Avengers: Age of Ultron

[yoshif8tures]

What? I thought it was released in Australia on April 23rd.

I live in Japan now. Maybe I should update that flag?

 

[hbenthow]

I live in Japan now.

Ah, that explains it. I saw that you had your flag set to Australia's, so I assumed that you lived in Australia.

 

[Nic]

I think Sady Doyle's essay Age of Robots: How Marvel Is Killing the Popcorn Movie sums up my feelings nicely.

When I got around to the "there's no character arc for Age of Ultron" bit, I wanted to shout at the computer "you are full of SUCH bulls**t", especially since I've read articles that show that Age of Ultron does have deeper themes and character arcs:

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/05/04/age-of-ultron-consequences-legacies-killer-robots

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/05...-the-character-arcs-of-avengers-age-of-ultron

Honestly, articles like this one just come across as certain old guard critics not wanting to get sweeped up in something niche that turned mainstream and getting mad that everyone else isn't doing the same as them and condescend to the people who actually do enjoy the shared universe aspect, and even then Marvel's shared universe story-telling isn't even a new idea!

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/05...-avengers-and-the-history-of-shared-universes

I'd be lying if I said all the movies Marvel has made have been of the same quality, but as I've said before, the lack of "Michael Bay fatigue" means that people are still going to see whatever they want if they get enjoyment out of, and I would prefer that they go to Marvel movies, especially since, at the time I'm writing this, Age of Ultron has made over a billion dollars worldwide, which I think is a very good thing:

tl;dr-while there might be a few exceptions to some people, on the whole, Superhero Fatigue Is a Myth.

 

[theslime]

I can assure you that Sady Doyle is not an old guard critic, but that's beside the point. As is the discussion of whether or not shared universe is a new idea or not - hell, shared universes is a decidedly OLD idea, and one entertained by artists as diverse as David Lynch (who has claimed that some of his films are from the same universe) and Bret Eason Ellis (the Bateman family, etc).

Doyle's point (and mine) is that Marvel's strategy will reach the point (like the DC new 52 reached a couple of months after the reboot) where the shared universe idea hurts storylines and character arcs, and with Age of Ultron Doyle argues that it already has. The inevitable result of the MCU is characters that are given nothing important to do in a story, and several interlocking but ultimately utterly unsatisfying storylines that are mostly buildups to other unsatisfying stories. I think Marvel did the right thing up to and including the first Avengers film (although, let's face it, Captain America was pretty bad and Thor was abysmal). After that, the weight of the shared universe started becoming a story albatross. Good stories can still happen, sure, but the less they emphasize the shared universe, the better off we will be. Christopher Nolan knew this when he made sure that his Man of Steel would have nothing to do with his Batman trilogy.

The last video you posted could just as easily be made to mean that there should be superhero COMICS. Which I'm all for. Although the adherence to continuity creates even bigger storytelling issues than in the MCU, on the whole I think comics is a much better medium for the colourful antics of superheroes than movies will ever be. Can you imagine something as trippy as Grant Morrison's Action Comics arc in movie form?

PS: Important distinction - I'm saying superhero fatigue is COMING, not that it's already here. (Although in my case, it already IS here, but I'm not silly enough to think I'm speaking for anyone else.)

 

[Kal-El]

Doyle's point (and mine) is that Marvel's strategy will reach the point (like the DC new 52 reached a couple of months after the reboot) where the shared universe idea hurts storylines and character arcs, and with Age of Ultron Doyle argues that it already has. The inevitable result of the MCU is characters that are given nothing important to do in a story, and several interlocking but ultimately utterly unsatisfying storylines that are mostly buildups to other unsatisfying stories.

^This.

I think Marvel did the right thing up to and including the first Avengers film (although, let's face it, Captain America was pretty bad and Thor was abysmal).

The First Avenger was an overlong prelude to Avengers, but Thor was a great film.

After that, the weight of the shared universe started becoming a story albatross.

And yet Captain America 2 was the greatest Marvel film we'd seen in a while!

Good stories can still happen, sure, but the less they emphasize the shared universe, the better off we will be.

Point in case: Guardians of the Galaxy.

Christopher Nolan knew this when he made sure that his Man of Steel would have nothing to do with his Batman trilogy.

Hear hear. And yet, that was the first chapter in another shared universe. He didn't look back, but he did look forward. Considering all of the easter eggs in that film, perhaps a bit too far.

 

[Nic]

Thing is, the only films which I feel actually emphasized the shared universe and it backfired was actually AoU itself. If you're an avid MCU fan like I am, Thor has to leave the story so he can explain the something that we already learned about in Guardians of the Galaxy (though admittedly, he was telling it to people who didn't know). Outside of that, other mentions of the shared universe in the Phase 2 films have been nothing but nods to characters and 5 second cameos, with the exception of Guardians of the Galaxy, which makes no references outside of the infinity stones, and even then you can presume that the stones are a Guardian-centric thing if that's the first film in the MCU you watch. I'd have to wait to see how Ant-Man, Captain America 3, and the rest of Phase 3 will work out, but even given some floundering on AoU's part, I don't see it as some harbinger of the end of blockbusters, at least not yet anyway.

 

[Neglify]

 

[Neglify]

 

[eternalsage]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! And I respectfully disagree with your reading of how far Tony matured in IM1. Sure, he made big steps in terms of caring about civilian innocents, and he got closer to Pepper, but he still didn't asked her out or anything, he still had zero time for any reasonable authority figures, be they SHIELD, the military, or even his own company's board of directors or good friend Stane (whom he repeatedly blew off before he reveals his treachery); despite his newfound moral compass, he was still a self-loving, go-it-alone narcissist by the end. IM2 gave him a grudging respect for SHIELD and legit teamwork with Rhodey, under the radical context of a life-threatening disease, but, by his own admission to Fury, he remained a narcissist. I think both IM2 and IM3 did awesome jobs of advancing his character without making him too good, which is darn tough. In short, maybe you oughta give 2 another try. (And calling it near-PT bad is well and truly bonkers, IMO.)

I just got done re watching the first half of the MCU movies (up to Avengers 1) and I have to say you are right. Iron Man 2 is actually a much better movie than I remembered, and is right there with the first one. And having seen 1 & 2 in such close proximity to each other, I see what you mean about the characterization. It did actually flow well, and somehow I just forgot how much a douche he still was at the end of one. Also, I forgot that this was the movie that introduced Black Widow, and I also missed the bit with Senator Sterns who later appears in Winter Soldier. Good times.

 

[Gaith]

^ Sweet, dude, and welcome to the IM2 fan club! Who else wants to join?!

 

[Kirestananderson01]

it's good movie but first part was even better

 

[Gaith]

Went to see this again and quite liked it. Going in a second time, when I didn't have to expend time trying to work out where the plot is going, I could just enjoy the action and characters for what they were.

My first rewatch was this weekend, and I had pretty much the same reaction. There's still lots of details that make little to no sense, but knowing where things were going, I could relax a bit and enjoy the ride. Heck, even Natasha/Bruce pretty much worked for me this time, and that was one of my biggest complaints upon my first viewing.

I still say Ultron makes little to no sense - and Slate's Abraham Reisman agrees, in his illuminating article "Ultron Has Always Been a Dumb Character, and That’s OK", and I stand by my initial reaction that, apart from introducing the Vision, this particular movie was pretty inessential to the overall MCU uber-story. Still, I did rather enjoy it this time around. It's definitely not great, but it's good, and that's good enough. ;-)

 

[Nic]

Felt like this was a good time to post this, given the impending release of the Blu-Ray. Really puts the "super hero fatigue" bull in its place.

 

[DominicCobb]

As to whether or not it can die, I agree probably not. But should it? Probably yeah. All I know is I'm getting tired of superheroes and Marvel's output (minus Daredevil) this year didn't help. There are others that would agree. I think it's definitely possible that the genre could slow down ala the western and the Simpsons and that's what I usually mean when I saw I believe in superhero fatigue.

Also, speaking as someone from the millennial generation, nostalgia does exist. It's not just when you yearn for a time when your favorite thing was around. It's when you yearn for a time when your favorite thing was good.

 

[thecuddlyninja]

Yeah but won't they be nostalgic for Transformers and Ninja Turtles in 20 years? They keep remaking stuff which will lead to us all being nostalgic for the same stuff albeit different versions. It'll be weird but all social evolution seems that way.

 

[Gaith]

As to whether or not it can die, I agree probably not. But should it? Probably yeah. All I know is I'm getting tired of superheroes...

Well, I'm tired of pro football. It's dull, it's formulaic, and it's crammed with almost as much product placement as an issue of Vanity Fair. May it die out soon!

 

[henzINNIT]

Man, the blu ray release of this is poor. For such an successful film studio, and such a densely packed film, you'd think Marvel could throw together a half decent package. Very brief behind the scenes docs, and only 4 deleted scenes, not including the Loki cameo or alternate ending that were previously mentioned... meh.

I like the film, but honestly I was looking forward to seeing what was cut as it felt very choppy.

 

[Gaith]

Honest Trailers is honest:

Custom blu cover-makers, Assemble!

 

[TomH1138]

I finally saw the movie and read through all of the posts since May, and I agree with the general "meh" reaction. I'm a huge Joss Whedon fan, so I'm not one to dogpile for its own sake, but there was definitely something lacking here.

A key problem is Ultron. He's a

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villain who can be killed over and over again and not die. The Terminator handled that concept well, but in that film, there was only one nearly-unstoppable robot. Ultron has thousands (millions?) of bodies, so destroying any one of them is meaningless. His bodies are so worthless that at one point Ultron himself destroys one copy just because it's a slightly older model. How can there be any dramatic tension when "destroying Ultron" is such a pointless goal? By the time the Vision destroys what's supposedly the last one, I had no idea if it was actually the last one. So the scene meant nothing to me.

There's a moment when thousands of Ultrons (all clearly CGI) are descending upon our heroes. Rather than being a moment of terror and dread, and it looked like nothing so much as a cheap video game.

Also: Where is Ultron getting all of that raw material to create all those versions of himself? It would have been interesting if they had all looked different, like they had been assembled from whatever metal or steel happened to be on hand (ripping off pieces from people's cars, bridges, items found in junkyards, etc.). Instead, thousands upon thousands were created in under a week, and they all looked identical. Did he take over a factory somewhere? Considering how fast they were churning out, were there already facilities somewhere equipped for making killer robots?

Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to base a movie (at least in name and villain) on a fairly recent comic book event. (The comics version of Age of Ultron is so recent that it happened in 2013, after the release of the last Avengers movie.) I wonder what villain Joss would have picked, or what story he would have told, if he had free rein. Joss is usually very particular about a story he wants to tell -- he might have put his mark on a story from his own younger comic book reading days, or told a completely new story. But in this case, it felt like too many of the blanks had been filled in for him before he even began writing. (But that's just speculation.)

Other thoughts (includes unmarked spoilers on earlier MCU movies, which I guess are fair game at this point):

--At the end of Iron Man 3, Tony blew up all of his suits and quit being Iron Man. Even at the time, we knew there was going to be an Avengers 2, so it seemed a pretty pointless thing to do, but I was hoping there was going to be some really good story reason why the filmmakers went to the effort of retiring Tony and a really good reason for bringing him back. There wasn't. He was just there with the rest of them, right at the beginning. AoU actually works better if you haven't seen Iron Man 3. That's sloppy filmmaking.

--On a similar note (and someone may have said this), but the Avengers were disbanded at the end of their previous team films, all dropping off the grid, only to be called back for the most dire emergency. I was looking forward to that whole "getting the band back together" stuff, but that was just completely skipped over. Ditto for the reveal of the Stark Tower now being the Avengers Tower. That should have been a big moment.

And, as the "Honest Trailer" pointed out, of all the things that could have brought the Avengers back together, the opening sequence seemed like a very minor incident.

--As I'm sure everyone here knows, there was a big legal battle between Fox and Marvel Films over the use of the characters Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Having now seen both films, it seems like there was no really good reason for Marvel Films to want these characters so badly. Quicksilver was done much better in X-Men: Days of Future Past (although admittedly, SW was pretty meaningless in that film). Joss gives both of them stuff to do in this film, but they're in a movie that's already so overstuffed with characters that there's no time for us to really know or care about them. When

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Quicksilver died,

I didn't feel anything.

(Also: Wasn't the whole deal that one of them could use the name "Quicksilver" and the other could use the name "Pietro"? I think DoFP used Peter and AoU used Pietro and nobody used Quicksilver.)

--Falcon was completely wasted in this. He was great in Winter Soldier and Ant-Man, but he shows up and does nothing, and then we're supposed to be excited when it's heavily implied that the next Avengers film will be about him and the other new Avengers that we don't care about.

(Again, based on his other appearances, I am a bit excited, but putting him in that final scene with Wanda et al. just felt like the cinematic equivalent of a shrug. Even the usually dependable Rhodey couldn't make that roster seem more exciting.)

--While I don't expect that having watched all of Agents of SHIELD should be a requirement for understanding the movies, there was practically no connection between the two. Yes, if one gets into the details, there's some connectivity there (and kudos to the people who did explain those connections so well earlier in this thread), but what it really boils down to is this: SHIELD sent the helicarrier. That's it. And we didn't even know that until the following week's episode.

I was hoping for some added emotional resonance or maybe even just a cameo from a beloved character, but the connection between the two was really just an afterthought. Still, I would have gladly overlooked this if the rest of the movie had been more entertaining. (BTW, I initially resisted Agents of SHIELD, but it's a wonderful series.)

Anyway, the movie isn't outright incompetent, just very unsatisfying. I really hope we get to see an extended edition at some point -- not that the movie really needed to be longer, but because the 3+ hour cut might reveal what Joss' original intentions were, and that there might be a great movie buried in there that can be found in fan editing.

Side note: My favorite thing in the whole movie -- finding out that Hawkeye

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has a family. After two movies where he had very little screen time, I finally care about Hawkeye.

 

[Neglify]

^Excellent post, you bring up a lot of great points. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie when I saw in the theaters but haven't rewatched it and don't feel any strong urge to do so. Which is a shame because I loved the first Avengers a ton and watched that at least 3 or 4 times now.