The Marvel Thread (Spoilers, and language!)

Moderator announcement: like we did with the last Hobbit movie, please keep using spoiler tags here when talking Age Of Ultron for the next week or so. Give everyone a chance to see it. Next weekend, gloves are off.

Did anyone hear the final verdict on the elevator question?

Because if the elevator can't lift the hammer... they missed a real easy way of keeping that rock down.
 
I just got back from seeing it, was great. I agree with NP that it's probably 3rd behind Winter Soldier and GotG, although I could see it beating TWS maybe. I loved how Black Widow and (especially) Hawkeye got some actual character development. In general the story was very strong with lots of interesting and sometimes subtle sublots. Something Avengers 1 was severely lacking IMO.

By the way, did you guys see it in 3D? I personally wouldn't recommend it. It doesn't ruin the movie but it also doesn't add anything to it and at worst is a minor annoyance with the glasses.
 
I saw it in 3D. To be honest, apart from Avatar and maybe Tintin I never liked 3D in a movie I saw. Don't get the appeal. I only really saw it in 3D because it was the earliest possible screening of the movie.
 
I agree, I only did 3D because my brothers insisted. It's always gimmicky and often nauseating. At least the 3D in Avengers wasn't a distraction but still isn't worth the extra money.
 
Also, for the first time I'm actually interested in seeing a Thor movie. I skipped the first two but with the way AoU wrapped up I get the feeling Thor 3 will be very important in the overarching story leading to Infinity Wars.
 
2nd time I'm definitely seeing it in 2D.

AoU's opening weekend is 2nd best ever, but about 20m less than the first one. Most people think it's because it's not a new thing anymore, and that it had to compete with Kentucky Derby, NBA/NHL finals and that dumb boxing match, but I think that also more and more people are tired of 3D and choose 2D instead which means less money. So it's not a catastrophe if it doesn't outgross the first movie; if you just take a look at the list of highest grossing movies, it's mostly first and last movies in the series there. 8th Harry Potter movie was the first one to outgross the 1st Harry Potter movie!

And yep!
Thor: Ragnarok will be super important, which is why I think they need to find an awesome director to make it right. I think Ragnarok will be to Phase 3 what The Winter Soldier was to Phase 2 - game changer with big repercussions on the rest of the universe. So it needs to be done right and it needs to blow away the other 2 movies.
 
I now know where the last 2 Infinity Stones will be.

Wisdom begins here:
L5Bws4b.gif
 
So, I saw the movie last night.

1) The 3D, as Mosh and others have said, added little to the movie. However, I was seeing it in Landmark Extra, which has the extra large, soft, comfy seats that don't make my knees ache from being so damn low to the ground, and have the larger screen with 7.1. I was paying that extra money anyway. Where it did matter, however, and where I was infinitely glad watching the movie in 3D, was for the trailer for Force Awakens.

2) Brian Tyler is no Alan Silvestri. The score for this movie was quite poor, in my opinion, and I only noticed the music when it was loud and inappropriate - or worse, simply annoying.

3) Four origin stories in one movie? No, thanks. Here's the problem with this: I didn't care when Quicksilver died. I had less emotional attachment to him in this movie than anything else. But when War Machine showed up, finally, to get his due with the Avengers? That was awesome and only would have been better if Falcon was his wingman.

4) Ultron was great, but suffered from the same lack of backstory that the twins and Vision suffered from. In the end, I'm still not sure why Ultron felt the way he did. I'm not sure how the AI got out of the scepter and into the Stark systems. I'm not sure how JARVIS survived the attack of Ultron. Some of this stuff doesn't matter, but I would have very much enjoyed a scene with Ultron and Tony Stark discussing father/son stuff. In the end, Ultron felt more like a misguided child than a supervillain.

5) I'm tired of Avengers murderfacing basic robots en masse. I get it, they can kill stormtroopers. Unlike first Avengers, there was no variation in the enemies here. Just wave after wave of drones. The Chitauri had the robots, the guys on the speeders, and the big space whales.

So on the good end...

I loved that Hawkeye got some story. He went from being a nobody to one of the most fleshed out characters in the MCU. And I really enjoyed that. Jeremy Renner was said to be very unhappy with the first Avengers, and he must be pretty pleased now. I also loved that they finally brought in a few of the supporting characters - War Machine and Falcon to be specific, and it was awesome when War Machine showed up. Pretty cool to see Idris Elba, even in a dream sequence. This movie had a much more expansive feel than the first one.

Vision looks and feels perfect. I'm not a fan of the rushed backstory and the hurried creation of him, but I will admit I love the final product.

James Spader knocked Ultron out of the park. He felt like a petulant four-day-old offspring of Tony Stark. He quipped like he was Tony Stark, he flirted with the line between good and evil like Tony Stark. What he didn't have - unlike Tony Stark - was the relationships to ground him. Really really well acted by James Spader.

I ended up feeling like this movie was either a half-hour too long, or a half-hour too short. A nice B+ movie, but below the grades for all the recent Marvel films.
 
LooseCannon said:
So, I saw the movie last night.
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Do you get notified on a reply if the reply is inside spoiler tags?

LooseCannon said:
Four origin stories in one movie?
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I didn't see it that way.

The twins: the origin of their powers was not shown. We're just told "Hydra experimented on them". Their story about the Stark bomb is necessary to tell us where the characters are at mentally, just like we know the motivations of the rest of the Avengers.

The origin of Ultron is the whole point of the movie, and the origin of Vision as created by Ultron has always been part of that story. It's not just an excuse to fit Vision in there, it is the plot.

So in retrospect, I can see why you'd say that - but for me, watching the movie, it never felt that way.

LooseCannon said:
In the end, Ultron felt more like a misguided child than a supervillain.
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He's often been written that way in the comics too. It's part of his character in many stories. They may have taken it too far, and the petulant brat act is a Spader specialty, but I didn't find it out of line. (Not a knock against Spader, he was amazing, but his acting style does tend to emphasize the "spoiled brat" aspect of many of his characters over his entire career. The script played to that strength of his, and Spader ran with it like you'd expect.)

While it may not have been as good for those who only see the movies, I thought AoU came closest so far to the tone of the comics. Tony Stark was the closest yet to his comics characterization (especially the small things like the little "sorry" when he knocks Hulk's tooth out). Vision was also very much like the comics characterization.
 
Black Widow getting kidnapped for no purpose other than to be rescued 3 seconds later? It did kinda neuter her character a bit. I suppose she told them where Ultron was, but they could have figured that out...after all, the twins were on their side now, and had met Ultron there.
 
Ah, that. She was supposed to have way more action scenes and wasn't supposed to get kidnapped. However, ScarJo got pregnant like 3-4 months before the filming even started, so they had to shoot her scenes way earlier, mask her pregnancy and cut down the stunts to the bare minimum, and so the kidnapping part was brought in. They could've easily had her get injured after the HYDRA attack and have her sidelined during the rest of the movie, but this way she got to be involved till the very end.

I don't quite remember the whole dialogue from the scene with her and Banner that's also a subject of controversy (I only saw the movie once), but that one is also very misinterpreted. Anyone who saw Agent Carter could've connected that Romanov went through the same program Dottie did, which was basically training little girls to become killing machines and having them kill each other since childhood. And the sterilizing part was supposed to convince them they aren't supposed to start families or get attached to anyone, especially children. Scarlet Witch's dream probably woke up her doubts about herself again, hence that dialogue. And also Banner-Romanov romance wasn't really a real romance since nothing came out of it, but it did make sense in a way, she was never really a part of a team before, was more of a solo agent in SHIELD. Stark, Thor and Barton are all taken, Cap's not interested, so that left her with Banner.

That's just my theory, at least.
 
LooseCannon said:
Black Widow getting kidnapped for no purpose other than to be rescued 3 seconds later? It did kinda neuter her character a bit. I suppose she told them where Ultron was, but they could have figured that out...after all, the twins were on their side now, and had met Ultron there.
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I'm so incredibly tired of this crap.

Any woman in any piece of media that is ever captured becomes an icon for misogyny. That's absurd. A damstel in distress is a trope and it can get annoying, but a woman taken hostage or kidnapped does not a misogynist make. It's The Avengers. There are three humans in the group: 1 is protected by impenetrable armor, 1 was brainwashed and underutilized in the last film, and 1 is a woman. So, just because Black Widow becomes an overused plot device, Joss is now labeled a misogynist? Ridiculous. An average bit of writing, maybe, but not misogyny.
 
Yes, I agree that it is not mission critical. But they're right to point it out that it is a fairly tropey, stereotypical thing to do. Definitely an over-the-top reaction to a problem that occurred because ScarJo couldn't do everything they wanted to do. That being said, was it the smartest thing for Joss to do? No. But there's a lot of this movie that falls into the "could be better" aspect.

NP, completely agree. Seems people are pissed off that BW was upset that she was sterilized for the BW program. Well, that's straight from the comics, and it makes sense. Some people are interpreting her emotions as upset that she can't have children...but I think it's more that she's upset that she doesn't have the choice. She was having the conversation with Bruce Banner, who, as was pointed out...was irradiated. He can't have kids.
 
In the end, I could understand people not liking that she got kidnapped. Yeah, it was a bit cliche, but saying he ruined her as a character is very over the top. She had 3 movies before to kick ass and she did. Pretty sure she's gonna kick ass in Civil War too, since the filming already started and she's not pregnant this time. Her role in the movie was still important and she had stuff to do. Hell, she got more screen time than Thor and Hawkeye!

And I don't even wanna talk about Whedon being accused of being a mysoginist because it's ridiculous. I don't see anyone calling Alan Taylor a mysoginist for having Jane kidnapped in TDW or Shane Black / Pepper / IM3.

I've also heard that people are saying that the twins are whitewashed. I think they had Romani heritage in the comics for a bit (got retconned later I think), so people picked up on it even though there's no trace of them being Romani in the movies. IMO Sokovia is supposed to be some sort of a mashup of all the ex-Russian and ex-Yugoslavian European countries.

It's just sad that people can get so upset over a movie and hurl abuse at others because of it...
https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/595441490286944257
 
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