The Avengers: Age of Ultron
May. 7th, 2015 07:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroWhen Pepper Potts isn’t around to say, “Tony, no,” Tony does dumb stuff. Like making a super-powerful insane genocidal AI that wants to destroy all humans. Other highlights include three new major characters, the Hulkbuster armor, a bunch of backstory/development for the characters who don’t get their own movies, and really how much stuff did they cram in here?
Jethrien commented that this was a bloated mess that somehow seemed to hum along coherently, and how much of a testament to the skill of the director and actors that was. It occurred to me that the best metaphor I can come up with is calling this “Collecting issues #18-24 of the ongoing series.” It requires you know what came before, and while it’s theoretically a whole, single story; it mostly exists to get all of the characters and plot pieces from point A (where they were when we last saw them), to point B (where we need them for the next big storyline).
Which doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it—the action sequences were great and there were plenty of fun quips—but like Iron Man 2, I don’t think it’s particularly rewatchable.
I was amused that Joss tried to out-Joss himself with the blatant “I’m gonna kill Hawkeye! Look! Look! He’s totally marked for death! He ain’t coming home! …Fooled you!” I’m not sure how well it worked, but it was nice to see the guy with the wife and kids actually get to go home to them. (I did briefly wonder if there was going to be a “it looks like he’s dead but he’s just been deafened” thing; there’s been a lot of fan clamor about Hawkeye’s deafness and whether it’ll appear in the MCU.)
I thought the Black Widow backstory scene (that the internet is up in arms over) was clunkily done; it’s fairly clear they weren’t trying to equate sterility with monstrousness (Romanoff is a monster because she was trained to dispassionately murder people from a very young age), but it came off as weirdly tone-deaf. I did read a great article arguing that it was trying to tie into the greater discussion of the movie, of evolution and having children that will surpass you / make you obsolete. Of course I can’t find the link now, but that person’s theory was that this scene was to define the Avengers as an evolutionary dead end; which Cap tries to subvert in the ending with a new generation of Avengers.
I think it’ll be interesting to see what they do with that B-team in the next few years and in Infinity War Part 1, though I think it’s likely they’ll get their asses handed to them and necessitate bringing back the A-team. (Though Vision and Scarlet Witch pick up some of the slack, losing Thor and Hulk reduces the raw power of the team greatly; and War Machine isn’t as useful out of combat as Iron Man.) It’s going to be touchy destroying a team that has two black men and two women, though, which makes me suspect that the “catalyst event” will be Thanos smashing Vision and stealing the Mind Gem. Then robot played by a white guy is a politically and ratings-board safe target.
And for the record, I called that Loki’s staff was the mind gem two movies ago.
Overall: Has the internet told you to hate this yet? Because you’re a terrible person if you don’t hate it. You misogynist monster. Joss Whedon is the devil. Have you told him how much he sucks today? We should cancel him, just like Stephen Colbert, the racist. Anyone who ever told you that Whedon did anything good was lying, we’ve always hated him for being Worse Than Hitler, and we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
But those fight sequences are glorious nonetheless. Beautifully choreographed, no jump cuts, no shaky-cam, no lens flare…I wish all comic movies could have fight scenes like that.
Jethrien commented that this was a bloated mess that somehow seemed to hum along coherently, and how much of a testament to the skill of the director and actors that was. It occurred to me that the best metaphor I can come up with is calling this “Collecting issues #18-24 of the ongoing series.” It requires you know what came before, and while it’s theoretically a whole, single story; it mostly exists to get all of the characters and plot pieces from point A (where they were when we last saw them), to point B (where we need them for the next big storyline).
Which doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it—the action sequences were great and there were plenty of fun quips—but like Iron Man 2, I don’t think it’s particularly rewatchable.
I was amused that Joss tried to out-Joss himself with the blatant “I’m gonna kill Hawkeye! Look! Look! He’s totally marked for death! He ain’t coming home! …Fooled you!” I’m not sure how well it worked, but it was nice to see the guy with the wife and kids actually get to go home to them. (I did briefly wonder if there was going to be a “it looks like he’s dead but he’s just been deafened” thing; there’s been a lot of fan clamor about Hawkeye’s deafness and whether it’ll appear in the MCU.)
I thought the Black Widow backstory scene (that the internet is up in arms over) was clunkily done; it’s fairly clear they weren’t trying to equate sterility with monstrousness (Romanoff is a monster because she was trained to dispassionately murder people from a very young age), but it came off as weirdly tone-deaf. I did read a great article arguing that it was trying to tie into the greater discussion of the movie, of evolution and having children that will surpass you / make you obsolete. Of course I can’t find the link now, but that person’s theory was that this scene was to define the Avengers as an evolutionary dead end; which Cap tries to subvert in the ending with a new generation of Avengers.
I think it’ll be interesting to see what they do with that B-team in the next few years and in Infinity War Part 1, though I think it’s likely they’ll get their asses handed to them and necessitate bringing back the A-team. (Though Vision and Scarlet Witch pick up some of the slack, losing Thor and Hulk reduces the raw power of the team greatly; and War Machine isn’t as useful out of combat as Iron Man.) It’s going to be touchy destroying a team that has two black men and two women, though, which makes me suspect that the “catalyst event” will be Thanos smashing Vision and stealing the Mind Gem. Then robot played by a white guy is a politically and ratings-board safe target.
And for the record, I called that Loki’s staff was the mind gem two movies ago.
Overall: Has the internet told you to hate this yet? Because you’re a terrible person if you don’t hate it. You misogynist monster. Joss Whedon is the devil. Have you told him how much he sucks today? We should cancel him, just like Stephen Colbert, the racist. Anyone who ever told you that Whedon did anything good was lying, we’ve always hated him for being Worse Than Hitler, and we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
But those fight sequences are glorious nonetheless. Beautifully choreographed, no jump cuts, no shaky-cam, no lens flare…I wish all comic movies could have fight scenes like that.
