Obligatory AoU post

[osprey_archer]

I've finally seen Age of Ultron! Now I can read everyone else's Age of Ultron posts!

That is pretty much the thing that I am most excited about with this movie.



- It's an enjoyable popcorn action movie with action sequences that are sometimes hard to follow but always quite attention-grabbing. It's not much more than that.

- I'm going to assume that Loki's scepter was doing some fiddly business with Tony and Bruce's minds, because otherwise, guys, everything you know about this scepter says BAD NEWS in great big screaming neon letters, why on earth would you try to make an AI out of that?

- I think AoU, even more than Whedon's first Avengers movie, has that classic Whedon problem where the funny bits undercut the serious parts. (By "classic" I mean not that all of Whedon's work displays this issue, but that it's a problem that recurs within his work.)

- Having said that, I did love the bit at the beginning where Bruce is like "So how many did I kill?" and Thor, all congratulatory and excited, is all "Your enemies crowd around the gates of hell!" And then Bruce hides his face and Thor furiously attempts to backtrack. OH THOR.

- Speaking of Bruce. I did not expect to like Bruce/Natasha, and indeed I did not particularly like Bruce/Natasha, but it also didn't sour the rest of the movie for me, so I guess that's something.

- I've just never been very interested in Bruce. Maybe this would change if I saw the Hulk movie? Or maybe I would see the Hulk movie and be like "Well that's two hours of my life gone."

- From an Agents of SHIELD perspective: so we're up to, what, three SHIELDs now? Although Fury may have ditched the name and just call his version the Avengers Initiative now. Maybe this is somehow related to the Theta Protocol? I am so curious to see what happens on AoS tomorrow. (I still think it would be rather cheap if it turns out that Coulson knew all this all along.)

Comments

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

You should watch the Hulk movie because BETTY ROSS. Liv Tyler is so good. But yeah, that's pretty much it. (Oh, wait, no, I also think it has the best Stan Lee cameo, too.)

Maybe Tony & Bruce were under the influence of the staff, too, but I think a lot of it was Wanda's influence over them. Some people are criticizing the characterization in the movie, but I personally think it's good characterization -- they are acting differently that they might usually, because they are all responding directly to their greatest fears.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Did the MCU just decide that the Ed Norton Hulk movie is uncanonical? No one seems to think that Betty Ross might get in the way of Bruce/Natasha.

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

No, it's canonical. They make vague references to it from time to time.

Well, Bruce doesn't want to ruin Betty's life. But Natasha's is pretty much already shambles, so.

ETA: that last comment was meant to be sarcastic. in case that was unclear. XD

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is why he flew away in the plane at the end. He wants to find a deserted island where there is no one's life to ruin.

I've seen some posts that argue he leaves because he's mad at Natasha for the whole "I adore you"/kick off the cliff thing, but I think he understood about that: he carried her up onto the rising city, after all. I think he just doesn't want to be the Hulk anymore (or at least to do the killing bit of being the Hulk) and he thinks staying away from everyone, even Natasha, is the way to do it.

In a way it's a mirror image of Natasha's storyline: she wants to get away from her murderous past through love and attachment, and he wants to get away from his murderous present by getting away from all that.

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

I really feel like it's the Hulk who made the decision to leave, not Banner. Marvel has explored the Hulk-Banner dichotomy in other adaptations pretty recently, and AoU shows the Hulk reacting very strongly when Tony mentions bringing Banner back.

The Hulk trusts Natasha (and to a degree, the other Avengers), sure, but that doesn't mean he wants a lullaby. Like, he's pure anger. He doesn't want to be put to sleep. He doesn't want to come out only when Banner lets him out.

[littlerhymes]

Yeah, I mean, who would've guessed things could go horribly wrong when you use a supervillain sceptre as your template for your brand new shiny AI? SHOCKER! Actually, the real shock is that they try it again. LOL.

I agree that Liv Tyler is a lovely Betty Ross in The Incredible Hulk (the okay Ed Norton one, not the boring Eric Bana/Ang Lee one) and Tim Roth is superbly Tim Rothy-y. But neither Hulk movie seems very connected to the rest of the MCU.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

The Ang Lee one actually makes me seasick, so I vote for giving it a miss. (There are lots of scenes of Bruce biking, shot with hand-held cameras, so Bruce goes back and forth and the camera goes back and forth and I feel nauseated.)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I have heard basically nothing good about Ang Lee's Hulk movie, so I probably won't see it.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Not only do they try it again, BUT IT WORKS. I kept expecting Vision to turn out to be evil too but NO, apparently something went right that time so he isn't? I realize that this is all running on handwavium but I would prefer the handwaves to be a little better explained.

[your-insomnia.livejournal.com]

I've finally seen Age of Ultron! Now I can read everyone else's Age of Ultron posts!

Same! Except now I can't find anyone's posts. XD

Yes, the action scenes were hard to follow but I didn't find them tedious which is what often happens when I watch action movies. Also, so much destruction!porn courtesy of Hulk rages.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I bookmarked some of them so I could come back to them later, but I expect even then I missed some of them. This post (http://escritoireazul.livejournal.com/412108.html) has links to a bunch, although many of them are negative so that may harsh your squee.

[your-insomnia.livejournal.com]

Ahh, thanks for the link! I already heard all the harsh criticism and even in the cases when I agree with it (Natasha/Bruce romance being off) it didn't really put a damper on my enjoyment of the movie. I just really had so much fun watching it.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

I just saw it! It was big, dumb, and loud! There was Learning the Importance of Teamwork! And slow-motion comic splash page cinematography! Wanda Maximoff was in this story and I love Wanda almost too much to function; I was in tears practically every time she was on screen.

I wish there had been more scenes of Ultron learning to speak / gathering information / just being a cool AI before he worked out all the details of his plan to Kill All Humans.

I liked the idea that was being gestured at, that he was sort of a patchwork of Tony and the Avengers and maybe Loki with input from The Entire Internet, but I wish they'd taken it a little further out of what felt like safe Joss Whedon wisecracking villain territory. I wanted him to sound a little more like a crazy robot with all of human history at his fingertips. And I don't understand why he had a mouth that moved like a human mouth. It seems like a really inefficient way of producing sound if you are made of metal. The version of Ultron in the cartoon Avengers just has a light-show mouth and that seems like a better model.

It was nice to see some cities other than New York being destroyed, except not, because they were cities being destroyed. :(

And yes:

everything you know about this scepter says BAD NEWS in great big screaming neon letters, why on earth would you try to make an AI out of that?

It's such a bad idea! Mindwhammy is probably the kindest explanation.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Didn't they learn the Importance of Teamwork in the first Avenges movie? Aren't all of Cap's movies about the Importance of Teamwork? In fact, I think the only Avenger who might not be on board with the Importance of Teamwork is Tony Stark.

I would have been so much more into Ultron if we saw more scenes about Ultron Learning to Function before we got to Ultron's Genocidal Rage. It would have given him some tragic depth of character if he started out curious and experimenting with things and ended up trying to destroy humanity, rather than basically waking up and going "TIME TO MURDERBOT."

And I think they didn't spend nearly enough time thinking about the consequences of the fact that Ultron is a networked creature, so all the robots he takes over become Ultron. It could have been used to much creepier effect, don't you think?

On the other hand, Wanda was great. I was pretty meh about the rest o the movie, but I did like Wanda a lot. Also I am convinced that Pietro is not going to stay dead. This is the MCU! Heroes never die!

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

It was so weird that there was no initial curiosity/betrayal phase of Ultron's development! I love tragic struggling AIs and I really expected to get more out of Ultron's arc than, "oops, I exist, better kill all humans!" Like, I expected there to be an arc at all! I know WHOOPS, TIME TO MURDERBOT is narratively inevitable in this kind of movie (although also NOT, because Anthropomorphic JarvisBot Guy didn't come to the murderbot conclusion) but that doesn't mean you can skip the entire journey.

And yes, creepy networked Ultron is Legion could have been used to MUCH creepier effect! It was hardly used at all! They didn't even have any shots of random civilians getting Ultron in their internet!

I enjoyed the movie because I have an enormous amount of affection for some of the characters (Natasha, Thor, now Wanda) but it definitely felt like it needed another two rewrites at least, and managed to disappoint my killer-robot expectations considerably more than I expected from a movie with Ultron in the title. It felt sloppy.

Pietro is only Marvel dead. Where there's Marvel death, there's hope!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Sloppy, yes. I think that's the word for it. In a way it's unfortunate the release date was so hyped, because I think that even a couple more weeks could have given them time to iron out some of the issues.

Although probably not to give Ultron an arc of his own, alas, which seems like it was never in the cards. Clearly the plan was always for him to come to life and immediately go TIME TO MURDERBOT.

[alby-mangroves.livejournal.com]

Wow, your post is much more coherent than mine, I just sort of exploded into my journal. I'm kind of afraid to go back and re-read because I'm not exactly sure what I will find.

eta, I hope it's okay that I have friended you xx

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

That's fine! I don't seem to be posting here much any more, but maybe now that summer has come I'll get back in the swing of things.