#chitauri

>SPOILERS AHEAD<

It's been a while since I posted my last review (TLDR I now have a job). So on my week off, I decided to do a lil bit of catching up. And now dear GOD it's time to watch (and mayhap cringe) at The Avengers. Let's dive right in.

OK so first and foremost, what the FUCK are they doing to the Tesseract?? Secondly, how the FUCK is Loki alive??? I mean, he's a god and Asgardians are thought to be immortal, but holy shit.

For the "Robin Scherbatsky" comment at the end of my review on Captain America, Smulders played Agent Maria Hill. She was kind of a badass, but I have no fucking idea how the fuck she survived the cave collapsing around her in the beginning.

The movie was fast-paced and action-packed, just the way I like them. Every character was snarky and lovable... except for Thor (for the most part). I am not a huge fan of Thor. Not just the movie apparently; the whole character of Thor. His "he's adopted" line was GOLD, but his character was otherwise pretty dull. Yes, it was fascinating to watch him and Iron Man get in a fight and really cool to watch him light the Empire State Building up. Otherwise, anything with Thor was lowkey dull.

Loki, however, made for an entertaining villain. Him destroying the car was very amusing. I turned to my boyfriend and said "Damn, Loki really just said fuck the police" and he visibly cringed at my comment. Loki was very snarky and egotistical and amusing. The SFX for his armor were amazing.

Speaking of SFX... the Chitauri look absolutely terrifying, though I'm mad at their name. My phone kept auto-correcting them to "chianti" as I was taking notes, which is NOT the same thing. Maybe the Chitauri drink chianti, who knows? Chianti-Chitauri mix-ups aside (try saying THAT five times fast), there were so many tense scenes and amazing lines and funny moments throughout the film.

OK, so, Tony Stark honestly should've been named Tony Snark because good LORD, that man knows how to fit in some great one-liners. He's witty and a lot more lovable than he was in Iron Man (2008). My favorite moment of his was either when he Jonah-ed the Chitauri ship or when he flew the nuke to the Chitauri. I was so scared for him and so glad when he woke up. And him adrenalized talking about shawarma... I was giggling like a maniac.

Hawkeye... I felt so bad for the poor guy in the beginning, so when he came back around I was cheering like crazy. He had some insane shots and funny moments, and God DAMN him shooting the Chitauri blind was GORGEOUS. And him shooting at Loki with the arrow... I fucking loved watching Loki catching it and then promptly getting exploded. He's an insane shot and an entertaining watch.

And Widow? WHAT. A. BADASS. I love her so much. Her beating the shit out of some Russian dudes while Coulson was on the phone was just hilarious. She outwitted Loki so beautifully that I was totally blown away. I lowkey ship her and Hawkeye TBH, but I suppose you never know with the MCU. Either way, she was an absolute unit. Her using Cap's shield to commandeer a Chitauri ship... what a moment!

TBH, my favorite hero is probably Cap. He's just... a guy. The $10 scenes between him and Fury were AMAZING. Him silently handing Fury the money was personally the funniest moment in the film. I will say, however, Cap's pre-costume outfit was ATROCIOUS. A plaid shirt with tweed pants?? WTF???? He saved so many civilians and showed down the cops when they challenged him in the process. The "Hulk? Smash." line was gold, and him using his shield to refract Iron Man's beam... what a genius idea. Cap is 100% one of my favorite characters in the MCU thus far.

My other candidate for favorite hero is the Hulk. Ho. Lee. Fuck. He's not quite as witty as Iron Man or as badass as Widow, but he seems very well-rounded overall. Him beating the shit out of Loki was one of my favorite moments by far, and him saving Iron Man had me in tears. I'd honestly forgotten all about him by that point. My notes for the Hulk saving Iron Man scene were as follows:

omg iron man sending the nuke to the chianti??? (fuck you autocorrect) TONY NOOOOO NUKE EM ALL BUT NOOOOO TONY YES HULLKKKKKK YESSSSSSSSSS TONY?!?! NO YESSS HULK I LOVE YOU please tell me nobody kissed me lmao

So yeah, Hulk is 100% in the A-tier of characters, possibly even S tier. I really need to make a tierlist now, huh?

Nick Fury has made his way into my higher-tier characters as well. Him telling the council that they made a stupid-ass decision made me cackle like a damn hyena. Him telling the Avengers about Coulson's cards had me broken up, but Hill calling him on his BS made me understand his motivation to assemble the Avengers. He's a bit crazy, pretty smart, and HELA (see what I did there with the Asgardian joke?!?!) entertaining.

The ending was something I should've predicted - a hidden safety in the device. It's an easily guessed plot "twist," but I genuinely didn't expect it. And Stark tower being Avengers tower... I should've seen THAT coming but it was still cool either way.

I'm adding a new segment just before my rating called "Tidbits in Rivals" for when I recognize a power, weapon, or random line that the say in the game. Here they are:

Loki's scepter

Loki's clones & stealth abilities

The "Puny God" achievement (I predicted the line before my boyfriend, and he's seen the film before)

Hawkeye/Black Widow having a team-up for reasons other than being snipers

Iron Man missiles

On the seventh day since the White Event, General Ross launched his counter-attack.

At dawn, Abomination was released from his restraints and travelled north from the base the Jotunns had just destroyed. Two hundred Marines followed the monster at a safe distance, ostensibly to provide support. The company proceeded without any resistance until they reached the outskirts of Brooklyn.

Chitauri aircraft rose over the rooftops, weapons trained on the advancing infantry. The Abomination simply glared at them, standing still to allow the Marines to come to a halt behind him. Through his earpiece came a single word of command from the General:

“Engage.”

Abomination let out a deafening roar and leapt fifty feet, straight into the alien guard. The Marines opened fire, bullets clattering against Chitauri plate armour. As predicted, the bellows of the Abomination and the sounds of gunfire echoed across the ruined borough. More airborne Chitauri raced to the scene. Abomination hurled one of their fallen chariots at the newcomers and raised a gigantic fist in challenge. All about him the soldiers cheered and chanted, then followed their monstrous leader as he charged towards the enemy.

To the North-West, War Machine observed the skirmish from the air. Concealed by cloud cover, Colonel Rhodes counted the thermal readings of ground units sprinting across the city to the disturbance in Brooklyn. He turned his attention to their aerial units. Gradually more and more chariots took to the air as their infantry struggled to push back Blomsky’s attacks. From the wreckage of Madison Square Garden, the suit’s scanners picked up one of their giant flying beasts, the Leviathans, stirring. It screeched once, then rose through the collapsed stadium roof and into the sky.

“Leviathan in the air, General.” said Rhodes.

“Copy that, Colonel. You are clear to engage.”

“You with me, J?”

“Always, Colonel.” answered J.A.R.V.I.S.

“Then blast it.”

As the War Machine suit broke from the clouds, the P.A. system blares a single note, the growl of an electric guitar. A second later, Ozzy Osbourne’s robotic vocals filled the sky over New York City.

“I AM IRON MAN.”

The Leviathan changes its course at the sound of the music overhead. Chitauri steer their chariots to follow the beast instead of crossing the river to Brooklyn. The tiny figure of War Machine opens fire on the ascending aliens, shooting indiscriminately. From a remote location, General Ross issues another command.

“Hammer. Send them in.”

From a control room beneath the Pentagon, Justin Hammer excitedly types the keyboard on his government issued laptop. At the same time, a fleet of one hundred Hammer Drones descend from the clouds to support Rhodes in the air. The same models that had debuted at Stark Expo 2010, now encrypted with the strictest firewalls and constructed using all the resources and manpower the U.S. military could supply.

The skies above New York erupted into a dogfight. War Machine keeping the pressure on the Leviathan as the drones’ charge at the astonished Chitauri, ill-prepared for an ambush from above. With enemy forces now engaged on two fronts, Ross initiated the final stage of Operation: Thunderbolt.

A stealth Quinjet under full cloak flies in amid the tumult. It hovered silently around Manhattan before finding a safe landing zone not far from the former site of Times Square. Down the ramp emerges a small squad of black ops agents with Ghost and Yellowjacket front and center. Their mission is simple: kill Loki.

The landscape of New York had changed dramatically since the Battle of New York. Not only a burned and bombed out warzone, glaciers and pillars of ice had sprung up from the shattered buildings, erected by the army of Jotunnheim. The Chitauri had salvaged what they could from the rubble and fortified key areas of Manhattan for defence and surveillance. Bridges of ice stretched across the Hudson to allow faster traversal for ground troops. And the Jotunns had also unleashed some of their own beasts of war, massive reptilian monsters with sweeping horns and mace-like tails. Impossible conditions for even the most experienced infiltrators.

Which was why this unit boasted two enhanced individuals who disappear and reappear at will.

Ghost used her invisibility powers to completely cloak the group and the Yellowjacket suit allowed the wearer to shrink on command. The alien ground patrols were unaware of their presence until it was too late. As battles raged south of their location and in the skies above them, the covert division of the Thunderbolts ventured deeper behind enemy lines. After interrogating eight Chitauri and one Frost Giant, they finally had a clear idea of Loki’s whereabouts.

Before the attack had begun, Loki had been seen going into an ice mound where the Empire State Building had stood, without any guard.  At the highest point of this frozen mound, the proverbial tip of the iceberg, was a small, hollowed out ice chamber. In that chamber, perfectly frozen behind a wall of ice, was Thor. Unwilling to risk healing his brother, but not daring to murder him, Loki ordered the Jotunns to preserve his body within the ice, alive but in stasis, just as Steve Rogers had been. Loki would visit his brother once a week.

The team infiltrated the mound and ascended a winding staircase. At the top, standing underneath a makeshift doorway was the horned figure of Loki, his green-draped back to the trespassers. Eager to bring the war to an end, Ghost turns herself invisible and charged. Instead of tackling the god to the ground, Ghost passes through and rolled across the icy floor. The Loki had been an illusion. A decoy. The real Loki advanced from behind a wall of ice and skewered Ghost with the end of his sceptre. They tried to phase into their intangible state, but the Infinity Stone in Loki’s weapon overwhelmed their abilities. For the first time since the accident when she was a child, Ava Starr was unable to phase. As she choked on blood, Loki released the sceptre from his attacker’s chest and dropped the body to the floor.

The rest of the squad opened fire from the staircase. Yellowjacket used the gunfire as cover to shrink in size and hopefully get close enough to fire a stinger blast in Loki’s eye. With a wave of his left hand, Loki cast a spell that froze the bullets and Yellowjacket in mid-air. The God of Mischief, incensed at how close his enemies had come, fired a volley of blasts from his sceptre. 

The firefight was intense, but short-lived. A portion of the ice-wall had been blown out by Loki’s blasts. The last of General Ross’s would-be assassins staggered backwards and fell through the hole. Loki walked to the precipice and watched him fall.

In that moment, a single high-calibre sniper round ricocheted off one of the horns on Loki’s helm.

From the husk of an apartment building not far away, at the remains of a window frame, the Winter Soldier reloaded his rifle.

When Thaddeus Ross announced his plans to modify the Avengers Initiative for wartime, the mission objective agreed by the President, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Joint Chiefs was neutralising Loki and liberate New York. However, unknown to Ross, the HYDRA contingent of the Security Council had their own objective for Operation: Thunderbolts; eliminate Loki at all costs, recapture the Tesseract and acquire his sceptre. To that end, HYDRA would use the entire battle as a smokescreen and deploy their deadliest asset the Winter Soldier, escorted into the city by Brock Rumlow’s STRIKE team as soon as Ghost and her team had boots on the ground.

Angrier than he had ever been in his life, Loki teleported from the ice mound to the STRIKE hideout. Within minutes, the wrathful god had slain all but two men. The Winter Soldier was the last to be subdued. After a drawn-out brawl that scaled the dilapidated building, Loki was finally able to use the Mind Stone and freeze the assassin in their tracks.

Meanwhile, in an underground bunker at an undisclosed location HYDRA High Command was getting nervous. Director Pearce, Senator Stern, Defence Head Carson and Secretary Malick had gathered to make sure of the Winter Soldier’s progress but updates had abruptly stalled. Just as they were starting to panic, a portal opened in the middle of the room. Out stepped Loki, with Winter Soldier dragging the battered body of Brock Rumlow across the floor. Loki addressed the room.

“I don’t understand fascism, but if you wish to rule the world you may do so…under me.”

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Thunderbolts (Movie 2025), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Robert "Bob" Reynolds (Marvel), Yelena Belova, Ava Starr, John Walker (Marvel), Alexei Shostakov, Tony Stark Additional Tags: Time Travel, Aliens, Bickering, Team Bonding, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

Summary:

Yelena didn’t look up from where she was sharpening her knife against a whetstone she definitely wasn’t supposed to have on the couch. “You want to meet aliens?” she asked, eyebrow arched.

“I mean… kind of?” Bob said. “Not the evil ones. The cool ones. Like E.T.”

As far as Bucky was concerned, Bob needed therapy the most out of any of them.

The point was, Bob was excited about aliens now.

Aliens.

And it was a problem.

Because it brought them back to 2012, accidentally.

Bucky was trying not to think about Steve Rogers too much but it was impossible to do when the man was breathing and alive and well in 2012.

Snippet:

“I’m picking Alien next,” Ava declared confidently. A chorus of groans immediately followed, Bucky’s included.

“Can we not?” Walker said, exasperated. “We deal with aliens enough as it is.”

Bob, however, perked up like a kid at Christmas. “What? I’ve never met aliens!”

Bucky gave him a flat look. “The Chitauri invasion? No?” he asked. “And the whole Thanos situation, he’s literally an alien.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t on the front lines for any of that,” Bob said with a shrug. “I was, like, in Florida. Watching it on TV. Doesn’t count.”

Yelena didn’t look up from where she was sharpening her knife against a whetstone she definitely wasn’t supposed to have on the couch. “You want to meet aliens?” she asked, eyebrow arched.

“I mean… kind of?” Bob said. “Not the evil ones. The cool ones. Like E.T.”

or worse

The Guardians of the Galaxy and Scott Adsit's Nova Corps are in a long hard battle against the Fraternity of Raptors and the Chitauri army. Groot wipes the floor with the Chitauri soldiers while Gamora takes down the Raptors left and right. Just then, a Chitauri soldier blows the horn which signals them that they will continue to fight no matter what. Scott Lang scoffs at the Chitauri that they will fight the Chitauri to the last stand but unfortunately, he gets shot down for being in the open. Scott Lang was sent flying until he lands onto the wounded Nova Corpsman on the stretcher. The Guardians of the Galaxy and the few remaining Nova Corps continue to fight even though they are getting outnumbered. Meanwhile, Richard Rider goes over to the wounded Rob Rider as Talonar, who tells him that the giant Power Stone is actually a simulation and the real Power Stone can be brought down with mind over matter. Richard watches the Fraternity of Raptors take his brother away.

Back to the battlefield, the Guardians of the Galaxy are facing dire straits as they are hopelessly outnumbered and are starting to run out of ammo. As the Guardians face what they believe to be certain death, Star-Lord tells Drax to go ahead and try playing the saxophone from his old human life one last time before they meet their maker. As he does this, the Chitari mistake it for a war horn like the one they used to signal their advance. They also comment how the Guardians' war horn sounds a lot better than theirs. Then, Richard Rider comes in and tells Star-Lord that Rob Rider's theory about the giant Power Stone is a simulation and the real Power Stone can be brought down by mind over matter. Star Lord goes to the giant Power Stone and it turns out the theory is right. Just as the Chitauri Warbringer attacks him, Star-Lord swats the alien with the Power Stone before passing the infinity stone to Drax. Thanks to the Power Stone, Drax defeats the Chitauri army and the Fraternity of Raptors with his own power of jazz. As their enemies are finally defeated, Drax passes the Power Stone to Richard Rider who in turn, helps them to get out of the planet before it explodes.

Now he wields two Infinity Stones! I made him the Scepter, aka the Glowstick of Destiny. Bit of a rush job, but I’m entering him into a crochet competition tomorrow, so it had to be finished tonight. If I had time I’d extend the plate ridges on the back, not that you can see them clearly in this photo.