I saw it again, and Thanos is there right at the beginning, pulling the strings with the Chitauri leader.  It is implied that the Chitauri are his army (or more to the point, it is never implied that they are only teaming up with Thanos).  So their motivation is left intentionally vague for the reveal in the credits.  Again, their motivation is not at all important to the plot of the film.

LOVED this.  Whedon just punched his ticket.  This movie was so damned good, I really have trouble finding fault with anything.  The Hulk was totally awesome.

As far as the Hulk goes, I think it was strongly implied that Banner had learned how to control the Hulk to an extent, even going back to the coda of The Incredible Hulk.  I think when he went nuts on the carrier, it was because he didn't initiate the transformation.

I guess my one gripe would be the ultra-generic looking alien cannon fodder.  Why they kept that a secret forever is lost on me.  It did not hinder the movie at all, but what was all the cloak and dagger about?

I can't wait for The Avengers, and I will totally geek out for certain.  That said, I am confident that at the end of the summer, we'll be saying TDKR is the better movie.  Nolan has yet to disappoint.  This trailer looks amazing.

Flying tumbler?

That's actually kind of what my display case for vintage is, in design, but not the cardback background of course.  Mine's just stained wood.

My gripe with that is you can't display the variations well then.  I'm kind of a stickler for primary variations getting displayed too.  It's great, a really neat idea, but wouldn't work for my collection display I guess. 

I do like that the Rebo Band and blue Snags got slots in there though.

The major variants are in there...  Vinyl Jawa, pin head Han, brown snake Yoda, multiple R2's...

This is pretty awesome.

Saw Cabin in the Woods today....I've been hooked on horror flicks since I was a boy.  This movie was no different until almost the end.  Nice twist!   

All Whedonites must see this film!  His style is all over it!  Spoilers:
I literally LOL'd at the unicorn scene.  Absolute genius!

That does look nice, but not the direction I think we need to go. 

One thing that many fail to realize when discussing this topic is that is very easy to see NOW that "figure x" is all over the pegs and isn't selling, but the decision on what goes into an assortment isn't made while product is on the shelf; it is made months before.  Those revision cases were picked before the first waves of TPM hit, most likely. 

Now if you say "Anyone should know that these would be a stinker," I would totally agree with you.

I think that Hasbro needs to work harder at market research, and some shakeups need to happen with the way they pick product.

I think the biggest change is to stop the bloat.  We don't need 70 figures a year.  Why don't we try 24 for the whole year, sprinkle them out over a 12-month period.  This would allow them to recoup some of their tooling dollars, and they can also take the time to make sure all 24 are completely up to snuff. 

There was a sort of successful toy line years ago that did this.  Maybe you've heard of G.I. Joe?  We knew (mostly) what was coming for the year from the cardbacks, and I while I was CRAZY for that stuff, I don't recall a single figure during my time collecting that I was not able to find.  Sure, some may have taken a few months to find, but I did eventually get them all.