The Avengers (2012) - 14 questions

Question: As Banner is transforming into the Hulk and Romanoff is pinned, she says, "I swear on my life I will get you out of this..." But rather than comfort Banner, it seems that this promise is finally what sends him over the edge, prompting him to snarl the question, "Your life?" Why would Romanoff's promise affect him so much? Or am I simply over-analyzing?

Answer: It is not Romanoff's promise that sets him off. Banner is already too far gone from the attack to be comforted.

Question: Bruce Banner brings up at one point what SHIELD is doing in the energy business. That is actually a good question. If they want to use the Tesseract to build weapons, why would they spend millions of dollars and their top researchers on energy?

Answer: Because the Tesseract is a powerful energy source and only by understanding that energy can they hope to harness it to create the weapons that they need. And there are other applications other than weapons. For example, SHIELD's Helicarrier clearly requires an insane amount of power to keep running; mastering the Tesseract and the potentially unlimited power it provides could give them a whole new range of options there. Likewise their ground installations, vehicles, equipment, all of these need power too. There are plenty of good reasons why SHIELD would look into non-weapon-based uses for the Tesseract's energies.

Question: How is Hulk a total mayhem on the aircraft carrier, almost killing Romanoff, but at the end he is acting as a team member? Banner did reveal his secret how to control not turning into Hulk, but not how to control Hulk himself...

Answer: During the end sequence of The Incredible Hulk Banner discovers that he can aim the Hulk in the right direction, give it a goal, which he uses to defeat the Abomination in that film. Key to that appears to be willingly accepting the transformation into the Hulk, which he does by choosing to jump from the helicopter. On the Helicarrier, Banner doesn't want to transform, it's caught him by surprise, he's fighting it, which is why it takes ages, is seemingly very painful and, as an involuntary change, the Hulk is out of control. In the final battle, Banner chooses to make the transformation, to "suit up", as it were, and thus the change is swift, painless and results in the cooperative Hulk capable of working with the others towards a goal.

Question: Loki is pacing in the prison on the helicarrier and just as he says "there aren't many people who can sneak up on me" Natasha is shown. In that shot half of her outfit is tan. at first i thought it was Loki's reflection in the glass but he isn't wearing anything tan. Can someone explain what's going on to me?

Answer: The cell has large glass windows connected by large white supports. It is one of these supports that you see dimly reflected against her black outfit which, along with the lighting, creates the effect that you describe.

Question: In the beginning of "Thor", the battle between Odin's army and Laufey's army happened in Norway. In (Captain America) the Tesseract was found in Norway during World War II. Do you think there is a connection ?

Answer: The Tesseract is described in Captain America as being "the jewel of Odin's treasure room", so clearly it has significant links to the Asgardians, making it perfectly reasonable that it was located in Norway. Whether its presence there is directly linked to the battle in some way is unknown.

Question: In the scene after the credits, what did the other mean when he said "To challenge them is to court death" ??

Answer: It's pretty straightforward. If you try to take on humanity, you risk death by doing so, as they've shown themselves to be quite capable of defending themselves.

Question: How did Thor know where Loki was after he was ejected from the Helicarrier?

Answer: Not hard. Go to where all the action is. Like that big hole in the sky caused by a portal.

Question: Was Natalie Portman ever approached to reprise her role as Jane Foster (from Thor) for this film?

Answer: As she was extremely pregnant at the time of shooting, which would have been impossible to hide, it's likely that her participation was never considered seriously. Given the desire to get the film out on their chosen release date, there would have been no question of delaying shooting to include her in what could only have been a minor supporting role at most.

Question: Thor asks Loki who showed him the true power of the Tesseract. Then, he gets interrupted by Iron Man. But when Captain America asks Thor about Loki's plan, he knows exactly who is coming and why. Did we miss something? Did Thor already know? Or is he just guessing with a hundred percent accuracy?

Answer: Odin knew about the army. It is why he used the dark powers to send Thor to earth (a very difficult task according to mythology). Thor was probably referring to Thanos, although we don't find out about his role until the end of the movie.

Question: We all know that movie guns tend to have outrageous amounts of ammunition, but what about movie quivers? In the big battle Hawkeye is knocking out arrow-ey death all over the place, and most of the time his quiver seems to be full. Up until it's totally empty of course. So just how many arrows does that thing carry, and how many arrows did he shoot in the movie?

Answer: The arrows in Hawkeye's quiver are very tightly packed - promotional shots of scenes immediately prior to the final battle seem to suggest that he has several dozen arrows in there. The number does visibly decrease as the battle progresses, although the initial tight packing makes it less easy to tell. A number of the shots he takes are also at close range, allowing him to potentially retrieve the arrows for re-use - it's only once he's atop the building, mostly sniping at long range, that he finally runs out. As for precisely how many arrows he fires in the course of the movie, watch it and count 'em.

Question: **SPOILER** When Loki kills Agent Coulson, Coulson has his Captain America cards in his pocket but later Maria tells Fury something about the cards being in a locker. Did I understand that right? And how and why were the cards in Coulson's pocket?

Answer: Coulson never had the cards in his pocket. They were in fact in his locker all along. This was done by Fury to help motivate the remaining Avengers to work together and save the world!

Question: How exactly was Thor able to get back to Earth when the bifrost bridge was previously destroyed in his movie?

Answer: In the original "Thor" movie, Loki tells Thor that there are ways into Asgard other than the Bifrost. Then when Thor takes Loki from the transport and the two of them are alone, Loki says "How much dark energy did the Allfather have to use to conjure you here?". Odin used dark energy to open a wormhole to send Thor back to earth.

Question: What special "Something" Does Nick Fury use to pick the Cosmic Cube up at the beginning of the movie? All I saw was that he had on a glove. If my memory serves me correct, In Captain America it was said only people with special abilities could handle it, and even later in the The Avengers when Banner is moving the cube, He uses a gadget and he's the Hulk! Did I miss something?

Answer: The Red Skull claims that the Tesseract is only for superior beings, but it seems reasonably clear that this was mostly his ego talking. We see Arnim Zola and Erik Selvig experimenting with the cube, both of whom are highly intelligent, but otherwise quite unremarkable, and SHIELD has undoubtedly had many other scientists examine the Tesseract during their decades-long possession of it. Throughout the movies, the cube is generally handled using some sort of manipulator, rather than directly, regardless of who's got it at the time - even the Red Skull, despite his claims, generally carries it using a containment device. Fury is presumably using a glove that's been specifically designed to allow the wearer to pick up the Tesseract - given SHIELD's technology level, it's not unreasonable that they could have developed something like that.

Question: Between the events in The Incredible Hulk (2008) and The Avengers how did Bruce Banner end up in India when he was last in Canada? Did it have anything to do with what happened at the end of the Incredible Hulk movie?

Answer: Very probably. The moving around is just how he lives: He goes to some remote area where he won't be recognized, but either the Hulk comes out or someone tracks him down and he has to move again.