Author Topic: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)  (Read 9694 times)

DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #10 on: May 06, 2015, 03:42:24 AM »
As for my favorite comic story arc, some Avengers fans might not be too crazy about it just for the fact that it's the current run, but I think Jonathan Hickman is writing the cable-drama of Avengers stories at the moment. It's an auteurist take on the Avengers. Brilliant big ideas carried out in dialogue/character-driven drama! Nothing like it at the big two comic companies. After that would probably come Millar/Hitch's The Ultimates and its sequel (clear inspirations for the MCU).

The problem with the Ultimates storylines is that Avengers 1 is basically a mashup of Ultimates 1 and 2 : Chitauri invasion (U1) + Loki invasion (U2). I will not mention Ultimates 3 because we do not talk about such things. The one thing Marvel could keep from those comic books is the idea of an international community fed-up with America's arms-race-type of escalation as it hoards more and more meta-humans, but that only works if the Avengers are working for the government, which is not the case since the fall of SHIELD. It's a pity because the first two Ultimates are some of the best comic books I have ever read.

My biggest complaint about the movie is the fatigue. Heroes will win and there's ten more movies in the pipeline that get set up. Everyone is fighting over a gem, a box, a stick. What I did like is the character interaction, the chemistry and the all-around quality of the performances (the comic/movie fanboy in me has felt that blockbuster movie casts are so awesome nowadays). Also the fact that (and The Dissolve wrote a great feature on this, but my friends and I were talking about it on Friday after the movie) in the MCU the heroes are heroes. They want to save the day and put human lives first. The Avengers were willing to die and make no compromise to risk human life. Cap says something to the fact he won't even weigh lives against each other and would rather go down fighting till the end.

I think the fatigue problem could be solved by Marvel allowing itself to kill an Avenger once in a while. And I don't mean in a he'll-be-back-in-the-next-movie Captain America kind of way, which is essential to that one character's origin, but that Marvel has constantly used for decades in the comic book world. I mean death death. And it would have to be a real Avenger, one people know and care about. My reaction to Quicksilver's death was a « Oh well, it was nice to meet you. » which really makes the whole thing pointless and gratuitous. Death would bring stakes back into the movies, and we all know how important stakes are.

As for civilian death in these movies, what I love about them is that Marvel doesn't shy away from killing civilians, it just doesn't kill all of them. Thousands died in the Battle of New York, as is mentioned several times in the MCU. As heroic as the Avengers are, they cannot save everyone. This time around, I also imagine thousands will have died in what will probably be known as « Sokovia in the sky but not exactly with diamonds day ». It's a breath of fresh air from the naive and completely unrealistic we-are-going-to-save-absolutely-everyone stance many comic books and movie adaptations take.
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MattDrufke

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #11 on: May 06, 2015, 07:37:40 AM »
I'm glad DarkeningHumour mentioned the easter eggs, because I want to know if I'm the only one bothered by this:

I understand as a fan of the source material for this stuff that not everything from the books is going to work it's way into the film and that there's going to be some deviation of backstory and all that. Which is why when Tony Stark is the creator of Ultron and not Hank Pym, I'm following along and excited to see where it's gonna go. But the full backstory for Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch is not only so drastically altered (being given powers as a result of tessaract-infused testing as opposed to the comics where they're the mutant children of Magneto) that it left me a little uneasy. I hope there's a way that the movies can rectify this because I'd love to see some sort of Avengers/X-Men crossover in following MCU films.

Also, if Stan Lee ever wrote a book about how to age well, we should all buy it. If any of us look like that at 92, we'd be lucky.
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MattDrufke

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #12 on: May 06, 2015, 09:44:44 AM »
For the most part, I really liked the film, though was extremely disappointed with the last action sequence. Here's a few reasons why:

#1: It's not the best action sequence in the film. The opening assault on the castle was better. So was the Hulk vs. Iron Man in the "Veronica" armor. C'mon! This is supposed to be the last scene. It felt like Whedon just ran out of bells and whistles to throw at us, so he tried to distract us by just making it really long. Also, one of your heroes, Iron Man, doesn't even spen any time fighting!

#2: We saw it in the last movie. You remember in the first Avengers, where it ended when the team came together to fight an army being lead by our villain? A lot of fun, right? So how does this one end? Well, the team comes together... to fight an army being lead by our villain. They even use the Hulk for comedic timing again, but instead of throwing Loki around he's throwing Ultron out of a plane.

#3: An army does not a villain make. The cover for the "Age Of Ultron" comic book that came out a few years ago has Ultron standing over our heroes after he conquered them all. All of them. Just by himself. Just the one guy. That's how Whedon could've made this different. We've already seen The Avengers fight an army. Hell, we saw it earlier in the film. Now give them a villain so formidable that it can only be destroyed by off them working at once. Together. That's a real bad dude.

Hopefully, they'll get the message with Thanos.
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #13 on: May 06, 2015, 10:59:42 AM »
I agree that I would have rather have had a mutant backstory for the twins, since their mutant alienness is so fundamental to why they are outcasts from birth, become terrorists in their youth and are a controversial pick for the new Avengers roster when they reform. But as luck would have it, evil evil Sony will not let us have any of that. The only other Earth option for powers of this magnitude in the current MCU are the Inhumans, but I don't think Marvel is ready to let that genie out of the bottle in a movie just yet. I am not crazy about, in fact I don't even like, the mad-scientist-with-Loki's-sceptre explanation prided here, but I can't come up with anything better. I do blame Marvel for not making us care about the two of them though, and coming up with what is essentially a bland and unoriginal backstory. Maybe more empathy could have been generated with some flashbacks to the experiments that gave them theirs powers or somesuch.

This makes me think about another Easter egg : in the comics, big baddie baron Strucker has a couple of twin children, a boy and a girl, which I imagine is part of the reason they chose to make him Quicksilver and Wanda's creator.

Also, I don't think the final action sequence is substandard, but I agree that in the chaos it seems that some characters are left out of the on-screen action at times, namely Iron Man and the Hulk. But by all accounts you must admit that the slow-motion scene around the shaft is gorgeous. 
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MattDrufke

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #14 on: May 06, 2015, 03:01:56 PM »
Also, I don't think the final action sequence is substandard, but I agree that in the chaos it seems that some characters are left out of the on-screen action at times, namely Iron Man and the Hulk. But by all accounts you must admit that the slow-motion scene around the shaft is gorgeous.

I mean, yeah, that was a cool 30 seconds in what seemed like a half-hour fight scene.

Again, I'd have rather had all nine of them try to take on the master Ultron. To me, it comes down to why you need the Avengers. If it's just because, "Oh, man! There are so many of them," then all that means is that if you had enough firepower (say, the entire army) you could do the same job. But if you have a foe so powerful and cunning that you need the combination of earth's mightiest heroes to even have a chance to defeat one dude... that's pretty awesome.

It goes back to something I saw with Bruce Timm when the Justice League became a tv series. He basically said the first thing the writers had to do was realize that you had Superman on your team. So you had to create a problem bigger than Superman which is hard because he's, you know, Superman.
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #15 on: May 06, 2015, 06:19:45 PM »
The thing is, if you go down the incredibly-powerful-enemy route, then you have to keep escalating the power levels of all next villains, and unlike in the comic book world, the realism requirements of the MCU put restrictions on how far you can go in making a single entity powerful. I mean, okay, say you make an uber-Ultron this time around, how titanic (see what I did there) do you have to make Thanos to make it a real increase in threat level in Avengers 3 ?

Plus, an all-against-one fight sounds cool, but there is only so long it can go on for. It would basically be 3 minutes of all Avengers going 100% on Ultron, probably following a plan laid out by Stark, and then they would be all worn down and either have lost or won.
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MattDrufke

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #16 on: May 07, 2015, 12:16:19 PM »
First off, I'd rather have a cool 3-minute fight than what we had at the end of AOU, which I should point out is a moive I still liked a whole lot (I feel like I've been pooping a lot on the final sequence- which I have- but the movie is crazy enjoyable with a lot of stuff I really, really liked).

As for the "If Ultron is so powerful, what will Thanos have to be?", isn't this the point of adding new Avengers? Also, you don't always have to beat a villain one certain way (nor does a villain have to beat superheroes one certain way, and I feel like the MCU films have done a really good job showing this).
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #17 on: May 07, 2015, 01:05:50 PM »
Thanos will make the other Marvel villains look puny. The Infinity Gauntlet basically makes him a god.

DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #18 on: May 07, 2015, 02:16:28 PM »
I hope he doesn't actually get his hands on a fully functional wholly filled gauntlet. The ways Marvel finds for its heroes to beat enemies who have achieved omnipotence are always so contrived...

And I would prefer they do not keep on adding countless Avengers. The team already seemed overstuffed in this movie, with little camera time given to each as we only see a glimpse of what they actually do. I shudder to think about how they'll manage once the Guardians are involved, not mentioning Black Panther, Ant Man, the Inhumans and the end-of-movie new roster.
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StudentOFilm

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Re: The Avengers 2 : Age of Ultron (2015)
« Reply #19 on: May 07, 2015, 08:38:47 PM »
As to character death, I'm the billionth person to point this out, but I honestly feel like the Quicksilver death is in response to Days of Future Past announcing they would use Quicksilver (not a response to the film itself as both films were obviously at different stages of production at the same time).

Also I wasn't too bothered by the Hank Pym/Tony Stark switch. I mean both are egomaniacal jerks who are still super smart and do care (although Hank was always one to go the extra mile, but Tony still has his share of mishaps) so to have a scientist bad boy create the villain worked for me. I also loved the Ultron/Vision/Tony dynamic. Spader's Ultron is sort of another side of the coin to Tony with Jarvis/Vision then becoming the almost antithesis for that.

Finally, I agree what 1SO said about Cap 3. It almost feels like it's going to be a more significant film in terms of impactful events. I mean the fact that the Russo Bros and the writers are going on to do Avengers 3/4 and look at the cast...

Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd, Emily VanCamp, Frank Grillo, William Hurt, Chadwick Boseman, Daniel Bruhl and Martin Freeman.

Sounds more like an Avengers movie the more I look at it.
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