'Avengers': We Dissect the New Trailer

”Doctor, we need you to come in,” Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow says. But Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner doesn’t really like showing off his mean, green side. ”What if I say… no?” Banner asks, while Black Widow gives him a flirtatious smile. ”I’ll persuade you,” she says. Well, well, well! In THAT case! But… what she meant by ”persuade” is that there are a dozen agents outside his shack with automatic weapons.

Still haven’t seen the trailer? Click here to see the latest Avengers teaser.

”What are you asking me to do?” This is what Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is asking Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, apparently after being beaten into submission to S.H.I.E.L.D. by Iron Man and Captain America. We don’t hear what Fury says back, but I imagine it’s something like: ”Oh, you know… just jump on top of a flying jet, harness the power of lightning, and maybe hammer your evil brother into the ground with that big mallet of yours.”

Nobody likes a third wheel, right? That’s exactly the thought both of these guys are having after being brought on board for the Avengers team by Black Widow. Joking aside, this is an interesting meeting: Chris Evans’ Captain America is the ideal version of a super soldier, while Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner and the Hulk are what happens when that kind of experimentation goes wrong.

Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark flies to the top of his Manhattan skyscraper and lands on this platform, where a series of mechanical arms takes off his Iron Man suit while he walks inside. Couple of things: Isn’t he worried about something getting pinched by all this robotic gear coming on and off? And didn’t George Jetson have something similar to help him get dressed in the morning?

Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America square off against each other in the woods in this shot, which goes by without explanation in the trailer. Aren’t these guys supposed to be on the same team? Why is Iron Man kicking Thor through a tree, and why is Thor slamming his hammer on top of Captain America’s shield? From the way things look, they’re forcing Thor to cooperate with S.H.I.E.L.D. whether he wants to or not.

Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, Evans’ Captain America, and Johansson’s Black Widow are fully suited-up and ready for action. This shot reminds me a little of Reservoir Dogs, though. Anybody else hearing ”Little Green Bag”?

Loki is wearing… a tie? The way this scene plays, it looks like his is not only invading Earth, but kind of succeeding. We see him make a massive crowd of people kneel before him. If Loki’s attack is more the beginning than the climax of this film, it would explain why the team is called The Avengers and not The Defenders.

Scarlett Johansson seems to take an awful lot of punishment as Black Widow, who is one of the Avengers who doesn’t have any super abilities or equipment to help her. ”This is nothing we were ever trained for,” she tells Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, a sharpshooter who, like her, is just a human.

”Out of way! Out of way! Hulk missing first few minutes of Real Housewives!” Whatever is actually happening here, it’s obvious you do not want to run in front of the Hulk when bad things are going down.

Ouch. I don’t care if he is super strong, with ultra tough skin — it can not feel good to catch a flying alien motorcycle in the small of your back. Although it looks even worse for the creature flying the craft, I bet that leaves a mark on old Hulk.

At the end of the trailer, Iron Man says ”Guys, I’m bringing the party to you,” and flies around the corner of a skyscraper with this giant, mechanical eel chasing him. Here we see that machine — or another like it — blowing up real good… right over the heads of Thor, Captain America, and Black Widow.

There is a lot of falling in this trailer. Almost everybody plummets at one point or another, but this is one of the more memorable ones as Jeremy Renner’s sharpshooting archer Hawkeye slips backward off a ledge toward the Manhattan street below. He gets off one last shot as he goes, and let’s hope somebody catches him before he makes his own bullseye on the hood of a New York City cab.

There’s not much to see in this blurry screen grab, but these are a few of the soldiers helping Loki in his conquest of the planet Earth, and they definitely come from some other plane of existence. Aliens? Most likely — but the big question has been what kind they will be. The Marvel Universe has no small amount of extraterrestrials. From this image, though, smart money would be on the Skrull.

Thor is helping a wounded Captain America get back on his feet. I imagine their dialogue is something like: ”Hey, remember when I slammed my hammer down on your shield when we were fighting that time in the woods?… Sorry about that.” Or maybe: ”Hey, your whole face fits in the palm of my hand!”

As Iron Man tumbles to Earth, the Hulk leaps up and snatches him out of the air, bouncing off the side of a skyscraper to break both of their falls. In all seriousness, he seems to snowboard down the side of it while the façade crumbles.

”And HULLLLLL-EEE-UUUUUUUULK will always love YOOOOOUUUUU!”

THIS is the scene fans of these characters have been longing to see. Captain America, the Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Iron Man, and Thor all in one place, all in uniform, and ready to join forces for a common good. Though it’s not in the trailer, this sequence will feature them not just battling alongside each other, but actually joining their respective skills together.

Robert Downey Jr. has already joked that in a cameo in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk his Tony Stark mentions that he’s putting a team together, and then in Iron Man 2, he’s told he’s not part of the team. A line in The Avengers trailer attempts to smooth that over: ”I thought I didn’t qualify?” Stark says. ”Apparently I’m volatile, self-obsessed, and don’t play well with others.”

What would you call this? A giant metal dragon? A mechanical alien eel? Whatever the case — or whatever is inside — Iron Man is a tiny piece of bait luring it around the corner of a building toward the Avengers, who are looking up from the street below. ”Guys, I’m bringing the party to you,” Stark says.

Not only do we get a close look at Iron Man’s new Mark 7 armor, but in the sequence where the suit is removed, we also get a peek under the hood.

One of the other new additions to the Marvel movie universe is How I Met Your Mother actress Cobie Smulders as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill, seen here with Clark Gregg’s long-suffering S.H.I.E.L.D. bureaucrat Phil Coulson. She is the right-hand woman to Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, but otherwise her exact role in the story has been kept hush-hush. Like Hawkeye and Black Widow, she’s just a regular human — but maybe she needs a cool nickname?

Still haven’t seen the trailer? Click here to see the latest Avengers teaser.