Avengers: Age of Ultron.

[Lantyssa]

Do eet!

[Mattemeo]

[Ironwood]

Two big spoilers there.  Don't touch.

[Johny Cee]

I don't think it's much to do with Hype.


Spoilers above are not spoilers at all, but I'm aware that you might be trying to limit your immersion as most UK types have to on these boards.  I'm trying desperately not to spam jgsudgen with tons of PM's.   

Without having seen the movie:

[Ironwood]

Nope.  None of that, fortunately.

[MediumHigh]

So I am prepared in my black cold cynical hesrt for AV2 to suck. Marvel has a long history of sucking the big one on the second movie. The only exception being Captain Ameriva 2. If this shit pulls an Iron Man 2 or a Thor 2 the Marve Movie Universe will suffer.

[eldaec]

There have only been three second movies before this one, one was good, two were not so good. That isn't really a huge sample to pass judgement on, especially when the best was the most recent.

[jgsugden]

Thor 2 and Iron Man 2 were steps down, but well above suck in my book.  On a scale of 1 to 10 where 5 is that level where I'd see it again if it is on TV and I'm bored... everything Marvel has done is at 6 or above.  Everything is at least good.  I hope AV2 will be really good, but what they're tackling (men in tights versus army of robots and real comic book super powers pulled into the equation) is tough water to tread. 

[eldaec]

Pretty sure the last one was also about men in tights fighting an army of robots.

And for that matter so was Iron Man 2.

[Teleku]

Yeah, I actually enjoyed Ironman 2 and Thor 2.  Maybe not standout movies like guardians of the Galaxy or the first Ironman, but perfectly fine entertaining movies on their own.  It'll be sad if it's not as good as the first one, but if its at least on par with Ironman 2, I'll be happy.

[MediumHigh]

The strength of marvel is being able to come back with good or really good movies after stinking up the place with bad movies. Its something DC hasn't mastered because DC is convinced the only marketable superheroes are superman and batman. So yeah marvel CAN fuck up a movie or two but since they basically release 3 marvel movies a year they have to bomb all three movies to get seriously hurt, and there is plenty of people that consider their fuck ups enjoyable. But the Avengers is kinda different, its the super carrier of the movie universe. One bad Avengers spills over to the rest of franchise, that's faith that is hard to get back and requires more talent to recover. So yeah I'm kinda worried and prepared at the same time. I want this to be so good but marvel movies are kinda victims of its own formula, with the exception Cap 2.

[jgsugden]

Bad Marvel movies?  What would you put down as a worse movie than Green Lantern or Superman Returns?  Those are films I have no interest in rewatching.  I've got no problem rewatching any of the Marvel stuff.

[Velorath]

I'm not expecting anything groundbreaking from Age of Ultron. Most of the cast is already signed on for Civil War next year and with the Infinity War in 2018 and 2019, 2017 is the only year in the next few that won't have a movie featuring most of the Avengers cast, and we've got GotG 2 coming that year. There's not really any pressure for this to be the greatest Marvel movie ever. They've got a lot coming up in the next few years.

[MediumHigh]

Bad Marvel movies?  What would you put down as a worse movie than Green Lantern or Superman Returns?  Those are films I have no interest in rewatching.  I've got no problem rewatching any of the Marvel stuff.

Watched returns and never bothered with Green Lantern. I mean both movies are like Wolverine Orgins bad so their generally shitty waste of time for vastly different reasons. So is the amazing spiderman. Would I put the marvel movies that low? No because that's direct to DVD bad. Will I ever sit through Iron man 2 and Thor 2 again? Hmm no... but that don't make them direct to DVD bad.

[Raguel]

I thought Thor 2 was a great movie up to the Thor/Loki/Kurse scene. After that it went off the rails.

Anyway I'm impatiently waiting for the movie.

[Ironwood]

It doesn't suck.

[Margalis]

I don't know that many of the Marvel movies are bad (I turned off IM3 after like 15 minutes so maybe it is) but at the same time I have problems calling too many of them good either. Most of them are just the same - a generic enemy wants to kill a bunch of people using blue magic lasers and the quippy heroes stop them. Maybe along the way a minor character, one often introduced in the same movie, dies, but other than that there are no stakes.

Even though in most movies the earth / some planet / the universe is at risk the stakes still feel so low. Not even the characters take the situations seriously. So a series like Daredevil feels like it has higher stakes than the movies, even though there are only dozens of lives at risk instead of millions.

I'm sort of checked out of the Marvel movies at this point I think. I've seen most of them but the last few ones I watched barely held my interest.

[Lantyssa]

Pretty sure the last one was also about men in tights fighting an army of robots.

And for that matter so was Iron Man 2.

Well, Iron Man 3 was about an army of robots fighting men in tights.

[eldaec]

And all the others, in the end, are about men in tights fighting an army of something other than robots.

[Velorath]

Most of them are just the same - a generic enemy wants to kill a bunch of people using blue magic lasers and the quippy heroes stop them. Maybe along the way a minor character, one often introduced in the same movie, dies, but other than that there are no stakes.

They're superhero movies. I feel like you're pointing out that Fast and the Furious movies always have a bunch of driving sequences in them.

[eldaec]

I don't think anyone is arguing that there is anything wrong with that, just that there are now more fun but formulaic superhero movies released than any sane person could wish to watch, and in this context something like Thor 2 is hardly 'must see and rewatch'.

[Mattemeo]

I liked this even more second time round.

[Ironwood]

I don't think anyone is arguing that there is anything wrong with that, just that there are now more fun but formulaic superhero movies released than any sane person could wish to watch, and in this context something like Thor 2 is hardly 'must see and rewatch'.

You're wrong.

But subjectively so.

[Samwise]

I don't think anyone is arguing that there is anything wrong with that, just that there are now more fun but formulaic superhero movies released than any sane person could wish to watch, and in this context something like Thor 2 is hardly 'must see and rewatch'.

I would tend to agree with this.  I like all of these movies at the time that I see them, but I don't feel the desire to rewatch them for the most part.  Even the first Avengers movie was lots of fun when I saw it, but I watched it again when it hit Netflix and it was like "that was okay".  The first Iron Man holds up better to that test, mostly because RDJ was so delightful in it.  Same with Dark Knight and Heath Ledger.

[Velorath]

I don't think anyone is arguing that there is anything wrong with that, just that there are now more fun but formulaic superhero movies released than any sane person could wish to watch, and in this context something like Thor 2 is hardly 'must see and rewatch'.

That's getting close to the argument that's been going around for few years now that superhero movies are hitting an oversaturation point where the audience is going to stop showing up. The $200 million international opening of this movie seems to say otherwise, as does the fact that Marvel's last two movies were two of the top grossing movies in 2014, and Days of Future Past and Big Hero 6 were both huge international successes as well.

I'm not going to say that everybody needs to be watching these things. If Margalis isn't having fun with them he certainly doesn't need to force himself to sit through them and try to appreciate them intellectually. Pointing out that they all heavily involve superpowered dudes hitting each other in big action sequences is kind of odd thing to criticize them for though in the same way it would be odd to criticize Westerns for all having scenes where guys shoot at each other. Presumably that's a good part of the reason why you'd go to watch these movies.

[jgsugden]

I still think it's unfair to call all of these movies the same. They've managed to put quite a bit of diversity into the structure of these films, similar to the way that each of the comic books they release have their very own style. It is very possible for them to maintain a high level of quality and enjoyment for their audience for a very prolonged period.  I find it laughable to think the people would classify a new Punisher movie as being substantially similar to any of the Thor movies.

[Tannhauser]

How many decades did Westerns rule the silver screen?  As long as Marvel keeps making good movies with superheroes, people will go see them.  Time and again I doomcasted superhero movies; first came Thor then Guardians of the Galaxy.  No more.  If you want to watch Kramer vs. Kramer:  This Time Its Personal, it's not at the movies, it's on TV where many shows have launched a new Golden Age of TV.  If you want to see Iron Man rocket punch a fool or Vin Diesel drive a car off a skyscraper, you go to the movies. 

RDJ and Vin Diesel are two of the most major movie stars.  Let that sink it and realize that the times they are a changing baby. 

[DraconianOne]

Aaannyway...

I may buck the general trend and say I may have preferred this to the first Avengers film - and I really like that film.

[K9]

The first Captain America film was pretty fucking dire.

[Ironwood]

See, this is why conversations like this bother me.  So far, we've had two chaps, one of whom says Thor 2 was awful, another who says First Avenger was awful.

I liked them both.  A lot.

Which is why, I guess, having a LOT of these is a good idea.  I don't think I'm going to like Ant Man much, for example.  And I know that any Iron Man after One was a waste of my fucking time.

[eldaec]

I'm not saying they shouldn't make lots of them. Making enough to achieve a corporate critical mass is probably a big part of how they achieve the degree of consistency that they have in production quality and house style. Also they clearly make money.

The differences between Thor2 and Captain America, are mostly about which writer's jokes and melodrama you prefer. (And naturally, also about being wrong if you prefer T2 to CA1)

Perhaps Disney superhero movies are something different and interesting because of all of this. Makes me at least vaguely interested in each one purely to see how long they can keep it up. Easy to ignore what the team running this have achieved in maintaining the quality and style of a series for this long, something no one else has achieved in decades. Possibly the last example I can think of is the Carry On films?

[K9]

I'm not a comic person, so I think for me the first CA film (factoring in comments from here and elsewhere subsequently) represented an imbalance of fanservice to actual quality filmmaking. If there was no existing canon for that film the whole plot would have been panned as dumber than films like the Expendables. A secret army of laser nazis hiding out in switzerland for decades without anyone noticing? Some dude with an inexplicably wierd red head? It wasn't helped that Captain America is about the dullest superhero since Superman. Sure, I get that the whole point of his character is honour, duty, virtue, loyalty, so on and so yawn. He's still dull as bricks.

In contrast, the first Thor was more or less equally dumb, but was far more fun to watch because Chris Hemsworth as an overblown manchild romping around Arizona calling people 'peasant' was really pretty hilarious. He seemed to enjoy the role more than whoever the guy who plays captain Vanilla does. Iron Man was good because the plot wasn't even that ridiculous, and RDJ and Jeff Bridges are fucking phenomenal actors.

Thor 2 wasn't awful, but then again a lot of it didn't make any sense to me. Afterwards when everyone was saying "well obviously it was an infinity gem" I'm just sat here reflecting on the fact that I don't know what an infinity gem is, and after reading up on that and Thanos on wikipedia all I feel is that this is the sort of over-the-top fuckstupidity that makes me completely disinterested in the world they're trying to build. When I go and read about how The Beyonder is so powerful that his morning dump usually accidently wips out a few universes I just switch off. And I suspect that the majority of viewers won't know or care about this tuff, but the closer the films get to the more ludicrous aspects of the canon, the more they'll be turned off.

On the flip side, I bloody loved both of the X-Men films. They had great casts, clever plots that didn't rest on a whole host of inside knowledge, and they also aren't creeping into the realm of silly like the other MCU films are. Marvel's main problem I think is balancing existing canon and fanservice against making films that make sense and are entertaining to people. They've done OK so far, but if the films creep the same way comic narrative seem to have, I can see people bailing on them hard.

[Ironwood]

'Both' X-Men films ?  Can we narrow that down ?   

I get where you're coming from.  I am deliberately NOT commenting on whether anyone elses 'tastes' are 'wrong'.

Because that's a retarded position to take.

I agree entirely on the balancing act.  I know next to fuck all about the Infinity Stuff either before these films and I'm at a total loss as to how the hell they're going to make Thanos Interesting.  Like, at all.

[Setanta]

All I'm getting from   this is "some people like some movies, other people like other movies". I am at the point where I suspend belief and just go along for the ride and that includes all the Avengers and origin stories, F&F7, Interstellar, Xmen etc because they entertain. Are you not entertained?

Age of Ultron was good. Not Guardians of the Galaxy good, but a fun romp that made me wish I'd brought 2 boxes of popcorn.

[K9]

'Both' X-Men films ?  Can we narrow that down ?   

Haha, fair. The two most recent ones. I thought they entirely stood on their own feet as narratives, and were a whole ton of fun to boot.

I guess that's my main criticism of some of the Marvel films. They're either bad because the people in them or making them are bad (hulk movies, ghost rider, etc) or they're bad because the plots don't make sense without extensive outside knowledge. Imagine trying to jump into a late season of Game of Thrones without having read the books or seen the prior episodes, it wouldn't be entertaining at all. And while I get that comic book fans love all the subtle references and in jokes, when the plot begins to lean on them it's going to make the film suffer as a whole.