The last few lines from Angel:
Spike: And in terms of a plan?
Angel: We fight.
Spike: Bit more specific?
Angel: Well, personally, I kinda wanna slay the dragon. Let’s go to work.
Willow: I’m a witch! I worship Beelzebub! I’m dating a musician!
Black Widow: I have red in my ledger. I want to wipe it out.
You can make any silly face you like, but it is not just my “say so”. Film review aggregator Rottentomatoes.com shows the 2012 Marvel’s The Avengers has holding a 92% All Critics positive rating (91% audience score), while the 2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron has a 75% All Critics rating and an 84% audience score. By comparison, Captain America: The First Avenger, a film most people were clearly kind of ‘meh’ about holds a 79%/74% ranking, while Captain America: The Winter Solider, which was widely acclaimed as being far superior to its predecessor, is 89%/92%. So, it seems I’m not alone in considering Age of Ultron to be broadly inferior to the earlier Avengers movie.
I have it on Blu Ray and have probably seen it three or for times with various people after having seen it twice in theatres. I wouldn’t describe it as a ‘bad’ movie, certainly not in the sense that the abysmal J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboots have been, but it lacked the characteristic wit and charm of pretty much everything else Joss Whedon has previously done regardless of budget or scale. I wouldn’t describe it as random or having meaningless details, but much of the dialogue is kind of trite, and the plotting is very linear, especially compared to Avengers where Loki was playing the team members upon each other.
Stranger
Thanks, I’ll make one again. :eek::rolleyes::dubious:
That’s just so much fun.
Paraphrasing here, but he once said there should be a sarcasm font.
Be careful about citing Rottentomatoes scores, or someone might use them against you the next time you rip on Star Trek.
Gah! You did it in the very same post!
The “abysmal” Star Trek reboot in 2009 got a 95% rating from critics and 91% from audiences. For context, that’s as good or better than the first Avengers on both counts.
I was just making a comparison between the critical and popular reception of the two Avengers films in which the second is clearly regarded as inferior to the first.
I realize that a thundering herd of people think the lens-flare ensconced Star Trek reboot and its even worse sequal populated by attractive people doing nonsensical things was fantastic, but then, for some reason people think J.J. Abrams is clever and original when he actually cribs unabashedly from other and better material and then makes it is own by inserting non sequitur conspiracies that are then never satisfactorily explained or resolved. Personally, I think J.J. Abrams is the worst director working in mainstream films today, and that includes hacks like Michael Bay and Zack Snyder, and I preferred the the 2009 Star Trek when it was called Galaxy Quest and was populated with good actors knowingly playing in a satire.
Stranger
Sounds like you unfairly blame Abrams for Lost. Abrams wrote and directed the pilot, and consulted on story concepts for a bit. He was gone early in season one. From here:
This also helps explain why it was stated that the island wasn’t purgatory early on (Abrams’ vision) but then it got retconned into exactly that in later seasons. (Lindelof and Cuse)
Lost started out excellent, thanks in no small part to Abrams. It started going off the rails after the first season, but that can’t be blamed on Abrams.
No, I blame Abrams for the smear of shit that he’s dragged around Hollywood for the past decade or so, from the incoherent Mission: Impossible III through yawn-inducing Super 8, the excrable Star Trek Into Darkness, and the imitative fan service of the recent Star Wars: Episode VII film (although to be fair, Disney probably specifically picked Abrams for his sense of pastiche and not taking risks with ther $4B acquisition of the Star Wars franchise). He’s not original, clever, visually inventive, or frankly a good director of eithe actors or action set pieces. But he makes shit blow up real good which is all you need for a crowd-pleasing blockbuster. Whedon, on the other hand, has shown a flair for being original and inventive even when working in an established genre or with an adaptation like Much Ado About Nothing; unfortunately, I think he was just too tired and burned out when it came to the second Avengers movie to do good work.
Stranger
Resolved: Avengers: Age of Ultron was not nearly as good, either overall or in the number of good lines, as the original.
Likewise resolved: A: AoU was still better, both overall and in the number of good lines, than most movies.
Are we settled on that?
Can you please take the Age of Ultron debate to another thread.
From Cabin in the Woods:
Mordecai: Cleanse them. Cleanse the world of their ignorance and sin. Bathe them in the crimson of…
[pauses]
Mordecai: Am I on speakerphone?
Hadley: No, absolutely not. Speakerphone, no, no, I wouldn’t do that.
Mordecai: Yes I am. I can hear the echo.
Hadley: Oh, my God, you’re right. Hang on one second, I’ll take you off.
Mordecai: That’s rude. I don’t know who’s in the room.
Dana: I’m so sorry I almost shot you. I probably wouldn’t have.
Marty: Hey, shh, no. I totally get it. I’m sorry I let you get attacked by a werewolf and then ended the world.
This.
Natasha Romanoff: These guys come from legend. They’re basically gods.
Steve Rogers: There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.
Nick Fury: I don’t know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I’d like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys.
Thor: Monkeys? I do not understand.
Steve Rogers: I do!
[Stark rolls his eyes, while Captain America looks proud of himself]
Steve Rogers: I understood that reference.
Thor: Have a care how you speak! Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard and he is my brother!
Natasha Romanoff: He killed eighty people in two days.
Thor: He’s adopted. (The sheepish tone with which Thor delivers that last line really sells it beautifully.)
Was just going to say that myself? Did I just get ninja’d?
Willow: She’s being kind of a b-i-t-c-h.
Xander: Bitca?
I love it because it gave me a new word that I was able to use around (not about) my sister for a couple of years, before she finally tweaked to what I was saying?
A lot of my favorite Buffy quotes have been taken already. 
“Does this sweater make me look fat?”
“No, the fact that you’re fat makes you look fat. That sweater just makes you look purple.”
“Humans make the same mistakes over and over. I saw it when I was a vengeance demon. Some guy dumps a girl, she calls me, I exact vengeance, blah blah blah, the next year, same girl, different guy. I mean, after you smite a few of 'em you start going, “My goodness, young lady… maybe you’re doing something wrong here too.”
“I’m up…I’m suddenly very up… it’s just, um…I’ve never been up with people before.”
“Just relax. Take your pants off.”
“Those two concepts are antithetical.”
From Firefly:
“Ohhh, I’m going to the special hell…”
“You see, morbid and creepafying, I got no problem with, long as she does it quiet-like.”
And, of course, the entirety of The Hero of Canton.
Zoe: Jayne, this is something the captain has to do for himself.
Mal: No! No it’s not!
Stark: Your work in anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I’m a huge fan of how you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage-monster.
Loki: If it’s all the same to you…I’ll have that drink now.
Cap: No one has to break anything.
Ultron: Clearly you never made an omelet.
Stark: Beat me by one second!
Ultron: I’m glad you asked, because I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you my evil plan!
Spike: Yeah, I could do that, but I’m paralyzed with not caring very much.
Mal. That means bad.