Avengers: Age of Ultron: It's pretty fucking awesome

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Darth Rosenberg

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Saw it yesterday, and I found it to be excellently made and far more enjoyable than most most non-Marvel Studios blockbusters...

...and yet I felt it was frustratingly conservative, and - as it could not escape comparison with the first Avengers film - simply more of the same, ultimately. I'm sure I'll enjoy it more second time around, but it's not even close to being my 'best of MCU', so that's a little disappointing in itself. As a huge Whedon fan, I also get the feeling that he was just buckling under the weight of all that the MCU now demands this time - servicing what's there, as opposed to really expressing himself as a writer. The Avengers felt more like a quintessential Whedon product (although, obviously, even that was heavily watered down from, say, Buffy or Dollhouse).

Ultron being written by Whedon and voiced by Spader seemed an utterly perfect combination. But, really, he felt drastically depowered compared to the page, and I found his final form design to be rather dull - especially when considering some of the superb designs they could've picked from.

As for the conservative angle; it didn't feel like it took any risks at all, and that's something which has arguably distinguished Phase 2, with IM3 (I really liked and admired it), Winter Soldier, and Guardians (although I even thought that was too vanilla). Age Of Ultron was just another 'here's a team vs a villain'.

...it feels odd criticising it, or calling it a bit of a disappointment, when every component part was done so damn well. But The Avengers and, in particular, The Winter Soldier set the bar very high in terms of spectacle and quality, and Age Of Ultron just didn't raise that at all. I don't believe it even matched it.

One thing I was unquestionably disappointed by was just how little it does to the MCU continuity overall. The team gets a shake up, sure, but beyond that? I'd have loved---
a Black Panther cameo (or even just a prolonged glimpse at Wakanda), or some proper groundwork set for Civil War, or anything from the other new properties. But nope, nothing.
Oh yeah, re the mid-credit scene:
Thanos finally getting the Infinity Gauntlet is nice, and all, but again - it's not a major reveal for the MCU. It didn't feel like a surprise, it felt like routine.
To end on good points: the Vision's not a character I've read much at all, and I think he's one of the most interesting and exciting additions to the MCU for a long while. And, as someone else alluded to, I think his actor's now one of the heaviest hitters in the MCU. Great character, played by a great actor. Marvel Studios really do have an incredible knack for casting.

Wanda, too, is something very different whose like hasn't been seen before in the MCU, and whilst she also felt rather depowered from the page, I can't wait to see how she develops. Never seen Elizabeth Olsen in anything else before, but - accent, perhaps, aside... - I thought she was superb. Surprisingly compelling/charismatic, given how little screentime she probably actually had.
 

Maxtro

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Why the hell hasn't this been released in the US yet?!

It's a freaking American made movie that as far as I know takes place in America.
 

Silvanus

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I must say, I was faintly disappointed by Age of Ultron. I generally liked Ultron himself, except for the 'Stark tech going bad! Moral questions!' shtick having been covered in two previous films already. Didn't like Vision much visually or story-wise.
 

McElroy

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Maxtro said:
Why the hell hasn't this been released in the US yet?!

It's a freaking American made movie that as far as I know takes place in America.
I can't answer your question but half of the movie takes place in fictional countries, and then there's Korea and even Norway for a little bit. It's a Tintin/Bond route of locations.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Maxtro said:
Why the hell hasn't this been released in the US yet?!
It's a way of countering piracy. They release first in the "third world" (not exclusively, but for the most part) so they can sucker in people to the theaters for lack of bootlegged copies. If they released first in the US, the studios would lose a handsome chunk of the overseas market to bootlegs.

It's a freaking American made movie that as far as I know takes place in America.
Most of the movie takes place in made-up crapsack countries like "Sokovia" and "Wakanda". You get dat third world charm, but nobody gets offended.
 

WolfThomas

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Johnny Novgorod said:
Maxtro said:
Why the hell hasn't this been released in the US yet?!
Most of the movie takes place in made-up crapsack countries like "Sokovia" and "Wakanda". You get dat third world charm, but nobody gets offended.
Plus they've been fictional marvel countries for years. So nods to continuity
 

Tawanda

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Saw it on Thursday, somewhat disappointing, its not a bad movie its just seem they are going through the motions and setting up for future projects.I think Joss made the mistake of thinking bigger=better
 

marurder

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Tawanda said:
Saw it on Thursday, somewhat disappointing, its not a bad movie its just seem they are going through the motions and setting up for future projects.I think Joss made the mistake of thinking bigger=better
Couldn't have said it better. I felt that the overall movie felt rushed. Not in the production sense, but in the story telling. There is absolutely no time to let anything sink in before you are whisked away to the next locale or action scene.
 

CaptainMarvelous

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Johnny Novgorod said:
McElroy said:
Yeah, saw it today as well. I'm just gonna spoil everything now:
It's decent overall with a great second act with the meaningful fights before the villain and his drones get reduced to one big joke. Quicky is quippy and kinda fun, but Wanda is just angsty-wangsty to the Maximoff. Nat's and Banner's little arc is almost a little touching but that's it - I think they could've given more focus to Ultron instead. I disagree with Johnny that Ultron is unintimidating - it was the only character I wanted to see on screen from the first appearance to the last, because of the absurd bouts of humor as well as violence - but ineffective he certainly was. The final fight... it's nothing, it's over in seconds. Oh boy the jokes just kept coming and coming, almost all of them pointless just for the sake of it. Somehow Cap has become a total fucking terminator between Winter Soldier and this, though they kept nerfing the Uldrones as the battles went on. Feels like dick-waving to me especially the thrid act (and the first was just kinda boring). Unfortunately they can do it without much trouble. And as always the 3D is a complete waste.
I think Ultron starts out intimidating, Spader does a great job with the voice - charming, suave - and his intro is suitably creepy. But nothing he ever does afterwards in the movie lives up to his introduction. And the whole inevitability-of-human-extinction shtick bored me to tears. He's not a character, he's a device, something annoying that must be overcome for the sake of an arc.
See, I disagree on this, Ultron to me is up there with Loki in the 'actually having a motivation'. One of my big beefs with the Marvel films (spurred on by this actually) is that the villains very rarely have an actual understandable motivation or goal. Loki wants to rule Asgard/rule Midgard/avenge his mother (...and rule Asgard), but compare to like Malekith he wants to destroy the universe because... reasons. Or Killian who's all I wanna be the top dog like Justin Hammer but totally not. Or Whiplash who wants his bird.

Ultron's kind of a weird mix of god complex, oedipus complex and incredibly lonely. He genuinely valued the Maximoffs as friends which is f*cking WEIRD but he's also an insane A.I with his own weird predilections. His actual plan even changed, he went from wanting to improve humanity to just 'f*ck it, the Avengers took my friends, my new body AND the internet from me, humanity go bye bye': But this is the same character who kidnapped Black Widow because he wanted to have someone to show his big plan to. I think Vision called it, dude is in pain. Compared to the other marvel villains he did feel like he had a genuine character arc. Admittedly, he was more light-hearted than I expected, but still miles ahead of the others.
 

Guffe

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Xsjadoblayde said:
Just come back from seeing it. What you on about? Is the UK not western now?
I was thinking the same... I'm from Finland and I saw this movie in the cinema last Thursday o_O

On Topic:
I thought is was good, many seem to say there was no character development but I thought there was plenty, liked the "new guys" and the world building it left at the end.
 

Sonicron

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I think I'm sadly not going to be seeing the movie at all.
I've been looking forward to it immensely, but then Disney had to be dickbags and massively raise the prices for their film distribution to cinemas. Not sure if they did it anywhere else, but they did here in Germany anyway. The result - if this works and a precedent is set - would be a very real threat of hundreds of cinemas slowly starving and closing down, which is why about 600 cinemas in our country are refusing to screen any Disney movies.
And since I believe they're damn right to do so, the only thing I can really do to oppose Disney's dickbaggery is to vote with my wallet and not see the film in one of the massive cineplexes near my town. :(
 

bug_of_war

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Saw it, enjoyed it, but didn't love it. It felt like they went too far with the quips and jokes, with every chance to have a funny little line was taken, which ended up making the good ones less good than if they had backed off in a few areas. It's decent, but it's nothing special like the first one was.

Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are underutilised, Ultron starts off as something to be feared to an angsty teenager, and there are stretches of time where it just feels like padding.

Quicksilvers death really annoyed me because it seemed so unlikely as you get a scene where he is able to watch a bullet fly past him so slowly that the glass that it passes through (which is also underneath him) takes a good amount of time to break before he falls down. SO WHY IS HE NOT FAST ENOUGH TO DODGE THE BULLETS THAT END UP KILLING HIM?


So yeah, while it's not a bad movie, and it has some really good bits, it just doesn't seem like a great film. It's humour is too hit and miss for my liking, some characters are underused, and Ultron quickly goes from an intimidating interesting villain to a joke. And that's probably the most disappointing thing, Ulton is made a joke. I feel as though this was the point where in which the jokes should be downplayed slightly, allow the seriousness/darkness of the story to be slightly more prevalent. I think they were so scared of being too serious that they went to far in the opposite direction to the point where in which character's personalities were compromised for a quick joke.

But that's just me...
 

Johnny Novgorod

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CaptainMarvelous said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
McElroy said:
Yeah, saw it today as well. I'm just gonna spoil everything now:
It's decent overall with a great second act with the meaningful fights before the villain and his drones get reduced to one big joke. Quicky is quippy and kinda fun, but Wanda is just angsty-wangsty to the Maximoff. Nat's and Banner's little arc is almost a little touching but that's it - I think they could've given more focus to Ultron instead. I disagree with Johnny that Ultron is unintimidating - it was the only character I wanted to see on screen from the first appearance to the last, because of the absurd bouts of humor as well as violence - but ineffective he certainly was. The final fight... it's nothing, it's over in seconds. Oh boy the jokes just kept coming and coming, almost all of them pointless just for the sake of it. Somehow Cap has become a total fucking terminator between Winter Soldier and this, though they kept nerfing the Uldrones as the battles went on. Feels like dick-waving to me especially the thrid act (and the first was just kinda boring). Unfortunately they can do it without much trouble. And as always the 3D is a complete waste.
I think Ultron starts out intimidating, Spader does a great job with the voice - charming, suave - and his intro is suitably creepy. But nothing he ever does afterwards in the movie lives up to his introduction. And the whole inevitability-of-human-extinction shtick bored me to tears. He's not a character, he's a device, something annoying that must be overcome for the sake of an arc.
See, I disagree on this, Ultron to me is up there with Loki in the 'actually having a motivation'. One of my big beefs with the Marvel films (spurred on by this actually) is that the villains very rarely have an actual understandable motivation or goal. Loki wants to rule Asgard/rule Midgard/avenge his mother (...and rule Asgard), but compare to like Malekith he wants to destroy the universe because... reasons. Or Killian who's all I wanna be the top dog like Justin Hammer but totally not. Or Whiplash who wants his bird.

Ultron's kind of a weird mix of god complex, oedipus complex and incredibly lonely. He genuinely valued the Maximoffs as friends which is f*cking WEIRD but he's also an insane A.I with his own weird predilections. His actual plan even changed, he went from wanting to improve humanity to just 'f*ck it, the Avengers took my friends, my new body AND the internet from me, humanity go bye bye': But this is the same character who kidnapped Black Widow because he wanted to have someone to show his big plan to. I think Vision called it, dude is in pain. Compared to the other marvel villains he did feel like he had a genuine character arc. Admittedly, he was more light-hearted than I expected, but still miles ahead of the others.
He was on par with every other malignant AI who has ever rewritten Asimov's Three Laws to its favor. He's born, something does not compute, goes on a killer rampage. His character was "i'm a villain". His arc was "gets stopped".
He's HAL 9000, if HAL 9000 had been written by someone who's grown up on nothing but Saturday morning cartoons.
 

Arqus_Zed

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inu-kun said:
I feel like I've been trolled
Hawkeye raises shit loads of death flags only for Pietro to bite it and it even gets lampshaded immediately after
This!

I mean, you know how Joss Whedon operates. You sit there thinking: "Right, so that's gonna happen". And you've seen the first Avengers film, so you know he'd do it... And then he ends up doing the other thing.

I was half expecting a Bugs Bunny clip as the post-credits sequence going: "Ain't I a stinker?"
 

CaptainMarvelous

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Johnny Novgorod said:
He was on par with every other malignant AI who has ever rewritten Asimov's Three Laws to its favor. He's born, something does not compute, goes on a killer rampage. His character was "i'm a villain". His arc was "gets stopped".
He's HAL 9000, if HAL 9000 had been written by someone who's grown up on nothing but Saturday morning cartoons.
Except he interacted with characters and, y'know, developed. Had a motivation beyond a programming error, transcended his original directive which reflected his own thing with humans. Had a personality independent of his programming. Actually befriended and felt loss when certain humans abandoned him yet still wanted them to be safe (most especially Wanda)
So... not like Hal 9000 at all, really.
 

bartholen_v1legacy

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I'll just say it: it wasn't that special. After the explosive nerdgasm of the first minute there was nothing I could particularly remember or draw my attention to. Effectively the first movie, only with robots instead of aliens. And tell me, was that an accurate depiction of Ultron from the comics? I'd gotten the impression that he was a purely cold, calculating machine, not a wisecracking sociopath.
 

Casual Shinji

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bug_of_war said:
It felt like they went too far with the quips and jokes, with every chance to have a funny little line was taken, which ended up making the good ones less good than if they had backed off in a few areas.
It was definately throwing them around a bit too eagerly. And I can't remember anyone in the theater I was in even laughing at any of them. Most of them were real groaners, too. Like Banner landing in Black Widow's cleavage... Seriously Whedon, you put freaking anime shenanigans in here?! The only time I actually chuckled at something was when everyone's gearing up for the final climax battle and you see Quicksilver just grabbing a pair of sneakers.
bug_of_war said:
Quicksilvers death really annoyed me because it seemed so unlikely as you get a scene where he is able to watch a bullet fly past him so slowly that the glass that it passes through (which is also underneath him) takes a good amount of time to break before he falls down. SO WHY IS HE NOT FAST ENOUGH TO DODGE THE BULLETS THAT END UP KILLING HIM?
That was actually when of the few moments in the movie I liked, just because it took me by surprise. From the moment you're introduced to Hawkeye's family and his soon-to-be-expecting wife, you can just feel his imminent demise hanging over his head. You have him talking about this being his final mission as an Avenger and casually bringing up how he wants to do the floor in his house after this is all done. And then finally you have the scene of him being on the rescue boat, but getting off to save a kid. And I was like 'Oh boy, here we go...'. You even get a shot of him trying to shield the boy from the incoming fire. But then it's actually Quicksilver that saves Hawkeye and sacrifices himself to do so. That was a nice twist, because I was so expecting Hawkeye to bite it.

As for why he didn't dodge... It's established a couple times in the movie that eventhough he's fast, he can't dodge everything. There's the scene with him breaking through the plate glass, and the one where he gets accidentally shot through the upper arm. And again, he was trying to save Hawkeye and the kid, but just wasn't fast enough to save himself.