Trailer for The Avengers - first "real" one

[kirke_novak]

We still don't know who the enemy is (my money on Skrulls), I don't believe it's Loki
I already ship Natasha/Loki
Steve has a gun, all is right with the world
Don't like how they just attached Hulk at the end - is he in the film for just 3 seconds?

Comments

[terra]

But Hawkeye isn't a SHIELD agent in 616, it's actually a pretty big departure from his origin that they made to slot him into the film. In Ultimates Hank and Jan were introduced as SHIELD scientists, too, iirc.

Carol Danvers also has heavy SHIELD associations in the Ultimate universe and a military/spy background in all versions that slots in pretty easy with the movieverse mood.

But they chose to use Hawkeye, circus archer ex-villain, and adapt him to suit the films, rather than a character who isn't a dude.

I mean, I admit it's partially due to Clint being a perennial, iconic member and also due to budget, but, still.

[valtyr]

Carol could have been brought in through Iron Man as an Air Force buddy of Rhodey's. :D

[filthysize]

As I clarified in my other reply above, it's less about what organization they belong to and more about WHAT they are.

There's a really, really big difference between "Here's one of our SHIELD agents, he's been trained as an expert marksman" and "Here's one of our SHIELD agents, she's boinking Ant-Man, so he gave her shrinking powers" or "Here's one of our SHIELD agents, she was in an accident involving an alien device, so now she can fly and have super-strength."

Those need (and I'd argue DESERVE) elaborate origins that are not as simple as "these guys are highly trained spies," which you can sideline Hawkeye and Widow as, given their powerset. I don't really want to see Jan or Carol show up just for the sake of showing up and they're nothing but regular ol' gun-toting SHIELD agents. Do you?

As for non-616 versions, in The Ultimates, Jan's origin is that she's a mutant born with her powers. I'm not sure they can go with mutants in the movie, since The X-Men franchise is by a different studio. Ultimate Carol isn't even Ms. Marvel, just a SHIELD director with no powers whatsoever. Again, I don't think fans are clamoring to see that.

[terra]

Ah, but Hawkeye and Black Widow both have origins outside SHIELD, themes the same way any other character does. I think the budget constraints and heavy espionage tones make them logical choices for this film, but don't mistake no powers for no origin story. And, in both Ultimate and 616 verse, Black Widow isn't just a normal human— she has enhancements similar to Steve Rogers, they just get to be left vague because no one will ever treat her story as something as worth telling as Steve's. You're shortchanging those two characters by treating them as a skillset while arguing that other characters deserve to be treated as more than just their powers.

However, I don't think you need an origin story to have a hero appear, and appear interesting, especially in a shared universe context that the Avengers film so bombastically presents itself as. Plenty of characters are introduced in comics years before we get their proper origin. Absolutely, Nick Fury could present Carol Danvers as codename Ms. Marvel, someone who flies and punches things hard and is a complete mystery to the rest of the team, but who obviously has her own motivations for doing things, that are hinted at in her actions but never explicitly spelt out. (Hell, maybe we don't even know her name is Carol until the end of the movie.) Why does she know so much about the Skrulls? That's set up for a sequel, etc.

And yeah, I'd love to see Jan or Carol show up as SHIELD agents, that would be preferable to me to a universe where they do not exist at all. Basically: the reason there are so few women in this film is because they chose to make it that way. Precedent helped, but they chose to follow that precedent, instead of conceiving of a way that would be less sausagefesty, instead of having a worse female to male ratio than the original 1964 Stan Lee era team.

[halloweenjack]

You know that Maria Hill is in the movie, right?

[terra]

Yeah, but I'm not sure what that has to do with my comment.