"So the Chitauri were Al-Qaeda? O.K., good to know. A suspicion I had during Iron Man 3 was confirmed during Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (by which we mean the movies starring Marvel comic-book characters that aren't distributed by Sony or 20th Century Fox) has decided to go back and reposition the big battle from Marvel’s The Avengers as its 9/11. On the one hand, this is a “no duh” observation—at the end of The Avengers, New York was blown to smithereens. But the tenor in which Joss Whedon shot and cut the lengthy third act sequence was so zippy and fun that it seemed as if Marvel was “taking back” the iconography of New York’s destruction, from both the terrorists and real life. The key image from Avengers is an adulatory 360-degree swoop of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes assembled in full flex before the sturdy columns of Grand Central. It is not “Falling Man.”"