Think it will be the moment Marvel jumps the shark imo, it's at the point where too much money is involved and there are business execs making creative decisions. Iron man 3 was the beginning of the end. The original Marvel movies had that comic book campy feeling where they didn't take themselves too seriously and it made it bearable but now they turned it.
That's a bleak assessment... I liked Iron Man 3. It was, at least, a massively better movie than Iron Man 2.
I'd say this Avengers is worth seeing in IMAX, but it's not on par with the original. There are too many moving parts, too many characters they're trying to deal with all at once. It's the entire original Avengers, plus they have to make time for Hawkeye who was brainwashed last time, plus two new characters in the Maximoffs, plus Bettany's character.
The villain is a great concept but not terribly well executed - he just doesn't get enough time to develop and is always just doing things. The benefit of Loki in Avengers was he had an entire movie to be set up (also, he wasn't CGI). The other issue was he was a bit too wise-cracky, and combined with the lack of development time this just made him seem less significant as a threat.
Is this a spoiler thread? There's no spoiler tag in the title, so...
Spoiler!
If you haven't seen the trailers, Vision is in it. He appears 2/3 of the way through and emerges as a fully developed character and part of the team right "out of the box" as it were. This is just sort of jarring. It's just "okay, I'm here, let's go fight the bad guys". There was no screen time to do this properly.
Also here's just a nitpick; if Loki had access to the mind stone the entire first film through his scepter, what's so special about the Tesseract, which is basically just another stone like it? It kind of undercuts the whole thing; "I am attempting to obtain this artifact of ultimate power, but PS, I already have one". Apparently, you give one of these suckers to Ronan and he can destroy advanced civilizations with it but if you give it to Loki (ACTUALLY A GOD) he surrenders to Iron Man in Germany. Just weird.
All in all it's an entertaining flick and I'll watch it again. Had a bunch of clever lines I laughed out loud at. But it was too unwieldy to manage for Whedon this time around.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
going to see it tonight, pretty excited. I don't care if movies are getting too corporate or whatever. I love comic book stuff and this will be awesome.
A bad marvel movie is still better than most movies out there.
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Fan of the Flames, where being OK has become OK.
Oh, by the way, there is NO end credit scene. There's one extra scene before the credits but nothing at the end so don't waste your time.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Really Iron Man 3 better than 2? 3 was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. To each their own I guess, seems to me like the quality goes down with each movie.
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I know that there were some people who just hated Iron Man 3 but I don't understand why. The overall consensus is it was a good movie, not the best Marvel movie by any stretch but not bad. In fact, for me, it's about on par with this one, though they have completely different flaws.
Iron Man 2 was a train wreck and everyone knew it including Mickey Rourke, RDJr and Jon Favreau... It suffered from serious micromanagement, and Favreau wasn't allowed to make the movie he wanted. I feel like Whedon had to deal with some of the same issues here (not perhaps to the same extent but having to "fit things in" for the sake of the greater arc) and this results in the movie feeling a bit overstuffed. He was able to keep most of the balls in the air though, even if sometimes a bit clumsily, so it doesn't go the route of Favreau's movie.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Also here's just a nitpick; if Loki had access to the mind stone the entire first film through his scepter, what's so special about the Tesseract, which is basically just another stone like it? It kind of undercuts the whole thing; "I am attempting to obtain this artifact of ultimate power, but PS, I already have one". Apparently, you give one of these suckers to Ronan and he can destroy advanced civilizations with it but if you give it to Loki (ACTUALLY A GOD) he surrenders to Iron Man in Germany. Just weird.
Spoiler!
You are still beatable if you're only carrying one infinity stone for example, they are very specific to what they do.
Space [Tesseract] - The ability to move anywhere in the universe instantly, it creates portals. While some have found a way to siphon energy from it to create weapons, that's not its pure purpose. Location Asgard
Mind (scepter) - The ability to bend wills to the users desire, you can also use it to move your consciousness to a higher level of existence. You can siphon energy from it to charge weapons but that's not its primary purpose. Location Shield
Aether - is a symbiotic stone, when absorbed by its user gives him or her strength, power and almost unlimited abilities location unknown. Not sure, the collector had it in its museum which was destroyed by the Orb or power stone
Orb - Considered to be the most powerful of the infinity stones. Its simply destruction, it can destroy planets. Novacorp vault
If we go by the Marvel universe concept of the stones being Mind (scepter) Orb (power) Soul (Ether) Space (tesseract)
We are still waiting for the reveal of Time (ability to move through time) and Reality (Ability to control reality and events)
We know that Thanos is pursuing all of them and also pursuing the Infinity Gauntlet, which when combined with the Gems give the user complete control over the multi-universe I think. Thanos wants it so he can court Death.
The colector had the gauntlet and was on a quest to collect the stones, whether to use it or just to have it I don't know.
Loki's aim wasn't to possess the infinity gems, he just wanted to carve out a kingdom by gifting the Tesseract to Thanos who would then have two stones, giving him the ability to go anywhere, anytime and control minds. He was also after the power stone which would give him un matched destructive power which might have given him the ability to go after the Aether.
Even Ronan's goal wasn't the possession of all of the stones, he just wanted the power stone first to gain favor from Thanos but then he got corrupted and just wanted revenge.
I would expect that we are going to see anther stone in Antman and possibly another in the next Guardians movie.
Then the infinity wars might feature Thanos trying to gather the stones and the gauntlet.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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Now that there is a spoiler tag there I figure we're probably good...
My point is, just with the mind gem or stone or whatever we're calling it, Loki should probably have been able to own basically everyone. I guess the assumption is he didn't know what he had.
The other side of it is, was Thanos expecting that scepter back? Because otherwise it's sort of like saying, "I am trying to collect all of these infinity stones. I want you to go get the one on Earth. In order to help you, I gift you one of the infinity stones." Wtf? He needs that. Why give it away? Maybe he does expect it back, but that seems like pretty terrible judgment. You probably shouldn't give things to Loki and expect him to level with you.
PS - pretty sure the gauntlet was in Asgard. Not sure how Thanos got it, but I guess by the end of Thor 2 Loki is secretly running the show so maybe that's how.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Now that there is a spoiler tag there I figure we're probably good...
My point is, just with the mind gem or stone or whatever we're calling it, Loki should probably have been able to own basically everyone. I guess the assumption is he didn't know what he had.
The other side of it is, was Thanos expecting that scepter back? Because otherwise it's sort of like saying, "I am trying to collect all of these infinity stones. I want you to go get the one on Earth. In order to help you, I gift you one of the infinity stones." Wtf? He needs that. Why give it away? Maybe he does expect it back, but that seems like pretty terrible judgment. You probably shouldn't give things to Loki and expect him to level with you.
PS - pretty sure the gauntlet was in Asgard. Not sure how Thanos got it, but I guess by the end of Thor 2 Loki is secretly running the show so maybe that's how.
I fully expect that endgame wise, Thanos was going to get the Scepter back. He wasn't all that serious about conquoring earth, he just wanted the Tesseract, then he would have betrayed Loki and taken back the other stone.
Loki even with the Mind Stone wouldn't have been able to control everyone at once, it looks like you physically have to interact with the person that you want to bend. Without the power of the other stones, Loki would be able to build an army of his own, but he wouldn't have true destructive power.
I wonder, how soon after Loki delivered the Tesseract to Thanos would his army continue to support Loki?
I'm not sure how Thanos got it, I thought I'd seen the guantlet in the collector's museum in Thor 2, but it was in Odin's collection in Thor.
If he's got he Gauntlet what are the chances that he got the Tesseract?
They were both in the same place.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
If he's got he Gauntlet what are the chances that he got the Tesseract?
They were both in the same place.
Good point.
For that matter, in Thor 2, the Asgardians take the Aether to the Collector for safe-keeping. Yet they're keeping the Tesseract? Why move one stone off-site if they can't protect it properly but keep the other? Trying to spread them out rather than having all eggs in one basket?
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
For that matter, in Thor 2, the Asgardians take the Aether to the Collector for safe-keeping. Yet they're keeping the Tesseract? Why move one stone off-site if they can't protect it properly but keep the other? Trying to spread them out rather than having all eggs in one basket?
Yes, they said as much in the movie, that they do not want to keep both infinity gems in one location in Asgard.
going to see it tonight, pretty excited. I don't care if movies are getting too corporate or whatever. I love comic book stuff and this will be awesome.
A bad marvel movie is still better than most movies out there.
well someone is brainwashed. marvel has you under their fat thumb, no matter what quality of product they pump out. audiences today make me sad...
though im seeing it tonight because I was invited out. I heard its 3 hours of CGI over load, which should be enjoyable for maybe a half hour to an hour, then all the awe and impressiveness of it will dissipate as it just looks like a giant video game cut scene. I'll go in with low expectations and hopefully find some pleasant surprises.
I'm more excited for Ex Machina which is getting a calgary release next friday, from the director of sunshine and 28 days later. looks way more promising. but it's hard to pass up on the big old comic book cash vacuum with all the hype around it even though the product has been largely mediocre outside of the winter soldier.
I watched the movie this morning. Paul Bettany was great. James Spader was great. I'm bothered that they never took the opportunity to make theme music for each individual character, and then bring those out as each did their thing in the Avengers films. That's a major ball dropped for me and I wonder why I was constantly thinking about that during the film. Then again, they don't really have theme music for superheroes anymore.
I was not hurt by CGI overload in this film. It has incredibly diverse locations and the realism of shooting in Eastern Europe, South Korea, Africa (Wakanda looks more like New York though), etc. made the film look more realistic in a strange way.
My only beef is how clear Hawkeye and Black Widow don't make any sense in this team (Hawkeye even admits it in the funniest moment in the movie) as they are so easily hurt and a hindrance to a team full of super humans.
Quicksilver was alright. He didn't have the charisma of the Days of Future Past version but made up for it by being a total Russian cliche down to wearing track suits and Addidas. Product placement was blatant everywhere.
The change to the character origins made sense. There's no Henry Pim (Antman) or Reed Richards so Bruce Banner stands in as secondary scientist to Tony Stark. Ultron never looked like Ulton to me until the end when some of the minion bots had more of the classic look to them (trapezoidal eyes, red zig-zag mouth).
As far as the plot goes, I totally missed the resolution at the end and will have to re-watch because I have no idea what happened. They just glossed over it and that's the weak point to me.
One final thing, this is almost a G-Rated film in terms of violence. The Avengers really go into saturday morning cartoon overdrive and constantly save everybody when it's on film. The actual casualties from what happens in the movie (unseen) would probably be hundreds of thousands.
If you haven't seen the trailers, Vision is in it. He appears 2/3 of the way through and emerges as a fully developed character and part of the team right "out of the box" as it were. This is just sort of jarring. It's just "okay, I'm here, let's go fight the bad guys". There was no screen time to do this properly.
Spoiler!
Lots of things bugged me but this is not one of them. We've had 4 movies with Jarvis in it already. We know the character, we are calmed by that voice and that intellect, we trust him. They also did the brilliant thing of making him trustworthy in one fell swoop. It's basically a more nuanced Jarvis in a body (it's even Paul Bettany in make up!).
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 05-01-2015 at 03:10 PM.
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The other issue was he was a bit too wise-cracky, and combined with the lack of development time this just made him seem less significant as a threat.
This comes from part of his personality coming from Stark to be a foil to Stark. He even beats Stark to his own jokes before Stark can say them. They are also going for the slightly deranged Joker-like vibe. It made for a great villain because of the unstable psychology, especially at the end when humanity has to be explained to him.
I think it works great, especially if you can see this movie as Robert Downie Jr. vs James Spader. I kept getting flashbacks to their 80s movies.
I think it was quite good. It was less of a standalone movie than the first one, and had less of a "I can't believe they pulled this off!" feel than the first one (or, arguably, Thor and GotG) did. It crammed a ton of story into a pretty dense flick, handled some origin stuff quite well, and ticked a lot of boxes for a serialized universe (more character back story, more hints of things to come, tying up some things while introducing new threads to dangle, nods to the source material). I was really impressed how it juggled such a tremendous number of characters. And I liked how it set up the Avengers roster going forward.
Last edited by Finger Cookin; 05-01-2015 at 03:13 PM.
I think it was quite good. It was less of a standalone movie than the first one, and had less of a "I can't believe they pulled this off!" feel than the first one (or, arguably, Thor and GotG) did. It crammed a ton of story into a pretty dense flick, handled some origin stuff quite well, and ticked a lot of boxes for a serialized universe (more character back story, more hints of things to come, tying up some things while introducing new threads to dangle, nods to the source material). I was really impressed how it juggled such a tremendous number of characters. And I liked how it set up the Avengers roster going forward.
Spoiler!
I hope Hawkeye retires to his secret family He should have died at a million points in this movie. There are situations he can excel in but it just doens't make sense for his character to be fighting alongside the Thor and Hulk in the same battlefield against massive super-powered threats.
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Age of Ultron **Spoilers**
