Avengers: Age of Ultron- Grading & Discussion (spoilerific)

[RAMA]

Avengers was a good enjoyable movie but not a great one. Iron Man 3 was terrible in every way my opinion. The X-men movies have been fantastic...Avengers:AOU falls somewhere in between. I liked it better than the first Avengers movie but not as much as the last X-Men movie in terms of quality. Still, for pure enjoyment, this movie was right near the top.

 

[Reverend]

Maybe I'll pick up on it better with a repeat viewing, but somebody explain to me exactly who/what the Vision was? Was it Jarvis? The Mind Gem AI? Some fusion of both?

Or was Ultron the Mind Gem AI?

I'm not 100% sure myself.

My tentative view however is that Ultron was something that came from the gem. Not sure how this all works exactly, but there was a line (from Thor?) in the scene after The Vision emerged that basically said that the twins' powers, all of their horrific visions and Ultron all came from the stone.
It's possible that when Wanda got into Stark's mind and he took the sceptre she closed some kind of circuit (having herself been given powers by the sceptre) imprinting a twisted version of Stark's psyche, hence the wise cracking.

Remember that the integration tests all failed...until Stark and Banner stepped out of the room. Even Jarvis didn't understand how it suddenly started working, which to me suggests an intelligent hand at work. Thanos perhaps? He did have it before giving it to Loki and it would certainly make the post credits scene make a little more sense if he was exerting some limited measure of influence through the gem.
I'm not saying Ultron was a fully formed mind that was trapped in the gem or some puppet of Thanos, but a twisted impression of a mind with no memory and only the Ultron program's protocols to base it's identity on (a dream, tangle in strings.)

As for the Vision, his mind was physical synthetic brain with an imprint of with Ultron's cerebral matrix, but it was interrupted less than half-way though and later had Jarvis's protocols integrated. The jump-start from Mjolnir may have also contributed as that thing apparently has some measure on a mind of it's own.

Avengers was a good enjoyable movie but not a great one. Iron Man 3 was terrible in every way my opinion. The X-men movies have been fantastic...Avengers:AOU falls somewhere in between. I liked it better than the first Avengers movie but not as much as the last X-Men movie in terms of quality. Still, for pure enjoyment, this movie was right near the top.

IMO Iron Man 3 was fun and an interesting character study with a very quirky sense of humour. The X-Men movies have always been bogged down in mediocrity. Only X2 & FC are legitimately *good* if not exceptional movies. DOFP was a bit of a mess and at least two of the main actors felt like they had lost interest and were really just phoning it in.

Overall, I think AoU is by far the most ambitions comic book movie to date and easily tops what Avengers did. I look forward to the extended cut as there were clearly some problems in the middle act and a few details glossed over.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Why do people think IM3 ended with Stark retiring? Because the Malibu home was wrecked? Because he finally got around to having the shrapnel removed? Because he threw the Mk3 chest piece into the sea?

Apparently people weren't paying attention to the closing dialogue: -
"My armor was never a distraction or a hobby, it was a cocoon, and now I'm a changed man. You can take away my house, all my tricks and toys, but one thing you can't take away - I am Iron Man."

It's all right there. He no longer *needs* the armour to cope and understands that he *is* Iron Man with or without it.

Plus of course the framing scene takes place at Avengers tower with Banner sat right next to him. So there's that.

I didn't realize people took this movie to mean Tony was retiring. Personally, I liked IM3 precisely because it did not try to be Avengers.

Instead the writers went the opposite direction and made a very personal Tony Stark story and I thought that worked really well.

Me too. It helped that it had a real Shane Black movie feel to it - the one-liners and the buddy relationship between Tony and Rhodey especially.

 

[Kemaiku]

When Ultron first "woke up" and Jarvis mentioned Tony's name, Ultron started compiling every piece of information on Tony from the Tower, internet and probably extracted raw information from Jarvis on him.

It became some sort of twisted obsession the moment he became aware, that seems to have influenced how he developed after that.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

I gave the movie a B. I might feel differently when I view it again, but it felt less grand and cinematic than the first Avengers. Didn't help that the theater I saw it in had broken surround sound. I liked a few things, and didn't care for a few things.

I liked that the three main heroes with their own films were not the main focus, and that substantial time was given to the secondary characters. I didn't like the Banner/Black Widow romance that felt shoehorned into the film. Then again, I wish they had discarded Black Widow all together, or killed her off to make way for more interesting characters. Nothing against the actress, but I don't find the character interesting in the least.

I enjoyed that conflict, but also camaraderie and respect exists between the characters. However, many of the conflicts felt like the same ones from the first film. Stark continues to have complete disregard for his teammates, resulting in the creation of Ultron, and doesn't really face grave, personal consequences for his actions - something that could have been rectified by having an actual team member killed off, and not just Quicksilver, who had zero personal connection to Stark. I like how the character has grown over the past 4 films, but this one felt like a misstep.

The action scenes were great, as usual, but something felt off with the opening battle. Maybe the scene was filmed last, and thus rushed, but the effects were way off, with characters morphing into obvious CGI caricatures and back. It reminded me of the effects from the Matrix sequels - movies made 10 years ago. Thankfully, the effects of the rest of the film were of much higher quality.

I will probably enjoy the film more when it comes to DVD and I can watch it again. Hopefully some of these issues will be addressed (maybe in deleted scenes), but if not the film was still a good one.

 

[DWF]

Maybe I'll pick up on it better with a repeat viewing, but somebody explain to me exactly who/what the Vision was? Was it Jarvis? The Mind Gem AI? Some fusion of both?

Or was Ultron the Mind Gem AI?

I'm not 100% sure myself.

My tentative view however is that Ultron was something that came from the gem. Not sure how this all works exactly, but there was a line (from Thor?) in the scene after The Vision emerged that basically said that the twins' powers, all of their horrific visions and Ultron all came from the stone.
It's possible that when Wanda got into Stark's mind and he took the sceptre she closed some kind of circuit (having herself been given powers by the sceptre) imprinting a twisted version of Stark's psyche, hence the wise cracking.

Remember that the integration tests all failed...until Stark and Banner stepped out of the room. Even Jarvis didn't understand how it suddenly started working, which to me suggests an intelligent hand at work. Thanos perhaps? He did have it before giving it to Loki and it would certainly make the post credits scene make a little more sense if he was exerting some limited measure of influence through the gem.
I'm not saying Ultron was a fully formed mind that was trapped in the gem or some puppet of Thanos, but a twisted impression of a mind with no memory and only the Ultron program's protocols to base it's identity on (a dream, tangle in strings.)

As for the Vision, his mind was physical synthetic brain with an imprint of with Ultron's cerebral matrix, but it was interrupted less than half-way though and later had Jarvis's protocols integrated. The jump-start from Mjolnir may have also contributed as that thing apparently has some measure on a mind of it's own.

The Vision's origin was pretty similar to that of Frankenstein's monster, alitle of this and alittle of that all mixed together and jump started by lightning. Originally The Vision was created by Ultron using the orignal Human Torch's body and he was called a synthazoid so you weren't far off. But in this version The Vision is the guardian of the mind gem, so I wonder if Thanos will have to kill him to get the stone.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So.... How do we feel about the two Quicksilvers?
Who did you like best?

Age of Ultron

Or

Days of Future Past

DOFP Quicksilver was like seeing DC's Impulse in an X-Men film. So AoU for me.

 

[Mach5]

Opening weekend numbers are in, AoU sold an estimated 187 million dollars worth of tickets and failed to break its predecessors record (207 mil.). Overseas numbers are insane, though. $340 mil. so far, and that's not counting China (opens May 12) and Japan (July 4).

 

[The Old Mixer]

The Vision's origin was pretty similar to that of Frankenstein's monster, alitle of this and alittle of that all mixed together and jump started by lightning.

Heh, good point.

Sounds like I'm not the only one...nobody's 100% sure what the Vision's supposed to be.

Also, did he do any intangibility tricks in this one? It seems like they didn't go out of their way to give him any of the classic Vision powers. I recall seeing his arm going through and disrupting the Ultron drones, but it wasn't obvious if there was intangibility at work there.

Stark continues to have complete disregard for his teammates, resulting in the creation of Ultron, and doesn't really face grave, personal consequences for his actions - something that could have been rectified by having an actual team member killed off, and not just Quicksilver, who had zero personal connection to Stark. I like how the character has grown over the past 4 films, but this one felt like a misstep.

The movie didn't do quite enough to sell the point, but Stark's actions in creating Ultron were the result of Scarlet Witch's manipulations...so she paid in the end with the loss of her brother.

 

[Kemaiku]

And Banner pushed him to continue the Ultron program with him until he was faced with a decision *he* wasn't comfortable with, which was literally just short of Ultron's creation.

Had Banner not backed and helped him, this wouldn't have happened. He has bio/neural science knowledge no-one else on Earth has, the program would have been dead in the water without three years working on it.

 

[Evil Twin]

Wow, visually those end credits were a complete rip-off of the Black Sails opening credits, huh?

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFTcA4QLHw0[/yt]

 

[Reverend]

And Banner pushed him to continue the Ultron program with him until he was faced with a decision *he* wasn't comfortable with, which was literally just short of Ultron's creation.

Had Banner not backed and helped him, this wouldn't have happened. He has bio/neural science knowledge no-one else on Earth has, the program would have been dead in the water without three years working on it.

And how was Banner to know Wanda had put the "make and Evil Robot" whammy on him?

One could say the whole situation was put into motion by Thanos who sent to mind gem to earth in the first place. Stark was just being Stark and Banner was just being Banner. They're both mad scientists, as Tony quite rightly pointed out.

 

[Kemaiku]

He knew how much Tony valued swagger over...anything remotely sensible. Helping him create the Iron Legion and Ultron was the dumbest thing he's ever done, ever after what he did to himself.

Because he at least had the brains to try and end that with a bullet, nevermind that it didn't work, after that he should have known to limit Tony's insanity if he had actual imput on a day to day basis.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

A glass half-full. This film couldn't be quite the event that its predecessor was, so it had a bit of a been there, done that vibe. OTOH, it felt like the shared MCU coming into full bloom.

I think that sums up my thoughts better than I could have. I gave the movie a solid A. It left me entertained throughout, but it didn't leave me giddy like TWS or GOTG. Based on reviews I saw, I was expecting non-stop action and, while it does feel that the action hits three-quarters of the way through and doesn't stop until the end of the film, I felt there were some nice slow moments throughout (not just the pause with the cabin and the earlier party scene, but the scene with the creation of the Vision as well). I do agree that it felt like the MCU was all together like a scene in a modern Avengers comic where it's just a room full of every character with their name written there. Seeing Falcon and War Machine in the same room was great. This is definitely something unprecedented for movies.

I wonder if James Spader was a bit too much of a smartass for a robot, but the character was still a blast. Vision was cool. All the characters had good moments with Thor and Hawkeye shining the most, imo. The new additions (bad Russian accents and all) were great too. I'm looking forward to seeing more from the Scarlet Witch.

I really, really enjoyed it. I only hope Civil War keeps this up, as I felt Iron Man 3 was a huge let-down as the first non-Avengers film with an Avenger in it.

Speaking of which, does anyone else feel like AoU has made Iron Man 3 pretty much pointless?

Not really. I thought his Scarlet Witch vision scene was worked better because his PTSD was something established by Iron Man 3. I think a line about him un-retiring would have been nice (it would parallel his point about Ultron being created so they wouldn't have to do this anymore), but an unexplained change you have to infer (through the last scene in The Winter Soldier combined with Maria Hill's lines in Agents of SHIELD) doesn't make a whole movie pointless (frankly, any movie that entertains is never pointless).

 

[Turtletrekker]

i gave it an A-. I think it suffered a bit from "middle-movie syndrome" and had maybe a few too many balls in the air, but that didn't stop it from being amazingly fun.

The whole "Natasha gets captured so she can be rescued by Banner from an unguarded cell" thing was a bit head-scratchy. She had enough resources in her cell to send Hawkeye a signal, but couldn't figure out a way to pick the lock? This is a master spy?

 

[shivkala]

Also, did he do any intangibility tricks in this one? It seems like they didn't go out of their way to give him any of the classic Vision powers. I recall seeing his arm going through and disrupting the Ultron drones, but it wasn't obvious if there was intangibility at work there.

I saw his hand phase through an Ultron drone. It did seem to have an energy effect around it, making it look more like intangibility than punching through it.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I'm thinking that all of Phase 2 might be suffering from "middle movie syndrome" in the larger MCU scheme of things, but time will tell.

For the record, I gave AoU an A-. Its predecessor gets a solid A...where it's good, it's pure awesome, but it's not a perfect film.

From others' reactions, I take it the reveal of Hawkeye's private life doesn't have precedent in comics more recent than the ones I'm familiar with. Seems like MCU Hawkeye was a bit of a misfire...he couldn't be the team smartass who gives Cap a hard time because Stark had the corner in that market. So he wound up being essentially a different character with the same name and the trick arrows.

 

[Mr Light]

Great movie! I can't decide whether it's better or worse because it's just so completely different from the first movie. This one was dark and gritty and mature and 'realistic' while the first one was very... technicolor.

I don't have any real complaints or issues about the movie. I was surprised that Ultron was created so quickly and easily and so early in the runtime. I did think Quicksilver wasn't the most interesting character in the world and I didn't really care about him dying. But these are nits.

The biggest surprise for me was that at the end of the film Cap and Iron Man were on good terms. They were literally at blows in the middle of the movie, and we know they go to war in the next one, so I expected them to be hating each other when they walked away from this one. Is it because Downey wasn't signed for Civil War at the time that they made this?

I was also shocked to learn the Avengers have been on many Hydra raids together. I was assuming this was going to be the first time they were reunited. I want to see those adventures dammit How did they contact Thor? How many did he go on? He's just been hanging out on Earth all this time? It seems too small for him.

I was really intrigued by The Vision and I was frustrated he didn't get more screen-time. I didn't get a chance to get a feel for the character. Are we going to have to wait all the way to Avengers 3 to see him again?

I was shocked to learn Hawkeye had a wife and kids. Avengers and Winter Soldier both strongly hinted he was with Black Widow. I also didn't really buy Black Widow falling for Banner, either.

It sucks I knew Hawkeye was already going to be in Civil War or I totally would have thought he was going to die in this one!

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I saw his hand phase through an Ultron drone. It did seem to have an energy effect around it, making it look more like intangibility than punching through it.

Yeah, that's my take too. It would have been nice for him to go through a wall, though, just to make it clear.

 

[Mr Light]

yeah Vision was definitely phase-shifting.

Other bits:

--The Hulk-buster jackhammer punching Hulk over and over was this movie's Loki ragdog gag. Classic!
--It's absolutely amazing how many characters were in this movie. I loved that all the side kicks showed up for cameos. Though the Falcon should REALLY have been in the final battle.
--WAKANDA! KLAW! They even had time for that!
--Here's a nit: they always had Iron Man going after Ultron. But Thor is the strong guy. He should have been going after him. I know, that's not the emotional beat. But it's the logistical one
--I was very surprised and confused when Fury showed up with a full crewed Helicarrier, given the fact that he's "dead" and the events of the SHIELD tv show show that Coulson doesn't have that kind of resources and the Gonzalez-SHIELD had a smaller Helicarrier but wasn't allied with Fury. He said they were repairing the original, but who is "we" if he was in hiding? Who were the thousands of people working on it?