SPOILER SPOILER SPOILERS ALL THE SPOIED THINGS
So why was it necessary for Joss Whedon to kill Agent Phil Coulson (my favorite thing about the movie verse. Brace for weeping bias). He’s gone on the record to say that killing Coulson wasn’t his idea, but he didn’t disagree with him. It “had” to happen to bring this rag tag bunch of personalities together. But did it?
Comics has a long history of killing people to serve as motivation for a hero to go a hero-ing. To be fair this didn’t start in comics—the Illiad has a fairly famous super hero who only enters battle AFTER a beloved fellow soldier has fallen. There’s something moving and incredible (and true) in the idea that one man’s love can change the fate of nations; but it’s gotten to the point where nothing can happen until it’s “personal.” Bruce Wayne wouldn’t be a hero unless his parents had died; Spiderman’s Uncle Ben had to be killed to show him the light. It appears heroes aren’t motivated by a ideals, or a desire to do good, or protect people. It’s vengeance that makes the hero.
Coulson himself points out as he’s dying that it will take something like this (his death) to bring the Avengers together as a team. Fury then intentionally covers Coulson’s prized vintage Captain America trading cards in his blood to show to the gathered Avengers; he, too, believes it will take the death of one of their own to make the team work (he states as much to Hill when she points out what a manipulative jackass he was being). And then Iron Man says to Captain America that Loki has made it “personal.”
The magic of the dead side character works its magic, and the team comes together and fights Loki and the invading army of Chitauri. And here’s my problem with this—other than my favorite character getting offed—it doesn’t seem necessary. Of course the desire to avenge a friend is a great motivator, perhaps especially for a team of heroes called The Avengers, but don’t we want our heroes to be moved by something greater? The world is about to be destroyed, billions of lives wiped out, people enslaved by Loki—shouldn’t that be enough for our heroes? Why do we need to see them mourn a personal loss before we can accept their conviction to the cause? Or is it just easier to understand that?
Of course, while Loki is busy stabbing Coulson and looking fabulous the team is trying to keep the flying base from crashing into the ocean. There are hundreds of lives as stake, and so they do the hero thing—set aside their egos and pull it together. It seems as if they were already able to work as a team BEFORE Coulson was killed. Yeah, Hulk is rampaging and Thor gets dropped into the ocean, but Captain America and Iron Man (the main ego conflict of the movie) are working together quite well. They’re doing it because the base is under attack, and there’s no space or time for them to fight one another when there are so many lives at stake. And I wish Whedon had chosen to follow that line of motivation rather than taking the emotional shortcut of killing off a friend. I want to see a team motivated by something other than vengeance; motivated instead by the desire to do the right thing, even at huge personal sacrifice, because they can, because they know that there’s no other option. It might be harder to write, but I think you’ll get something closer to a true hero then, rather than a loose knit team of vigilantes.



