Totally disagree. I thought the dialogue and character-building in Age of Ultron was better than Marvel’s Avengers. It was for different characters, sure… but it was also for characters that NEEDED building, that had been given short shrift till now.
I’m quite sure the DVD release will be at least an hour longer, just to fit in all the scenes I’m sure Joss filmed but cut.
Not as wow as the first one, but a great film nonetheless. Lots of things had to get done, and for the most part they were. I was never that thrilled with the choice of Big Bad, but Spader made him “sing.”
In truth, I prefer the way the earlier movies weren’t afraid to switch genres. CA:WS wasn’t so much a comic-book superhero movie as it was a 70s spy thriller. I liked that change in tone. But it looks like the future of the Avengers movies is “bigger and…well, bigger.”
It’s possible people are getting tired of these characters. This is essentially a Second Season finale for the world’s most expensive TV show.
Elizabeth is the talented one. I met her several years ago after a screening and Q&A for Martha Marcy May Marlene, and she’s very nice too.
Trivia everyone probably knows: Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Quicksilver), who played twins in this movie, played husband and wife in the most recent Godzilla movie. She’s come a long way from MMMM and he’s come a long way from Kick-Ass (that’s so cool, from a fake superhero to a real superhero).
Loved this movie, btw. Not quite as much as the 1st one, but still up there. I want to see it again. We didn’t pay for it and I feel guilty. The only screening time that worked for us was a 3D showing (because we were also going to see an Indian movie called Grabbar Is Back), and we refuse to pay extra for 3D, so we bought a ticket to Ex Machina, which we’d already seen. I carry 3D glasses with me for such occasions (rare, maybe once a year). When I see it again it’ll be in 2D.
That’s (a) clearly wrong if you read this thread, and (b) obvnoxiously condescending. Lots of people in this thread (including me) loved The Avengers, were super hyped for this movie, and were disappointed by it. It also has a 17% lower tomatometer rating. It’s entirely possible that it’s just plain a worse movie.
Yes. That scene did make me think of 9/11.
That’s exactly what I was expecting. The whole movie had a bad case of Hollywood Physics.
Agreed. But I love watching Paul Bettany act, so I was okay with Vision.
This I thought was something that the movie did get right. An ordinary guy moving at that speed is going to have enough kinetic energy to do serious damage just by hitting you. Didn’t explain why he wasn’t vivisecting all the civilians he was knocking out of the way of the train, though.
I enjoyed the film, but - coming in as someone who has never read the comic books and only seen a few of the films; that is, unfamiliar with the Avengers 'verse - I felt it didn’t do a great job of establishing the context. I felt the same thing when I saw the first Avengers movie - I thought it was the sequel, because it didn’t explain that Tesseract thingy.
Of course, I had to pee like a racehorse about half-way through, so I perhaps didn’t give it my full attention. This is probably why professional movie critics don’t grab a tub of popcorn and a large Coke on the way in.
I was talking with a friend today, who is not only a huge comic book geek, but also a scriptwriter in Hollywood. He indicated that, according to what he’s read and heard, there was indeed a full additional hour of material which was edited out. Whether all of that will make it into the DVD release is a good question, but it did seem to me like there were a few areas (like Falcon’s change of heart) that could have used a little more exposition.
She’s certainly blossomed*
Yes, I know she’s not the same age as the twins.
I really liked the characterization of Scarlet Witch and I really liked Elizabeth Olsen’s performance but I can’t help but think that the heaps of high praise that the character is getting might have more to do with the fact that Elizabeth Olsen is friggin’ gorgeous.
I mean, I think she did a great job with what she had to work with and I think it was a cool character but the character seemed kinda underdeveloped to me. Like the audience was expected to take a bit of shorthand from the script and then fill in the blanks. Not a major criticism from me- there were a lot of equally weighted characters and juggling them would be no easy task for any screenwriter. But even though I’m not overly critical about the underdevelopment there just wasn’t enough to really take me over the top in my enjoyment of the character.
Are there any gay men or straight women (or straight men who simply are not attracted to petite elven-like women) in the Thread who want to add to the heaps of high praise that Scarlet Witch has been getting?
If you want to see more of Elizabeth Olsen, I highly recommend the 2012 film Liberal Arts.
I’m pretty sure that’s available on Netflix, so I might check that out. Thanks for the recommendation- I do think she’s quite a talented actress.
Critics gave the first movie higher ratings because of its novelty at the time. The reviews I’ve read that are less than flattering claim this movie is “overstuffed” with too much, but that to me sounds like the complaint of someone who is watching this movie as a stand-alone when it’s clearly a part of something much larger. If you aren’t a fan of the Marvel movies in general and the story they’re telling through the entire MCU, then you’re not going to like this movie as much as the first. If you are, you’ll like it more.
And frankly I don’t care if you think what I said is condescending, and I don’t believe it’s wrong. I hear a lot of nitpicking about plot points that were pretty obviously shown and explained in the movie in the posts critical of it. That’s the poster not paying attention.
Except for the parts where he:
1)removes every trace of Ultron from the internet, isolating him in his robot bodies
2)saves Thor’s ass and turns the tide of the battle
3)is the only reason, using the mind stone, that they are able to penetrate Ultron’s vibranium coating, thus defeating his primary body
4)rescues The Scarlet Witch when no one else can and
5)is there to destroy Ultron’s final remaining body, thus ensuring he can’t do all this again.
So, aside from being totally crucial to the victory, he’s useless and “meh.”
You see, this is exactly what I meant by someone not paying attention. But I guess that’s just “totally wrong and condescending”…
:rolleyes:
Oh! I’ll have to rewatch for that detail. Don’t know if you saw my previous post about how I felt this movie cheapens Vibranium in the MCU, but if it’s made clear that it is the mindstone that enables the defeat of Ultron’s Vibranium body then I’ll feel better about it.
I didn’t know it was an Olsen until someone told me yesterday. I also didn’t realize it was the guy from Kick-Ass until someone (you) told me this morning.
Overall, I liked the movie a lot. I completely understand the criticisms. I still loved it.
And yeah, the building scene did remind me of 9/11 (the documentary about 9/11, actually), but it didn’t bother me.
I would have bet money that Hawkeye was going to bite it. Apparently, Whedon did that on purpose.
That’s the Whedon M.O. He will kill an appealing character, and you will not see it coming.
Well, I know that’s his M.O. generally, but I can’t see him getting to kill major characters in the MCU without it being prescribed from above.
I don’t know if there’s an online cite for this, but he says in the commentary track for The Avengers that he was told to kill off Coulson and his reaction was “Oh no! Everyone is going to blame me!!!” Similarly, I’m sure he didn’t decide on his own to kill Quicksilver- there’s no way Feige et al would allow it. Now, his particular delivery of those death scenes may have his signature but there’s no way it was his personal creative decision.
I’m kinda curious about the party… what were they celebrating, exactly? I realize they took out a major Hydra base, but from Agents of SHIELD, we know that Hydra is still freakin’ everywhere… it didn’t seem reasonable for them to have a full-on series finale cast party…
And why in Odin’s name did they not take it back to Asgard at the end of Avengers?
Re: Thor and the hot tub… they looked for a way to get Chris to take his shirt off, and they found it.
Yeah, way to totally negate the awesomeness of Cap budging Mjolnir, and the look on Thor’s face…
I also loved how the guy who played his best friend from Kick-Ass played Quicksilver in X-Men.
I saw it yesterday, and loved it. That said, I’m not a comics geek but I’m a pretty big fan of both Joss Whedon and the Marvel movies (and S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Daredevil, etc.), so it would’ve had to be pretty bad for me to not at least like it.
One of my favorite lines remains one of the earliest ones: Stark has just blown a hole in the side of a building, after rhetorically saying something like he was going to need to have a chat with the bad guys.
Howard Stark: Good talk.
Voice from the Rubble: Not really!
The “bad guys turn good after realizing the villain is planning to kill them” thing always makes me roll my eyes a little, but otherwise I liked the character development. I especially liked that she made the choice to help without having been guilted into it: Hawkeye sincerely told her that she could stay put and wait for rescue and that would be perfectly ok. It was a nice change from the usual “be a coward if you must” subtext that’s usually present in those scenes. And I actually got a little teary at her reaction to Quicksilver’s death (thank goodness for dark theaters). So, yeah: I’m not going to dress up as her for Halloween or anything, but I’ll be happy to see her in the next movie. 
We’ll see how many there are left next week, won’t we? Strucker’s base was obviously supposed to be the largest remaining Hydra stronghold, so that may have actually been Hydra’s final destruction.
Besides, they got the Scepter.
*Back *to Asgard? It didn’t come from Asgard in the first place - Loki picked it up sometime between *Thor *and the first Avengers.
Why would Thor have any claim to it? They let him have the Tesseract; why should Asgard get all the cool toys?