After watching The Avengers a second time and marveling on how bad-ass it still was, I thought it would be a good idea to make a delayed review of the characters and actors by matching them with popular Linux distributions.
- Tony Stark - Robert Downey Jr. - Ubuntu
- There's little doubt that RDJ and his armored alter-ego is currently the most popular Avenger despite historically being a second-stringer in the comic books for several decades (and embarrassingly replaced by Rhodey during an unsuccessful and poorly written run in the 80s). RDJ attempted to steal the show during the flick but was generally overshadowed by performances and even brief moments in the limelight by other characters such as Maria Hill and Steve Rogers. He's still likable though especially during scenes involving Tony, Pepper, and shawarma.
Why Ubuntu? Today, the Avengers is associated with Iron Man. Ditto for Linux and Ubuntu (though I personally contest this). There's also that color scheme and Mark Shuttleworth, the wealthy and generous entrepreneur who supported Ubuntu and Canonical's software services.
- Steve Rogers - Chris Evans - Fedora
- Chris Evans proved a hero is more than his sucky costume and gave a great performance as the living legend of World War II. Whereas comic book fans can easily gripe about how underrated Thor's power was in the film, Cap was infinitely believable and bad-ass. Only Cap would face down a god like Loki and supported only by Black Widow on a Quinjet. He was also the only gentleman to shield Natassha when Hulk punched that alien whale.
Why Fedora? Captain Rogers has a lot in common with Fedora: he stands for freedom, he's not everyone's favorite on the list, and his costume needs a lot of work (like Fedora's default applications). Like Rogers, Fedora, formely "Fedora Core", was "revived" after Red Hat Linux was discontinued.
- Nick Fury - Samuel Jackson - Debian
- Ok, so he's not an Avenger but he did contribute to the team and in the comics played important roles in the lives of Iron Man and Cap. Samuel Jackson, Nick Fury, and Debian have been around for a long time. In fact, the character Nick Fury has been around longer than Steve Rogers (thanks to the Infinity Formula). Jackson did what little he could with the screen time he received and the role he played in the film. Aside from Johansson, he was the only real veteran A-lister in the movie (RDJ was an A-lister in the 80s-90s but was largely forgotten until Iron Man).
Why Debian? Debian, like SHIELD and Fury, has influenced and contributed to almost every Linux distribution out there. Can you say old-school?
- Maria Hill - Cobie Smulders - Knoppix
- Maria Hill is a fairly new character. As a longtime Marvel reader as far back as the 70s, I hate that they chose her over classic SHIELD agents like Dum Dum Dugan. But after seeing Smulders' sexy and surprisingly convincing turn as Maria Hill in The Avengers, I realize that the franchise did need extra sex appeal. Considering the amount of macho testosterone in the helicarrier, I'd hire a supermodel as my second if I was head of SHIELD. Smulders' scenes were actually more memorable than Jackson's and I hope she gets to strut that tight-fitting SHIELD uniform again.
Why Knoppix? Knoppix is based off of Debian (see above) and was designed to be used as a LiveCD or LiveUSB. That is to say, Knoppix and Hill are proactive and "portable".
- Natassha Romanov - Scarlet Johanssen - FreeNAS
- The Black Widow is not one of my favorite Marvel characters. After failed relationships with her first Russian husband, Hawkeye, and Iron Man in the 70s comic books, she switched costumes/weapons and had the balls to test her skills against an injured and distracted Spider-Man (no surprise she STILL got her big ass handed to her). Later on, she had a long-standing relationship with Daredevil and recently was retconned to have had a relationship with Bucky Barnes - Cap's ex-partner who is now the Winter Soldier. She's one of the most overrated characters in the Marvel Universe, so I don't really mind that they miscast the character with the delectable Scarlet Johansson. To her credit, she was the only person in the whole movie who was able to convey the fear of facing the monster that is the Hulk (Loki should have known better . . . ).
Why FreeNAS? FreeNAS can support a lot of storage. And Scarlet has a lot of . . . uh . . . front-loading "storage".
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