The Avengers: Age of Ultron [** SPOILERS FROM POST 599 ONWARD **]

Chip Whitley

During the Hulk v Hulkbuster fight I loved Robert Downey Jr's delivery of "I'm Sorry" and "GoToSleep, GoToSleep, GoToSleep, GoToSleep..."

They were up there with Avengers Assembles Hulk smacking Thor and "Puny God' for me.

allibastor

Chip Whitley wrote: »

During the Hulk v Hulkbuster fight I loved Robert Downey Jr's delivery of "I'm Sorry" and "GoToSleep, GoToSleep, GoToSleep, GoToSleep..."

They were up there with Avengers Assembles Hulk smacking Thor and "Puny God' for me.

Its why he gets paid the big bucks!!!

I would imagine they would have made so much more in a film he if wasnt paid 50 Million.

Penn

eviltimeban wrote: »

I was a bit disappointed with the Vision. I loved the character, and Paul Bettany's reading of it, but he sort of... didn't do much. He was supposed to be the most powerful being in the universe or whatever, with a bloody great bit infinity stone shoved in his head, but after his initial impact he sort of went off screen, and then was just flying around shooting laser beams from his head.

Surely a being with this power could just snap his fingers and all the bad guys would fall down dead? Like, it took them as long to clear up all the flying robots in AoU as it did all the aliens in AA. The Vision should've made that child's play.

The Vision isn't *that* powerful. The Mind Stone definitely grants him a lot of power, but he's not powerful enough to just snap his fingers and destroy all the robots. The powers of the Mind stone are more so to do with mind control, while also being able to shoot energy. You also have to take into consideration that The Vision is new. He might not even know how much power he has or how to use it fully.

I think you're expecting a bit much from him, let alone that if he did have that much power it'd be a boring-ass final fight in the film.

dr.fuzzenstein

Penn wrote: »

The Vision isn't *that* powerful. The Mind Stone definitely grants him a lot of power, but he's not powerful enough to just snap his fingers and destroy all the robots. The powers of the Mind stone are more so to do with mind control, while also being able to shoot energy. You also have to take into consideration that The Vision is new. He might not even know how much power he has or how to use it fully.

I think you're expecting a bit much from him, let alone that if he did have that much power it'd be a boring-ass final fight in the film.

Vision walks on, snaps fingers, all baddies drop dead. The End, cut to kebab shop. :pac:

Nervous Wreck

allibastor wrote: »

A thing I found very disappointing with that line, not so much the actual line, but that it did set up for a very much Banner controlled Hulk.
If he was able to master the transformation, it should have followed on to some extent that he was able to have more control over the Hulk.
It was even hinted in Avengers that Hulk got humor and so on, but in AoU he seemed to be back to the basic form of Hulk smash and not much else.

The only part of the movie where he was out of control was when Scarlet Witch had gotten inside his head. For the rest of the movie, he was very much able to, to quote from The Incredible Hulk, "not control it, but maybe direct it." In the opening and closing battles, Hulk was aware of who he, his teammates and the civilians were and who he needed to smash. They were very distinct to him. After he was finished smashing and had nowhere to direct his rage, he paced back and forth kicking things until his lullaby. I thought it was all really well done.

eviltimeban

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Vision walks on, snaps fingers, all baddies drop dead. The End, cut to kebab shop. :pac:

I'd have preferred that to "let's destroy another city".

Foxtrol

eviltimeban wrote: »

I'd have preferred that to "let's destroy another city".

This keeps coming up and I don’t really get it. What do you really expect/want to see from the end of an Avengers movie?

dr.fuzzenstein

eviltimeban wrote: »

I'd have preferred that to "let's destroy another city".

They can't really say to the baddie "Actually, would you mind awfully if we move this battle to a less densely populated area, there's a good chap?"

Penn

Foxtrol wrote: »

This keeps coming up and I don’t really get it. What do you really expect/want to see from the end of an Avengers movie?

Agreed. Hell at least this time they spent a huge amount of focus in getting people to safety both before and during the fight.

dr.fuzzenstein

This (left) was one of the best version of the Avengers though:

Thargor

Because its boring, there's no danger to any of the characters and we've seen it all before, you know the city isn't going to be destroyed so its just mush. at least with DC there's a chance of something interesting happening.

PirateShampoo

Penn wrote: »

Agreed. Hell at least this time they spent a huge amount of focus in getting people to safety both before and during the fight.

Think that was mostly to do with the amount of BS Man of Steel got over destroying a city.

dr.fuzzenstein

PirateShampoo wrote: »

Think that was mostly to do with the amount of BS Man of Steel got over destroying a city.

That was hardly the controversial sticking point of MOS. I remember everyone screaming about Zod.

pixelburp

Foxtrol wrote: »

This keeps coming up and I don’t really get it. What do you really expect/want to see from the end of an Avengers movie?

It's deadening, and only serves to emphasise how little is at stake for the characters. And yes, no matter how super the heroes are, they're still meant to be characters. That it's the Avengers doesn't mean the finale has to be reduced to only spectacle. At least the original film, while being itself an orgy of urban destruction, made narrative sense because it was a demonstration of the Avengers overcoming their differences and personality clashes to work together. Clichéd as hell but it gelled together.

Avengers 2 did the classic thing that sequels often do by assuming the next film has to out-do the previous in terms of scale or showiness. What was at stake? Ok yes a city, lots of civilians but they were just background details. It was a nice touch to show heroes being actually heroic, but ultimately was hard to be in any way invested in something when the scale and spectacle was so vast, with resonance with the characters' journeys. The first half of the film openly played with the notion of Tony Stark / Banner going too far and splitting the team, but it came to nothing by the films end - nope, we gotta have thousands of CGI extras exploding again.

Oddly, Civil War looks like the third act Avengers 2 could have been, which just made Avengers 2 feel even more hollow.

Kev W

Thargor wrote: »

Because its boring, there's no danger to any of the characters and we've seen it all before, you know the city isn't going to be destroyed so its just mush. at least with DC there's a chance of something interesting happening.

Except in AOU the city did get destroyed. Also one of the characters died.

Foxtrol

Thargor wrote: »

Because its boring, there's no danger to any of the characters and we've seen it all before, you know the city isn't going to be destroyed so its just mush. at least with DC there's a chance of something interesting happening.

One of the characters died (be it a new one) which I think counts for enough danger. No matter where they had a battle we knew most of the characters were returning due to Marvel’s announcements of future movies so there was no danger to them.

All signs are pointing to the cumulative destruction by the Avengers being a key driver for the Civil War storyline so having a battle in the middle of nowhere doesn’t move the narrative at all.

You simply cant reasonably compare anything DC have produced to the Avengers. All the recent DC movies are focused on a single hero while the Avengers is an ensemble cast. People want to see each character in action so there pretty much has to be a big battle scene with numerous enemies fight and/or civilians that need to be saved in order to give characters something to do. I can guarantee the Justice League movie will have one or the other of these.

Foxtrol

pixelburp wrote: »

It's deadening, and only serves to emphasise how little is at stake for the characters. And yes, no matter how super the heroes are, they're still meant to be characters. That it's the Avengers doesn't mean the finale has to be reduced to only spectacle. At least the original film, while being itself an orgy of urban destruction, made narrative sense because it was a demonstration of the Avengers overcoming their differences and personality clashes to work together. Clichéd as hell but it gelled together.

Avengers 2 did the classic thing that sequels often do by assuming the next film has to out-do the previous in terms of scale or showiness. What was at stake? Ok yes a city, lots of civilians but they were just background details. It was a nice touch to show heroes being actually heroic, but ultimately was hard to be in any way invested in something when the scale and spectacle was so vast, with resonance with the characters' journeys. The first half of the film openly played with the notion of Tony Stark / Banner going too far and splitting the team, but it came to nothing by the films end - nope, we gotta have thousands of CGI extras exploding again.

Oddly, Civil War looks like the third act Avengers 2 could have been, which just made Avengers 2 feel even more hollow.

You could say that about most of the Marvel movies, nearly all setup/lead into the next. AOU clearly had a third act which closed off the Ultron storyline. The obvious flow from one movie to the next is just becoming more apparent now for the characters that have been around since phase 1 and I can only see it ramping up further in the lead up to Infinity Wars. I can say you’ll likely feel the exact same about the end of Civil War too so get yourself prepared.

johnny_ultimate

pixelburp wrote: »

Oddly, Civil War looks like the third act Avengers 2 could have been, which just made Avengers 2 feel even more hollow.

Why provide emotional, thematic or dramatic resolution when there's another half dozen tickets (at least) you want your audience to buy?

That's IMO the fundamental flaw that makes so many of these films come across as cynical, unresolved and shallow. Ironically, it's the Avengers films that suffer worst from that particular affliction - while they should IMO feel like a culmination of the half dozen standalone films that preceded them, they instead feel like a glorified commercial break and a cheap tease for the next phase. To use TV as a comparison (given there's not really any cinematic equivalent to a serialised mega-franchise such as the Marvel films), a good season finale will provide a satisfying conclusion to an arc while setting the scene for what comes next. The Avengers IMO have failed to achieve that, always pointing towards some future development in the Marvel universe rather than taking the time to truly do its own thing.

Mickeroo

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Why provide emotional, thematic or dramatic resolution when there's another half dozen tickets (at least) you want your audience to buy?

That's IMO the fundamental flaw that makes so many of these films come across as cynical, unresolved and shallow. Ironically, it's the Avengers films that suffer worst from that particular affliction - while they should IMO feel like a culmination of the half dozen standalone films that preceded them, they instead feel like a glorified commercial break and a cheap tease for the next phase. To use TV as a comparison (given there's not really any cinematic equivalent to a serialised mega-franchise such as the Marvel films), a good season finale will provide a satisfying conclusion to an arc while setting the scene for what comes next. The Avengers IMO have failed to achieve that, always pointing towards some future development in the Marvel universe rather than taking the time to truly do its own thing.

Don't agree with that at all, there's not a single marvel film regardless of quality that doesn't have a complete story arch. They set stuff up for future films like a series has to but that stuff is never the main focus of the story of each individual film.

Foxtrol

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Why provide emotional, thematic or dramatic resolution when there's another half dozen tickets (at least) you want your audience to buy?

That's IMO the fundamental flaw that makes so many of these films come across as cynical, unresolved and shallow. Ironically, it's the Avengers films that suffer worst from that particular affliction - while they should IMO feel like a culmination of the half dozen standalone films that preceded them, they instead feel like a glorified commercial break and a cheap tease for the next phase. To use TV as a comparison (given there's not really any cinematic equivalent to a serialised mega-franchise such as the Marvel films), a good season finale will provide a satisfying conclusion to an arc while setting the scene for what comes next. The Avengers IMO have failed to achieve that, always pointing towards some future development in the Marvel universe rather than taking the time to truly do its own thing.

I agree with a lot of this but I think your viewing of it is somewhat flawed. You’re looking at each phase being a season when it’s clear that using your comparison the Infinity War movies will be the end of the first season. Everything has slowly built towards them not AA or AOU, so you're not going to get a big payoff/closure after either movie.

pixelburp

Foxtrol wrote: »

You could say that about most of the Marvel movies, nearly all setup/lead into the next. AOU clearly had a third act which closed off the Ultron storyline. The obvious flow from one movie to the next is just becoming more apparent now for the characters that have been around since phase 1 and I can only see it ramping up further in the lead up to Infinity Wars. I can say you’ll likely feel the exact same about the end of Civil War too so get yourself prepared.

Well I wouldn't presume to know what I feel about a movie that hasn't come out yet; it's all well and good to talk about Marvel's grand plan for this super-narrative they got going on, but frankly it's frustrating that a film addresses some decent character beats only to jettison them because it's time to wreck a city (Oh, we did that in the first film? Hmmm, but what if it was flying!) And to introduce a new character, only to then immediately kill them off is about as thrilling as Redshirt Death #435. It's a massive cheat & sidestep from putting characters in any kind of peril.

It's ok to not be in love with every film Marvel comes out with, and to be disappointed that the good work they did in Avengers 1 got abandoned, or at least put on the back-burner, for the sequel. The first half hour of Avengers 2? I enjoyed it, the first battle was completely OTT but the scale was just right and did a good job establishing the new status quo. The Banner / Stark drama had lots of potential. The back half though was just dull and pointless, and there gets a point where just saying 'oh well it'll all come together in the future films' becomes tedious, because there's a point where being a constant cocktease ain't charming anymore. All build-up, no pay-off.

And while on balance the movies are now all tied into each other, the earlier films definitely had stronger character-based hearts, with each of the Avengers having distinct emotional journeys. Throw in Cap America 2 as well, before, yet again, it was union-mandated that a city be wrecked.

johnny_ultimate

Mickeroo wrote: »

Don't agree with that at all, there's not a single marvel film regardless of quality that doesn't have a complete story arch. They set stuff up for future films like a series has to but that stuff is never the main focus of the story of each individual film.

While they have individual arcs, they almost always feel light, familiar and insubstantial. Age of Ultron was, as far as I'm concerned, the single worst example of franchise wheel spinning so far from Marvel. Stuff like Thor in the cave was the most grievous example, but the film spent too much time establishing the next six or seven films while doing itself a disservice in the process. I've argued it before, but I don't think I've ever seen a film that so determinedly ignored its own inherent themes and conflicts, the things that could potentially have made it rather more substantial than just another generic 'Avengers vs the bad guy' story combined with copious amounts of setup and brand awareness for Civil War, Infinity Wars and beyond.

Thargor

Kev W wrote: »

Except in AOU the city did get destroyed. Also one of the characters died.

Foxtrol wrote: »

One of the characters died (be it a new one) which I think counts for enough danger.

The city was damaged, they made a long tedious point of showing everyone was saved.

When I say none of the characters were in danger I didnt mean a one dimensional character they shoehorned in just for that purpose.

eviltimeban

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

They can't really say to the baddie "Actually, would you mind awfully if we move this battle to a less densely populated area, there's a good chap?"

But the baddie didn't write the movie.

allibastor

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

The only part of the movie where he was out of control was when Scarlet Witch had gotten inside his head. For the rest of the movie, he was very much able to, to quote from The Incredible Hulk, "not control it, but maybe direct it." In the opening and closing battles, Hulk was aware of who he, his teammates and the civilians were and who he needed to smash. They were very distinct to him. After he was finished smashing and had nowhere to direct his rage, he paced back and forth kicking things until his lullaby. I thought it was all really well done.

But he was able to do this in the first film also was more my point, but he seemed to be more fleshed out in the first one.

I agree with you though, he was much more in control that in the previous non-avengers films.

allibastor

Foxtrol wrote: »

You could say that about most of the Marvel movies, nearly all setup/lead into the next. AOU clearly had a third act which closed off the Ultron storyline. The obvious flow from one movie to the next is just becoming more apparent now for the characters that have been around since phase 1 and I can only see it ramping up further in the lead up to Infinity Wars. I can say you’ll likely feel the exact same about the end of Civil War too so get yourself prepared.

You can bet your left nut that the Civil was story line is going to show the obvious cracks in the team which had started to show here. Simple things like Tony wanting to protect the world and feeling accountable for this, and Cap feeling like he needs to keep on fighting and that he inst happy unless he has a war.

You can see the set up though for avengers 3 a mile off, they will all hate each other and all that, then Thanos arrives at the very end to give the "Dr. Manhattan" level threat that will re-unite them.

constitutionus

meant to say i think theres an out in the film to bring ultron back down the road should they want.

was watching it on DVD and im pretty sure theres at least one of his bods that didnt get nixed.

Kev W

Thargor wrote: »

The city was damaged, they made a long tedious point of showing everyone was saved.

When I say none of the characters were in danger I didnt mean a one dimensional character they shoehorned in just for that purpose.

The city wasn't damaged, it was completely destroyed.

Foxtrol

pixelburp wrote: »

Well I wouldn't presume to know what I feel about a movie that hasn't come out yet; it's all well and good to talk about Marvel's grand plan for this super-narrative they got going on, but frankly it's frustrating that a film addresses some decent character beats only to jettison them because it's time to wreck a city (Oh, we did that in the first film? Hmmm, but what if it was flying!) And to introduce a new character, only to then immediately kill them off is about as thrilling as Redshirt Death #435. It's a massive cheat & sidestep from putting characters in any kind of peril.

It's ok to not be in love with every film Marvel comes out with, and to be disappointed that the good work they did in Avengers 1 got abandoned, or at least put on the back-burner, for the sequel. The first half hour of Avengers 2? I enjoyed it, the first battle was completely OTT but the scale was just right and did a good job establishing the new status quo. The Banner / Stark drama had lots of potential. The back half though was just dull and pointless, and there gets a point where just saying 'oh well it'll all come together in the future films' becomes tedious, because there's a point where being a constant cocktease ain't charming anymore. All build-up, no pay-off.

And while on balance the movies are now all tied into each other, the earlier films definitely had stronger character-based hearts, with each of the Avengers having distinct emotional journeys. Throw in Cap America 2 as well, before, yet again, it was union-mandated that a city be wrecked.

The character beats aren’t jettisoned though; they’re still there and will come to the fore down the road.

If you don’t like the cocktease then you better find a different girl as this is what Marvel do. They’re in totally uncharted waters as far as filmmaking/media go and some who want payoffs and closure just wont like crossover movies. I’m happy to see things build until the Infinity War and at that point if there isn’t some kind of closure to the story arc then I’ll join you in complaining, until then I’m going to sit back and enjoy.

brianregan09

Alot of the guys saying DC does interesting **** ......You do realise they're just starting down the same road Marvel started in 2008

Like in Batman vs Superman you're going to have Aquaman and Wonder Woman too and soon to be joined by Cyborg, Green Lantern and who ever else in the Justice League and im sure the way those characters are built there's alot of City Destroying ahead in that particular World aswell

Foxtrol

brianregan09 wrote: »

Alot of the guys saying DC does interesting **** ......You do realise they're just starting down the same road Marvel started in 2008

Like in Batman vs Superman you're going to have Aquaman and Wonder Woman too and soon to be joined by Cyborg, Green Lantern and who ever else in the Justice League and im sure the way those characters are built there's alot of City Destroying ahead in that particular World aswell

The attempts to compare DC are quite annoying, especially when the focus of how different their products are is normally centered on the Nolan trilogy which has nothing to do with the current DC universe/direction.

brianregan09

Couldn't agree more I hate the comparison stuff and the whole Marvel vs DC that comic fans take on , for **** sake we can enjoy both for there differences

pmasterson95

Kev W wrote: »

Except in AOU the city did get destroyed. Also one of the characters died.

Pietro wasnt exactly significant. His MCU screentime is about 23mins. Hawkeye would have been a more significant and suprising blow. Pietro was a safe death.

Penn

pmasterson95 wrote: »

Pietro wasnt exactly significant. His MCU screentime is about 23mins. Hawkeye would have been a more significant and suprising blow. Pietro was a safe death.

But the film threw every trope in the book at foreshadowing Hawkeye's death.
"I'm going to live forever"
"Pretending we need this guy is what really brings the team together"
He has a wife, kids and happy home life.
He has a child on the way.
Says he just has one more home improvement job and then he's finished.
Is shown any time Cap mentions that they might die.
Gives a speech about what it is to be an Avenger.
Is safe, but then has to go back into the battle to save a kid.
Is about to be gunned down but turns his body to protect the child.

Hawkeye, at that moment, was the safe death. People had been led to his death in almost every scene he was in throughout the movie. It's Quicksilver who was the surprising blow, and until Hawkeye turned his body to protect the kid and the camera turned to Quicksilver, I thought Hawkeye was going to die.

As for Quicksilver having little screentime before his death, yeah, because it's a movie with a main cast of about 10 characters. Scarlet Witch barely had any more screentime than he did, it's just that her character was more central to the story due to her powers.

Zubeneschamali

pmasterson95 wrote: »

Hawkeye would have been a more significant and suprising blow. Pietro was a safe death.

Come off it, as soon as we saw Hawkeye's secret family with the pregnant wife, everyone in the audience knew Hawkeye was going to die in AoU. He might as well have said he was retiring from the team in just one month.

And when he got up from the boat to go back in the city and rescue a child, everyone said to themselves "Here it comes, bye-bye Hawkeye!"

Killing Pietro, the new guy, instead was a complete shocker in the cinema.

pixelburp

I dunno, a shock usually suggests a form of attachment to the character first. Pietro had barely enough time to become a character for his death to mean anything beyond what the stirring soundtrack told us to feel. Pietro was an orphan and had a bad accent, beyond that he was utterly disposable. Hawkeye's pining for the simple life was obnoxiously cliché all right, no doubt there, but I think a bigger shock would have been to kill of Cap, Iron Man or Thor without warning - and more in keeping with Whedon's previous style. Never going to happen of course given the nature of the franchise but that's a whole bigger issue.

Memnoch

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Come off it, as soon as we saw Hawkeye's secret family with the pregnant wife, everyone in the audience knew Hawkeye was going to die in AoU. He might as well have said he was retiring from the team in just one month.

And when he got up from the boat to go back in the city and rescue a child, everyone said to themselves "Here it comes, bye-bye Hawkeye!"

Killing Pietro, the new guy, instead was a complete shocker in the cinema.

Except it was difficult to care about Pietro's death anymore than it would be to care about the tiresome fight with endless cyborgs. Hawkeye's death would have been equally as boring but at least I wouldn't have to watch his lame character anymore. Meanwhile please also kill Scarlett's character, and captain America as well while we're at it.

Kev W

Memnoch wrote: »

Except it was difficult to care about Pietro's death anymore than it would be to care about the tiresome fight with endless cyborgs. Hawkeye's death would have been equally as boring but at least I wouldn't have to watch his lame character anymore. Meanwhile please also kill Scarlett's character, and captain America as well while we're at it.

Or you could just not watch movies full of characters you hate!

Memnoch

Kev W wrote: »

Or you could just not watch movies full of characters you hate!

I like iron man and hulk. Thor is fun and so is Loki. Rest are pretty disposable. Does thy mother know thou wareth her drapes?

pmasterson95

My point was missed and cant be arsed trying to re-explain it to diehards who believe everything Marvel does is golden. Daft.

Zubeneschamali

Memnoch wrote: »

Meanwhile please also kill Scarlett's character, and captain America as well while we're at it.

Well, not to give too much away, but...

Penn

pmasterson95 wrote: »

My point was missed and cant be arsed trying to re-explain it to diehards who believe everything Marvel does is golden. Daft.

Or maybe people just disagree with the point you made?

razorblunt

Only caught this recently, have to say it was awful, awful stuff. I think I finally narrowed down my main pain point and that's the "funny" quip close ups on Robert Downey Jr. Actually I think it might be Iron Man in general.
Have to caveat the above that my Marvel/DC interest doesn't really go further than Batman, but I almost missed GoTG as I dismissed it as another Avengers esque fare.

Sphynxinatron

Did anyone else hated the Hawkeye family/farm scenes? I couldn't care less, probably because the Hawkeye character himself was never truly developed in the first film, and out of nowhere now he was the center of attention, but Whedon actually fought for those scenes. This is one of the only scenarios when I actually supported the studio execs lol. And actually hoped to see more about the black lady in that cave but she didn't even appear