***SPOILERS*** Avengers: Age of Ultron

[gunnar hendershow]

Yeah I think the quick Google search can help alleviate a ton of fan's hesitations about a new team, but that still won't help with the audience who goes to films just for actors. If the MCU has crossed over into Star Wars territory where people go because of the name attached to it then that's great, but I'm not sold that there isn't a decent-sized audience who is going just for Downey Jr. and Hemsworth.

Plus, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Spidey, and Thor are much more recognizable to people who don't pay attention to comics than Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, and War Machine. The movies of those superheroes sell themselves because people know them, just like non-wrestling fans know The Rock or Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan, but the latter names aren't recognizable because they've never had the marketing appeal. So whether people latch onto them or not remains to be seen.

I think we'll just find out how dedicated a franchise following Marvel is over the next few years, and who knows maybe it gets by just by virtue of the Marvel label attached to it.

[Your Mom]

Maybe they can replace Hemsworth with the female Thor??

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Someone with more knowledge than me: What are the chances of Thor and Captain America (Rogers) being in Infinity War? I think both of their contracts are up after their third individual films right? It's going to feel pretty weird doing the grand finale without them if so.

Hemsworth said in an interview recently he has three films left on his deal. Kinda implied it was Thor 3 and then the two Infinity War films.

Evans I think is in a similar situation, he's definitely got at least one more after Civil War, but I can't find any proof.

[TheSqauredCircleMessiah]

Yeah I think the quick Google search can help alleviate a ton of fan's hesitations about a new team, but that still won't help with the audience who goes to films just for actors. If the MCU has crossed over into Star Wars territory where people go because of the name attached to it then that's great, but I'm not sold that there isn't a decent-sized audience who is going just for Downey Jr. and Hemsworth.

Plus, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Spidey, and Thor are much more recognizable to people who don't pay attention to comics than Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, and War Machine. The movies of those superheroes sell themselves because people know them, just like non-wrestling fans know The Rock or Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan, but the latter names aren't recognizable because they've never had the marketing appeal. So whether people latch onto them or not remains to be seen.

I think we'll just find out how dedicated a franchise following Marvel is over the next few years, and who knows maybe it gets by just by virtue of the Marvel label attached to it.

I think the success of Guardians of the Galaxy should really kill this theory. The movie was based around one of the least-known Marvel properties and the biggest star in the movie was voicing a talking raccoon in a supporting role.

[Benjamin]

That's exactly what you are meant to believe because that population certainly does still exist. I know more than one person that doesn't like the idea of Avengers moving on without the likes of Downey or Hemsworth.

I am one of those people. I like the characters but I was not exactly excited when they did the big shot showing the new team

As am I but to suggest that the people seeing these movies (who have the internet at their disposal) have done no research on the characters or kept up with the news is nonsense. This isn't 1994 where if you haven't read the physical comics you're out of luck. All you literally need to do is go to Google and type in "The Avengers" and you get sucked into a wormhole through Wikipedia. I know because that happened to me. I literally have not read a single Marvel comic in my life but I have learned about The Avengers and know where to go for movie news.

Not everyone is like people like us who like keeping up to date and following movie news or do research on what we're seeing. This is not what people spend the majority of their time on the Internet on.

[angeluzcr]

The Marvel/Sony deal wasn't reached in time to include Spidy,someone posted a link to an interview with Josh Whedon in this or the comic book films thread.

[DMN in the House]

I had to explain to my brother and his GF, who follow this stuff more than most people I know (and definitely know about the Spidey situation), that the new Fantastic Four movie is Fox and not Disney, so there is a disconnect out there with all the different Marvel stuff.

[TheSqauredCircleMessiah]

The Marvel/Sony deal wasn't reached in time to include Spidy,someone posted a link to an interview with Josh Whedon in this or the comic book films thread.

They filmed the schwarma scene after the premiere and two weeks before the movie opened worldwide

[EWB's Best Poster.]

Saw it. B- for me. Most of the movie was good, but the start was just a little ridiculous for the first 3 minutes. A lot of plot points that didn't get resolved or need to have happen. Vision was actually shorted on how cool he is, and yeah falcon not helping out in the final fight was tragic. It's a fight. In the air. I mean, come on.

As for the whedon is sexist thing, I gotta laugh. The first avengers had widow captured until we find out its a play by her. Why is this any different. She knows even by tricking Loki that the best way to play a man is letting them think she's weak.

Also, it's literally got a scene where Ironman and Thor are bragging who's girlfriend is cooler.

The part I laughed at the most was the idea of poor quicksilver running around for 30 minutes straight with the oxygen level at 18000 feet. Poor bastard.

Decent but I look forward to playing it again with cut scenes included to hopefully round it out.

[Benjamin]

Yeah I can't wait for the home release. I don't care if the extended cut is five hours, I'll probably watch it like three or four times again.

[Lint]

[Skummy]

I had to explain to my brother and his GF, who follow this stuff more than most people I know (and definitely know about the Spidey situation), that the new Fantastic Four movie is Fox and not Disney, so there is a disconnect out there with all the different Marvel stuff.

I've had to explain this to people more times than I can count. Just because millions of people are going to see the movie doesn't mean those same millions are doing the background research into how many films each actor is signed on for, or who owns what property. A lot of people either don't know, don't care about, or are incredibly confused by the difference between "Marvel Studios" and Marvel films made by other companies.

Yeah I think the quick Google search can help alleviate a ton of fan's hesitations about a new team, but that still won't help with the audience who goes to films just for actors. If the MCU has crossed over into Star Wars territory where people go because of the name attached to it then that's great, but I'm not sold that there isn't a decent-sized audience who is going just for Downey Jr. and Hemsworth.

Plus, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Spidey, and Thor are much more recognizable to people who don't pay attention to comics than Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, and War Machine. The movies of those superheroes sell themselves because people know them, just like non-wrestling fans know The Rock or Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan, but the latter names aren't recognizable because they've never had the marketing appeal. So whether people latch onto them or not remains to be seen.

I think we'll just find out how dedicated a franchise following Marvel is over the next few years, and who knows maybe it gets by just by virtue of the Marvel label attached to it.

I think the success of Guardians of the Galaxy should really kill this theory. The movie was based around one of the least-known Marvel properties and the biggest star in the movie was voicing a talking raccoon in a supporting role.

I thought Guardians Of The Galaxy would be the beginning of the comic book movie crash, and was very vocal about it on here, but I think it succeeded because of the strength of its marketing; it was very much sold as a quirky, comedic sci-fi movie with the Marvel nametag attached to it. At no point did they try and sell it as if the Guardians Of The Galaxy name was a selling point. It was sold very, very intelligently, and paid dividends. But in the future, that might not always pay off, especially when - potentially - years down the line they're trying to sell "The Avengers" as a product which doesn't have the names attached to it that people want to see.

It's easy to forget that it's not so long ago that comic book movies were box office poison. It would only take a couple of stinkers to get back there - and while Marvel might be, in most people's eyes, knocking the ball out of the park almost every time, that won't last forever. And even if, somehow, it does, there'll be a DC adaptation that sucks, or there'll be a Spider-Man or a Fantastic Four that - as we've discussed earlier - people think is a Marvel Studios property but isn't, that'll suck so badly that people eventually give up on the genre altogether.

People get fatigued over the same genre all the time, and they will sour on comic book movies. You might think it's impossible, but I'm sure Hollywood thought musicals and westerns would live forever too. Horror died a death for decades, too. Genres come and genres go.

Anyway, I saw the movie today. I had some thoughts:

I don't like at all that they don't address Tony Stark being Iron Man again. The last time we saw him, he'd lost everything, and had vowed to give up his tinkering and settle down. Now Pepper's nowhere in sight, he's Iron Man again, and he's got his lab and his headquarters back, and we don't get a single line of dialogue explaining what happened in the interim.

Hated the romance sub-plot. It was out of nowhere and clearly tacked on to give the Hulk a "calm down" narrative/plot device, but it was lazy and dreadful. It's bad enough that (pre-Scarlet Witch) there's only one female Avenger, before that female Avenger's role is reduced to "have romance sub-plot with any available male superhero". She's been in three movies and had three different romance sub-plots, but we're still told she was programmed to be a heartless, uncaring, unfeeling killer. Clearly not programmed very well. The only good thing to come out of it is that the ret-con of her relationship with Hawkeye lead to Hawkeye being an infinitely more interesting, human character than he's been in the movies thus far. It would have been even worse had Mark Ruffalo not been such a phenomenal actor to carry it to something approaching believability.

I actually really liked Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver; both in the performance - even if Pietro's accent got a bit Chekhov at times - and in how they were portrayed. Great stuff. The Vision was even better, I think he was done exceptionally well.

This sounds like a stupid criticism of a superhero movie every time I say it, but there were too many fight scenes. Every Marvel movie ends up in a clusterfuck CGI fight for a space MacGuffin, and it irritates me every time. There'll be one cool set-piece, and then just a bunch of flying around with lasers. It's bad enough having Iron Man + infinite back-up Iron Men involved before all the bad guys are interchangeable flying laser-firing robots too. The movie could have had two or three massive fight scenes cut out of it and functioned exactly the same. There was no sense of peril or importance in the majority of them, and I find it hard to care, or to pay attention. The strength of Marvel, in the movies and in the original comic books, was always in its humanity - even when clumsily written, the heroes of Marvel always felt more like real human beings than the heroes of DC. In DC, the heroes were interchangeable apart from their costumes and powers, but in Marvel they had flaws and personality traits that set them apart, and more often than not you wound up caring about the person behind the mask more than the superhero they were portraying. That's all out of the window when all you give them to do is CGI clusterfucks for half the movie.

Speaking of humanity, a lot of it felt forced. In the first movie, the quips and the "banter" and general relationships between characters felt natural and spontaneous. With the exception of Banner and Stark, in this one it all felt clunky and forced. It feels like they're writing for the performances in the previous film, rather than letting the performances breathe, if that makes sense.

Another problem many of the Marvel films have, and this one was no different, is that the villain simply isn't compelling. Ultron's motives were too broad and generic, and his backstory too cobbled together pseudo-science to give a shit, and as a character he never rose above either. I'll forgive it this time as there was an explanation - he carries some of Tony Stark's characteristics - but Joss Whedon writes all of his villains as sarcastic wise-cracking genre-savvy supervillains, and it wears thin. A character like Thanos should not do an exasperated comedy "I guess I'll do it myself!" quip.

I guess that the problem is there's such a huge list of films to come, and they can't waste all the biggest villains, so they're left with the dregs of the Marvel universe, or with subversions of "big" villains - such as the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 - to keep the fans on their toes. On top of that, they don't have the rights to a lot of characters I'd consider the "big" Marvel villains - Dr. Doom, Galactus, Magneto, Apocalypse - and that hurts them.

Also, half the movie felt like it was building to something else. No matter how "epic" they tried to make it, it felt like everything you were seeing was just there to set up a bigger story, or a bigger event, later on, in the next movie. And that's annoying enough when it happens in one of the solo films, but in The Avengers? Surely The Avengers is the pinnacle, the big team-up pay-off movie? It shouldn't be a teaser for the next one.

It sounds like I'm majorly down on this film and, compared to some of the other Marvel movies, I was, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. It just could have been a whole lot more.

[DMN in the House]

I had to explain to my brother and his GF, who follow this stuff more than most people I know (and definitely know about the Spidey situation), that the new Fantastic Four movie is Fox and not Disney, so there is a disconnect out there with all the different Marvel stuff.

I've had to explain this to people more times than I can count. Just because millions of people are going to see the movie doesn't mean those same millions are doing the background research into how many films each actor is signed on for, or who owns what property. A lot of people either don't know, don't care about, or are incredibly confused by the difference between "Marvel Studios" and Marvel films made by other companies.

Yeah I think the quick Google search can help alleviate a ton of fan's hesitations about a new team, but that still won't help with the audience who goes to films just for actors. If the MCU has crossed over into Star Wars territory where people go because of the name attached to it then that's great, but I'm not sold that there isn't a decent-sized audience who is going just for Downey Jr. and Hemsworth.

Plus, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Spidey, and Thor are much more recognizable to people who don't pay attention to comics than Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, and War Machine. The movies of those superheroes sell themselves because people know them, just like non-wrestling fans know The Rock or Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan, but the latter names aren't recognizable because they've never had the marketing appeal. So whether people latch onto them or not remains to be seen.

I think we'll just find out how dedicated a franchise following Marvel is over the next few years, and who knows maybe it gets by just by virtue of the Marvel label attached to it.

I think the success of Guardians of the Galaxy should really kill this theory. The movie was based around one of the least-known Marvel properties and the biggest star in the movie was voicing a talking raccoon in a supporting role.

I thought Guardians Of The Galaxy would be the beginning of the comic book movie crash, and was very vocal about it on here, but I think it succeeded because of the strength of its marketing; it was very much sold as a quirky, comedic sci-fi movie with the Marvel nametag attached to it. At no point did they try and sell it as if the Guardians Of The Galaxy name was a selling point. It was sold very, very intelligently, and paid dividends. But in the future, that might not always pay off, especially when - potentially - years down the line they're trying to sell "The Avengers" as a product which doesn't have the names attached to it that people want to see.

It's easy to forget that it's not so long ago that comic book movies were box office poison. It would only take a couple of stinkers to get back there - and while Marvel might be, in most people's eyes, knocking the ball out of the park almost every time, that won't last forever. And even if, somehow, it does, there'll be a DC adaptation that sucks, or there'll be a Spider-Man or a Fantastic Four that - as we've discussed earlier - people think is a Marvel Studios property but isn't, that'll suck so badly that people eventually give up on the genre altogether.

People get fatigued over the same genre all the time, and they will sour on comic book movies. You might think it's impossible, but I'm sure Hollywood thought musicals and westerns would live forever too. Horror died a death for decades, too. Genres come and genres go.

Anyway, I saw the movie today. I had some thoughts:

I don't like at all that they don't address Tony Stark being Iron Man again. The last time we saw him, he'd lost everything, and had vowed to give up his tinkering and settle down. Now Pepper's nowhere in sight, he's Iron Man again, and he's got his lab and his headquarters back, and we don't get a single line of dialogue explaining what happened in the interim.

Hated the romance sub-plot. It was out of nowhere and clearly tacked on to give the Hulk a "calm down" narrative/plot device, but it was lazy and dreadful. It's bad enough that (pre-Scarlet Witch) there's only one female Avenger, before that female Avenger's role is reduced to "have romance sub-plot with any available male superhero". She's been in three movies and had three different romance sub-plots, but we're still told she was programmed to be a heartless, uncaring, unfeeling killer. Clearly not programmed very well. The only good thing to come out of it is that the ret-con of her relationship with Hawkeye lead to Hawkeye being an infinitely more interesting, human character than he's been in the movies thus far. It would have been even worse had Mark Ruffalo not been such a phenomenal actor to carry it to something approaching believability.

I actually really liked Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver; both in the performance - even if Pietro's accent got a bit Chekhov at times - and in how they were portrayed. Great stuff. The Vision was even better, I think he was done exceptionally well.

This sounds like a stupid criticism of a superhero movie every time I say it, but there were too many fight scenes. Every Marvel movie ends up in a clusterfuck CGI fight for a space MacGuffin, and it irritates me every time. There'll be one cool set-piece, and then just a bunch of flying around with lasers. It's bad enough having Iron Man + infinite back-up Iron Men involved before all the bad guys are interchangeable flying laser-firing robots too. The movie could have had two or three massive fight scenes cut out of it and functioned exactly the same. There was no sense of peril or importance in the majority of them, and I find it hard to care, or to pay attention. The strength of Marvel, in the movies and in the original comic books, was always in its humanity - even when clumsily written, the heroes of Marvel always felt more like real human beings than the heroes of DC. In DC, the heroes were interchangeable apart from their costumes and powers, but in Marvel they had flaws and personality traits that set them apart, and more often than not you wound up caring about the person behind the mask more than the superhero they were portraying. That's all out of the window when all you give them to do is CGI clusterfucks for half the movie.

Speaking of humanity, a lot of it felt forced. In the first movie, the quips and the "banter" and general relationships between characters felt natural and spontaneous. With the exception of Banner and Stark, in this one it all felt clunky and forced. It feels like they're writing for the performances in the previous film, rather than letting the performances breathe, if that makes sense.

Another problem many of the Marvel films have, and this one was no different, is that the villain simply isn't compelling. Ultron's motives were too broad and generic, and his backstory too cobbled together pseudo-science to give a shit, and as a character he never rose above either. I'll forgive it this time as there was an explanation - he carries some of Tony Stark's characteristics - but Joss Whedon writes all of his villains as sarcastic wise-cracking genre-savvy supervillains, and it wears thin. A character like Thanos should not do an exasperated comedy "I guess I'll do it myself!" quip.

I guess that the problem is there's such a huge list of films to come, and they can't waste all the biggest villains, so they're left with the dregs of the Marvel universe, or with subversions of "big" villains - such as the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 - to keep the fans on their toes. On top of that, they don't have the rights to a lot of characters I'd consider the "big" Marvel villains - Dr. Doom, Galactus, Magneto, Apocalypse - and that hurts them.

Also, half the movie felt like it was building to something else. No matter how "epic" they tried to make it, it felt like everything you were seeing was just there to set up a bigger story, or a bigger event, later on, in the next movie. And that's annoying enough when it happens in one of the solo films, but in The Avengers? Surely The Avengers is the pinnacle, the big team-up pay-off movie? It shouldn't be a teaser for the next one.

It sounds like I'm majorly down on this film and, compared to some of the other Marvel movies, I was, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. It just could have been a whole lot more.

I do think you have a point in regards to the comic movie 'bubble'.

Even if Disney/Marvel continue to put out high quality movies, the glut of superhero movies on the market is going to hurt them, eventually. I think people are invested enough to get through the Infinity Wars movies, but I'm not sure how much ground there is after that. I hope it can continue to roll, but I'm not so sure, especially if movies coming from Fox, or the DC stuff, is not up to the quality of the Disney/Marvel stuff.

I do think they have a lot of room to grow with television shows, however. I think that putting out some more in-depth stuff on Netflix would be a great way to go. Stuff like Punisher would fit in perfectly there.

[Benjamin]

Yeah, I think the Inhumans movie might be where the bubble burst for MCU. I'm hoping it doesn't, and the way Agents of SHIELD are playing it makes it totally appealing to me, but it will be the first movie after the Infinity Stones storyline and just might be where moviegoers will lose interest. Again, I'm so hoping I'm wrong, though.

[angeluzcr]

The Marvel/Sony deal wasn't reached in time to include Spidy,someone posted a link to an interview with Josh Whedon in this or the comic book films thread.

They filmed the schwarma scene after the premiere and two weeks before the movie opened worldwide

Yeah,but I think is a little different filming people in a table eating without any special effects that shot a quality scene introducing your newest character.

[Avenged Probably]

While I agree with what people have said to some extent about "how long these films can last" I don't think it's a case of people getting sick of a certain genre.

Look at Bond movies for example, they have been around forever although not as frequent as Marvel movies.

The other thing that sticks out to me though, is that I don't think you can count all these movies as the being the same. I know they are all Superhero movies in one way or another but you had Guardians which was Sci-Fi, Thor which is fantasy, Winter Soldier was a spy film, Iron Man 3 was more like a typical action movie than its predecessors.

Looking at future films, you have a shrinking man, a sorcerer, an alien and and African King. Not typical 'superhero' stuff. At this point the only ones that feel full on superhero to me are the actual Avengers movies, I suspect Civil War may be similar to with the size of its cast.

[HailtotheYo]

I think the biggest thing is exactly what you just mentioned ... the diversity of characters/stories/elements/etc.

Espionage/spy stuff, fantasy, sci-fi, mythology, terrorism, domestic conflict, etc etc etc .... so many of the characters and stories mimic real world issues/events and they all come from different backgrounds etc.

[livid]

Beyond the fact that one of the reasons why the Western bubble popped wasn't so much that there were too many of them but that too many of them were terrible, I think it's important to keep in mind the different box office culture that we live in. One of the reasons why comic book movies do so well is the name recognition, which is big in foreign markets (and is the chief reason why we get so many remakes, reboots, sequels, etc.). That's not to say that there still can't be a similar effect if there's a noticeable downgrade in quality but the effects would be felt in a much more gradual way.

[TheSqauredCircleMessiah]

Ant-Man will really test my trust of the Marvel Brand. The concept sounds so stupid but they cast great people that I enjoy. I'm still not positive if I can get behind Paul Rudd in the MCU.

[DMN in the House]

I do know that the train scene from the trailer got a great response when they showed the trailer before AoU. I think that, if they can harness that type of humor into it, especially with Paul Rudd, it has a chance.