Avengers: Age of Ultron
Okay went to see Avengers 2 at the weekend. While not a complete waste of my time and cash. I did find I had a number of reservations about it.
As with all my movie reviews I have placed the meat of the piece under Cut to avoid spoilers.
Avengers:Age of Ultron.. Basic storyline, the Avengers survive the chaos that was S.H.I.E.L.D. crashing and burning and (i think they are now a private security force???) sequestered in Avengers (Stark) tower in New York. they are on the prowl looking for Loki's Sceptre which has gone missing out of S.H.I.E.L.D. storage.. as seen at the end of Cap 2. cue tag piece with the team rushing through Black Park err Sokovia?? to get to the suitably foreboding looking castle to get it back off HYDRA and a guy called Strucker. Cue awesome fighting whitty dialogue etc.. everything you would expect from a Whedon movie. While recovering the Sceptre Stark is affected by Wanda Maximoffs powers (one of two very special Twins who have been voluntarily helping HYDRA because they are Heroes in Sokovia thanks to some heavy duty propaganda) and becomes haunted by what he sees of the death of the Avengers and the destruction of the world.
Back at Avengers tower Stark and Banner study the staff and discover that it is in fact inhabited by an alien AI, in an attempt to study and utilise this to world advantage Stark pokes it.. it then gains self awareness frags J.A.R.V.I.S. takes over one of the Iron legion's robot bodies, infects teh internet and after having a massive fight with the Avengers skips out of the tower and back to Struckers robot building lab in Sokivia. There he reactivates the lab and builds himself many many bodies. While constructing a plan to destroy the Avengers and then the Earth the idea is to protect humanity by destroying them and also winning the allegiance of Piotr and Wanda Maximoff. Lots of fighting takes place, Ultron decides to buy all the available Vibranium available on the black market whilst also using it as a chance to get Wanda to put the Neural Whammy on the team. incidentally causing the Hulk to Go SMASH.. (cue the reveal of the new line of toys Iron Man suit) and co-opt a Korean synthetic tissue specialist's technology, to create for him the perfect body which is powered by the thing overpowering Loki's Sceptre, which it turns out is one of the Infinity stones (the mind stone).
fighting, angst, infighting, more angst.. character reveals.. Black Widow becoming the lacklustre female prisoner of Ultron...
sudden inexplicable death, reveal of a new character, group reveal of the extended Avengers and Credits.. with the ubiquitous shot of Thanos basically about to Bring it!.
Comparing this movie to what went before I can’t say that I found it as enjoyable.. And that hurts to say. Because I so wanted to enjoy it. Given that the first movie did have it’s flaws but was a real adventure.. And I came out of it going OMG! I must watch this again!.. With this one I came out thinking.. wow that was a long time.. And I don’t know what I got to show for it??? At 2hrs 20 odd minutes I think I should have at least felt like I had advanced my knowledge of the Avengers team.
I suppose there was some character stuff, but it felt more to me that it was, and here’s Thor and Cap and Widow and Ironman and Hawkeye.. ooh, and here’s Rhodey and Selvig and then here’s Strucker, and Wanda and Piotr and Ultron, and the Iron legion and Ultron bots, and oooh Vision has just been made.. and look even the Helicarrier has a guest spot… If you blink you miss stuff.. Which is a painful method of movie making. Where's waldo/wally on screen just really doesn't work after a while because you are so inundated your brain just shuts off. Having the odd cameo is nice but after a while it gets to the point where you start to loose the OOH-AHH! value and begin to get the “What?? Another one!!”.
In Cake terms if this is a Fruit cake it is one so dense you could possibly hand it to CERN to study as a cheap alternative to the Hadron Collider.
Avengers 1 has this massive re watch potential that makes you feel awesome and gives you the I MUST HAVE THIS MOVIE! Reaction. Everyone is having fun, there is daring doo and adventure and cool stuff.. in this movie.. no one seems to have time to have any fun.. In fact they are all mostly miserable throughout, even at the "party" everyone is so epically serious, except for the fringe character.. the whole thing is way too serious in that way a franchise gets when it’s desperate to get the “fans” to stay with it all the way through.
It is so serious in fact, that any of the levity carried into this movie through the excellent dialogue just falls completely flat. Smothered by the SERIOUS!.. “you must take this seriously, OKAY. “Seriously Guys we are heading to the INFINITY WARS!! So it serious okay!” OKAY!. Which actually goes against everything the other previous series of movies has put in place. Yes there should be some seriousness and reality to what is going on. But! You have to temper that with a sense of we are also watching superheroes here who are here to be awesome and have a bit of fun. You know.. like in a comic..
So much potential was burned in this film, Wanda and Piotr could have had so much more character build and screen time. Why were HYDRA studying them? what, if anything did they do to them? If they were volunteers who believed in the cause why were they in cages/captivity?.. Did they manifest their powers or where they given to them?
They were introduced to the franchise with so much promise and then(to quote someone funnier than I) let down like a flan in a cupboard.
Strucker. Again what was the point of him? Other than to drop a name and be “malevolent HYDRA bad guy”. Who.. chickens out and gives himself up at the first major assault on his secret lair/lab??? and then gets killed off screen like a wuss in his cell!
Also, come to think of it. If S.H.I.E.L.D. are no more, who has given the "Avenger's" permission to invade a sovereign territory and take this guy captive?... there is absolutely no legal basis for their activities. Except for “oh we are super” or “oh we have money and can buy you”.. of course this could be part of another series plot, the legal shenanigans of having to set up what is now effectively a private mercenary force. But again no reference is made at all to cover this angle, so basically you have a bunch of people who set themselves up as Semi militaristic mercenary force who then illegally invade a sovereign country (Sokovia) who don't seem to have an extradition treaty with the US (as its controlled by HYDRA).. Yay .go Good Guys!?
So when you sit down and think about the whole thing is a slight mess. The storyline makes even less sense structurally than the first movie and is a lot less, YAH!.. Which leads to an immense feeling of dissatisfaction when you walk out of the theatre. There are points where you are going.. What?.. Why is that?.. is that important?
Overall it feels a lot like the Spiderman 3, where you can see what Rami wanted to do and what the studio made him do. The same has happened here, you can see what Whedon wanted to do and then what the Studio wanted him to do which is why you get all this cluster of characters, dense areas of thick almost unintelligible plot stuff then some bits of action. Which is really sad because, when the studio let Whedon loose to do what he wanted, he gave up a film that got over lost of plot relevant info in less crowded time and produced a movie that basically allowed the studio to pretty much print money.
This is not a cohesive story, its choppy and stilted. We have an apologetic in depth background build for Hawkeye which was actually really nice and would have been brilliant if there had been more to it, you have the start of what could have been a nice introspective piece on.. What does a highly skilled human have to offer a group of “super men” but instead of having a conversation where say Hawk and Widow go through the whole thing and go.. Well he’s a super rage monster and scientist, he’s a philanthropist super genius sqillionaire, he’s a god, he’s a super serum super soldier and what do we offer?? How can two highly skilled normal humans fight a super AI with multiple bodies and an internet presence????
A bit is started up where how can a man with rage monster issues have a normal relationship with a normal human being!.. a question which is sort of started then just back burnered so that they can go fight the big nasty machine creature..
And the Twins.. the Twins could have had an epic journey of self-discovery that they had been lied to and used by HYDRA to bolster their whatever it is programme they were doing (which was conveniently wiped off the computers and then never referred to again)
Then there is Ultron, who was brilliant, thought round all of the Avengers, was in everything was able to do everything was at the top of the predator chain.. and then for the sake of plot started to do really stupid things at plot relevant times. Like.. Why did he grab Widow and not the body coffin thing as it was dropped into the Quinjet, why didn't he just transport,or reproduce all the tech back in his fortified lair? he had opportunity and the soft and hardware to do this. Why did he not just use the internet and destroy Stark Enterprises, and disable everyone’s stuff, why did he not just possess everything attached to the internet and do nasty stuff to kill everyone.. Getting the entry codes for Nukes is so flipping Passé, with everything on the internet these days he could crash markets, fritz electronic money transfer, hell he could play with traffic lights causing people to crash and die, disable plane navigation systems and set peoples sat-nav to "lemming mode".. And to be fair why the Hell! would Widow suddenly devolve from kick ass secret agent assassin into the “passive female presence”? to be saved by the big bold men?? WTF!.
Seriously I do not understand Piotr’s “Death” it was totally without point.. it was completely like “we need to raise the tone of the conflict.. you.. die a pointless “heroic” looking death it will push everyone’s buttons..” But.. you don’t know the guy enough to really care.. Because he has little to no background. I watched the scene and went.. Why is he dead?, none of those injuries are immediately life threatening . He wasn’t hit in the head or the heart and the abdominal wounds didn’t look close enough to major blood vessels, yes it was high calibre fire but hey the dude is a super human, a billion pressure bandages, fluids in to slow the shock and they have a good chance of possibly saving his life.. Especially as he has an impressively fast metabolism which could heal very quickly if supported by the right things.. oh no, they are going to just look at him in a sad way..
To me it feels like Whedon got racked off with interference and so resorted to Trope number ## and trope number## to make a point. Assemble a story which obviously the studio loved but is not the story he wanted to tell or really the fans wanted to watch.
This movie has the feel of a story at war with itself. As I said before it feels like Spiderman 3 where the director (Sam Raimi) had a clear idea of what he wanted to do and the Studio decided it wanted another. It is also obviously a “middle movie” like “Empire Strikes Back” or “Lord of the Rings the two Towers” etc.. it’s all portents and filler to back up things to come, but in doing that it sort of forgets itself and it's own story. There are two major plot lines actively fighting with each other and making the movie weak with no real story resolution except to set up the idea that the Avengers is many different characters other than Thor, and Iron man, and Cap etc.. Which to be honest they could have settled very early on in the movie by having different teams doing different jobs. Seriously the “money shot” of the team of Avengers revealed at the end of the movie was nowhere near as adrenaline racing as it could have been.
Now I know this sounds like I absolutely detested this movie with a passion known only on biblical levels but really I didn't, I just feel a bit sad really, I didn't think Marvel would de-generate this quickly, with the success of Cap America, Guardians and the other tv series I really thought they knew to leave it to the people who can make this gold.. instead they start to muck about with the golden goose ..
I really enjoyed Ultron and can see use for him in the future.. I can see the story threads in there. I can see what could have been, and what could have been a much better more cohesive story.. I am just worried that this will scare Whedon away from the projects, which I hope it doesn't because, seriously Disney/Marvel, you are going to need him and people like him. When you stop trying to social engineer and re-enforce out of date gender stereotyping and come to realise that these movies can pull in a much wider demographic than the narrow band that you have set yourself. Joss can write and organise a overarching story which works and pulls people in, and if he leaves the cohesion we have been seeing in the Marvel will just evaporate and the “golden-age” of the comic hero movie will come crashing down before it has really gotten going..
So Yeah, all i can say is this movie isn't bad, but its just not good. and Marvel/Disney or Disney/Marvel, you need to step back and let the master work.. because otherwise its just all goign to fall down.
As with all my movie reviews I have placed the meat of the piece under Cut to avoid spoilers.
Avengers:Age of Ultron.. Basic storyline, the Avengers survive the chaos that was S.H.I.E.L.D. crashing and burning and (i think they are now a private security force???) sequestered in Avengers (Stark) tower in New York. they are on the prowl looking for Loki's Sceptre which has gone missing out of S.H.I.E.L.D. storage.. as seen at the end of Cap 2. cue tag piece with the team rushing through Black Park err Sokovia?? to get to the suitably foreboding looking castle to get it back off HYDRA and a guy called Strucker. Cue awesome fighting whitty dialogue etc.. everything you would expect from a Whedon movie. While recovering the Sceptre Stark is affected by Wanda Maximoffs powers (one of two very special Twins who have been voluntarily helping HYDRA because they are Heroes in Sokovia thanks to some heavy duty propaganda) and becomes haunted by what he sees of the death of the Avengers and the destruction of the world.
Back at Avengers tower Stark and Banner study the staff and discover that it is in fact inhabited by an alien AI, in an attempt to study and utilise this to world advantage Stark pokes it.. it then gains self awareness frags J.A.R.V.I.S. takes over one of the Iron legion's robot bodies, infects teh internet and after having a massive fight with the Avengers skips out of the tower and back to Struckers robot building lab in Sokivia. There he reactivates the lab and builds himself many many bodies. While constructing a plan to destroy the Avengers and then the Earth the idea is to protect humanity by destroying them and also winning the allegiance of Piotr and Wanda Maximoff. Lots of fighting takes place, Ultron decides to buy all the available Vibranium available on the black market whilst also using it as a chance to get Wanda to put the Neural Whammy on the team. incidentally causing the Hulk to Go SMASH.. (cue the reveal of the new line of toys Iron Man suit) and co-opt a Korean synthetic tissue specialist's technology, to create for him the perfect body which is powered by the thing overpowering Loki's Sceptre, which it turns out is one of the Infinity stones (the mind stone).
fighting, angst, infighting, more angst.. character reveals.. Black Widow becoming the lacklustre female prisoner of Ultron...
sudden inexplicable death, reveal of a new character, group reveal of the extended Avengers and Credits.. with the ubiquitous shot of Thanos basically about to Bring it!.
Comparing this movie to what went before I can’t say that I found it as enjoyable.. And that hurts to say. Because I so wanted to enjoy it. Given that the first movie did have it’s flaws but was a real adventure.. And I came out of it going OMG! I must watch this again!.. With this one I came out thinking.. wow that was a long time.. And I don’t know what I got to show for it??? At 2hrs 20 odd minutes I think I should have at least felt like I had advanced my knowledge of the Avengers team.
I suppose there was some character stuff, but it felt more to me that it was, and here’s Thor and Cap and Widow and Ironman and Hawkeye.. ooh, and here’s Rhodey and Selvig and then here’s Strucker, and Wanda and Piotr and Ultron, and the Iron legion and Ultron bots, and oooh Vision has just been made.. and look even the Helicarrier has a guest spot… If you blink you miss stuff.. Which is a painful method of movie making. Where's waldo/wally on screen just really doesn't work after a while because you are so inundated your brain just shuts off. Having the odd cameo is nice but after a while it gets to the point where you start to loose the OOH-AHH! value and begin to get the “What?? Another one!!”.
In Cake terms if this is a Fruit cake it is one so dense you could possibly hand it to CERN to study as a cheap alternative to the Hadron Collider.
Avengers 1 has this massive re watch potential that makes you feel awesome and gives you the I MUST HAVE THIS MOVIE! Reaction. Everyone is having fun, there is daring doo and adventure and cool stuff.. in this movie.. no one seems to have time to have any fun.. In fact they are all mostly miserable throughout, even at the "party" everyone is so epically serious, except for the fringe character.. the whole thing is way too serious in that way a franchise gets when it’s desperate to get the “fans” to stay with it all the way through.
It is so serious in fact, that any of the levity carried into this movie through the excellent dialogue just falls completely flat. Smothered by the SERIOUS!.. “you must take this seriously, OKAY. “Seriously Guys we are heading to the INFINITY WARS!! So it serious okay!” OKAY!. Which actually goes against everything the other previous series of movies has put in place. Yes there should be some seriousness and reality to what is going on. But! You have to temper that with a sense of we are also watching superheroes here who are here to be awesome and have a bit of fun. You know.. like in a comic..
So much potential was burned in this film, Wanda and Piotr could have had so much more character build and screen time. Why were HYDRA studying them? what, if anything did they do to them? If they were volunteers who believed in the cause why were they in cages/captivity?.. Did they manifest their powers or where they given to them?
They were introduced to the franchise with so much promise and then(to quote someone funnier than I) let down like a flan in a cupboard.
Strucker. Again what was the point of him? Other than to drop a name and be “malevolent HYDRA bad guy”. Who.. chickens out and gives himself up at the first major assault on his secret lair/lab??? and then gets killed off screen like a wuss in his cell!
Also, come to think of it. If S.H.I.E.L.D. are no more, who has given the "Avenger's" permission to invade a sovereign territory and take this guy captive?... there is absolutely no legal basis for their activities. Except for “oh we are super” or “oh we have money and can buy you”.. of course this could be part of another series plot, the legal shenanigans of having to set up what is now effectively a private mercenary force. But again no reference is made at all to cover this angle, so basically you have a bunch of people who set themselves up as Semi militaristic mercenary force who then illegally invade a sovereign country (Sokovia) who don't seem to have an extradition treaty with the US (as its controlled by HYDRA).. Yay .go Good Guys!?
So when you sit down and think about the whole thing is a slight mess. The storyline makes even less sense structurally than the first movie and is a lot less, YAH!.. Which leads to an immense feeling of dissatisfaction when you walk out of the theatre. There are points where you are going.. What?.. Why is that?.. is that important?
Overall it feels a lot like the Spiderman 3, where you can see what Rami wanted to do and what the studio made him do. The same has happened here, you can see what Whedon wanted to do and then what the Studio wanted him to do which is why you get all this cluster of characters, dense areas of thick almost unintelligible plot stuff then some bits of action. Which is really sad because, when the studio let Whedon loose to do what he wanted, he gave up a film that got over lost of plot relevant info in less crowded time and produced a movie that basically allowed the studio to pretty much print money.
This is not a cohesive story, its choppy and stilted. We have an apologetic in depth background build for Hawkeye which was actually really nice and would have been brilliant if there had been more to it, you have the start of what could have been a nice introspective piece on.. What does a highly skilled human have to offer a group of “super men” but instead of having a conversation where say Hawk and Widow go through the whole thing and go.. Well he’s a super rage monster and scientist, he’s a philanthropist super genius sqillionaire, he’s a god, he’s a super serum super soldier and what do we offer?? How can two highly skilled normal humans fight a super AI with multiple bodies and an internet presence????
A bit is started up where how can a man with rage monster issues have a normal relationship with a normal human being!.. a question which is sort of started then just back burnered so that they can go fight the big nasty machine creature..
And the Twins.. the Twins could have had an epic journey of self-discovery that they had been lied to and used by HYDRA to bolster their whatever it is programme they were doing (which was conveniently wiped off the computers and then never referred to again)
Then there is Ultron, who was brilliant, thought round all of the Avengers, was in everything was able to do everything was at the top of the predator chain.. and then for the sake of plot started to do really stupid things at plot relevant times. Like.. Why did he grab Widow and not the body coffin thing as it was dropped into the Quinjet, why didn't he just transport,or reproduce all the tech back in his fortified lair? he had opportunity and the soft and hardware to do this. Why did he not just use the internet and destroy Stark Enterprises, and disable everyone’s stuff, why did he not just possess everything attached to the internet and do nasty stuff to kill everyone.. Getting the entry codes for Nukes is so flipping Passé, with everything on the internet these days he could crash markets, fritz electronic money transfer, hell he could play with traffic lights causing people to crash and die, disable plane navigation systems and set peoples sat-nav to "lemming mode".. And to be fair why the Hell! would Widow suddenly devolve from kick ass secret agent assassin into the “passive female presence”? to be saved by the big bold men?? WTF!.
Seriously I do not understand Piotr’s “Death” it was totally without point.. it was completely like “we need to raise the tone of the conflict.. you.. die a pointless “heroic” looking death it will push everyone’s buttons..” But.. you don’t know the guy enough to really care.. Because he has little to no background. I watched the scene and went.. Why is he dead?, none of those injuries are immediately life threatening . He wasn’t hit in the head or the heart and the abdominal wounds didn’t look close enough to major blood vessels, yes it was high calibre fire but hey the dude is a super human, a billion pressure bandages, fluids in to slow the shock and they have a good chance of possibly saving his life.. Especially as he has an impressively fast metabolism which could heal very quickly if supported by the right things.. oh no, they are going to just look at him in a sad way..
To me it feels like Whedon got racked off with interference and so resorted to Trope number ## and trope number## to make a point. Assemble a story which obviously the studio loved but is not the story he wanted to tell or really the fans wanted to watch.
This movie has the feel of a story at war with itself. As I said before it feels like Spiderman 3 where the director (Sam Raimi) had a clear idea of what he wanted to do and the Studio decided it wanted another. It is also obviously a “middle movie” like “Empire Strikes Back” or “Lord of the Rings the two Towers” etc.. it’s all portents and filler to back up things to come, but in doing that it sort of forgets itself and it's own story. There are two major plot lines actively fighting with each other and making the movie weak with no real story resolution except to set up the idea that the Avengers is many different characters other than Thor, and Iron man, and Cap etc.. Which to be honest they could have settled very early on in the movie by having different teams doing different jobs. Seriously the “money shot” of the team of Avengers revealed at the end of the movie was nowhere near as adrenaline racing as it could have been.
Now I know this sounds like I absolutely detested this movie with a passion known only on biblical levels but really I didn't, I just feel a bit sad really, I didn't think Marvel would de-generate this quickly, with the success of Cap America, Guardians and the other tv series I really thought they knew to leave it to the people who can make this gold.. instead they start to muck about with the golden goose ..
I really enjoyed Ultron and can see use for him in the future.. I can see the story threads in there. I can see what could have been, and what could have been a much better more cohesive story.. I am just worried that this will scare Whedon away from the projects, which I hope it doesn't because, seriously Disney/Marvel, you are going to need him and people like him. When you stop trying to social engineer and re-enforce out of date gender stereotyping and come to realise that these movies can pull in a much wider demographic than the narrow band that you have set yourself. Joss can write and organise a overarching story which works and pulls people in, and if he leaves the cohesion we have been seeing in the Marvel will just evaporate and the “golden-age” of the comic hero movie will come crashing down before it has really gotten going..
So Yeah, all i can say is this movie isn't bad, but its just not good. and Marvel/Disney or Disney/Marvel, you need to step back and let the master work.. because otherwise its just all goign to fall down.