Avengers: Age of Ultron

Ryan Farnes

Ryan Farnes

Well-known member
Spoilers.

Very entertaining. I don't know why, but they really know how to cram a lot of humor into these action movies, they're basically comedies. I feel like Marvel has made so many solid films of this genre, its hard to top their previous films.

I thought Ultron was an amazing and manacing villian. (Spader for the win on that voice!)

I do tire of the evacuating city under attack trope, complete with normal street police and pee shooters, then their military betters with larger, but also ineffective weapons, all while the super heroes fly around and kill the innumerable minions that are meant to be dangerous, but are really just window dressing. This very much felt like Avengers 2.

It was fun to see Paul Bettany in his "embodied" role.

All in all, a fun ride.
 
Not as much fun as the first one. Dragged a bit in the middle. Strong finish.

Ultron was 100% a Joss Whedon villain.
 
David Jimerson said:
Ultron was 100% a Joss Whedon villain.
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Yes, but the whole film felt 100% Joss Whedon.
His style of circular repetitive humour: the Thor hammer joke set up worked very well in this respect. His style of killing of a main character with misdirection - though that misdirection with Hawkeyes family was overly long and boring.
I liked it, but the overly long action scenes are getting a bit monotonous; even my kids were getting restless at the end. If it could have been cut down to around 100mins it probably would have been a perfect sequel.
 
David Jimerson said:
I don't agree with everything this guy says -- I liked the movie a lot more than he did -- and he, ironically, takes way too long to say what he has to say, but he's got a number of good points.

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/marvel-killing-the-popcorn-movie/
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Whew. Almost made it to the end...yeah. An interesting take, I guess. When you start mixing contemporary political and gender theory into a movie titled Avengers: Age of Ultron, you may be taking yourself too seriously, and you end up dissatisfied. :P
 
She does have a number of good points. Me, personally, I like smart pop-corn movies. Stupid I can get any day, and in fact have a difficult time getting away from. So I don't go to a lot of stupid pop-corn movies.

I think Joss Whedon did an excellent job, working within the restraints he had to work within. There was a fair amount of good dialog, some actual wit.

But the reviewer is right, there was very little story telling going on. Both my wife and I remarked on it as we were leaving the theater. So the reviewer isn't alone in recognizing the problems.
 
I agree with the author's thoughts about screen time, pacing, and the expanded cast of characters. It really was too much. Which dilutes the quality of the characters and the story. The first Avengers movie had the mix right, with this one, it felt like somebody somewhere said "make it bigger, more action, more everything!"
 
KurtF said:
I agree with the author's thoughts about screen time, pacing, and the expanded cast of characters. It really was too much. Which dilutes the quality of the characters and the story. The first Avengers movie had the mix right, with this one, it felt like somebody somewhere said "make it bigger, more action, more everything!"
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Agree. And I do fear that we will never get any interesting storyline again in the franchise (or others), mainly because it does feel they are emulating what they do in the comics: these are no longer blockbuster films, but blockbuster Series - like a season of a tv show, but a much bigger budget. What this means is that we will see these Episodes were absolutely no character development happens, or where the film doesn't go anywhere. It will be the exact same formula the author of the article wrote.
 
I think what happened to this movie is, the first one was a success, yes, so they decided to make more movies that are worth getting the hype, when in reality, the stories itself are rather lacking. It's pretty good though, although not as good as the first one.
 
Uh, It was a comic book action movie after all. Beyond the hardcore comicon attending fans, most people just go to these kinds of movies to see things gettin blowed up on a big screen. Turn off the cinema class and just enjoy the ride! It was a fun movie to watch, but I'm not expecting it to get any Oscars.
 
I enjoyed it enough. Whedon's dialogue is always amusing. Ultron was a good villain and Vision was an interesting addition. Marvel are getting these movies down to a science and they are almost always of a certain threshold of quality, but they are becoming kind of routine and unsurprising. I liked it more than Guardians of the Galaxy, but I enjoyed that film less than most people did.
 
I feel like Marvel is hitting a point where they're struggling with some of the same things Apple struggles with? They've made such cool products, that new iterations are hard to appreciate as anything more than just new spinoff versions of the original amazing ones, slightly updated and mildly inspiring. They command the market, everyone buys their stuff, so they make obscene amounts of money, yet are roundly criticized or panned as not being innovative like they used to be.

Every analogy is imperfect, and certainly there are many valid points about weak character arcs in this film, but I guess people are looking for that same thrill the originals gave them maybe? A lot of the talk about Marvel films seems to focus on their consistently formulaic patterns.
 
Ryan Farnes said:
A lot of the talk about Marvel films seems to focus on their consistently formulaic patterns.
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Marvel should have a little more guts. I realize there are billions of dollars at stake, but the great thing about having a formula is that now you can mess with it and really catch the audience off guard. Marvel has made their Star Wars. Now they need to make their Empire Strikes Back.
 
I actually thought Captain America: Winter Soldier was their Empire Strikes Back.

Would sort of make Ultron into Jedi. Sort of works.
 
David Jimerson said:
I actually thought Captain America: Winter Soldier was their Empire Strikes Back.

Would sort of make Ultron into Jedi. Sort of works.
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I think Winter Solider still adheres to the formula. Empire flipped the formula completely upside down. I'm guessing the upcoming Civil War storyline is where things will really get upended in the Marvel universe.
 
I dunno; in Winter Soldier, they pretty much wrecked the whole universe. Civil War will wreck it more, but while there was a small victory in Winter Soldier, HYDRA still remained triumphant.
 
David Jimerson said:
I dunno; in Winter Soldier, they pretty much wrecked the whole universe. Civil War will wreck it more, but while there was a small victory in Winter Soldier, HYDRA still remained triumphant.
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Yeah, it's more that, it still hits those same action/story beats as every other Marvel film if you peek under the hood. I'm not criticizing it for that, but structurally it doesn't deviate that much. Empire Strikes Back doesn't seem to repeat a single thing about Star Wars. I enjoy the Marvel superhero films but I'm starting to realize there is an upper limit on my enjoyment of them because of their lack of individuality. It doesn't feel like there's a strong personal stamp on any of the films. Some of Whedon's dialogue peeks through, but directorially they all look like they could have been made by the same guy. They're becoming slightly generic. They're usually good. But none of them are great for me.
 
I certainly agree that the whole MCU is turning into a vastly-expensive TV show where not a lot can change, so there's less of a sense of stakes.
 
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