angryfreckle said: I think the reason he’s been made to be basically useless in the movies is because they felt like they only had room for one badass assassin so they went with Black Widow for sex appeal. However, Hawkeye is the other side of that badass partnership.
There is only room for one assassin, though. They only needed one character to demonstrate the difference between a regular person with a lot of training and a person who has superpowers. Having a second character also do that would have been redundant, which is also why Batman is the only major member of the JL without powers. Having one character alone demonstrates how these people are better than even the best trained regular people, making them Earth's mightiest heroes.
When it comes to deciding between Black Widow and Hawkeye, Black Widow was chosen not (just) for sex appeal, but because A) she had a bigger role in a previous movie (Remmer wasn't even credited for Thor), B) she added diversity to the team otherwise made up only of men and C) she worked better in the plot, since she was ashamed of all the years of wetwork she did for the Russians and saving New York by closing the portal redeems her.
Also, the few things he did do didn't actually matter. He led Loki's forces, but anybody could have done that. His fight with BW gave her something to do in the helicarrier attack and was almost interesting since she had to fight the person she's trying to save (which reaffirms what Loki was saying about her since she's trying to help but is still being violent), but a scene of her risking herself saving some shield scientist from attacking mercenaries would also have worked, since it shows that he's wrong. In New York, he helped kill aliens but only like 12 tops, and while everybody else had a role to play, he just gave them a bird's eye view, which they already had since two Tony and Thor can both fly. His most famous scene, exploding an arrow in Loki's face, showed that regular people were able to fight back too, which would have been good if Coulson hadn't demonstrated that by blowing him through a wall.
Basically, he had no real impact on the plot or themes of the movie, to the point that it could have been made without him and not suffered in the slightest. If you think that doesn't mean he's not important then you're wrong.
