The Avengers 2 -- Age of Ultron

It says here. And Joss Whedon giggles and giggles, or something.

i really enjoyed that first avengers movie. i kinda can't stand about 85% of marvel/dc movies. but that one was totally fun. make every superhero movie like that please.

Ultron's a great iconic character, but a straight adaptation of the Bendis story would be tricky, especially since one of the main Avengers in that story is one that Marvel Studios doesn't have film rights to (Wolverine). And I'm not sure Marvel would be wise to go down the time travel route in the filmed universe.

I loved Ultron madly but I haven't read Avengers since 1984 and I'm sure this will not = that in any way. Would love to see the whole Jocasta storyline in a movie...

They don't have Sue Storm either (or did I read something recently about the FF rights reverting to Marvel?) so the whole thing with her and Wolverine would need recast. Further to that there isn't a Hank Pym in the Marvel film universe yet, so that would need re-casting too with someone who is as intrinsic to the Universe that all the ripple effects make some kind of sense in their scale.

Also let's not forget the next X-Men movie is DofFP so it REALLY wouldn't make sense to make an AoU time-travel film.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/408157c26220cce105e0ccddcdb81030/tumblr_mq9p0gSywj1rd9v8io1_500.png

Cue two years of comic nerd rage.

Every day is a good excuse for nerd rage

when is there gonna be a WEST COAST AVENGERS movie?

Is Thanos going to be in some other movie then?

could turn up in Guardians of the Galaxy in some capacity

which actually sounds like it's going to be pretty cool

Yeah, from that link up top about the overall Marvel panel:

And then Djimon Hounsou made everybody lose their minds when he described Borath as "a great ally to Ronan and Thanos."

Further to that there isn't a Hank Pym in the Marvel film universe yet, so that would need re-casting too with someone who is as intrinsic to the Universe that all the ripple effects make some kind of sense in their scale.

And indeed:

http://io9.com/joss-whedon-no-you-dont-need-hank-pym-to-have-ultron-860162779

In an interview with io9, Whedon said you can absolutely have Ultron without Hank Pym. He said:

We don't have to have him. It works very simply — this is Marvel cinema, not Marvel comics. One thing [Marvel Studios head] Kevin Feige has a genius for is knowing what to hold onto and what to let go of. You can invoke the feeling you had and play with the characters you love and remain true to the needs of the film.
I asked how this will change Ultron's origin story, as a kind of offspring of the Avengers themselves. Whedon smiled and replied:

You'll have to wait and and see, but you don't need a Pym to create an Ultron.

Can't see how there is any mystery there at all - Tony Stark makes Hank Pym redundant, and his movie-persona is ALL about "guy plays with toys, makes mistakes, forgets what's Really Important, remembers it."

I remember in that good-but-not-great Mighty Avengers series, a Celestial or the Watcher or somebody sits Hank Pym down and explains that while Tony Stark is the Earth's greatest engineer, and Reed Richards its greatest inventor, Pym is the scientist supreme. Naturally this inflates Pym's ego enough that he starts working on whatever it is the person is trying to get him to do, and thus completely overlooks the fact that a) this makes no sense and b) the Watcher (or whatever) is blatantly a villain in disguise.

They can have a virus infect Jarvis who goes rogue and builds Ultron.

You think they might have Vision then too?

I see it spinning off Iron Man 3, where he seems to renounce being Iron Man but keeps the idea of being "the mechanic." Inevitably he turns to tinkering on a self-sufficient robot suit (not to be confused with the evil drone robots from Iron Man 2). This gets debuted at the beginning of the movie as an exciting new project "but there's still some bugs in the AI." It gets pressed into early service against some preliminary crisis and then the REAL crisis becomes this out of control robot master. Throw in a dash of Terminator 3 ("Ultron IS the virus!") and you've got a movie.

Basically, it's not that hard in a movie featuring robots and genius inventors and people building genius robot and stuff to have someone somehow make Ultron. Cue trailer:

Tony Stark: What's silver and angry and can't be destroyed?
Bruce Banner: What's green and angry and doesn't care?

Turns into Hulk.

"You think they might have Vision then too?"

I say quite possible since they are stating that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will also show up in the second film.

http://www.hitfix.com/news/avengers-2-joss-whedon-says-quicksilver-and-scarlet-witch-a-huge-part-of-movie

kinda thought for sure that the dead shield agent was gonna be the vision, with the tv show now i dunno

could turn up in Guardians of the Galaxy in some capacity

― Number None, Sunday, July 21, 2013 3:13 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

which actually sounds like it's going to be pretty cool

― Number None, Sunday, July 21, 2013 3:13 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oddly the first big-budget summer movie i've been excited about in years

Tony Stark makes Hank Pym redundant

Not if the plot was going to be the comics Age of Ultron, which is what I thought when I typed what I did. In AoU, being the guy who invents Ultron is a HUGE deal.

I just did a triumphant fist bump at the news about the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver

I mean, fist pump. I am by myself; I did not bump fists w anyone

Weren't they going to do an Ant Man movie?

Ant Man comes out in 2015, along with Avengers 2. Don't think Marvel has formalized Phase 3, but Planet Hulk and Doctor Strange are rumors.

Phase 3 article link.

post rocket racoon i put nothing past them, howard the duck reboot inclusive

the Planet Hulk stuff was debunked

James Spader as Ultron? Sold!

lol, really?

Yup.

:D

heh, i saw him out at a music festival this past month. Friendly guy.

I don't really get why they would need an actual person to play Ultron...? are they really gonna put him in a robot suit? or is it just gonna be CGI w Spader's voice?

My guess would be the latter. But Spader's talent never really struck me as being built around his voice -- more his combo of bemusement and "I will gut you like a fish" dead-eye look.

If they actually have him talking about how much fun he's going to have peeling everybody's skin off, I can see it working, I guess.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/04/elizabeth-olsen-avengers-scarlet-witch

http://io9.com/avengers-age-of-ultron-finds-and-casts-its-second-v-1502076286

I hope this thing isn't starting to get X3-level unwieldy.

Trailer
http://vt.tumblr.com/tumblr_ndva19t7n71szaunl.mp4#_=_

Doom death or something

well that does look pretty cool

The backlash against the Marvel and DC cinematic universes will have all winter to consume itself in FIYAH and by May everybody will be ready and willing to give this a billion dollars.

...everybody except Morbs, I mean.

I could dig it up until the LOGO BRAAAAAAMMMMMS

That reminds me, update display name

wait there's backlash?

afaik marvel-marvel (not fox not sony) is still gold and DC/WB is lulz. what am i missing?

So, the whole Agents of SHIELD plot holes lasted about 2 minutes into the ep then are actually a reasonable part of the SHIELD plot line going forward. (Actually, it was mentioned in a throwaway line at least once in he past couple of eps, plus Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch were already a plot line.)

yah, they've been dropping hints that Coulsen has been hiding something for a bit, mostly in the other characters getting angry that he wouldn't explain what THETA PROTOCOL is

it turns out THETA PROTOCOL was a deep cover SHIELD team hidden somewhere with an extra helicarrier underground

consider me mollified

this was ok but I'm feeling marvel-ed out these days, or avengers-ed out, or something. I still feel like the best films with these characters were Captain America 1 and Thor 1 because they were a little bit quieter.

I loved Thor 1. Had so much more breathing room. And the New Mexico scenery was so cool

Marvel execs kinda right about the dream/cave sequences tbh

Enjoyed this. Don't think I'll watch it again, but so far none of the Marvel movies have been worth a second view for me except for GotG.

It was a way overlong. I was practically bouncing in my seat for it to be over in the last half hour, but on the other hand, my ADHD kid only took one bathroom break/hallway run. He usually takes at least 4.

Felt that before the big battle, when Cap says "there's ten of us going in, not all of us are going to make it out, blood will be spilled, etc", the payoff to that foreshadowing, while true to its word, was a bit of a cop-out.

Loved all the Whedonic quippiness though: "He's fast; she's weird." And there were lots of great comic book moments too. Hard to describe, but stuff that actually felt like it could be drawn in a panel? Hulk flying off in the Quinjet, for example.

Scarjo zooming around Seoul on a motorcycle reminded me too much of the Shania Twain Getcha Good video.

just said this on the mcu thread but While the hulk/widow story was not unaffecting for me, I completely understand the pain people are having seeing ScarJo spend so much of this movie making googoo eyes knowing no spinoff is on the horizon, esp post winter soldier. that wapo link from a couple days ago does a good job getting at what's good about the black widow story (and it's hard to think of an action franchise with much MORE meat re: an adult female character to chew on) but as there's no other adult female character who isn't primarily for exposition (scarlet witch's deal is basically teenage), i can see why a lot of people didn't expect or appreciate getting "i wuv you, hulky" stuff.

but oh man i really dug this movie on the whole. i'm just such a sucker for comic ensembles, superheroes saving lives and this kind character-based melodrama. I wanna revisit winter soldier but I think part of the reason I found it underwhelming is that i just don't care about shield qua shield. this time the Big Security Questions primarily emanate from stark's self-loathing, which is WAY more my kinda cookie.

scarlet witch is hysterical, I wonder what elizabeth olsen looked like doing those hand movements without special effects

i believe i've heard the word "voguing" used

I hadn't seen her in anything else and thought she was an interesting hollywood newcomer until I determined she's one of /those/ Olsens

wouldn't say olsen should get an oscar but i was pretty pleased with all the new characters

The 'Techbros: a warning from history" aspects are kind of interesting, partly also for the way they make Ultron into a being of pure evil that you have to destroy it all, all of it, not suffer any of it to live, any of it, which is a knot that Whedon's picked at a bit in the past.

But here the best bit of the entire film is the scene where the morality of "send an even more terrifying avatar of humanity's obsolescence to kill the fairly terrifying avatar that's the antagonist" is just completely gloriously punted to "a hammer says it's okay".

that really was a great payoff

the black widow debate really just shows that the issue is representation imo - some people want a takin-care-of-bizness-24/7 hero, some people want one that actually acknowledges stuff like motherhood - if there was more than one woman on the team, maybe she wouldn't have to be all things for all people

scarlet witch is hysterical, I wonder what elizabeth olsen looked like doing those hand movements without special effects

wonder no more!

https://youtu.be/56kfzV9GjRU?t=6m27s

I liked this one about the same as the first (if anything Whedon's throwaways are better) although I admit I was annoyed that it was Jams Spader and not J.K. Simmons in Whiplash mode whose voice I was hearing as Ultron.

i want an outtake where ultron says "That girl was, is, and always will be nada!" after wanda leaves

I'm probably the least trustworthy source for opinions on MCU movies as I acknowledge my complete lack of critical distance from them (at least until the inevitable qualitative decline begins in earnest) but this was great. Better than the first, imo, in that it felt more lived in and intentional. Lile they have a clearer vision of the world they're trying to build. Which can (and surely eventually will) be an impediment. Somewhat frustrating from a narrative standpoint, being the middle chapter of a number of different stories, but a lifetime of reading this stuff has prepared me for that particular brand of frustration.

I hadn't seen her in anything else and thought she was an interesting hollywood newcomer until I determined she's one of /those/ Olsens

This was pretty fun? A weird combination of feeling extremely long and messy, but without me wanting to throw anything at the screen. It had a nice number of moments that made me laugh, that kind of short laugh of surprise and delight that they're willing to go there and throw something even more nonsensical at the screen than you saw a minute ago. In that sense, it's not remotely in the same league as something like, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it at least avoided being a completely grim trudge. There were so many beautifully absurd lines of dialogue in this, people shouting preposterous exposition over their communicators and just jamming in a total explanation of the scene and what's at stake because otherwise you'd have no clue what was going on. In that sense it felt very Silver/Bronze Age and I liked that - all that was missing was people announcing exactly what their powers do and how they got them every few minutes. Similarly, the opening battle worked very well for comic-bookyness, the team exchanging their banter as they go about their business. Loved that one stunt with Cap and the motorcycle.

A shame it all flies by so quick; CGI has made it way too easy to have our heroes knock dozens of guys flat in mere seconds rather than set up interesting little challenges/obstacles where you can build some tension for a few minutes, like "they have to get over that barricade but they're pinned down" or whatever. I would have cut at least one big fight out of this and given all of them more time to actually work. When it gets to the end and the "keep him away from the detonator!" type scene, it's just a bunch of stuff whizzing around. First film's climax had some similar issues, and possibly more generic foes, but it had a better sense of weight and space, I think.

And yeah, it's overstuffed, in the way of a third or fourth draft, that one right before you take two weeks off, come back to it and realize you can make major, scythe-like cuts through the thing to get to the meat. Just too many bits and ideas, crowding each other out and pulling the movie in different directions. It doesn't have to be a lean little action-thriller (though I wish more of the "side" movies would accept that, and not feel compelled to do an epic bonanza with the fate of the world at stake), but, for example, Hawkeye was a huge waste of time and brought nothing to the movie, just like in the first movie, but here he's onscreen way more as if they're trying to compensate for everybody pointing out what a waste he was in the first movie. But the ship has sailed and he's ensconced as "the boring one." In hindsight they could have easily built some of the first movie's plot around introducing him as an everyman, rather than a superspy - maybe he's like a really good archer on the college circuit or something, and our point of identification/contact into the weird world of the Avengers - but they didn't do that, they're stuck with this generic guy and in attempting to make him an identifiable everyman they make him even more boring and add the wife/kids scene and it's like, buddy, the movie's not about you.

What's it about? Well, this got a little garbled too I think. Clearly some major stuff didn't make it to the screen... like Whedon shot this ginormous, unwieldy script and then was forced to cut it down into something nonsensical, rather than hitting it with a red pen before filming started. If he didn't have space to make Thor's vision puddle thing with Skarsgård make sense, it should have just been rewritten where he just like, goes into the woods near Hawkeye's house and does some kind of meditating or something. The whole "Scarlet Witch shows everybody bad stuff - so now they can have character-building scenes!" idea was just a cheap plot device. Not a good plot device though: it just made the movie more bulky and confusing.

Ultron is such a weird villain with his tonal shifts, maybe they were going for "unsettlingly creepy schizo" but it seems more likely they had intended to do more with him having this imprint or influence of Tony Stark, but it's never clear why that would be, really, and after the one scene with Klaw is built around that, it sort of falls out of the movie. So my theory is, at one point the script was really upfront about this being an evil version of Tony Stark, maybe even like a nanotech thing he's working on that takes over his body (which would also mean the team is now fighting without their leading brain guy). It would be great if his evil plan was basically to actually implement Tony Stark's global security apparatus, but in doing so we see everything that's wrong with the idea. Could be kind of a Colossus: The Forbin Project with a chance to gesture vaguely at the security state, Snowden, and all the contemporary infrastructures of control/exclusion. Even if it were just more about the character and his arrogance etc., it would tie better in with the Hulk and Black Widow guilt stuff.

Either way they should have given us a better sense of just how ubiquitous and unstoppable Ultron is, or isn't - really seemed like we were being set up for a "the Avengers have to operate off the grid, on the run, without all their toys!" but then everything's fine, I guess they switch to some backup Internet or something. Not saying I wanted another hacker-fighting movie but it was just weird to play up the "he's on the Internet, he's everywhere!" thing and then have it not matter at all.

Final gripe for now: the Hulk was way less fun in this movie than the last one. Not sure what went wrong there but maybe he was just too central. Worked really well as this lovable neurotic super-nerd who kind of quietly turns into the raging Hulk with only a few scattered lines of dialogue in the movie. Oddly, the Jekyll and Hyde complex, which of course is what actually defines the Hulk as a concept, is maybe just not that interesting to watch in a movie. I do like how, after his big scene where he and Black Widow decide not to run away but to join the battle, the two of them leap into a forest and then he... does nothing, as far as I can tell, until suddenly reappearing in the "keep away" scene. Maybe I blinked and missed how he got there, or what he was doing in between.

And yet... I was entertained! I didn't hate it! It was kind of a dumb mess and I should ask for better from my light diverting action fare, but it could have been way worse, I guess!

speaking of overstuffed...

I forgotten everything that happened in this film, apart from the Thor's hammer gag.

James Rhodes finds his level.
Audience wonders why this charismatic arms dealer seems so familiar.
The old Kiss 'n' Cliff.
Everyone has an interesting story inside them, except Steve.

(Off to restart my attempt to re-introduce 'interstitial chapter titles' to summer blockbusters.)

I felt the dialogue in this was offensively bad and it made me sad for Whedon. There were of course some zingy lines that sounded like him, but they had a sense of weariness to them, like "the only thing I can think of to bring some life to this thing is to roll out some patented Whedon zing, but my heart's not in it." And it was laughable when the fight scenes kept slipping into dopey slo-mo (occasionally this was to represent Quicksilver's POV, ok, fine, but most of the time just because, well, I don't know why, some people still like the Matrix?)

I think most of the slow-mo bits were mean to recreate the effect of a comics splash page e.g. the shot of all the Avengers mid-flight at the start, or the one that spins around them as they fight off Ultron's hordes

That does make sense in the abstract. But it still looked bad. I feel like there's a lot in this movie that's meant to be delightfully ridiculous but they forgot to make it delightful.

I finally saw this and pretty much loved it. The reveal of Clint as stable family man, pretty much in total opposition to his comic book persona, was really funny to me. I didn't think the action scenes were particularly difficult to follow and, if anyone got shortchanged in terms of character development, it was the twins (particularly Quicksilver) but the beats they WERE given worked very well in defining both why they would help Ultron and why they would ultimately turn against him.

Ultron himself was fantastic, as was Vision. Thor's defining trait as beefcake is also pretty funny.

IDK, I guess I don't get what people are looking for from these movies that they would come away from something like this violently hating it unless you just flat-out hate all of the Marvel movies. It wasn't the best one they've done but I thought it was a ton of fun and hit all the notes I wanted it to.

Oh OK I might watch this

Ultron's voice is terrible.. couldn't get past it. as DCasino said upthread, there's no real sense of tension to the action, with all of the CGI bullshit going on

Ultron's voice... was pretty much James Spader being James Spader. It's not like, say, Christian Bale gargling tacks to come up with a menacing Batman voice and that seems like a weird criticism, or at least stated weirdly (like, I would get "I hate James Spader's voice and therefore I didn't buy his Ultron" if that's what you mean).

There's "no real tension to the action" because it's a comic book franchise where characters rarely die and, when they do, someone brings them back later, so it's hard to feel like any major character is actually in jeopardy or that anyone who does get killed is going to remain dead by virtue of the environment the story exists in, which is completely aside from "all of the CGI bullshit" as you put it.

I mean, obv it's your opinion and you can express it however you want; I vehemently disagree with you

There's "no real tension to the action" because it's a comic book franchise where characters rarely die and, when they do, someone brings them back later, so it's hard to feel like any major character is actually in jeopardy

there is something to this though, it does rob traditional action sequences of any weight - in general for an action sequence to work in these films it comes down to the characters' powers/abilities being used in a creative, novel or otherwise unexpected way. But watching two guys punch each other for five minutes is basically just wasting my time, is how I feel about it.

xp they do actually kill someone though! The CGI is less of a problem there than the plangent slo-mo (Thanks, Peter Jackson)

The only scene with two guys punching each other is the Hulk/Hulkbuster, which is full of lots of smart tactical decisions and obviously only possible due to CGI.

smart including dumb there.

xp they do actually kill someone though! The CGI is less of a problem there than the plangent slo-mo (Thanks, Peter Jackson)

hence someone brings them back later

Even if that character remains dead, that doesn't make the feeling that a future writer isn't going to pull a resurrection for pathos/story beats (esp. given The Infinity War coming up, that's a cheap way to escalate personal stakes)

The slo-mo felt like splash pages to me, as someone alluded to upthread.

fwiw I was speaking generally of the genre, not about this movie specifically (which I haven't seen)

xp

I was only mildly disappointed with Ultron's voice because I'd always imagined him to sound more like a Dalek. He looks like a screamer. But Spader performed commendably.

I dunno, I enjoy these movies as live-action "What-If?" setpieces featuring characters I only peripherally followed in the comics until the first Iron Man movie came out; I'm not looking at them for much more than "how many quips, beatdowns and explosions can we get over the next couple of hours and are the staged/delivered well enough to make easily-entertained me smile"; it's a remarkably low hurdle to clear tbh but I feel like demanding that movies entertain me rather than putting myself in a mood to enjoy what they have to offer and then enjoying them is easier and makes me happier.

i want to watch this again

i enjoyed this enough though it definitely cemented a sense of superhero movie fatigue. thought the gulf in quality between this and the first avengers movie is wildly overstated though obv the first one had the novelty of omg a teamup and omg they got hulk right etc. thought spader was great, as an offspring of stark it made sense he would be this asshole who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. plus, yknow, less than zero.

Dr casinos overstuffed post otm except about Hawkeye, who is the soul of this movie.

Ultron was a vg villain imo, equal parts hal, skynet and evil stark, pity that whedon couldn't keep that going rather than turn him into a fighty robot but otherwise this was as good as it was going to be

no comments on this in more than a year? guessing people are not too geared up for a 2-part sequel then.

oh I'm geared up

not looking forward to the part where Cap eats it though

the movie isn't out for another year what is there to talk about

It's four MCU movies away, gotta hyperventilate in the correct order.

yeah exactly. so much more MCU to go