The Avengers 2 -- Age of Ultron

It says here. And Joss Whedon giggles and giggles, or something.

i really enjoyed that first avengers movie. i kinda can't stand about 85% of marvel/dc movies. but that one was totally fun. make every superhero movie like that please.

Ultron's a great iconic character, but a straight adaptation of the Bendis story would be tricky, especially since one of the main Avengers in that story is one that Marvel Studios doesn't have film rights to (Wolverine). And I'm not sure Marvel would be wise to go down the time travel route in the filmed universe.

I loved Ultron madly but I haven't read Avengers since 1984 and I'm sure this will not = that in any way. Would love to see the whole Jocasta storyline in a movie...

They don't have Sue Storm either (or did I read something recently about the FF rights reverting to Marvel?) so the whole thing with her and Wolverine would need recast. Further to that there isn't a Hank Pym in the Marvel film universe yet, so that would need re-casting too with someone who is as intrinsic to the Universe that all the ripple effects make some kind of sense in their scale.

Also let's not forget the next X-Men movie is DofFP so it REALLY wouldn't make sense to make an AoU time-travel film.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/408157c26220cce105e0ccddcdb81030/tumblr_mq9p0gSywj1rd9v8io1_500.png

Cue two years of comic nerd rage.

Every day is a good excuse for nerd rage

when is there gonna be a WEST COAST AVENGERS movie?

Is Thanos going to be in some other movie then?

could turn up in Guardians of the Galaxy in some capacity

which actually sounds like it's going to be pretty cool

Yeah, from that link up top about the overall Marvel panel:

And then Djimon Hounsou made everybody lose their minds when he described Borath as "a great ally to Ronan and Thanos."

Further to that there isn't a Hank Pym in the Marvel film universe yet, so that would need re-casting too with someone who is as intrinsic to the Universe that all the ripple effects make some kind of sense in their scale.

And indeed:

http://io9.com/joss-whedon-no-you-dont-need-hank-pym-to-have-ultron-860162779

In an interview with io9, Whedon said you can absolutely have Ultron without Hank Pym. He said:

We don't have to have him. It works very simply — this is Marvel cinema, not Marvel comics. One thing [Marvel Studios head] Kevin Feige has a genius for is knowing what to hold onto and what to let go of. You can invoke the feeling you had and play with the characters you love and remain true to the needs of the film.
I asked how this will change Ultron's origin story, as a kind of offspring of the Avengers themselves. Whedon smiled and replied:

You'll have to wait and and see, but you don't need a Pym to create an Ultron.

Can't see how there is any mystery there at all - Tony Stark makes Hank Pym redundant, and his movie-persona is ALL about "guy plays with toys, makes mistakes, forgets what's Really Important, remembers it."

I remember in that good-but-not-great Mighty Avengers series, a Celestial or the Watcher or somebody sits Hank Pym down and explains that while Tony Stark is the Earth's greatest engineer, and Reed Richards its greatest inventor, Pym is the scientist supreme. Naturally this inflates Pym's ego enough that he starts working on whatever it is the person is trying to get him to do, and thus completely overlooks the fact that a) this makes no sense and b) the Watcher (or whatever) is blatantly a villain in disguise.

They can have a virus infect Jarvis who goes rogue and builds Ultron.

You think they might have Vision then too?

I see it spinning off Iron Man 3, where he seems to renounce being Iron Man but keeps the idea of being "the mechanic." Inevitably he turns to tinkering on a self-sufficient robot suit (not to be confused with the evil drone robots from Iron Man 2). This gets debuted at the beginning of the movie as an exciting new project "but there's still some bugs in the AI." It gets pressed into early service against some preliminary crisis and then the REAL crisis becomes this out of control robot master. Throw in a dash of Terminator 3 ("Ultron IS the virus!") and you've got a movie.

Basically, it's not that hard in a movie featuring robots and genius inventors and people building genius robot and stuff to have someone somehow make Ultron. Cue trailer:

Tony Stark: What's silver and angry and can't be destroyed?
Bruce Banner: What's green and angry and doesn't care?

Turns into Hulk.

"You think they might have Vision then too?"

I say quite possible since they are stating that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will also show up in the second film.

http://www.hitfix.com/news/avengers-2-joss-whedon-says-quicksilver-and-scarlet-witch-a-huge-part-of-movie

kinda thought for sure that the dead shield agent was gonna be the vision, with the tv show now i dunno

could turn up in Guardians of the Galaxy in some capacity

― Number None, Sunday, July 21, 2013 3:13 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

which actually sounds like it's going to be pretty cool

― Number None, Sunday, July 21, 2013 3:13 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oddly the first big-budget summer movie i've been excited about in years

Tony Stark makes Hank Pym redundant

Not if the plot was going to be the comics Age of Ultron, which is what I thought when I typed what I did. In AoU, being the guy who invents Ultron is a HUGE deal.

I just did a triumphant fist bump at the news about the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver

I mean, fist pump. I am by myself; I did not bump fists w anyone

Weren't they going to do an Ant Man movie?

Ant Man comes out in 2015, along with Avengers 2. Don't think Marvel has formalized Phase 3, but Planet Hulk and Doctor Strange are rumors.

Phase 3 article link.

post rocket racoon i put nothing past them, howard the duck reboot inclusive

the Planet Hulk stuff was debunked

James Spader as Ultron? Sold!

lol, really?

Yup.

:D

heh, i saw him out at a music festival this past month. Friendly guy.

I don't really get why they would need an actual person to play Ultron...? are they really gonna put him in a robot suit? or is it just gonna be CGI w Spader's voice?

My guess would be the latter. But Spader's talent never really struck me as being built around his voice -- more his combo of bemusement and "I will gut you like a fish" dead-eye look.

If they actually have him talking about how much fun he's going to have peeling everybody's skin off, I can see it working, I guess.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/04/elizabeth-olsen-avengers-scarlet-witch

http://io9.com/avengers-age-of-ultron-finds-and-casts-its-second-v-1502076286

I hope this thing isn't starting to get X3-level unwieldy.

Trailer
http://vt.tumblr.com/tumblr_ndva19t7n71szaunl.mp4#_=_

Doom death or something

well that does look pretty cool

The backlash against the Marvel and DC cinematic universes will have all winter to consume itself in FIYAH and by May everybody will be ready and willing to give this a billion dollars.

...everybody except Morbs, I mean.

I could dig it up until the LOGO BRAAAAAAMMMMMS

That reminds me, update display name

wait there's backlash?

afaik marvel-marvel (not fox not sony) is still gold and DC/WB is lulz. what am i missing?

Has anybody started a rumor that Ultron is going to go Demon Seed and make a terrible looking baby with Scarlet Witch?

I think there is generalized backlash on comic book movies that seems to be more of an echo of apocalyptic CGI spectacle fatigue

i dunno guardians seemed to be pretty well-received

I sold a lot of tickets to that movie through personal evangelism out of a desire to ensure it did better than Wahlberg Dinobots

Tombot where ya been, man. (I mean, yeah, real life and family and etc., granted.)

Anyway, they gave in and/or this leak was a fake and was priming for this anyway but here's the full HD thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmeOjFno6Do

BTW, all time:

https://twitter.com/MuseZack/status/525071313585451008

I think there is generalized backlash on comic book movies that seems to be more of an echo of apocalyptic CGI spectacle fatigue

Yeah, this is what I was getting at. I think it will ramp up from vague nothing-syllables to actual "goddammit, this stuff takes money away from real movies" vitriol for a few months, but the wallets will still open like flowers in the springtime.

thing is, very few "real movies" need to be seen in IMAX

was that james spadervoice i just heard?

and for all i can tell that trailer was cobbled together from outtakes from other marvel films, seemed pretty generic

just hearing james spader makes me :D

also
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/264/200/acb.jpg

and who doesn't love pinocchio references

low bass rumble

reaction shot of thor looking worried

low bass rumble

metal foot steps on pavement in close up

low bass rumble

james spadervoice

mechanical crunching sound

"tagline"

reaction shot of iron man looking worried

low bass rumble

repeat

I GOT NO STRINGS

TO HOLD ME DOWN

spaderbot + hulkbuster fight = count me in

Guess they're saving the Vision for trailer 2. I expect he's going to save the day

superheroes stand around in intersection, scan skies for threat

It's amazing how only the futuristic fast forwards or alternate realities even feature the heroes fighting in piles of ruined cities. I wonder if they help with clean up between disasters?

"Hulk clear rubble!"

Like all of the well-to-do, they have people for that.

there was one spectacularly misguided comic where the superheroes (and villains) chipped in with the recovery effort

https://s-media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/21/14/1d/21141df8c869476c42ea2c9f69c47ea0.jpg
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/4/43640/1322893-__hr_09.jpg

yeah, everyone knows cyclops' optic blasts can't melt steel like that ffs

hahahahaaaaaahahhahahaha I'd forgotten about weepy Doom

weepy doom nevar forget

it's also nice that they got a giant Sontaran to stand in for The Kingpin

...everybody except Morbs, I mean.

http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2014/10/pollute-soul-2-marvel-whores-back/

J Wells is technically a "body"

That's the same Jeffrey Wells who wrote: "I saw Winter Soldier last night at Disney and I have to give praise where due. This is one sharp, well-written (by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely), rock-solid, mega-efficient, super-expensive something or other, and with a certain humanist empathy that seeps through from time to time. It’s going to be a huge hit."

yes one of his commenters addressed that above

glad you have Wells quotes cataloged and at the ready tho

you're welcome morbs

I really liked Guardians of the Galaxy, and Marvel movies are cool to watch with my younger brother, but I'm still ready for the backlash. I think the final straw for me would be the news, which I also brought up in the Dawn of Justice thread, that WB is cutting 1475 jobs to fund their agressive slate of 'tentpole' movies. You know, 'tentpoles', the films that was supposed to bring in the money that could then be used for more interesting things. And now CNN will fire 300 people, so Zack Snyder can destroy another city.

WB bumbling around chasing marvel is excellent meta-entertainment tbqh

Re: crying Dr Doom. I read that when it came out, at the height of my delusional fanboy mindset and even I and many fans thought it didn't seem right. Later on Romita said Dr Doom, Juggernaut and Magneto weren't literally supposed to be there, it was just supposed to nail the mood down, but I don't think that worked at all.
If you read online articles about this, there are loads of comments saying "Dr Doom is just crying because he didn't do 9/11".

I saw the Birdman director saying why he hated superhero movies.

I was out of comics fandom for a while when that came out, but I recall at the time some questioning as to whether 9/11 should have even taken place in the MU. They probably should have skipped it, if only because their reaction was practically preordained. That issue would have made an interesting aside in the Sean Howe book.

Also there was a lot of talk of Marvel storylines of genocide and stories where Juggernaut actually knocked over buildings and killed thousands of people without that ever being remembered.

Marvel, DC and lots of independents did some storylines for it.

IIRC, that was basically the extent of Marvel's in-continuity acknowledgement of 9/11, and it was pretty much a stand-alone issue. Crying Doom was awful and embarassing but, as such, wasn't wholly out of place in Straczynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man.

There was also that Moment Of Silence comic. The Heroes gallery too but that wasn't stories.

Remember there being a lot of talk about the motivations of these and Art Spiegelman's In The Shadow Of No Towers.
And the speculation of these becoming worth something in back issue market.

Trailer breakdown. Had completely missed that was Andy Serkis in there.

http://io9.com/shot-by-shot-breakdown-of-avengers-2-trailer-reveals-sp-1649782452

tony starkis

haha thanks for sharing crying doom, had never seen that.

http://cdn1.smosh.com/sites/default/files/ftpuploads/bloguploads/villains-takeover-doom1.jpg
lots of good gises for "crying doom"

i wonder if doom cries equally for the victims of american military interventions overseas

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/25176235/images/1370125134806.jpg

well that wasn't supposed to happen. Curse you Doom!

heh, i tried to post that one too and caught myself in the act

BTW, is the use of the song from "Pinocchio" the first official Marvel/Disney crossover? Maybe second, after "Phineas & Ferb?"

depends what you define as a crossover, I guess. marvel characters appeared in the Disney infinity game recently:

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5578/14533012778_b7e82a3674_z.jpg

But that looks like a Marvel game, right? Just produced by Disney? Ultron is a Disney song (property) from a Disney movie popping up in a Marvel movie. Just like Marvel characters popping up in a Phineas & Ferb (Disney) ep.

i am in no position to mock a typo on ilx but i am in a position to love the one above

Noooo ooone hits like Ultron
matches wits like Ultron
In a spitting match nobody spits like Ultron

Give it time! Odds of a scared little girl clutching an Elsa doll ...

Ha, my typo.

I think you can mix and match marvel and disney characters but I haven't played it tbh

Noooo ooone hits like Ultron
matches wits like Ultron
In a spitting match nobody spits like Ultron

― da croupier, Wednesday, November 12, 2014 5:59 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dying

we are so close to cloud strife showing up in an avengers movie

It's a cross-Disney megaproperty game; the Marvel Super Heroes were added in this year's edition (2.0).

I love the Donald Duck figure for some reason
http://i.imgur.com/7Jq7Y6Q.jpg

He looks like Sonic the Hedgehog or something, so much badditude.

disney has been trying to make donald A DUCK WIT ATTITUDEZ for a long time now

hulkbustin' new trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZoO8QVMxkk

Apparently there must be a certain subset of nerd who is looking forward to the Hulkbuster suit more than anything else in this movie

Probably the same folks who used to write to the letter columns as a kid, asking whether Hulk or Thor can lift more.

there is such a great Jan Strnad/Gilbert Hernandez strip about that ("Who's Stronger, Thor or the Hulk?")

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/whyfight1.jpg

tbf isn't Downey basically the biggest star in the avengers crew? I also think theyre not making any more iron man solo movies so featuring iron man a shitload also makes sense.

tbf isn't Downey basically the biggest star in the avengers crew?

Er, he's basically the biggest star in Hollywood.

which is why everyone saw the judge oh wait

so you guys actually think that trailer shows what the movie is gonna focus on

huh

Were those Thor/Hulk partisans on their way to an NCAA basketball game?

Very chill Hulk there.

I'm not sure who everyone would have gone to see in the Judge.

New trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAUoeqvedMo

oooh

watching Manhattan get decimated yet again makes me wish for a cinematic adaptation of Damage Control

looks boring

that's a mirror, dude

Would mirror universe Tony Stark be clean shaven?

No, but he would be Samarium Man.

meh

smash smash self-referential joke smash smash

Looking forward to a whole lot more insightful opinions from uninterested parties.

When the MCU started picking up steam, I never thought the Cap movies would be more interesting than the Avengers movies, but I'm interested in this more as a lead-in to Civil War than on its own merits.

I think overall the Cap movies are the best self-contained stories; I never cared that much about Captain America as a comic book character but I really, really enjoy him as a film character.

I've seen and enjoyed all the Marvel movies of the modern era (except the Hulk which is kinda not so much canonical so since they switched leads so quickly)
cap's second film might be the best of the bunch but they're all sorta equally good popcorners; if you are adamant about the leap in quality between, say, iron man 2 and avengers, i think you're splitting hairs

Destroyed buildings in CGI. Jagged girders and exploding glass in CGI. Malevolent robotic creatures profusely decorated with ornate curlicues in CGI. Noisy, bass-heavy, throbbing, insistent music. Fight scenes reduced to little more than strobe effects through countless quick cuts. Under-developed characters delivering perfunctory dialogue. Scarlett Johansson rolling her eyes.

Looks boring.

loool

that's a mirror, dude

― DJP, Wednesday, March 4, 2015 1:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

http://giant.gfycat.com/WindyUnhappyAstarte.gif

Needs more heroes. And villains, too.

One X-Men: The Last Stand is one too many.

xxxp - dude did you see Iron Man 2? it goes on for a million years.

i don't remember iron man 2 being long? i also don't remember manakamana being long.

looks cool, stoked for madness, etc. except renner seems like he's in another movie and should really be in that other movie.

not to be one of those "i just posted multiple to say i don't care" people, but i'm realizing with marvel i'm more interested in the new movies than the sequels - can they get ANOTHER franchise up and running vs can they enjoy the fruit of that labor. i'm totally gonna see this and probably have a great time, but i'm more jazzed to find out whether Ant-Man will work

this is, in a very real sense, teal vs orange: the movie

looking forward to watching this at Cinerama, finding it tolerable

the hulk cannot be entirely orange

a profound philosophical truth

btw, downey such a class act

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3055271/Robert-Downey-Jr-sparks-controversy-accused-making-racist-remark-Oscar-winning-Mexican-director.html

rough press tour for The Avengers crew

I do find Innaritu complaining about movies that "purport to be profound" fairly rich though

yes, no denying that

superhero grist obviously has a strong fascist stripe tho

say what you will, they keep the superhero movies running on time (over two hours)

that's on time?

it's a mandatory requirement of superhero movies, iirc

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu otm. Let's not pretend like these movies have anything real to say.

Biggest military country in the world has biggest movie franchise in the world centered on a hero who is a defense contractor/super rich asshole.

100% true, but coming from iñárritu we're definitely in 'bald men fighting over a comb' territory here xp

The people making these movies are likely not among the the people making arguments that these movies are profound.

I can assure you that they are not

James Gunn has a background writing stuff for Troma! I would say he's refreshingly non-profound.

the hulk cannot be entirely orange

http://marvel.wikia.com/Orange_Hulk_%28Earth-295%29

Biggest military country in the world has biggest movie franchise in the world centered on a hero who is a defense contractor/super rich asshole.

tbf, this is complicated somewhat by tony stark's decision to stop making weapons in the first iron man - the family of pivotal characters in age of ultron were killed by stark weapons too

he still enjoys strapping himself into his wmd-suit and conducting unilateral action on foreign soil tho

Civil War will be addressing some of these concerns, I'm sure.

The people making these movies are likely not among the the people making arguments that these movies are profound.

― More Fetid Than Fêted (Old Lunch), T

― More Fetid Than Fêted (Old Lunch), Thursday, April 30, 2015 11:40 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can assure you that they are not

― Οὖτις, Thursday, April 30, 2015

I can assure you that they are!

Yeah, they sort of try to have their cake and eat it too with him turning against weapons development but remaining all pally with the military, Rhodes, SHIELD etc. I mean it just makes him seem like a sanctimonious in-denial asshole.

It'd be great if the "Civil War" movie just skips ahead to Dark Reign and gives us a supervillain in the red-white-and-blue "Iron Patriot" suit. That would be nice too because generally I'm more interested in the on-the-ground Marvel Universe of Bendis and company than the side turn into galactic/cosmic stuff with Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy and I guess Infinity War which seems a huge misstep. (I'd be all about a bizarre mindfuck Fantastic Four movie, but the odds of that look extremely low.)

well I'm referring to the FX people I know who actually work on these movies, who generally seem to have a profound sense of self-loathing about most of these projects. The set of TMNT2 was sounding especially bleak for ex.

xp

I am sure Jeph Loeb thinks he is profound as hell but as far as I can tell he has very little creative input :)

I am a big fan of Jeph Loeb in his current role with respect to Marvel's television projects as he clearly isn't contributing anything creatively.

Day is bright! Solar Hulk am powered by good sun!
-- Orange Hulk

orange hulk otm

lotion is his kryptonite

spf-55 aerially dropped by helitack

There does seem to be some blurring of 'centred on' and 'started by' in this thread - but I'm interested in seeing people's reactions over the weekend on how the film deals with the issue of tech and governments.

I haven't seen any of the writers or directors claim profundity - even Branagh, who you'd imagine would be a good bet.

Orango Hulkington

FOR PRESIDETN

It's really impressive how Whedon juggles all the strands of this film, soooo much is going on, and a lot of it pays off. Don't know if I'll say 'most', because this is sequel-ville, but there are some nice payoffs. It's nothing special, but I watch something like this, and I don't get why so many blockbusters are so awful. There's a scene where a hero steps on a toy, then becomes embarassed. It's fun. How fucking hard is it to have Superman step on a toy now and then?

Filmmaking is easy, man. Someone give me a billion dollars.

The small touches in this one really are the best bits. [one character]'s little "yay!" in the opening sequence of delight in [his or her] own abilities. The most whedony thing about this is that the big moment that brings the house down involves a hammer but is not an action sequence and yeah, it would be nice if more blockbuster would take the lesson. We come for spectacle but we live or die on the emotional beats.

On reflection, I'm pretty sure that I would have enjoyed the 3-hour version of this a lot more.

I've learned that I hate the spectactle 9 times out of 10, it's the other stuff that I find entertaining.

Then you may enjoy this sliiiiightly more than you think. Popcorn at the Metreon is oversalted tho.

"Hammer" moment was a showstopper, the theater I saw this in went nuts. Same for the inter-credits scene.

the latter was rubbish though

yeah, the hammer bit is really the 'puny god' moment of this movie

it's also a pretty neat bit of work in quickly establishing a new character a good way into the movie

Also the fact that Cap is still obsessing about it at the end. "What if you put it on an elevator . . . ?"

This was fun, but pretty exhausting. One thing it did get across very well was how batshit dangerous Tony Stark is, which of course tees up Cap 3 perfectly.

Was the city ID'd where Iron Man and Hulk fight?

I totally didn't recognize Julie Delpy, just noticed her name in the credits. Went back later to see who she played.

Also sets up Cap having to wield the hammer at a crucial moment down the line

I don't think the city was named but it's Johannesburg

Yeah, saw Delpy's name in the credits but did not even recognize that that was her.

Kerry Condon voicing Stark's Jarvis replacement "Friday" in the last third of the movie.

That was very weird. Especially for an Irish audience

I hope this isn't a spoiler, but as someone who doesn't know anything about the comics stuff and has only seen about half of the Marvel movies, can someone explain what was happening when Thor got into the hot tub/natural spring thing with Stellan Starsgaard watching him? It seemed to be the moment where suddenly the heroes figured out exactly what they needed to do, but I didn't understand what had happened. Pure deus ex machina? Nonsense? Amazing plot twist? None of those things? Actually I think I only understood about 75% of the plotting.

I think that was meant to be a set-up for the next Thor movie but it was obviously severely truncated in the editing room

it really didn't have anything to do with the plot of this film

I thought it was something for later as well. Did he see the gems? Who was it that saw the gems? Perhaps that made him realize there was a gem in the sceptre? What is it with those gems? There was one in GotG and another one in the cosmic cube, right? Where did the fourth one come from.

I can't recall the plot as well. What was Ultron's plan? Oh well, we can't discuss that without spoilers, so prob wait a few days.

The gems (GotG + Cosmic cube + Sceptre + the red nonsense in The Dark World) are Infinity Gems, related to Thanos, and to Infinity War, which is the next two Avengers films, 2018/2019

So yeah, that was Thor's vision quest (hence, the Vision), which serves to answer the question "Why not just shoot Stark in the face for trying AI again?"

Ultron's plan was to build a perfect body for himself and then when that failed to raise the city of Fakeova off the ground and turn it into an extinction event style meteor. Also the film's been out for a week, fuck yer spoilers.

a primer:
http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a32067/marvel-movies-infinity-gems/

In fairness the anti-Stark Avengers seem pretty on the fence about the Vision until the hammer - it's only Thor who returns with faith in him and the juice to get him completed.

why did he need starsgaard again

Hold his clothes during his floatation, stop Loki stealing them again.

happy ending iirc

From the other thread:

the thing i appreciated most about it, post-man of steel, is that the avengers spend most of the third act very visibly trying to save lives instead of mindlessly smashing their way through buildings filled with thousands of people

― bizarro gazzara, Tuesday, 28 April 2015 09:46 (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that quite clearly a direct response to Man of Steel

― Number None, Tuesday, 28 April 2015 10:33 (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They're kind of having their cake and eating here though - all of the civilians who get a shot in Johannesburgh are saved, but there's no way the Hulk hasn't racked up a hell of a body count.

well yeah, he's pretty tortured about it. Hence the ending

they're pretty clear that hulk is dangerous - natasha's clearly a bit scared during their 'lullaby' scenes - but even in the johannesburg scene they make a point of having iron man take the fight to a construction site where there's no-one around

and yeah, having banner showing remorse contrasts pretty sharply with superman's indifference over the levelling of metropolis

re spoilers this thing's only technically opening today in the states why not be cool?

All fair points - I was partly talking about my impression that it was fairly sanitised as regards actual bodies and damage - but I should probably STFU until I actually see Man of Steel to compare it with - which maaay take a while.

This is cool, we moved it from the Marvel Cinematic Universe post - who's coming in here thinking "I'm looking for some uninformed speculation about a film that opened yesterday"?

" . . . so I dropped the tank right in front of him and said, 'You lookin' for this?' Boom!"

cheadle really makes the most of his screen time

I don't think I'll ever be able to see him again without thinking of Captain Planet.

There were gems? Jesus I don't even remember what happened in this movie. Joss Whedon knows his audience, though, with Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Haley Atwell, Linda Cardellini - it's like nerd babe heaven

Linda Cardellini is in this?

If we're not avoiding spoilers then she plays a certain Avenger's surprise wife.

(It's Hawkeye.)

ugh @ Cardellini getting stuck w/ the Momwife character

this felt about four years long

predictably, Mick LaSalle hates it: http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/The-Avengers-Age-of-Ultron-offers-a-grim-6231187.php

Ugh. I really don't want to become a blockbuster-defender, since I'm always impressed by the stupidity and ineptitude of most of them, but this is such typical bullshit:

The Avengers — a band of various superheroes — are fighting somebody, but you don’t exactly know whom right away. But does that really matter? Just the sight of them ought to inspire a rooting interest, just as the mere spectacle of things blowing up should stir the blood — or at least that’s the idea.

Um, yeah? The SIGHT of the heroes ought to inspire, because cinema is a fucking VISUAL medium. Get those crappy motivations and psychologies and plots out of the spectacle. I bet that writer likes oscar-crap and has Scorcese as his favorite filmmaker.

Speaking of spectacle I think the biggest failure of Age of Ultron is that none of the sub-Lubezkian tracking-shots make the impression they should. I mainly sat there going 'huh'.

nothing like some ad hom attacks eh

ftr here's LaSalle's Top 10 for last year:

1. Boyhood
2. Birdman
3. A Most Violent Year
4. Third Person
5. Calvary
6. Fury
7. Chef
8. Big Eyes
9. The Galapagos Affair
10. Rob the Mob

Wow, I was pretty spot on, huh?

Writers who talk about 'filmmaking as art' or 'hope for cinema's future' yet apparantly don't know that films are made in languages other than English. Biggest dud in criticism.

tbf all non-English language films are terrible, every American knows that

they even screw up the ones with boobs in them

that top ten is hilarious

I cannot imagine having strong feelings in any direction towards this movie

what he said

Thanks for stopping by

So glad I am not excited to see this tomorrow morning, imagine how terrible THAT would be

This was aight. Best parts were the fun character moments and one-liners. The 'splodey stuff in these movies is getting increasingly stale though.

Joss Whedon knows his audience, though, with Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Haley Atwell, Linda Cardellini - it's like nerd babe heaven

Addition of Paul Bettany and Mark Ruffalo ensures he has all bases covered in the attractive-to-nerds arena.

Oh that part was already a given!

loved this. some have said it's bloated but that could be applied to much of the Marvel universe. but I found this fun and with the right touch of humor, though sometimes the humor was too much or deployed at inappropriate times. Renner's line made me laugh more than anything in a long time though ("This doesn't make any sense!")

You're talking about the first movie, right?

I get that I seem to be alone in this based on the last run of posts.

I liked a lot of the elements here but in a theater that was half full of little kids (10:20am showing) I could palpably feel that there was a lot of tedium & heavy shit in this one. Lot of out of uniform heroes standing around talking lol.
Lot less "fun" to be had here.

(Oh and shoutout to the genius who thought trailering Insidious 3 beforehand was a great idea...scared the PANTS off the kids sitting nearby)

Mr Veg found it bloated & mostly kinda ponderous. He didnt seem to enjoy it much. I thought it was ok. The city as a meteor was a weird device...like I get why they did it and saving the ppl was cool but it was just kinda HAY LOOK AT THIS SPECTACLE

And Whedon is not great at the action.without the one liners & visual gags it would be a mess.

I enjoyed Raymond Reddington Ultron Spader

all the characters in these movies should fight exclusively through kickboxing, like in buffy. just hold a nice wide flat angle and let em kickbox. maybe look down from the top a lil bit diagonally for a thrill. it worked for years.

tbf buffy's fighting style was always shite

by the end she was kickboxing gods of major lower planes. i think in the last two seasons she kickboxed abstract concepts.

plus it was full of cuts so smg's badass bodydouble could do the heavy lifting

i dont know what this says about me but i liked stark's bruce lee dj tshirt

I think that's just RDJ's shirt

I've seen him wearing it in interviews

i watched winter soldier again last night, fell asleep thinking 'this movie is much more likeable than avengers 2 was'

thank god whedon's out. clear at this point that he adds like one thing to everything he does and subtracts from the rest

in this case he added tony's 'yay' and that's it

yay ruled. so did the hammer bit tho. also wtf.

and come on, "I totally support your avenging"

yes, cute little whedonisms. cute. good riddance tbh

Nahhh. He brought a lot of the geekisms which I feel is one of the reasons for the franchise's success

first Avengers was great, he brought a lot to the table. he has freely admitted that this movie kinda broke him

I usually take the criticism about Whedon as Bad Feminist with a pinch of salt, because, you know, Joss Whedon - but the "Who is really the biggest monster, a literal monster who kills hundreds of people, or a woman who can't have children?" can go die in a fire.

the good whedony things he contributed to the first one were helpful for gluing it together well but he is in sum an atrocious filmmaker whose grasp of these well-established characters is limited to randomly decided ideological tension and the same forced scooby quirk/dynamics he's relied on for two decades

i am excited to see what the russos do even if they sacrifice the geek laffs

which is weird to say cause didn't they come from the geekiest sitcom ever

"In sum" there meaning "Ignoring the first one"?

I thought this movie was generally okay, but they kinda failed with Ultron, didn't they? I mean, it wasn't even clear what his ultimate goal was? To destroy humankind so robot hybrids like Vision can rule the world? To kill most of humans so the survivors could evolve? So much of the movie was just setting up plots for future Marvel universe movies (the ideological conflict between Stark and Cap, the Infinity Stones and Thanos, Vision and Scarlet Witch, etc) that it didn't feel like they had a chance to properly develop the main bad guy for this one.

And I really don't understand why they had to give Ultron such human mannerisms? What makes him so scary in the comics is that he's so ruthless and efficient, that doesn't have human qualities like compassion or indecision, but here we have him fumbling his words, cracking jokes, etc. James Spader was pretty good in the role, and they had all the makings of a great villain, but they missed it.

Also, one thing that made the movie feel chaotic is that it had so many characters! It's cool that they want to build a proper movie universe with everyone coming together in the Avengers movies, and I liked that they tried to give all the major characters some quiet personal moments, but you can do that only so much before it starts feeling like bunch of separate threads that don't really come together as a whole. The Avengers having loads of characters works in the comics, where you have monthly installments and enough space to develop multiple character arcs at their own pace, but trying to cram it all into a movie is too much, you don't really have enough time to digest Important Character Moment A, before Important Character Moments B and C and D and E hit you. It was just too much.

I'm hoping Avengers 3 will only have all the MCU superheroes coming together to fight Thanos in one big battle like in the comics, without needing to give them all individual arcs of their own in the movie.

qualx your austerist read of this megaproperty is quaint but v weird

i didn't know "joss whedon turns everything he touches into shit" was such challops

i mean i'm a fan of the MCU? they are the only mainstream movies i consistently get anything out of and i enjoy still being able to have that with something. i know it looks gauche to care but what're you gonna do.

Leaving aside the plausibility of that sentence, Avengers is kind of the first thing he's touched? Unless you're making the claim that there's an external reality of Buffy / Dollhouse / Firefly / Dr. Horrible / Cabin in the Woods that he's an unworthy vessel for?

i don't think it would benefit this thread to begin a discussion on the semantics of touching but i didn't mean it like that. i guess if people interpret that phrase strictly as "working with someone else's established property" i should find a different phrase.

i guess the avengers is interesting for allowing us to isolate inherent whedonistics but that sounds like a painful project nvm

obv "austerist" = "auterist" damn u autocorrect

I'd probably focus on 'turn', but your point's made.

That does leave us with 'I didn't know "everything Whedon's done is shit" was surprising' which is still an odd statement. I mean, I don't know much about you other than you speak English and have access to the internet, but... that should do it?

i think we hang out on different sides of the internet

i mean i still love buffy, like a lot of people, but ime people who still love buffy in 2015 tend to be split between loving and hating whedon w/no grey area. hiring him in the first place was a big gesture towards the geekdom at large but he is still a well-hated individual by many didn't think that was unknown

You'd have to be quite a dick to hate him m outright, guy has some annoying tics but who hasn't

obv "austerist" = "auterist" damn u autocorrect

― resulting post (rogermexico.), Sunday, May 3, 2015 6:20 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh lol

i mean these movies have always at least feigned a respect for 'auteurism' that isn't present in basically every other megafranchise (esp in comparison to DC's "do what nolan did" policy) even as that creator-freedom is crammed into a studio-mandated frame. that's been a part of the brand for a while. i'm aware of how badly i'm stating this case. james gunn was literally told his GOTG script wasn't "james gunn" enough, shane black turned IM3 into a buddy cop movie sort of, the russos wanted to make a 70s political conspiracy thriller so they literally included a 70s political conspiracy thriller montage set to marvin gaye at the end of the movie. even if you compare cap1 and thor1, even if their scripts follow a similar pace with the same beats they're stylistically unique and those scripts care about different things. maybe 'auteuristic' isn't the word to use but hey yr word not mine

and whedon was brought on to be whedon, like i said above. the issue is that he's just so gosh darn himself he decided to ignore the strides the phase 2 movies made in developing these characters and just made a direct sequel to avengers 1. w/e, onward, etc. i don't want to clog this thread w/my read, i'm sure other people saw it over the weekend.

more or less agree with the above fwiw

not sure how it could be controversial to acknowledge that the position "i love buffy but man it would have been so much better without whedon" is, um, difficult ground to hold.

i mean i'm not even a whedon stan and sometimes the tics can grate and this flick is a very mixed bag but i don't think it was when's idea to cram too much in for a 2.5 hour feature to handle.

(i'll acknowledge here that imo in the case of A2 the whedonics help to establish whatever passes for stakes and imo the action is no less comprehensible than any of the last couple marvelers e.g. winter soldier or guardians of the galaxy which also had plenty of complaints about the action. same as it ever was i mean what exactly is your gold standard for action in a superhero flick?)

"when" = "whedon" oh christ the machines are turning against me

i'm not saying buffy would've been better without whedon, it is obv a thing that could not have been done by anyone else and i credit him personally for being responsible for some of the best tv ever (the body), it's what he's done in the 12 yrs since it ended that's soured me and many others on him

yeah the body is really something else

marred only by the obligatory vampire battle. also, chron of a career foretold: contains an avengers reference.

So basically people really hated Dollhouse?

i was a fan of the obligatory vampire battle. i don't think it was like "the wb told us we had to have some hot vamp action; it basically cemented that buffy is never allowed to not be the slayer and that she's also always responsible for dawn, now. plus, they were in a sunnydale morgue, it's statistically likely that one of those bodies would be vampire.

lol i think i'm regurgitating shit i used in a college paper about it

I think you have a definite case to make there - my point was just that it's not the one naturally suggested by "joss whedon turns everything he touches to shit".

tbf i never did see dollhouse

It's great, you shd.

Hey, I've never seen Buffy. I'm completely lost in this discussion.

I think Whedon is generally great, and will continue to be, with his own stuff, where the cutesiness is completely effective because the material is designed to support it. And he is great when the material basically needs nothing but a sure hand, as with Much Ado About Nothing. I think the difficulty comes when he's brought in to add zing to something fundamentally kind of po-faced and square like the Avengers. Agents of SHIELD is even worse in this respect (at least season 1, which is all I've seen.) The gears just grind when the protagonist is asked simultaneously to be nu-Eliza Dushku and nu-Jennifer Garner (I mean Alias Jennifer Garner, not 13 going on 30 Jennifer Garner, obv) and no matter how hard she tries, this cannot be done, the gears grind, it is hard to watch.

i didnt know there were buffy fans who didnt like whedon

anyway back to avengertron age of ultras

Michelle Gellar would have been kick ass as Black Widow

bad sign when the villain's name is as dumb as "ultron"

hardly Whedon's fault, he was in the comics all the way back to the 60s

huge step down from "magneto"

he is in sum an atrocious filmmaker

This one was a lot worse in terms of giving in to the modern action editing style where so much is going on that it's impossible to tell what's happening during fight scenes.

He certainly lights everything like a TV show. It's all pretty flat and bright and tasteful two-shots - it would be fun to someday see one of these movies made by someone who really knows and loves film-the-art-form

I usually take the criticism about Whedon as Bad Feminist with a pinch of salt, because, you know, Joss Whedon - but the "Who is really the biggest monster, a literal monster who kills hundreds of people, or a woman who can't have children?" can go die in a fire.

― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, May 3, 2015 10:24 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that is a major misread of that conversation.

Yeah, I think Natasha's point was that the whole gruesome Black Widow training, as shown in the flashbacks (and in Agent Carter), is what made her a monster. She did mention the forced sterilization as a part of that, but I don't think that was supposed to be the "monster" thing, it was the fact that she was brainwashed into a cold killer.

It's pretty clearly that intent, but it's horribly written. On the face of it, she tells a story about being sterilized and asks 'so who's the biggest monster'. Another part of it is that she tells the story to assure Bruce Banner that she is ok with him never being able to start a family, and the implication is that only barren women doesn't put kids as first priority. It's bad writing, and it's very much not feminist.

This one was a lot worse in terms of giving in to the modern action editing style where so much is going on that it's impossible to tell what's happening during fight scenes.

if it's worse than Avengers 1 in this regard than wow, I'll just see Furious 7 instead

i am generally pretty allergic to what qualx aptly terms whedon's scooby quirk. For some reason i loved Firefly but everything else has annoyed me. You gotta have humor in this kind of shit but today there is a plague of banter upon the land

The action isn't that hard to follow imo, but the heavy use of CGI makes everything feel weightless in a bad way, even moreso than in the first one

^^^ this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_5KgpN38hM

so good

jesus christ

how is SNL still allowed to exist

i am generally pretty allergic to what qualx aptly terms whedon's scooby quirk. For some reason i loved Firefly but everything else has annoyed me. You gotta have humor in this kind of shit but today there is a plague of banter upon the land

― demonic mnevice (Jon Lewis), Monday, May 4, 2015 3:37 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

remember when Halle Berry had that awful line in a X-Men movie and he blamed her delivery

Big step down from the first one and most of the other Marvel movies - maybe I'm remembering incorrectly but the action sequences were much more confusing (knowing where you're located in space) and less interesting (because there are no stakes - except for Scarlet Witch's brother dying, which was pretty much the only halfway-strong emotional beat in the movie.

Too many characters, too many long battle scenes that didn't move the plot or do anything interesting with the fighters, way too unfocused - the brother dying didn't have the impact that it should have because they didn't have time to really deal with these being two war orphans and build an emotional payoff to his death).

so do none of the avengers know that agent coulson is still alive? seemed weird that he wasn't even mentioned.

Non-superpeople dont exist

that's been addressed - for purposes of the non-TV universe he's still deceased

even so, it's strange to make his death the emotional crux of the first movie and then to not even include a rote shot of thor stroking a framed 8x10 of him or anything in this one.

much as, as many people have noted. it's weird that in 'the dark knight rises' no one mentions the joker even once

pretty much agree with all of this. except i would be delighted to see Wonder Man in A3

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-hater-s-guide-to-avengers-age-of-ultron-1702062494

maybe they forgot about him

xpost

"hey why isn't the hospital here anymore? hmm...wait, wasn't there some funny lookin dude and that it exploded? ahh those were good times..."

so do none of the avengers know that agent coulson is still alive? seemed weird that he wasn't even mentioned.

i felt kinda bad for the showrunners of agents of shield, who have made a lot of effort to tie into the movies which went totally unrewarded in this. in the tv show, shield has been stripped back to a core of renegades but in the movie nick fury just shows up with a fully-manned helicarrier out of nowhere. did he just find it down the back of his couch?

i guess it was only a matter of time before the mcu got big and complex enough to join the proud comics tradition of contradictory continuity!

He found it "in mothballs" iirc, but consistency with the TV show is also consistency with The Winter Soldier.

I can buy that he'd have a cadre of loyal agents and a bunch of spare bases - that's core Fury right there - maybe even one spare helicarrier for something big and last ditch, but using it for refugee ferrying is just odd.

man we don't care about this movie much huh

apparently the helicarrier issue will be addressed in a future ep of Agents of EXPOSITION

http://www.slashfilm.com/agents-of-shield-age-of-ultron-plot-hole/

Comment section funnies

http://www.avclub.com/article/corporate-drone-joss-whedon-fought-pure-artistic-i-218967

The execs also wanted a scene where Cap gets 'Honorable' tattooed on his forehead, but Whedon screwed that up too.

Bruce Banner has an interesting one.
In human form, it just says, "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry".
When he turns into Hulk, it stretches out and reads, "TOLD YOU SO!".

Kind of like an inverted Mad fold-in
I love it

Here's his secret: It's always folded-in

...

anyway gonna download that Empire podcast interview

also the Jeremy Renner /Black Widow slut shaming story is bumming me out

the less i know about these irl people the better

Jeremy Renner kind of has asshole-face so it's not that surprising tbh

he's def a bit macho-seeming

he's from Modesto so i shouldnt be surprised

lol

:D

i saw the movie a second time, and I have to say I enjoyed it more this time around. it's still problematic & crammed with stuff & whatever, but i dont think whedon deserves quite the level of pillorying he's getting

and rewatching the Black Widow scene re sterilization/monster

it's phrased awkwardly but I took her monster comment to refer to her cold-blooded assassin training; the fact that she had been sterilized *to become a more efficient killing machine* made her feel like a monster. she's not talking about sterilization in isolation.

which sounds like me being an apologist maybe idk but I think that what ppl say whedon is saying is not what was truly being said

brave stand against the pitchforks imo

idk

my takeaway from that convo is she is saying big deal you cant have kids, you killed people: me too! don't we get to fall in love anyway? which seems kinda chill and a more modern take on romance but maybe it just loses something in the scene somehow idk

just think so much got left on the cutting room floor it's impossible to even tell. scene doesn't really work but it's not a crime.

but yeah that's my read too. there's much made in the first one wrt her karmic debt and I agree the thrust was dude, you're not the only killer here.

apparently the dreams were longer & thor's was supposed to have loki!

i think you have to do a certain amount of squinting to read that dialogue as "i'm a monster because of a bunch of things i'm not talking about" but even so you'd think someone at some point would go "hey make that clearer" cause it's just bad writing

mostly i just rmde when characters are like "i am sterile and thus kids are an impossibility!!!" liek there's no law that says the hulk and a russian spy can't adopt a baby

pretty sure general ross actually did try to get that law passed

i think you have to do a certain amount of squinting to read that dialogue as "i'm a monster because of a bunch of things i'm not talking about"

Except that she talked about right before! I agree that having the "monster" line follow immediately after the sterilization line was something that the writer should've avoided, but since the movie had just shown flashbacks of her Black Widow training, and she had told about it to Bruce right before the sterilization comment, it's not that hard to understand what she was really talking about. Takes a bit of willful misinterpretation to read the whole thing as "I'm a monster because I'm sterile", as if the previous discussion and flashbacks hadn't happened at all.

exactly!

its a marvel superhero movie guys. stop.

you stop

why are you even here, you're just going to say it was shit anyway :)

not watched yet, looks nowhere near as good as first one but feminist critique of one line makes me wanna give it my ticket money, yknow?

100% agree with veg's read on that scene.

not watched yet, looks nowhere near as good as first one but feminist critique of one line makes me wanna give it my ticket money, yknow?

― thoughts you made second posts about (darraghmac), Wednesday, May 6, 2015 2:54 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7j9ITHCIAEziwi.jpg:large

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Mennen

I thought the fem crit was the sterilization story was put in in leiu of more empowered character backstory hinted at repeatedly in the first one. Do they still go over her bloody past?

borated by mennens

The most Ultrony scene was the last Ultron drone talking to the Vision after the battle

Yeah. And it was very beautifully filmed as well. Also, it was pretty cool to have a short scene where the bad guy is shown actually fearing death. It is one of the best scenes in the film, probably.

The Vision was really good all round. Enjoyed the film loads actually, was very assured in its silliness. My not really a nerd GF liked it more than the first one basically cos she thought it took itself less seriously.

i thought the vision looked kinda silly but yeah paul bettany got his weepy-robot essence dead-on

loved everything about The Vision tbh

and I'm not really a Bettany fan

having Thor's specific contribution to the situation being related to him using a mystical resource to suss out what he saw in a vision was a decent plot thread

mr veg calls him Space Buddha

he's a little violent

Heimdall is more of a space buddha

Joss Whedon on Fighting With Marvel Over 'Avengers: Age of Ultron': "It Got Really, Really Unpleasant"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/joss-whedon-avengers-age-ultron-793502

the podcast is worth a listen

I can see how, if you're sure Joss means well, you can read the scene that way - but the quote on the excellent io9 article doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room.

that quote is only part of her speech tho

but i agree, it is a v good article

this gets closer to my own feelings

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/05/05/black-widows-feminist-heroism/

So, the whole Agents of SHIELD plot holes lasted about 2 minutes into the ep then are actually a reasonable part of the SHIELD plot line going forward. (Actually, it was mentioned in a throwaway line at least once in he past couple of eps, plus Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch were already a plot line.)

yah, they've been dropping hints that Coulsen has been hiding something for a bit, mostly in the other characters getting angry that he wouldn't explain what THETA PROTOCOL is

it turns out THETA PROTOCOL was a deep cover SHIELD team hidden somewhere with an extra helicarrier underground

consider me mollified

this was ok but I'm feeling marvel-ed out these days, or avengers-ed out, or something. I still feel like the best films with these characters were Captain America 1 and Thor 1 because they were a little bit quieter.

I loved Thor 1. Had so much more breathing room. And the New Mexico scenery was so cool

Marvel execs kinda right about the dream/cave sequences tbh

Enjoyed this. Don't think I'll watch it again, but so far none of the Marvel movies have been worth a second view for me except for GotG.

It was a way overlong. I was practically bouncing in my seat for it to be over in the last half hour, but on the other hand, my ADHD kid only took one bathroom break/hallway run. He usually takes at least 4.

Felt that before the big battle, when Cap says "there's ten of us going in, not all of us are going to make it out, blood will be spilled, etc", the payoff to that foreshadowing, while true to its word, was a bit of a cop-out.

Loved all the Whedonic quippiness though: "He's fast; she's weird." And there were lots of great comic book moments too. Hard to describe, but stuff that actually felt like it could be drawn in a panel? Hulk flying off in the Quinjet, for example.

Scarjo zooming around Seoul on a motorcycle reminded me too much of the Shania Twain Getcha Good video.

just said this on the mcu thread but While the hulk/widow story was not unaffecting for me, I completely understand the pain people are having seeing ScarJo spend so much of this movie making googoo eyes knowing no spinoff is on the horizon, esp post winter soldier. that wapo link from a couple days ago does a good job getting at what's good about the black widow story (and it's hard to think of an action franchise with much MORE meat re: an adult female character to chew on) but as there's no other adult female character who isn't primarily for exposition (scarlet witch's deal is basically teenage), i can see why a lot of people didn't expect or appreciate getting "i wuv you, hulky" stuff.

but oh man i really dug this movie on the whole. i'm just such a sucker for comic ensembles, superheroes saving lives and this kind character-based melodrama. I wanna revisit winter soldier but I think part of the reason I found it underwhelming is that i just don't care about shield qua shield. this time the Big Security Questions primarily emanate from stark's self-loathing, which is WAY more my kinda cookie.

scarlet witch is hysterical, I wonder what elizabeth olsen looked like doing those hand movements without special effects

i believe i've heard the word "voguing" used

I hadn't seen her in anything else and thought she was an interesting hollywood newcomer until I determined she's one of /those/ Olsens

wouldn't say olsen should get an oscar but i was pretty pleased with all the new characters

The 'Techbros: a warning from history" aspects are kind of interesting, partly also for the way they make Ultron into a being of pure evil that you have to destroy it all, all of it, not suffer any of it to live, any of it, which is a knot that Whedon's picked at a bit in the past.

But here the best bit of the entire film is the scene where the morality of "send an even more terrifying avatar of humanity's obsolescence to kill the fairly terrifying avatar that's the antagonist" is just completely gloriously punted to "a hammer says it's okay".

that really was a great payoff

the black widow debate really just shows that the issue is representation imo - some people want a takin-care-of-bizness-24/7 hero, some people want one that actually acknowledges stuff like motherhood - if there was more than one woman on the team, maybe she wouldn't have to be all things for all people

scarlet witch is hysterical, I wonder what elizabeth olsen looked like doing those hand movements without special effects

wonder no more!

https://youtu.be/56kfzV9GjRU?t=6m27s

I liked this one about the same as the first (if anything Whedon's throwaways are better) although I admit I was annoyed that it was Jams Spader and not J.K. Simmons in Whiplash mode whose voice I was hearing as Ultron.

i want an outtake where ultron says "That girl was, is, and always will be nada!" after wanda leaves

I'm probably the least trustworthy source for opinions on MCU movies as I acknowledge my complete lack of critical distance from them (at least until the inevitable qualitative decline begins in earnest) but this was great. Better than the first, imo, in that it felt more lived in and intentional. Lile they have a clearer vision of the world they're trying to build. Which can (and surely eventually will) be an impediment. Somewhat frustrating from a narrative standpoint, being the middle chapter of a number of different stories, but a lifetime of reading this stuff has prepared me for that particular brand of frustration.

I hadn't seen her in anything else and thought she was an interesting hollywood newcomer until I determined she's one of /those/ Olsens

This was pretty fun? A weird combination of feeling extremely long and messy, but without me wanting to throw anything at the screen. It had a nice number of moments that made me laugh, that kind of short laugh of surprise and delight that they're willing to go there and throw something even more nonsensical at the screen than you saw a minute ago. In that sense, it's not remotely in the same league as something like, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it at least avoided being a completely grim trudge. There were so many beautifully absurd lines of dialogue in this, people shouting preposterous exposition over their communicators and just jamming in a total explanation of the scene and what's at stake because otherwise you'd have no clue what was going on. In that sense it felt very Silver/Bronze Age and I liked that - all that was missing was people announcing exactly what their powers do and how they got them every few minutes. Similarly, the opening battle worked very well for comic-bookyness, the team exchanging their banter as they go about their business. Loved that one stunt with Cap and the motorcycle.

A shame it all flies by so quick; CGI has made it way too easy to have our heroes knock dozens of guys flat in mere seconds rather than set up interesting little challenges/obstacles where you can build some tension for a few minutes, like "they have to get over that barricade but they're pinned down" or whatever. I would have cut at least one big fight out of this and given all of them more time to actually work. When it gets to the end and the "keep him away from the detonator!" type scene, it's just a bunch of stuff whizzing around. First film's climax had some similar issues, and possibly more generic foes, but it had a better sense of weight and space, I think.

And yeah, it's overstuffed, in the way of a third or fourth draft, that one right before you take two weeks off, come back to it and realize you can make major, scythe-like cuts through the thing to get to the meat. Just too many bits and ideas, crowding each other out and pulling the movie in different directions. It doesn't have to be a lean little action-thriller (though I wish more of the "side" movies would accept that, and not feel compelled to do an epic bonanza with the fate of the world at stake), but, for example, Hawkeye was a huge waste of time and brought nothing to the movie, just like in the first movie, but here he's onscreen way more as if they're trying to compensate for everybody pointing out what a waste he was in the first movie. But the ship has sailed and he's ensconced as "the boring one." In hindsight they could have easily built some of the first movie's plot around introducing him as an everyman, rather than a superspy - maybe he's like a really good archer on the college circuit or something, and our point of identification/contact into the weird world of the Avengers - but they didn't do that, they're stuck with this generic guy and in attempting to make him an identifiable everyman they make him even more boring and add the wife/kids scene and it's like, buddy, the movie's not about you.

What's it about? Well, this got a little garbled too I think. Clearly some major stuff didn't make it to the screen... like Whedon shot this ginormous, unwieldy script and then was forced to cut it down into something nonsensical, rather than hitting it with a red pen before filming started. If he didn't have space to make Thor's vision puddle thing with Skarsgård make sense, it should have just been rewritten where he just like, goes into the woods near Hawkeye's house and does some kind of meditating or something. The whole "Scarlet Witch shows everybody bad stuff - so now they can have character-building scenes!" idea was just a cheap plot device. Not a good plot device though: it just made the movie more bulky and confusing.

Ultron is such a weird villain with his tonal shifts, maybe they were going for "unsettlingly creepy schizo" but it seems more likely they had intended to do more with him having this imprint or influence of Tony Stark, but it's never clear why that would be, really, and after the one scene with Klaw is built around that, it sort of falls out of the movie. So my theory is, at one point the script was really upfront about this being an evil version of Tony Stark, maybe even like a nanotech thing he's working on that takes over his body (which would also mean the team is now fighting without their leading brain guy). It would be great if his evil plan was basically to actually implement Tony Stark's global security apparatus, but in doing so we see everything that's wrong with the idea. Could be kind of a Colossus: The Forbin Project with a chance to gesture vaguely at the security state, Snowden, and all the contemporary infrastructures of control/exclusion. Even if it were just more about the character and his arrogance etc., it would tie better in with the Hulk and Black Widow guilt stuff.

Either way they should have given us a better sense of just how ubiquitous and unstoppable Ultron is, or isn't - really seemed like we were being set up for a "the Avengers have to operate off the grid, on the run, without all their toys!" but then everything's fine, I guess they switch to some backup Internet or something. Not saying I wanted another hacker-fighting movie but it was just weird to play up the "he's on the Internet, he's everywhere!" thing and then have it not matter at all.

Final gripe for now: the Hulk was way less fun in this movie than the last one. Not sure what went wrong there but maybe he was just too central. Worked really well as this lovable neurotic super-nerd who kind of quietly turns into the raging Hulk with only a few scattered lines of dialogue in the movie. Oddly, the Jekyll and Hyde complex, which of course is what actually defines the Hulk as a concept, is maybe just not that interesting to watch in a movie. I do like how, after his big scene where he and Black Widow decide not to run away but to join the battle, the two of them leap into a forest and then he... does nothing, as far as I can tell, until suddenly reappearing in the "keep away" scene. Maybe I blinked and missed how he got there, or what he was doing in between.

And yet... I was entertained! I didn't hate it! It was kind of a dumb mess and I should ask for better from my light diverting action fare, but it could have been way worse, I guess!

speaking of overstuffed...

I forgotten everything that happened in this film, apart from the Thor's hammer gag.

James Rhodes finds his level.
Audience wonders why this charismatic arms dealer seems so familiar.
The old Kiss 'n' Cliff.
Everyone has an interesting story inside them, except Steve.

(Off to restart my attempt to re-introduce 'interstitial chapter titles' to summer blockbusters.)

I felt the dialogue in this was offensively bad and it made me sad for Whedon. There were of course some zingy lines that sounded like him, but they had a sense of weariness to them, like "the only thing I can think of to bring some life to this thing is to roll out some patented Whedon zing, but my heart's not in it." And it was laughable when the fight scenes kept slipping into dopey slo-mo (occasionally this was to represent Quicksilver's POV, ok, fine, but most of the time just because, well, I don't know why, some people still like the Matrix?)

I think most of the slow-mo bits were mean to recreate the effect of a comics splash page e.g. the shot of all the Avengers mid-flight at the start, or the one that spins around them as they fight off Ultron's hordes

That does make sense in the abstract. But it still looked bad. I feel like there's a lot in this movie that's meant to be delightfully ridiculous but they forgot to make it delightful.

I finally saw this and pretty much loved it. The reveal of Clint as stable family man, pretty much in total opposition to his comic book persona, was really funny to me. I didn't think the action scenes were particularly difficult to follow and, if anyone got shortchanged in terms of character development, it was the twins (particularly Quicksilver) but the beats they WERE given worked very well in defining both why they would help Ultron and why they would ultimately turn against him.

Ultron himself was fantastic, as was Vision. Thor's defining trait as beefcake is also pretty funny.

IDK, I guess I don't get what people are looking for from these movies that they would come away from something like this violently hating it unless you just flat-out hate all of the Marvel movies. It wasn't the best one they've done but I thought it was a ton of fun and hit all the notes I wanted it to.

Oh OK I might watch this

Ultron's voice is terrible.. couldn't get past it. as DCasino said upthread, there's no real sense of tension to the action, with all of the CGI bullshit going on

Ultron's voice... was pretty much James Spader being James Spader. It's not like, say, Christian Bale gargling tacks to come up with a menacing Batman voice and that seems like a weird criticism, or at least stated weirdly (like, I would get "I hate James Spader's voice and therefore I didn't buy his Ultron" if that's what you mean).

There's "no real tension to the action" because it's a comic book franchise where characters rarely die and, when they do, someone brings them back later, so it's hard to feel like any major character is actually in jeopardy or that anyone who does get killed is going to remain dead by virtue of the environment the story exists in, which is completely aside from "all of the CGI bullshit" as you put it.

I mean, obv it's your opinion and you can express it however you want; I vehemently disagree with you

There's "no real tension to the action" because it's a comic book franchise where characters rarely die and, when they do, someone brings them back later, so it's hard to feel like any major character is actually in jeopardy

there is something to this though, it does rob traditional action sequences of any weight - in general for an action sequence to work in these films it comes down to the characters' powers/abilities being used in a creative, novel or otherwise unexpected way. But watching two guys punch each other for five minutes is basically just wasting my time, is how I feel about it.

xp they do actually kill someone though! The CGI is less of a problem there than the plangent slo-mo (Thanks, Peter Jackson)

The only scene with two guys punching each other is the Hulk/Hulkbuster, which is full of lots of smart tactical decisions and obviously only possible due to CGI.

smart including dumb there.

xp they do actually kill someone though! The CGI is less of a problem there than the plangent slo-mo (Thanks, Peter Jackson)

hence someone brings them back later

Even if that character remains dead, that doesn't make the feeling that a future writer isn't going to pull a resurrection for pathos/story beats (esp. given The Infinity War coming up, that's a cheap way to escalate personal stakes)

The slo-mo felt like splash pages to me, as someone alluded to upthread.

fwiw I was speaking generally of the genre, not about this movie specifically (which I haven't seen)

xp

I was only mildly disappointed with Ultron's voice because I'd always imagined him to sound more like a Dalek. He looks like a screamer. But Spader performed commendably.

I dunno, I enjoy these movies as live-action "What-If?" setpieces featuring characters I only peripherally followed in the comics until the first Iron Man movie came out; I'm not looking at them for much more than "how many quips, beatdowns and explosions can we get over the next couple of hours and are the staged/delivered well enough to make easily-entertained me smile"; it's a remarkably low hurdle to clear tbh but I feel like demanding that movies entertain me rather than putting myself in a mood to enjoy what they have to offer and then enjoying them is easier and makes me happier.

i want to watch this again

i enjoyed this enough though it definitely cemented a sense of superhero movie fatigue. thought the gulf in quality between this and the first avengers movie is wildly overstated though obv the first one had the novelty of omg a teamup and omg they got hulk right etc. thought spader was great, as an offspring of stark it made sense he would be this asshole who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. plus, yknow, less than zero.

Dr casinos overstuffed post otm except about Hawkeye, who is the soul of this movie.

Ultron was a vg villain imo, equal parts hal, skynet and evil stark, pity that whedon couldn't keep that going rather than turn him into a fighty robot but otherwise this was as good as it was going to be

no comments on this in more than a year? guessing people are not too geared up for a 2-part sequel then.

oh I'm geared up

not looking forward to the part where Cap eats it though

the movie isn't out for another year what is there to talk about

It's four MCU movies away, gotta hyperventilate in the correct order.

yeah exactly. so much more MCU to go