That was, in fact, totally badass, Steph.

I don't know why Banner's comment about putting a gun in his mouth struck me as so very dark, in a movie where the Earth is in peril. But it really threw me.

I really want to see it again now. Like, right now. But I have to get ready to fly back home (I've been in San Jose visiting family for the weekend), and then I have a bunch of work ahead of me. Must see it again at the soonest possible opportunity.

But it really threw me

Well, because it's so personal. That's an emotion most of us can and might experience, whereas the feelings associated with defending the Earth from alien invasion? NSM.

I mean, that's why most action movies have an individual character at direct risk, so the audience can identify with the fear for that person; generalized fear for an entire population is less, um, incentivizing.

Pentagon Quit The Avengers Because of Its ‘Unreality’

The Pentagon halted its cooperation with Marvel Studios’ blockbuster movie The Avengers because the Defense Department didn’t think a movie about superheroes, Norse Gods and intergalactic invasions was sufficiently realistic in its treatment of military bureaucracy.

Moviegoers and comic fans know that S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Samuel L. Jackson’s super-spy Nick Fury, is an international peacekeeping/global surveillance/crisis response/quasi-military organization. But its relationship with the United States is murky. And that basically stopped the U.S. military, which is normally eager to cooperate with the film industry on blockbuster movies, from teaming up with the Avengers.

“We couldn’t reconcile the unreality of this international organization and our place in it,” Phil Strub, the Defense Department’s Hollywood liaison, tells Danger Room. “To whom did S.H.I.E.L.D. answer? Did we work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? We hit that roadblock and decided we couldn’t do anything” with the film.

...

But the ambiguity around what exactly S.H.I.E.L.D. is provides a vexing complication. If it’s an American governmental agency, what kind of constitutional authority does it exercise over the military? If it’s an international body, as the movie text suggests and Strub determined, are U.S. military personnel and equipment on loan to it through some kind of United Nations Security Council resolution? The questions may seem picayune, but they’re precisely the stuff that can cause an image-conscious military to yank its cooperation from a movie.

eta: Rest of article is a little spoilery.

Oddly enough, Law & the Multiverse talks about SHIELD today: [link]

I loved the bit about Banner's attempted suicide too. I think it was taken from the comics. They were going to put that scene at the beginning of The Incredible Hulk, but it was deemed "too dark."

A very appropriate Dork Tower: [link]

Frank is a skimmer. I posted that a few days ago.

He redid the art today (refresh if it looks the same as it did before).