The Avengers: Loki's Tesseract

 Chitauri's Portal and the Fourth Dimension.

Aside from all the mind-blowing action and witty humor that truly made it a must-watch and a record-breaking movie, The Avengers shared us some knowledge--and some truth--about the Tesseract (originally Cosmic Cube in the Marvel comics Captain America but later called Tesseract in the movie), the cosmic concept that has raised endless debates dating as far back as Aristotle's time and has covered a wide range of theories from Euclid's Geometry Axioms to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity to the Superstring Theory. Although it doesn't really exist as a tangible object, much less as a dangerous instrument that could wipe out the entire planet, the tesseract may, in simplest terms be conceived as a cube as correctly portrayed in the movie.

From what I've researched the Tesseract, also called the hypercube is a "guided demonstration" of how we perceive in the fourth dimension. Living in the world of three-dimensional perception, this notion should be impossible to simply be drawn as a smaller cube inside a bigger cube, as it is best described in conceivable form. Mathematicians for years have debated about its existence, others claiming that as point is the first dimension, a line/square is the second dimension and a cube is the third dimension, time is the fourth dimension (initially proposed by writer H. G. Wells and supported by Albert Einstein's theory). While others scientifically relate its existence as the world of the paranormal phenomena--ghosts, after-life dimension, dreams, religious mysteries, dreams and maybe mythological times as the Tesseract was portrayed in the movie to be a portal--others like Helena Petrovna Blavatsky of the Victorian era, with her magnum opus "The Secret Doctrine" argued the scientific claim and proposed that such notion is not a quest for discovering a higher form of dimension; rather a new characteristic of matter she called "permeability" revealed by clairvoyance.

The fact that the concept of Tesseract used in The Avengers already amused me as the concept itself has marveled me ever since I met Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time, my first and favorite sci-fi book I read as a kid. With Madeleine's background research and interest in the Tesseract infusing it into the 50-year-old Newbery-Award-winning children's book, I was able to initially picture it as the time machine, giving me a lifetime opportunity to travel to different worlds and dimensions with Meg, Calvin and my favorite Charles Wallace. Even then, L'Engle was able to simplify the idea with Tesseract being like "folding space" into higher dimensions where “a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”

The Avengers: "We have a Hulk"

"But let's do a head count here. your brother the demi-god, a super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend, a man with breath-taking anger management issues, a couple of master assassins, and you big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them."

Two words: Tony Stark. What resembled Transformers: Dark of the Moon in terms of breath-taking cinematography, the action-packed thrill and the dark apocalyptic atmosphere became more than just what thirteen-year-old teenagers and Marvel fanatics lined up for; even their girlfriends and self-proclaimed geeks like me itched to watch Joss Whedon's block-buster hit and most-awaited movie of the year The Avengers.

And it's all because of the intellectual and witty humor--that Ironman has become overly famous for in his two movies--infused in the dim and end-of-the-world plot. And even though the laugh-off-the-seat punchlines were 90% Tony Stark, the other Avengers and even Loki had their own funny moments to contribute--they are a team after all--how Thor immediately denied that he and Loki are true brothers when Black Widow told him Loki has killed 80 people in two days; how Captain America, Thor and Ironman wrestled like real ten-year-old kids fighting over a precious in-demand action-figure doll (aka Loki) (Thor: Do not touch me again! Tony: Then don't touch my stuff.), and how Steve Rogers aka Captain America always boiled over Tony's witty sass-mouthing (Steve: Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you? Tony: Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.)

As we witnessed how Tony Stark also idolized The Hulk very much he even invited him to visit Stark Tower (his candyland), we also witnessed the end of the world as it is when Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson, Ironman) activated the Tesseract at the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters, a hypercube with a powerful energy source and opened a portal releasing exiled Norse god Loki (Tom Hiddleston, Thor). With plans of conquering Earth, he stole the Tesseract and manipulated  Hawkeye and astrophysicist Professor Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) to help him escape and collect Iridium for the Tesseract needed to stabilize it.

With The Avengers' Initiative (which served as epilogue scene for all Marvel Hero movies involved in this movie), Nick Fury assembled Black Widow ( Scarlett Johansson), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America (Chris Evans), Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) to stop Loki with his plan of wiping out the entire planet with the Tesseract. Complications immediately exploded with Thor interrupting the mission as he still had "unfinished business" with his brother, and all members--especially Tony and Steve--having "friendship" issues.

They managed to capture Loki but worse misunderstandings followed when Tony and Dr. Bruce Banner (aka Hulk) (friends as they immediately became mainly because they spoke the same "language") were able to breach Nick's security files and found out that The Avengers and the Tesseract were to be used by the government to create nuclear weapons, thus making them "not a team, but a time bomb".

Just as the heroes were caught off-guard, Loki's army attacked their ship led by Hawkeye, where Dr. Banner finally lost control, threatening and attacking not only the enemies but also Thor and Black Widow as well, and hard-core enemies Captain America and Ironman had to work together to keep the ship from crashing. Thor faced his brother Loki again, but fell into his trap and fell from the ship.

Tony's agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg, Ironman) tried to stop Loki but was killed in the process, and together with Nick's "dramatic" scheme  because the Avengers needed "a push in the right direction", the team reunited to finish the job and save the world.

Led by Captain America, the battle began as Loki, with Prof. Selvig's assistance assembled the Tesseract to open the portal that led to the world of the Chitauri, the alien race Loki recruited and released his army that all brought me back to the plot and the Decepticon aliens of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. In the end, Black Widow was able to close the portal using Loki's Tesseract staff just seconds before Ironman delivered his atomic bomb (which was released by the government to destroy Manhattan) to Chitauri portal.