Admittedly, the Avengers cartoon has captured what makes Hawkeye such a great character. Renner is too much the overly-cool "Ultimate" Hawkeye, and it makes him rather dull by comparison. In all honesty, if they had to cut somebody to make room for a new Avenger next time, Hawkeye would top my list... and that surprises and kinda saddens me.




I liked that not only did the heroes get their own big moments, their iconic weapons did as well. Cap's shield deflecting the energy of Mjolnir, Iron Man's suit hitting "400%" capacity, and Hulk completely failing to lift Mjolnir.

And I will give credit to Hawkeye's automated quiver... that was pretty cool. I'm quite annoyed that Black Widow wears those bracelets and yet only uses tiny handguns in the big fight scenes. In all honesty, they looked pathetically inadequate, and how much cooler would it have been to fire widow's stings, gatling-gun style from the cartridges circling her wrists?




I do wish they had at least taken a page from Video Games, and thrown a few mid-level boss characters in there to add variety to the fight... Especially for Captain America, who was stuck on the ground. Even "Raiders of the Lost Arc" knew that after watching Indy punch out half of the Nazi army, you needed to put him up against a big, shirtless guy under a flying wing. Some visually larger alien monster officer or super-trooper for Cap to beat up in more of a struggle would have kept it from seeming like his part in the finale was lesser.





That was indeed a great set-up for that particular villain reveal... and it likely meant absolutely nothing to 95% of audiences. I admire that.

However, what I was alluding to, pre-spoilers, was actually the idea that Hawkeye filled the role of Loki's kick-ass henchman... Only, he was "cured" and changed sides before the final battle, which removed a big interest from the villain's side and left only the leader and cannon fodder.





I'd enjoy Ms. Marvel, although if they were going to use her I would have put Carol Danvers in Maria Hill's role. I think, however, there might be deleted scenes with Maria Hill, as from actor's statements I expected there to be more about her in the film... Samuel Jackson said multiple times that they don't see eye-to-eye, and that she's much more in the pocket of that shadowy commission... Yet I never really saw evidence of this in the final film.

I think the Wasp would be a great addition, although apparently Whedon tried to work her in with earlier scripts and just couldn't get it to work, so she was cut. I'll be curious to see if they ever get Ant-man off the ground and introduce Pym and her.

On the subject of future Avengers, I've heard the repeated, completely-baseless theory that Agent Coulson was going to end up being the Vision... and I actually wouldn't mind that having some truth to it now that they've apparently killed him (although I found the scene somewhat suspicious.) I've never felt you needed Simon Williams to make the Vision work, the interesting thing about him in that regards is just the question of whether he's his own man or just a copy of another. Basing his brain waves off of Coulson connects the audience and the Avengers to that question in an emotional way, without having to introduce and kill off Williams (a character that Whedon has said he'll never add to the team anyway.)




I was really hoping for a hint that the mansion was going to be introduced at the end... More as a place where they could get together out from under SHIELD's eye.

I also was checking all of the names in the video reports at the end, but I didn't see any that I recognized. Unfortunately, Gyrich might not be available... Fox used him (and killed him) in the first X-men movie. If they actually have a role planned out for her, I'm guessing Hill was introduced so that she could supply that kind of antagonism.




I liked that they established that none of the big 4 trust SHIELD, making it feel less like they're some SHIELD task force.