Avengers: Age Of Ultron

[gwaevalarin]

I'm back back from watching Avengers: Age of Ultron and I'm still pretty overwhelmed.

I did love it, but now that I think about it, I loved it for all these characters I'm so fond of.

Overall, I think this movie can best be summed up as the closest a movie has ever come to conveying the feeling of reading a comic.

Thinks I loved:

• Steeeeeve! I'm sorry, he just has to come first. Just Steve, just everything. Being the team leader, being his amazing, true-to-himself-and-everything-he-believes-in self. Accepting that he couldn't go back, that this was him now, that this was his home his life, his family. I hope that helps him finally find some peace, just for a little while.
  Also, did I get this wrong, or is Sam now officially an Avengers?
• Clint getting some actual characterization, and story line. Clint being awesome, Clint adopting Wanda into the team, Clint not being brain-washed, Clint saving people, Clint providing them with a safe place to stay. Just Clint.
• Vision was perfect. His "birth" in particular. I can't wait to see more of him. I knew they were going to do something with Thor's hammer but I still gasped when Vision picked it up.
• I'm looking forward to more Wanda as well.
• Just everyone, actually! So many familiar faces made this movie feel like the part of a bigger universe that it is. Sam and Rhodey and Maria and Fury. Some who weren't there, but where mentioned. And a very special mention for that SHIELD tech from Cap 2. Seeing him back put the biggest smile on my face.
• I also really enjoyed the party. I wish we could get more Avengers just hanging out, relaxing, celebrating, interacting. Steve playing big brother to Natasha, Sam and Steve playing billiard, Rhodey's jokes falling flat. I want more of them just being human and friends.
• But I also very much enjoyed the conflict within the team. They are all such different characters, and it's so interesting to see them clash.
• There was once again so much focus on saving innocent people. Not "just" the world, but the people in the city. That's something I loved about the first movie, and I love it just as much in this one.
• A lot of the action scenes were simply amazing. You'd think that it gets boring after a while, but most of it felt fresh and creative. I know I'll have to watch the movie a couple of more times and I still won't be able to catch everything.
• So much foreshadowing and nods to the comics, making me very excited for (and scared of) things to come.

Thinks I didn't like:

• The overall story line, let's be honest, was was a bit thin and generic. There was so much going on that it didn't matter too much, but - and that's the part that makes me sad - there was no real lasting impact. Yes, they did get a few new team members, but other than that... what actually changed, really?
• I fully expected the team to already fall apart in preparation for civil war. Some serious damage at least, but somehow everyone - Steve and Tony in particular - was perfectly fine and friends again by the end. And next year for Civil War, we'll just start all over again with a new conflict?
• I also kinda feel like I missed an Avengers movie or two. When and how exactly did they all come back together? That's something I wanted to see.
• Natasha and Bruce. I wasn't even opposed to the idea before the movie. I'm still not. It just... didn't work for me. I loved the parts where she was the one to calm him back down, but the rest just felt like it came out of nowhere.
• This is such a small thing to complain about, but Steve referring to Natasha as "Romanoff" just sounded weird.
• Natasha's back story. Not the Red Room, I wanted the Red Room. But the part about the sterilization was just gross and entirely unnecessarily for the story, so I personally choose to forget that part and pretend the Red Room was just everything else, which is bad enough.
• Overall, I expected more of what they all went through after Wanda got into their heads. Just not enough time with so much else going on, I guess.
• Quicksilver's death felt unnecessary as well. Apart from Wanda's breakdown, it had little emotional impact*. We didn't really know him or Wanda all the well yet, after all. So it felt a little like a cop-out, killing an Avengers without really killing an Avenger. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad everyone else is fine. There just wasn't really any reason for Pietro to die.


• Where was Bucky? I didn't expect him to be in the movie - well, maybe I expected it a little bit since pretty much everyone else was - but the search for him is/was so important to Steve so I at least expected some throw-away line to explain while Steve was busy doing Avengers business instead of searching. They were taking down Hydra facilities after all, so why not have something about how Bucky is doing the same, and Steve hopes that they might run into him while looking for the sceptre? Just... something.
  ETA: So I just figured out that there was a throwaway line between Steve and Sam about their "missing person's case" that I just missed/misinterpreted. So, okay, not much, but it is what I asked for.

Things I'm in two minds about:

• Clint's family. I like Laura, and the idea of aunt Natasha. They were great because they were this ordinary-in-a-good-way family Clint comes home to. Part of me is just sad because I wanted Clint and Kate and Lucky shenanigans so much, and that's not going to happen now. Unless something happens to Laura, and I certainly don't want that.
• The running gag about Cap's "Language!". The problem is, the premise was incredibly OOC. Dear Joss, Steve isn't actually in his 90s, he's in his late 20s. But then again, Steve's reaction when someone brought it up again was just so adorable that I didn't mind that much after all.

I'm sure I forgot about a thousand things I wanted to talk about but there was just so much going on. Apparently, the movie was cut down by another hour? I can easily believe that.

Overall, it's not perfect. The story line lacked, but the characters and the atmosphere more than made up for it. I can't wait to watch it again.

*Extremly late ETA: When I say "little emotional impact" I mean for the established characters, not the viewers.