Just because they ain't done it in the comics... The bad guy is just too powerful for the regular Avengers setup - unless they seriously de-power him for A2, he'd wipe the floor with everyone but Hulk and Thor. Having him in Thor 2 makes a lot of sense, he was after the Tesseract and now has unfinished business with Loki - both now on their way to Asgard... I'd love to see Thor 2 opening with an attacked Asgard - Die Asgard With A Vengeance anyone? I didn't mean as a villain, Loki's damaged and arrogant, not evil, so he can be used in both aspects. It would add an extra dynamic to the team to have him on their side - the looks between him and Hulk alone would be funny! I think Loki is too good a character to have as Villain Of The Movie, having him as something of an amoral, self-interested force that sometimes aligns with, sometimes against, the Avengers offers a lot of mileage. He is the spoiled bad guy's primary nemesis... And has actually killed him at least once. Kinda guy who may be handy in a battle with him!
True, but I kind of hoped Sony would see sense in folding it into a currently successful franchise. Sony and sense. I see where I went rather wrong with that idea!
Obviously they are free to depart from the comics however they want to. But in the comics I'm fairly sure that similar Avengers lineups have taken on Thanos. This lineup took on Loki armed with the glowstick of destiny, whose power level was still ridiculously high. Also, as the Infinity Gauntlet miniseries showed, Thanos can be literally all-powerful and still get beat. There's certainly some logic to that. The thing is, if Thor can handle Thanos solo (or with some relatively small amount of assistance from a few of his fellow Asgardians), I don't see why Thor can't handle him with the assistance of Hulk, Iron Man and maybe a player to be added to the mix like Captain Marvel, Wonder Man, etc. I suppose it's a fairly safe assumption that anyone who might see Thor 2 would probably have already seen Avengers. But it's not as safe an assumption that anyone who will see Avengers 2 will have seen Thor 2. So to have the villain shown in Avengers 1 be raised in Thor 2 and presumably not in Avengers 2 would probably leave people confused if they go to another plotline not involving that guy. Of course, this is an awful lot of presuming... Right, but I think the studio would not want to spend time explaining his origins and trying to insert him here when there are more prominent Marvel heroes to promote.
What Loki seemed armed with was the Mind Gem, which hints at what may come (iirc the Gauntlet itself briefly appears in Thor), but it's primary power seemed to be mind control rather something that could take on a team. Most of the destruction was either through the Tesseract or the Skrulls, the former being super-powerful, but in the script taken out by it's use as a door, and the latter numerically. And in the Infinity Quest Thanos is only defeated after he loses physical form, really not sure that would play well on film. None of the post-credit scenes have directly led into the sequel, but have been used to flesh out the rest of the cinemaverse, so I don't think we can say for certain that the post-credit scene was designed to show off A2, rather than set the stage for Phase 2 of the Avengers storyline across multiple movies. My own, entirely unfounded, opinion is that the Infinity Gauntlet will make an appearance in some form in A2 and this will be gained from Thor 2 with Thanos escaping Asgard with it. Just as Avengers recapped the Tesseract, A2 will recap the Infinity Gauntlet so you won't need to have seen Thor 2, just know the bad guy they saw in the post-credit scene is back, and this time with a new weapon. A little exposition can go a long way, and the genius of the Avengers was that it was written like that. Why would they need to explain his origins? We never got much of Hawkeye's - all that would be needed is that he's been tracking Thanos and plans to defeat him. Origin stories can be stuck in as a tie-in.
Interesting. Didn't think of the possible connection to the Mind Gem. If Loki had used it correctly (trying to fully take over Hulk or Thor, rather than Iron Man, for example), it would have been even more powerful, as the Avengers would be fighting themselves. Instead, he made the mistake of just using it to blast people or (at least my read is) influence Banner/Hulk on the Helicarrier. The aliens in question weren't Skrulls, but some new race created, I believe, for the movie. Haven't read Quest and it's been a long time since I read Gauntlet. Fair enough. Hawkeye's background is pretty easily understood and established: he's an agent of SHIELD who is athletic, has killer eyesight and aim, uses arrows as his weapon of choice and has a relationship of some sort with Black Widow. Even if you've never heard of him before, the movie can readily establish his abilities, background and motivations, and he has a direct tie to Fury and Widow. Drax's background and powers and motivations are more complicated than that, I would say. Or maybe not, if I'm remembering correctly. He was a human guy who was killed by Thanos and who somehow got transformed into a big green monster with power blasts of some sort. And while Drax is tied to Thanos, he doesn't really have a connection with any of the Avengers. Also, he has not to the best of my knowledge been an actual Avenger. Again, the movies can choose to depart from the comics however they want, but I don't see why they would want to do that in this way.
Nope, they actually are Skrulls. The Ultimates universe rebooted them as Chitari (sp?) but they are the same race, and the first issue of Avengers, they did indeed fight a Skrull invasion led by Loki, so that was the intent. They ran into legal trouble using the actual name "Skrulls", because they're mostly a Fantastic Four villain, and Fox still owns the rights to them, and everything that spins off from them, so, they went with the Chitari name. Skrull, Chitari, tomato, tomahto...
That's kinda lame. Especially when they don't display the signature attribute of Skrulls (the shape-shifting ability).
