would have been better if the Tesseract had been found more recently.

[Mike Farley]

The movie implies that they didn't start weaponizing the Cube until the Asgardian incursion the year before, but that doesn't explain why they hadn't made ANY progress figuring out how it worked.

[Methos]

makes sense to me...

No offence to any of the genius guys working for SHIELD, but the Tesseract is beyond human technology, seriously beyond... the Red Skull had some success leaching power from it, but that's about it... and the SHIELD techs managed to leach power from it... at least they got to the level where they understood it was alive lol

The Tesseract is seriously high level technology, in the comics it's called the Cosmic Cube... and even the geniuses in the comics don't fully understand the thing...

in 70 years, learning it is alive and how to leach energy from it without blowing a building up, i'd call that respectful progress given how advanced the Tesseract actually is...

M

[Trekker4747]

How did the Tesseract end up on Earth anyway? In CA Red Skull says something like it was the "crown jewel of Odin's treasure room" and at the end of The Avengers it seems heavily implied its power is beyond what Humans should have access too and Thor takes it back to Asgard.

What? Did Odin get word of the trouble Loki was going to cause with it, snap his fingers, and say "Oh, damn! The Tesseract! I remember now I left it on Earth a few millennia ago." then he does a dunce-slap to his own head and says, "Man, if my head wasn't screwed on right... Well, it's a good thing it doesn't harness the power to destroy an entire planet or a good chunk of the universe or anything like that."

in 70 years, learning it is alive and how to leach energy from it without blowing a building up, i'd call that respectful progress given how advanced the Tesseract actually is...

Put, again, Red Skull and his little buddy are able to harness some of its power and make remarkable weaponry out of it using limited 1940s technology during a time of war when rare and valuable materials were hard to come by for the Axis (and by extension I'd assume Hydra.)

[Methos]

and the SHIELD techies managed to take that a few dozen steps further and turn the Hydra style weapons into Weapons of Mass Destruction...

That's like turning a 9mm into an atomic bomb...

In other words, they managed to pull energy from the tesseract magnitudes above anything Hydra had ever achieved... reasonable progress in the time given, assuming half the time was also spent on researching it's use for full clean energy, as Fury suggested...

M

[Data Holmes]

The Nazis also had a knack for advancing technology... Nearly every current "high tech" technology we have, both militarily as well as civilian, can be directly linked to german advancements of science, engineering, and medical understanding made during WWII. It's a dark reality that most don't like to even think about, let alone acknowledge, that modern society is what it is because of them.

[Gov Kodos]

I'd say it would be more accurate to say Germany was in the forefront of a lot of technologies and scientific research before the Nazi's came along. Their imposing ideological purity on universities and research centers as well as everything else led to a flight of brilliant minds from Germany (Einstein being one of the most famed) before the war, and a further plundering of researchers like Von Braun after which made a vast hobbling of the country's research abilities. The Nazi's co-opted many fields and did more to damage German intellectual power than they ever created.

[Caliburn24]

The Nazis weren't exactly ahead in the sciences for the most part. But their procurement methods combined with their growing desperation allowed them to field technologically weapons and equipment faster. The first jet engine was British, the Christie suspension was American, sloped armor Russian etc. Hitler's fascination with wonder weapons gave him the desire to dump a lot of resources into their development, but most of that was not into the basic science, it was aimed at getting a working weapon system into the field.

Other than perhaps rocketry I can't think of one area where the Nazis had a sizable purely technological advantage.

[Hyperspace05]

I finally saw this (the last person?) - My grade would be an A-.

I actually enjoyed the first half of the film the most... Everything in NY felt kind of flat in comparison to the excellent team build up.

My biggest issues:
- The CG aliens. Ugh. All the hand to hand fights looked quite off, like the aliens had no mass at all. Like they were added in post. (Hmm) The biggest offender was the Cap on top of the cop car fighting off two aliens. Yikes.
- Hulk was a bit too well-behaved in the fight - especially near the end, where they stare down Loki.

Other than that, I loved it.

[Derishton]

I think you guys are being mean to Arnim Zola. Maybe he's just smarter than everybody else when it comes to Tesseracts.