The Avengers with Bow and Arrow
The Avengers with Bows and Arrows is a lighthearted take on The Avengers. The film has the same great action sequences, but instead of weapons or laser beams, our heroes use bows and arrows to fight evildoers. I f you’ve seen The Avengers, probably the last thing on your mind was to keep track of what bow and arrow was used in the movie. But there were actually three bows and arrows used throughout, which we’ll explain further down the article.
Let’s first take a look at the major characters who are using bow and arrows in The Avengers, what they use it for, where you can see them shooting with it.
Marvel’s The Avengers, also known as The Avengers and Avengers Assemble, is a 2012 superhero film, based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name. The Avengers is the sixth installment in Marvel’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Hawkeye
Hawkeye’s Bow is Clint Barton’s standard weapon. He is a master archer with superhuman aim and also a great hand-to-hand combatant, and has the ability to precisely ricochet shots from his bow. Hawkeye makes full use of his bow and arrows throughout The Avengers .
The third “Avengers: Age of Ultron” trailer debuted today, and Hawkeye is rocking a brand new Hoyt Game Master II recurve bow, which features Hoyt’s signature TEC series riser. This is a switch from his last bow, the Hoyt Buffalo – an equipment preference that Hawkeye seems to share with Katniss Everdeen.
He demonstrates that he is the world’s best marksman by taking out half a dozen Chitauri soldiers in mid air with ease. He also uses a couple of exploding arrowheads for some impressive kills. He is shown to use two variations of a bow. One is a compound bow used in Thor.
It has an attachable quiver of five arrows and uses a fast-retracting bowstring for launching power.
The other, used in The Avengers, is a custom made collapsible, double recurve bow. It is equipped with a laser sight and several buttons, which Hawkeye can use to select which type of arrowhead his custom quiver attaches to an arrow shaft. Along with shooting arrows, Hawkeye also uses the bow as a quarterstaff of sorts, bashing enemies with it.
He uses an “assembly of recurve bows, compound bows, pulleys and slingshots” to shoot his explosive arrowheads. They have an accuracy range of up to two city blocks. He also has trick arrows like the grappling hook arrow, which is used to pull up somebody who’s falling from a building. The explosive arrows were used by Loki in Stuttgart, Germany and by Thor for crowd control on the SHIELD helicarriers. Hawkeye’s bow was given to him by Black Widow.
Shown in the Avengers’ Quinjet, Hawkeye’s bow was custom made by “Yost Varizoom” specifically for him. For those who know a little bit of archery equipment, it is a Hoyt Buffalo Recurve Bow with Inovaxion Alpha limbs and a Dynaflight 97 string. It is 40lbs with a 32-inch draw length.
For additional reference, the bow’s grip that was used by Hawkeye in The Avengers has Hoyt’s logo on it which you can see here:
Thor
Thor’s Bow is a powerful magical weapon forged by Eitri and used by Thor when he was living on Earth. In the comics, his bow is one of two weapons that he has in his possession from Asgard. He also had Mjolnir but it was destroyed during Ragnarok. He uses an asgardian reinforced steel compound bow made from the same metal as his hammer Mjolnir. He uses it with his lightning power to shoot arrows. The bow is used both by Loki and Thor during the beginning of the movie in Stuttgart, Germany.
Loki ‘s
Loki is given a special collapsible double recurve bow and quiver of arrows by Thanos after recovering the Tesseract, allowing him to fire projectiles from both ends simultaneously. Loki uses this weapon first to shoot down a SHIELD fighter jet and later during his final battle with Captain America and Black Widow in Stuttgart, Germany. The arrows from this bow have been shown to be incredibly powerful, being able to pierce metal and stone with ease.
He uses a compound bow with a string made from the intestines of his victims. Note that he does not use it for long as Hawkeye manages to shoot an arrow into his hand and break the bow. Loki’s bow was made by “Rene Van Verseveld” (a member of Marvel Studios) who has also created bows for the other characters in the movie.
How Were The Bows Made?
It turns out that the bows were not CGI-created but real, functional bows that were created by archery equipment maker Hoyt. They decided to go ahead and make two compound bows (for Hawkeye and Loki) along with a recurve bow (for Thor). The bows were made at Hoyt’s manufacturing facility in Valley City, North Dakota.
“We started with a sketch from the art department at Marvel,” said Hoyt’s marketing director Rob Taylor, “then went through a few variations to get it right. We wanted them to look unique and feel powerful in the actors’ hands. Taylor said, “and that’s important for him to get on board.” The bows were painted by hand to make them look like the ones used in the comics. They each cost around $3,000.
Hawkeye’s bow
Hawkeye’s bow was made with hickory wood branches that were laminated together at different angles for strength and then heated in an oven to keep it bent into shape while gluing it. Then they used traditional leather tooling to form the rest of the bow.
Thor’s bow
Thor’s bow was made with hickory wood branches that were laminated together at different angles for strength and then heated in an oven to keep it bent into shape while gluing it. Then they used traditional leather tooling to form the rest of the bow.
All the bows and arrows were built and painted by Hoyt and then later given to Marvel Studios. The recurve bow used for Thor was not finished in time for shooting, so they created two chrome versions that were meant to be props, but were later used for shooting. The arrows that Thor and Loki used in the movie were also created by Hoyt, but they ended up not using them at all because it’s difficult to shoot arrows in a “heroic fashion” (i.e., with cool-looking poses).
Bow and Arrow
A weapon consisting of a stave made of wood or other elastic material, bent and held in tension by a string. The arrow, a thin wooden shaft with a feathered tail, is fitted to the string by a notch in the end of the shaft and is drawn back until sufficient tension is produced in the bow so that when released it will propel the arrow. Arrowheads have been made of shaped flint, stone, metal, and other hard materials.
The origins of the bow and arrow are prehistoric; bone arrow points dating to 61,000 years ago have been found at Sibudu Cave in South Africa. The bow served as a primary military weapon from ancient times through the Middle Ages in the Mediterranean world and Europe and for an even longer period in China, Japan, and on the Eurasian steppes. In the climax of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus’s prowess with the bow is decisive in his combat with Penelope’s suitors. In the Old Testament, Ahab’s death is the result of an enemy arrow that “struck the king of Israel between the joints of a harness.”
Archery Bow Types
RECURVE BOW
The recurve bow is so called as, unlike the longbow which has one arc towards the archer, the limbs on a recurve bow curve away at the ends. This curve stores and delivers more energy more efficiently than an equivalent straight-limbed bow. Modern day recurve bows are takedown as they are in three parts with a handle – often called a riser – and a pair of limbs that bolt on.
Many beginner bows have wooden handles but the most popular bows have a metal handle, either cast or computer machined. Bow limbs can have many different laminations including wood, carbon and modern composite materials making them light and efficient. You can shoot a recurve bow in every shooting discipline right up to international level in target and field archery, and the recurve is also currently the only bow type used in Olympic Archery.
COMPOUND BOW
Modern compound bows have metal risers and composite limbs. The limbs are short and stiff and the string is connected to a pulley system mounted on wheels or cams. When a recurve bow is drawn the archer has to hold more weight as the draw length increases; on a compound the bow reaches a peak weight part way through the draw then the weight drops off – this “let-off” can vary from about 65-80% and means that at “full draw” an archer is holding very little weight.
As the fingers of the archer can then torque the string, compound bows are more usually shot using a release aid instead of “off the fingers”. As they can be less strenuous to shoot than the other types of bow, compounds are very popular. You can shoot a compound bow in every shooting discipline right up to international level in target and field archery, and this bow type is involved in two classes of Paralympic archery.
RECURVE BAREBOW
Barebow recurve archery is very popular in the UK especially in field and 3D archery where it is an international division under World Archery rules. It is also recognised in the UK for target and clout. Compound bear bows can also be shot in Archery GB field competitions.
A barebow has no sight and to be within the rules a barebow must pass through a 12″ hoop when unstrung. As the usual stabilizers can’t be used on the riser, some archers shoot with a heavy, dumpy weight instead and others use specialist barebow risers that allow weight to be inserted into the riser.
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