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

[urbandefault]

If someone can't sit still and watch a movie for 2-3 hours then they have some serious problems.

You don't have kids, or any medical issues that might preclude you sitting in one spot for 3 hours, do you? Stick around. If you're lucky you'll get there.

Maybe just wait for the DVD release then?

I usually do, but thanks for the tip.

If someone can't sit still and watch a movie for 2-3 hours then they have some serious problems.

You don't have kids, or any medical issues that might preclude you sitting in one spot for 3 hours, do you? Stick around. If you're lucky you'll get there.

Being Type One Diabetic, I need to keep an eye on my sugars, sometimes they'll rise for what ever reason and I'll need to go for a piss like when I saw AoU, I just got up and went to the WC. The need for an intermission or bringing them back for a handful of people is a stupid idea.

So which one do you have then, Children or a Medical condition?

Both.

I'm not suggesting that they bring back the intermission, but maybe if they did other people could sit still instead of going back and forth several times.

Here's something to think about. Longer movies cost more to make. A longer movie means fewer showings in a day, too. Higher cost + fewer showings will eventually raise ticket prices to ridiculous levels.

There has to be a happy medium. I'm thinking it's right around 2 hours.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

It really depends on the movie. If the story requires more running time to be told then so be it.
At a certain point the theater can't fit in another screening anyway, so they might as well put in an intermission, to let people go pee and buy new popcorn and soda.

These days some movies become so long they split them into parts showing them 6 months to a year apart. Earliest movie I can think of that did that was The Matrix ii + iii.

 

[Mr Light]

Matrix 2/3 were always supposed to be separate movies. Kill Bill was intended to be a single movie but became so long it was cut into halves.

 

[Ethros]

It's ever since the last Harry Potter movie/s isn't it? Though I'm not a fan isn't that last book huge? So they realised if it were just one movie loads would have to be missed out, so they split it into two movies.
Then other franchise finales followed- Twilight, The Hunger Games, now the Avengers.

It won't surprise me if they do it with the last 50 Shades movie tbh.


I don't see it as a bad thing really, more time for story & characters etc. To be fair I haven't seen any of the above movies so can't comment on how necessary it was to do it. I have seen the Hobbit movies though, and to me those ones really did feel stretched out to three just to make more money.

 

[Skywalker]

It's ever since the last Harry Potter movie/s isn't it? Though I'm not a fan isn't that last book huge? So they realised if it were just one movie loads would have to be missed out, so they split it into two movies.

They split it into two movies because it was the last Harry Potter movie and Warner Bros. knew they would both gross a billion dollars regardless. The "we did it to stay as true as possible to the book" excuse was just PR stuff.

 

[Beagleman]

I don't mind intermissions for particularly long movies and was thankfull for them during LOTR and the Hobbitses (I have have a bladder the size of a golf-ball), my local multiplex's webstite says which showing has one, so you can choose which you are planing to go to. Best of both worlds I guess.

 

[JD]

The LOTR and Hobbit movies had intermissions when you saw them? I don't think I've ever seen a movie with an intermission and I saw all six of them, and plenty of other movies that were just as long.

 

[Beagleman]

The LOTR and Hobbit movies had intermissions when you saw them? I don't think I've ever seen a movie with an intermission and I saw all six of them, and plenty of other movies that were just as long.

It depends on the place, when a movie pushes three hours my local multiplex has at least one showing per day with an intermission. IIRC even Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and 4 had one.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

There was a big miniseries a few decades ago (Avengers Forever, by the writer of Avengers at that time Kurt Busiek) that established that the Vision is still sort of the Torch, basically he's a copy made and then used by Ultron, while the original Torch still existed in his seperate body (and hence was later ressurected by the West Coast avengers).


Unless of course there's been a retcon to the retcon since, which certainly is possible (Just look at the recent developments with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch). Such is the crazy nature of Superhero comics

 

[Richard Baker]

I saw a Droid App recently which was designed to help you find a slow spot in a movie to use the restroom- it had a database of current theatricals and you started it running when the film did. It would also tell you what you missed.

 

[EnriqueH]

In the old days, they had an "Intermission" card for the audience to take a break. Today, there are no longer Intermissions. Instead, scenes like the one at the Safe House in the middle have replaced it. The part where there's no action, random stroking of egos among characters, while I go off and take a quick bathroom to ensure I don't miss out on any cool ass-kicking or story development.

I have to disagree here. Those scenes are just as important to movies, as the big action scenes, and scenes with big story developments. Those scenes are there so we can get some moments to build the characters. We need those scenes in order to invest in the characters, and to care about what happens to the characters in the end.

I agree with you in theory, but again, I don't think Avengers 2 was executed as neatly at the first film. I liked it, I enjoyed it, but it was absolutely a notch below the first in virtually all aspects but ESPECIALLY character development.

The characters don't seem to be the people that bonded and grew in Avengers 1. Now, I get that there's supposed to be a development towards Civil War, but at the beginning of the film, they don't feel the same. They've somehow devolved.

That's why I didn't feel particularly vested in the Safe House sequence. All these character moments that imply "development" come off as fake and arbitrary, (I'm thinking Hawkeye's family and all the bonding). They didn't ring true and developing organically from the fantastic framework the MCU set up.

This doesn't seem like the same Tony Stark from the end of Iron Man 3. Didn't Tony destroy all his suits in part 3? As if he was walking away from Iron Man? Or am I forgetting crucial scenes or moments from Iron Man 3? (As much as I loved the MCU, I've really only seen each movie once: in the theater, so I guess anyone would forget details.)

I would have no problem with Bruce and Natasha developing a relationship, but it seems random. Executed well, this should've been a nice surprise, but it totally comes out of left field. Instead of surprising, fun and exciting, the relationship feels like a careless after thought, rather than an organically developing relationship.

I also didn't find the Ultron storyline worthy of a team-up movie. It felt more like padding.

Liked the movie, but it was nowhere near as good as the first.

 

[Mr Light]

I loved the movie, but I agree that it basically threw all of the character development in Iron Man 3 right out the window. The rationale is that he changed his mind in the wake of the Hydra revelation in Winter Soldier... but there's no reference to it in the movie.

 

[EnriqueH]

I loved the movie, but I agree that it basically threw all of the character development in Iron Man 3 right out the window. The rationale is that he changed his mind in the wake of the Hydra revelation in Winter Soldier... but there's no reference to it in the movie.

Ok, I'm glad I'm not the only one.

When the movie started with Stark as Iron Man kicking ass all over the place, I was thinking, "Waitaminute, was there some sort after-credits scene I missed? Last I checked, Stark had walked away from Iron man. Should I have been watching Agents of Shield all this time? Did Tony Stark make some appearance in the TV show that I didn't know about?" (I wasn't too impressed with the first 7 or 8 Agents of Shield episodes and have not watched them since.)

Starting Avengers 2 with Iron Man like nothing basically renders Stark's character development in IM3 pointless.

It would've made more dramatic sense to start off with War Machine, and build up to the return of Tony Stark.

 

[Mr Light]

I suppose you could argue that Tony's motivation to create Ultron is consistent with Iron Man 3 though. He created Ultron so he could retire... which he already did in IM3... so he could re-retire...?

 

[EnriqueH]

That's the thing, the fans shouldn't have to justify or explain anything.

The movie should've been clear.

This is a high-profile, major motion picture where quality-control and story connections between the films have been carefully nurtured and written cohesively.

And here comes the most important MCU movie since Avengers 1, and they drop the ball.

It would be easier to forgive if Iron Man was a minor, secondary character, but that's obviously not the case. Iron Man is probably the most popular and important character in the MCU at the moment because Robert Downey Jr. helped popularize the character and elevated him (and himself) into a major pop cultural icon.

Iron Man *is* the star of the MCU at the moment, so there's no excuse for the lack of story cohesion.

I'll say it again: I liked the movie overall, but the MCU showed some vulnerability here.

Definitely not as polished as earlier MCU.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I never got the impression that Tony intended to retire as Iron Man after IM3. His last words of the movie were "I am Iron Man", after all. Sure, he destroyed a bunch of poorly made suits designed under the influence of sleep depravation, but that was a gesture to Pepper, a sign that his obsession with the suits was gone.

Also, CA:TWS indicated that Tony was still wearing an iron Man suit when Pierce told Fury that he wanted 'Iron Man' to appear at his niece's birthday. "And not just a flyby...".

 

[Gaith]

^ Agreed. He was showing that he could do without his suits, if Pepper really and truly wanted him to retire, and she seemed charmed by the gesture. That doesn't mean, however, that she did want him to retire, or maybe she at least knew that, despite his grand gesture, he wasn't actually fully ready to do so, so she approved of him suiting back up again in special circumstances, such as for an Avengers mission. My two-cent interpretation.

 

[Star Wolf]

It really depends on the movie. If the story requires more running time to be told then so be it.
At a certain point the theater can't fit in another screening anyway, so they might as well put in an intermission, to let people go pee and buy new popcorn and soda.

These days some movies become so long they split them into parts showing them 6 months to a year apart. Earliest movie I can think of that did that was The Matrix ii + iii.

A bit further back The Three Musketeers and the Four Musketeers in 1973/4 went about an hour forty-five each.

 

[Mr Light]

<<Also, CA:TWS indicated that Tony was still wearing an iron Man suit when Pierce told Fury that he wanted 'Iron Man' to appear at his niece's birthday. "And not just a flyby...". >>

Good point!

 

[EnriqueH]

^ Agreed. He was showing that he could do without his suits, if Pepper really and truly wanted him to retire, and she seemed charmed by the gesture. That doesn't mean, however, that she did want him to retire, or maybe she at least knew that, despite his grand gesture, he wasn't actually fully ready to do so, so she approved of him suiting back up again in special circumstances, such as for an Avengers mission. My two-cent interpretation.

But again, it should not be up to interpretation.

If the writers are doing their job, it should be CLEAR.

I haven't seen IM3 since the first week or so that it was released in theaters, but I seem to recall that Tony walked away from Iron Man.

Of course, we know that's not a permanent thing, but in storytelling terms, there was no explanation given to why he's kicking ass like normal at the beginning of the film. When we last see him, it looked like he was done with Iron Man.

There was no clarification that he would suit up again under extreme circumstances as you interpret. Did he have ANY suits left at the end of IM3?

I get that people here love the MCU, (i love it myself), to the point of forgiving and finding interesting ways to justify plot holes, but the fact is that a good story and well-executed movie doesn't leave major plot threads dangling like they didn't happen.

As it stands, Age of Ultron makes IM3's ending utterly meaningless.

(And I'm sorry, but throwaway lines made in jest in other Marvel movies don't count as explanations.)