Avengers: Age Of Ultron

I'm not sure if people hated this one or not but I thought it was alright.

Age Of Ultron all in all is a good entry in the Marvel series, it has things I really love and things I wish just weren't there, but I certainly didn't hate it. It keeps the ball rolling with the Avengers still on the hunt for Loki's scepter and they finally acquire it, unfortunately it holds no bearings in the plot after that, it's pretty much just an excuse for the opening action scene. Afterwards Tony reveals to Bruce of his dream, to create a being able to stop interstellar attacks on Earth and uniwittingly becomes Dr. Frankenstein and creates, you guessed it, a machine that wants to wipe out humanity. Do humans just piss robots off that much? Leading the Avengers to assemble once more to battle the threat of Ultron. Now let's get into details, I like seeing the Avengers on a bit of downtime to see them just kinda hang out and reinforce they are a true team. This is the movie that births the best ship in the MCU (I will fight you on this and win) with Black Widow and Hulk, and my God is it wonderful. Thanks movie, I love it! We get to see more Hawkeye which is nice cause I barely remembered him last time and it does feel ever so slightly manipulative that they gave him this nice farm with a loving family, it's like the writers knew he was the weakest Avenger and we have to make the audience care somehow so uh, give him a wife and kids, yeah that will get them emotionally invested. I genuinely felt Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were incredibly not needed in this story, they don't have much significance. They show up, team up with Ultron, turn babyface, fight Ultron, one of them bites the bullet or bullets I should say, and while they destroyed Ultron's body I still felt little connection or even cared about them throughout the film. And then we also get Vision thrown in the mix as if this movie wasn't busy enough, he's just sort of eh. Nice cape though. Okay you remember when I said all I wanted from the villain was memorable motivation and character? This was not what I meant. Ultron is...problematic in many ways. Now the idea of an incredibly advanced AI that when created has the personality of a human but the high processing mind of a machine leading it to have a twisted majorly screwed up view of the world is fascinating, and even kinda believable, I don't hate the design except for the mouth movements (he's a robot, his mouth should not move like he has lips), but his plans are just the same old tricks. And what kills me about Ultron is his actual character, his personality, when I think of an artificial intelligence that feels completely justified in the extermination of all organic life and hates his creator Tony Stark, I think of a voice and personality akin to the likes of say Grand Admiral Thrawn or HAL 9000. Cold, incredibly calculating, scary intelligent, and an unbendable philosophy and will. What we get is a mugging chucklehead who crows Disney songs, I cannot take him seriously as a threat because he keeps f***ing goofing around, which bugs the shit out of me because why would he act that way?? He's an advanced intelligence in a vibranium robot shell, he should be kind of terrifying and a real force to go up against where it really would take every single Avenger and then some to deal with this one enemy. And he's a joke. I could not believe what I was watching with this guy. How do you f*** that up man? David Spader has a great voice and could really have pulled off something menacing, think like the T-800's power but with HAL 9000's intelligence. That would have been unbelievable! But no. Just...whatever. The action isn't bad but the final fight goes on forever to the point where Ultron's army seems like unlimited waves of enemies in a video game, the character interactions are good, the story is a bit jumbled and busy but still works, but I'm just wondering now how Civil War comes about. Cause Tony and Steve seemed to have mellowed out since their first outing, like on really good terms as friends so how does this go to hell in a handbasket? Are they going to do the whole superhero identity registration plotline? I have no idea. Bottom line Age Of Ultron isn't bad, I didn't hate it that much but didn't love it either. 2.5 stars, 6.5/10, and apparently we take a detour with Ant-Man before Civil War so see you then tomorrow.

The Avengers

Are you happy? I finally saw it.

It only took me almost a decade but I finally watched The Avengers. How was it? It's okay. I mean I know the wet dreams of Marvel fans the world over is probably what got this film to be the highest grossing film ever at one point in time, and while I can safely say this movie does not suck I didn't exactly love it either. Don't get me wrong, I'm so happy this wasn't an hour and a half action scene done after an hour of buildup, in fact the pacing of the movie was commendable. Spending significant amounts of time catching us up on what the Avengers have been up to since their last movies, and getting everybody together for the first time. You started off good movie, you gave me Scarlett straight off the bat you get a point just for that! And I gotta say Mark Ruffalo really won me over very quickly, he brings more of that Bill Bixby humbleness and charm which pisses me off to no end that he hasn't got a proper solo movie cause I know he can pull it off! Christ, him and Loki were the best parts of the film hands down, Tom Hiddleston is just savaging this role and relishes every second of it, his acting is absurdly good in this movie. And I liked the dynamic of the team members, some don't get along while others do, they bicker sure but when shit hits the fan they are ready to help each other, the comraderie while brief was quite nice. The action scenes were spaced out and while I've become desensitized to crazy action setpieces I can just imagine the excitement and anticipation people had when seeing this for the first time. This has never been done before on any scale, and it would have been easy to make this a clusterf*** mess but they did good. I harbor no ill will towards The Avengers nor Justice League, I thought both movies juggled the characters and story well, so I can't really pick favorites on that case, I'd call them equals. I will say the plot sort of lost me a few times, mainly just because I forgot Hawkeye was even in this movie let alone brainwashed, and I didn't fully know why Loki decided to bring an alien race to decimate Earth. He had plenty of opportunities to grab the tesseract and GTFO but he just didn't, and I'm wondering what the plan was and how it pertains to a totally not California Raisin looking Thanos. I think the movie wisely focused more on the characters and their interactions than the sheer spectacle of battles, yeah it gets very cliched when the Avengers keep fighting one another and I know about the Civil War comic story so I know it's not impossible for these people to clash, but most of the time in the movie it felt forced and there just to sort of fill an action quota. And what the ass was with the alien/robot/monster things shutting down Phantom Menace style at the end? I thought they were just armored aliens but they work like robots? That...that was stupid, and weird, and didn't make a lick of sense but that's small beans to me with Tony and the nuke. He flat out pulls a Superman in The Dark Knight Returns and diverts a nuclear warhead to not destroy a city, but doesn't get caught in the blast radius this time, but what really gets on my nerves is he didn't need to fully insert it into the hole (Steady now...), just point it up and let go! And don't even try to tell me they were going for suspense if Tony was going to bite the bullet or not, nobody bought that for a millionth of a second. I know story doesn't have to be airtight in a popcorn flick like this, but some things just were odd to me and when the bullshit man says that's bullshit, well you know. It's a decent movie, I got some enjoyment out of it, I would place it with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk as some of my favorites so far, so I'm just wondering what this Phase 2 or whatever it's called is going to hold for me. 3 stars, 7/10, I can understand why people like it but I am so not feeling the Marvel fanboy syndrome here.