The Avengers (2012 film)/Tear Jerker

• The elderly German man who refuses to bow for Loki. It gets even worse when you realize that he is old enough to have been alive in Nazi Germany. He's seen this happen before and he will not let it happen again.

Loki: "There are no men like me."
Old man: "There are always men like you."

• Banner tells Fury he can't be killed, because he's already tried putting a bullet in his mouth - 'the other guy spat it out'. The man's been driven to actual suicide, and has had even that release denied him.
  • The other's reactions is what really sells this as well. Every single last person is struck silent, and even Nick Fury turns to look at him in horrified disbelief.
  • Earlier than that, Banner tells Black Widow "Well, I don't always get what I want"... while offhandedly rocking a baby cradle.
• Natasha desperately trying to calm Bruce down so he won't hulk out: "I promise you, on my life, you'll walk out of here!" She knows it's her and SHIELD's fault he's here, and that if he transforms not only will she probably be killed, but so will he, through no fault of his own.
• The Death of Agent Phil Coulson. We just spent four movies getting to know the guy through supporting roles and cameos and he even gets fleshed out somewhat in the movie, only to be summarily stabbed by Loki. His final line to his boss is an apology for dying and telling Nick that "[the team] needed something to....*dead*". That being said it's also a Moment of Awesome for him, as he delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Loki and then blasts him with a BFG.
  • Thor's reaction to it as he was inside the cage and helpless to stop it. Especially since he was grateful to Coulson for making sure that Jane Foster was safe.
  • The trading cards. Just... the trading cards. Even if that was a ruse by Fury.
    • Especially Captain America's expression when seeing them. You can see that he's thinking that he let a man who believed in him down in the worst way possible.
    • Also Tony's reaction. It's clear he's holding back tears as he angrily states that Coulson was stupid for trying to take on Loki alone. For all his teasing and snarking at Coulson, it's clear he was fond of him and even invokes his name when fighting against Loki.
    • Tony looking at the blood on the wall where Coulson was leaning after he was stabbed and then this angry, desperate line to Steve:

We are not soldiers!

• Even after all that Loki has done and will do over the course of two movies, Thor still considers him family and tries to protect him. Culminating in a scene where Thor embraces his adopted brother and asks him to "come home," it makes Loki's cold rejection of him and the resulting pain in Thor's eyes all the more heartbreaking to watch.

You give up the Tesseract, you give up this poisonous dream! You come home...

• • What makes it worse is that you can almost see Loki's eyes get unusually wet when he asks Thor whether or not he was mourned. And when he stabs Thor in the stomach in the climax, even smiling away, a tear escapes his eye. Perhaps there is some part of him that regrets what has happened...?
    • Following the quote above, that awful moment when Loki, the God of Lies, can't even pull up a convincing scathing reaction to that line. He stares at his brother. He tries to smile, to laugh it off, but it dies almost seconds afterwards. He's reduced to addressing another issue to try and cover it up.
• This might be minor, but I can't help tearing up when Loki says he has no home. Just the idea that he never felt like he belonged somewhere ...
  • It Got Worse. Considering that what he went through between Thor and The Avengers changed him from a villainous yet sympathetic person to a twisted psychopath with little empathy.
• Loki tricks Thor into the holding cell and deliberately drops him down thousands of feet to Earth, while telling him that this experiment will test whether or not Asgardians are immortal. Thor doesn't try to reason with Loki. Thor actually doesn't do anything but stare at Loki, who is coldly and casually about to try to kill him - yet again. He simply blinks back tears. And once he lands on Earth, he takes a long moment and just clenches his fists. Just... ow.
• Tony's Heroic Sacrifice. He's flying the nuke into the wormhole, calls Pepper, there is a long moment as the phone rings and Pepper doesn't pick up, the line goes dead, the suit goes dead, Tony closes his eyes and lets himself fall, all while tear-jerking music plays. He doesn't die, but still.
  • Oh, and the reason Pepper doesn't answer her phone? She's watching the TV report on the fight in Manhattan, unable to hear the phone, horrified and knowing Tony is somewhere in there.
    • Give you one worse. Can you imagine what she must have been going through when she saw her one missed call?
  • Gets even worse when you remember Cap's Heroic Sacrifice. He went down protecting New York City from the devastation of a bunch of massive bombs... and he had his girlfriend's picture on the dashboard on the entire descent to comfort himself in his last moments. Tony's got Pepper's picture up in his helmet during the entirety of what seems to be his last flight. It's a heartwarming testament to Tony's devotion to Pepper, and a Not So Different moment between him and Steve, all at the same time.
• The wall of remembrance shown in the aftermath videos, reminding us that even though the Avengers won the day, a huge number of ordinary people still died in the battle, despite all that the heroes could do.
• Steve's first appearance, where he's working the heavy bag at an old, empty gym. He starts having flashbacks about the war, the Howling Commandos, and his last words to Peggy Carter, and his blows grow more vicious and more rapid, until he literally knocks the bag off the chain.... And then we see that Steve has had multiple heavy bags prepared. This has been going on for some time, and Steve has come to expect it.
  • Everything about Steve, frankly, is a tearjerker, if one stopped to really think about it.
• Tony's snarky dig about Captain America ("That's the guy my dad never shut up about? Maybe they should have kept him on ice.") becomes a tear jerker if you recall what he says about his father in Iron Man 2 - "He never told me he loved me, didn't even tell me that he liked me." Along with their vastly different personalities, it also goes a LONG way towards explaining Tony's initial attitude towards Cap.
• Although we haven't even seen this scene yet as it was cut from the film (but Joss Whedon has said it will be on the DVD), but apparently there's a scene where Steve has a reunion with Peggy. Kind of a Foregone Conclusion that will be depressing....
• Captain America's vicious verbal putdown of Tony, telling him that he knows nothing about sacrifice and teamwork and thinking of others. Did it need to be said? Yes. Was it true? Yes. Did it make the look on Tony's face and his halfhearted attempt at a comeback any less heartbreaking? No freaking way.
  • Equally heartbreaking was Tony's crack about Steve being "a lab experiment at best". Now remember how Steve had started out as an 80 lb weakling that few looked at twice, and how even after the serum he was cast aside and used as a propaganda mascot. Then remember everything he had sacrificed to save New York, only to wake up to a world where the only son of his old friend tells him that "everything special about you came out of a bottle."
• The "We have a Hulk" scene. Tony starts listing off "Earth's Mightiest Heroes": Thor, Steve, Bruce, Natasha, and Clint. He concludes by saying "and you, big fella, have managed to piss off every single one of 'em." When he gets thrown out the window and comes back as Iron Man, he says that there's one more person Loki pissed off. It's not Tony. It's Coulson. He hasn't included himself in the headcount at all, even saying "you pissed off them" instead of us. Tony considers every single Avenger more of a hero than him, which makes his attempted Heroic Sacrifice much more painful.

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