My wife and I always converse about alignments (our last one was the Pirates of the Carribean)
But we are discussing the Avengers now.
Captain American = Lawful Good (I doubt there is any contention on this one)
Iron man = Chaotic Good (wife and I agree what do you think)
Hawk eye = Neutral good (not when he's mind controlled)
Black widow = Neutral
Hulk = Chaotic Neutral Banner = Neutral Good
Thor : we disagree on this one, my wife feels he's Lawful Good, But I see him as Neutral Good.
We Both Agree Loki is Lawful Evil.
Loki is a trickster god, so by definition he is chaotic. His plans regarding Midgard (and actions in general) make him evil. He has plans because he is relatively intelligent (you have to be to be a schemer)and very old (he is a god, remember).
I would peg Thor as chaotic good. His interest (and actions) regarding Midgard make him very different from your average Asgardian.
Agree with your other thoughts.
Pendagast, why do you think Hawkeye is good but Black WIdow is not? They both seem to be detached government agents to me, but heroic by the movie's end.
Pendagast, why do you think Hawkeye is good but Black WIdow is not? They both seem to be detached government agents to me, but heroic by the movie's end.Well, there was the mention in the movie to how Hawkeye went out of his way to bring Black Widow over to SHIELD instead of just killing her, even back when she was his enemy. Which is a showing of mercy certainly well above and beyond the call of just being a detached government agent. (And hence why Black Widow is so desperately loyal to him.) I'd agree with Neutral Good the whole way for him.
That was all a ruse that she used to get information; we can't know if anything she said in that part of the movie was true at all, considering her actions afterward :P
With Thor and Loki, Thor is chaotic and is (somewhat) selfless, so he's good. Loki is self-serving, so he's evil. Comic book character Loki in his movie form (I never read the comics) is Lawful - he has machinations, he sticks to them, and he has a "boss"; he's a megalomaniac who only wants things for himself, but sticks to his plans. In Asatru (the Norse religion), Loki is a trickster, and is Chaotic Neutral, because he has committed acts of kindness as well as maliciousness, but he's always a proponent of freedom.
Calling comic movie version Loki a "trickster" is you mixing real life with comic lore, when they are two VERY different characters :)
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I'm not sure alignment really works well for the Avengers.
Captain America, per his own movie, is idealistic and full of cool qualities, like not liking bullies and repeatedly punching Hitler in the face and whatever. The Avengers interpretation of Cap seems very much disheartened, taking the 'man out of time' a step too far, IMO, and making him seem equal parts beaten down and given up on the world (isn't the flag out of fashion?) and just following orders like a good zombie-dog-anachronism. The structure of the Avengers movie didn't give Cap a particularly stirring or ennobling scene (and some of that might be blamed on Joss, who doesn't always 'get' the heroism thing), and he, IMO, goes from defeatist Cap to 'following orders' Cap, with no real heroic arc or 'oh yeah!' moment. I don't blame Cap for that, 'though. He could still retain a good alignment from his own movie, and just have been really, really depressed (PTSD from hell!) in the Avengers movie, resulting in a flat affect.
Thor is *marginally* concerned with the 'greater good,' but not enough to do anything about it, other than sit in Asgard and comment to the other Asgardians about them not doing much for the humans. He's 'gooder' than the rest of the Asgardians, maybe (at least from a human perspective!), or, at least, more concerned about the rest of the non-Asgardian universe, but he's hardly a saint. He could be Chaotic Good or Neutral Good, by the end of his first movie, although, as of the time of the attack on the frost giants, he probably better fit in the vein of Chaotic Neutral. Still, I'm leery of 'got the hots for Natalie Portman and decided that humans don't all suck' as justification for giving him a good alignment...
The Black Widow and Hawkeye are *both* 'master assassins,' and neither of them has much of a quibble about what they do. The Black Widow has fairly recently switched over to only killing folk for the not-entirely-bad-people of SHIELD, but she's still not exactly Mother Theresa. (And, for all that Hawkeye has always killed who he was told to kill, and not been all rogue agent like Natasha, he doesn't even *pretend* to have any concern about wiping any red from his ledger.) Both seem to flirt between hard-nosed pragmatic Neutral Evil and Neutral, depending on how much they have sold themselves on the load of bull that they are 'assassins for the greater good.' ('Tasha seems very clearly not to have fallen for that line, but Clint may still be nibbling at that hook.)
Tony has to be browbeaten into going into the clean energy business by Pepper, and is as strongly motivated by showing off, as anything else. He's idealistic, when it's *cool* to be idealistic, and cold-bloodedly practical when the cameras aren't on him. He's very much a showman, and his persona seems tailored to whatever audience he's performing for. Anyone who ticks off 'philanthropist' on his bullet-point list of reasons why he's friggin' awesome is not in it for the good karma...
Bruce is living in hiding, and working as a medical doctor, while avoiding any situation in which he might cause harm. Of the characters in the movie, he's probably the 'goodest' of them all, and the only one I wouldn't hesitate to peg with a good alignment, in his case, Neutral Good. Like any character, good or otherwise, Bruce has got some complex motivations, such as a dislike of losing control, that would exist whether or not the Hulk was a rampaging force for destruction or a benevolent force of good, but he seems to have dedicated the shambles of his life to helping others, unlike Tony, who needs to be guided (by Pepper) into dedicating a small percentage of his resources to improving the world around him (as opposed to defending his own interests, which is more what he was doing in his own movies).
Hulk is Chaotic Neutral at best.
He just wants to wreck s$#& for the most part, and he doesn't care who. Maybe even Chaotic Evil working with the "good guys" because there's more s*~* to wreck when he's on their side.
Tony has to be browbeaten into going into the clean energy business by Pepper, and is as strongly motivated by showing off, as anything else. He's idealistic, when it's *cool* to be idealistic, and cold-bloodedly practical when the cameras aren't on him. He's very much a showman, and his persona seems tailored to whatever audience he's performing for. Anyone who ticks off 'philanthropist' on his bullet-point list of reasons why he's friggin' awesome is not in it for the good karma...
Except that we know from his own movies, which are part of the same continuity, that Iron Man very much is in it for his own atonement after years of producing weaponry and not really caring where they ended up.
Pegging Hawkeye as NG probably has a lot more to do with his main comic book continuity than anything specifically from the Avengers movie, in which his is more of a cypher, although CG might be an even better match given his trouble with authority figures (particularly Cap).
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Pegging Hawkeye as NG probably has a lot more to do with his main comic book continuity than anything specifically from the Avengers movie, in which his is more of a cypher, although CG might be an even better match given his trouble with authority figures (particularly Cap).
Comic book Hawkeye is totally Chaotic Good, IMO. His work with the Thunderbolts back during the Busiek run, all about redemption for former villains (mirroring his own redemption from an oh-so-brief criminal career, as part of 'Cap's Kooky Quartet' with Wanda and Pietro), really cemented that trait.
Even when people makes mistakes, comic book Clint tries to see the best in them, remembering his own mistakes, but he flies by the seat of his pants and never follows the rules, even being willing to cheat the Grandmaster when the stake is the fate of the entire Earth!
But movie Hawkeye borrows more from Ultimate Hawkeye than 616 Hawkeye. Heck, in the Ultimates-verse, Captain America is *literally* portrayed as a 'jack-booted thug' who believes that might makes right and is a 'good soldier' who will beat up and imprison his own allies on orders from above. All part of the Ultimates authors stated intent to 'deconstruct' the very concept of heroism.
Having your superhero movie characters borrow from the inspiration of writers whose design intent is to 'prove' that the concept of heroism or heroes (compassion, forgiveness, justice, other hippy Jesus stuff that's mockworthy today) is inherently flawed and naive, makes for a potentially great action movie, but not much of a 'superhero' movie, since you get the super, but not the hero.
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Having your superhero movie characters borrow from the inspiration of writers whose design intent is to 'prove' that the concept of heroism or heroes (compassion, forgiveness, justice, other hippy Jesus stuff that's mockworthy today) is inherently flawed and naive, makes for a potentially great action movie, but not much of a 'superhero' movie, since you get the super, but not the hero.
Thanks for perfectly summing up everything that turned me off of the Ultimate line. (and sadly a huge part of what's turned me off of the modern Marvel(and DC) universes)
But movie Hawkeye borrows more from Ultimate Hawkeye than 616 Hawkeye. Heck, in the Ultimates-verse, Captain America is *literally* portrayed as a 'jack-booted thug' who believes that might makes right and is a 'good soldier' who will beat up and imprison his own allies on orders from above. All part of the Ultimates authors stated intent to 'deconstruct' the very concept of heroism.
Or reconstruct him without the filter of the 1960s, generally anti-establishment Marvel writers. The Cap you see in the main continuity was only out of circulation about 20 years, and so lived through the disillusionment of Vietnam, all seen through the eyes of the Marvel bullpen. I was reminded of that when reading through some Avengers comics from the last 10 years or so. Cap was a major proponent of NOT executing the Supreme Intelligence for its genocidal murder of billions of Kree, something that I don't think would have come out of a Captain America more closely tied to his WWII experiences. In fact, I found it rather jarring until I thought about how he had developed over the years. The Ultimates Cap is brought much more directly from the WWII battlefield and I think the Ultimates pegged that Cap pretty well. He's rougher and harsher and reflects a time when punching someone out was a more accepted norm, but he's no jack-booted thug.