The movie constantly tries to tug at your heart-strings ( but there are no strings on me! ) and almost always fails to land a real emotional punch.
Black Widow and Hulk have a nice moment as she calms the “big guy” down. But that transforms weirdly, quickly, into an oddly forward Natasha Romanoff hitting on a Bruce Banner almost as confused as me.
By the end of the film, Banner is gone and Natasha is all bummed out, and the audience is pretty much unmoved. It’s a weird little side plot that doesn’t add anything but confusion to the story.
Meanwhile, Hawkeye, now questioning his relevance to the team ( much as audiences did back when the first Avengers came out) reveals his wife and family to his more super-heroic pals. This is an attempt to humanize him, one presumes, but it just feels…off.
What’s the point? Why do we need to humanize Hawkeye? Just give him more funny lines and let him shoot things with exploding arrows. All these little touchy-feely distractions are used to slow down what’s an otherwise action-packed adventure.
Which leads us to…