The Avengers

(Usually, I save non-political posts for the weekend. Sorry!) Suspension of disbelief is a funny thing. In the Avengers movie, I could buy the idea of an alien invasion led by a Norse god (all of whom speak English). I could accept the absurd heli-carrier, I wasn't bothered by the fact that the tesseract is defined as both a portal and an energy source, and I didn't even have much problem with the Hulk's infinitely elastic pants. All of that stuff was fine.

You know what really bugged me? In an early scene, Nick Fury visits a gym after hours to tell Captain America about a threat to the world. Before Fury has fully explained this threat -- while Fury is still talking -- Cap scoops up a large punching bag, slings it over his shoulder, and walks out of the room.

Why? Why does Cap walk away at a time when any sane man would be asking a zillion questions? Moreover -- and this is the bit that really gets to me -- why does he take that freakin' punching bag with him? Isn't it the property of the gym?

Also, in an early scene Fury isn't killed after being shot in the chest. Are we to presume that he wears kevlar all the time, even when going to his own headquarters? If so, that fact should be known to Hawkeye, the shooter -- who, being the world's best marksman, would have gone for the head.

On a related note: Maybe the next movie can work in some line about "Natasha Romanov" being a pseudonym, because that monicker always annoyed me, even when I was a kid. The first name of Tolstoy's heroine plus the family name of the Czar? Was that really the best Stan Lee could come up with? Wikipedia says that the character's patronymic is Alianovna, which means "daughter of Alian." "Alian" doesn't sound like an actual Russian male first name. Perhaps a reader can prove me wrong on that point.