The man working the console, digging into its hardware to get it up and running is trying to tell me that this program he’s demonstrating is a NASA-developed technology that shows its users to witness views of other planets. At least that’s what I think it did. All it showed me was a Windows Vista error screen followed by the prompt for a hard reboot.
Welcome to Avengers STATION at Discovery Times Square.
I want to preface the rest of this article by saying that I saw the exhibit, which opens today, at a preview event last night so not every bug had yet to be worked out. In addition to the machine above (which was then eventually fixed, though I never saw a full demonstration above), there were a number of exhibits that were out of bounds due to kinks still being worked out. If you were to go to Avengers STATION today then most of these issues will be fixed, at least according to the rushed and somewhat unconfident Discovery employees who said the same thing a couple dozen times last night.
I don’t want to sound cynical or anything, but on one hand I don’t know if I can recommend the exhibit since it’d be kind of weird for a restaurant reviewer to give five stars to a bistro that offered him a garden salad and then told him to eat in a chairless room with pictures of all its steaks it’ll have in a week or so. If you were to go today there would be the distinct possibility that there are still no chairs and that the garden salad had to be taken away due to a systems bug. On the other hand, that small metaphorical salad I was offered was still pretty darn appetizing.
The Avengers STATION, which stands for “Scientific Training and Tactical Intelligence Operative Network” (it means someone really wanted their initials to spell out “Station”), is meant to function as a training center for SHIELD Agents, which is unfortunate due to the entirety of Winter Soldier. The beginning of the exhibit is actually really cool, with you and your group being placed into a room not dissimilar to that SHIELD interrogation center from Thor and then given a recap of The Avengers for the parents in the back while a really in-character employee (in what could best be described as a Shadaloo outfit) gently screams at your group to get into place in front of the desk monitors, which looks straight out of Agents of SHIELD.
The SHIELD aesthetic really helps sell the feeling that you are in the MCU for a little while. The costumes and props on display aren’t donated by Hollywood, they’re salvage from the Battle of New York or (in an amazing bit of detail denoted by a plain sign next to Thor’s costume) a gift from the Asgardians to their brethren in SHIELD, which must’ve been an amazingly awkward meeting.
This dedication to convincing audiences they’re in an actual SHIELD facility helps segue in the partnership with NASA that helped Marvel build this exhibit. As such, about half of the STATION’s displays don’t have a lot to do with The Avengers as much as they do cool science. At least I think it’s cool. Again, half the exhibit was closed and the other half was figuratively on fire. There was one machine in the SHIELD Bio-Lab that was meant to be a tracker for The Hulk’s gamma radiation or something, but all it involved was pushing a display slide, pressing a button, and then watching a green light go off. It wasn’t particularly exciting.
There’s also a whole room revolving around Captain America’s super-soldier transformation process (including the machine from The First Avenger chilling behind some glass in the corner) where you can compare your physique to Steve Rogers’. I skipped this one because if I wanted to be reminded of how inferior I am to Chris Evans I could look in a mirror.
These exhibits, which primarily focus on The Avengers rather than the science, are pretty entertaining, though I wasn’t able to access most of them. Each visitor receives a keycard which allows you to access the displays and track your progress until you become a full certified SHIELD agent, which wasn’t available for the preview. Still, these sort of displays did give an interesting look into the science behind The Avengers (or at least for the more science-y Avengers like Hulk and Cap) which gave a lot of substance to what could have easily been a tour of The Avengers’ props and costumes — which honestly wouldn’t have been bad either.
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Look at that. That display case is crazy.
Going beyond the costumes and sets, there was still a lot to be found towards the end of the exhibit, which strayed away from The Avengers to focus more on just really cool NASA science, though many of these still weren’t at full capacity. There was an EEG set-up which scans your electrodes to track your eyes so you can access a menu, hands free, just like Tony Stark does. To do so, you need to move your eyes to move the cursor over to the menu you’d like (Flight Mode seemed the most promising but, again it was unavailable at the time). In order to access said menu, you need to blink at the prompt, which didn’t work for me but did for my friend who rightfully received the silent treatment on the way home. Yet again, this was another example of Avengers STATION having a really great potential, and when it’s at full capacity it’ll probably be overwhelmingly cool.
And really, the same could be said for the Avengers STATION as a whole. A lot of the science displays were intriguing but I’d hate to suggest them if they were as buggy as they were last night. If you wait a week at the very latest, it’s sure to have all been worked out. For now, I can see Discovery having a couple technical difficulties.
No matter how the science displays turn out, they still won’t get in the way of the real reason everyone’s here: the costumes and props from Avengers. I mentioned how the Avengers STATION does an excellent job of making its audience feel like they’re in the MCU, and the display cases holding Thor’s armor or the Red Skull’s outfit make that audience feel larger, more grand. The world is fleshed out through small mementos from Cap’s time at Camp Lehigh to crashed alien spacecraft (Phil Coulson fans are gonna get a kick out of one exhibit in particular) that makes the STATION feel almost like a museum of the superhuman activity that’s spiked ever since Tony Stark put on the armor in 2008.
It’s in these moments that Discovery finds the magic of the Avengers movies, creating a charming world full of magic and science. As much as Discovery might stumble when it comes to the technical aspects (and again, these are problems that will more than likely be fixed within this week at the very latest), they did an excellent job in translating the Avengers to real life.
Avengers STATION is an intriguing and fun experience for any Avengers fans, doubly so for the young ‘ins (and triply so for those taking selfies).
