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Avengers 2: Age of Ultron - Seriously

Started by Mr Wiggles,

2,574 posts in this topic

kdoginohio

kdoginohio

Posted
Posted

6) Send Hulk into exile -- because they don't know how to write for him

Gosh, if only there was a key issue that could be turned into a movie that a gazillion people will pay to see. I mean, most of the gross will be Marvel Fan Girl waiting for another Wolverine butt-shot! :D

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ChicksCosmiComics

ChicksCosmiComics

Posted
Posted
when I spoke to him after he saw this one he compared it to Ironman 3 as they were just fighting a load of robots... Again.

 

That is my biggest complaint with this movie. I am so tired of the huge battle with robots we seem to get once or twice a year from Hollywood.

 

I also think the comic book Ultron looks much scarier than what we got on screen. The mouth could have been awesome with a red glow deep inside that modulated to the voice. Instead we got a more or less human mouth on a robot!

 

Overall, a decent movie, but please, let's not have any more massive heroes versus robots in any more Marvel movies for a while.

 

Yeah, it does make me wonder how many more of these they can make before people start losing interest. I enjoyed the movie, but it felt like it was a little played out. The battles are really starting to run together.

 

I think they're aware of the potential burnout with these characters and this type of movie, that's why they had to add more characters, and up the internal conflict, ultimately resulting in civil war. I think they know this whole 'MCU' thing has a somewhat limited shelf life, and while they'll do their best and get all the money they can, they'll be moving I think to outer space (or very street level) for a while after Avengers Infinity War ends.

 

Inhumans, Guadians of the Galaxy 3 (now with Captain Marvel), Nova, Warlock?, Inhumans 2, leading to something like annihilation? maybe mix in a few one-offs (Ms. Marvel for the kids, howard the duck, Punisher? Winter Soldier?)

 

I don't disagree but yet I do disagree. Marvel has created real movies with intertwined plots solid actors. No longer are these Superhero movies. I see the Disney Marvel series more like James Bond and that series has lasted 50+ years. eventually the well will run dry but not as soon as you think.

 

Also Marvel is creating new generations of fans which will help sustain things into the future. DC on the other hand who knows.

 

I walked out of the theater after avengers 2 and on the wall was 2 adds for Batman vs. Superman just thought how lame that movie will look compared to Marvel. Each Marvel movie is better than the last. Can't wait to see what the do with Doctor Strange

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JiveTurkeyMoFo

JiveTurkeyMoFo

Posted
Posted

So, the wife and I finally got to see it last night.....here are some thoughts and observations:

 

 

The Good:

 

- Enjoyed the final set-piece scene quite a bit. Yeah, it was another army of generic bad guys to Smash, but the idea of creating your own meteor out of a city to hasten along an extinction level event was a nice departure from the usual bad-guy-wants-to-destroy-the-world scenario. Didn't realize the importance of the church and the do-hickey inside until I remembered Ultron's comment from earlier in the movie on how the elders built it in the middle of the city, making it crucial for his plan . All in all, an excellent final scene.

 

- The down-time at Barton's "safehouse" was a good way to consolidate previous events and to further character development. Enjoyed it and virtually all of the interactions between the main characters.

 

The Bad:

 

- James Spader is a talented, witty, sardonic character actor with a great voice. Sadly, at some point it was decided that he should supply more then just the voice of Ultron, but the personality as well. I didn't think it worked, AT ALL. Perhaps largely due to the missing development of Ultron as a character, but the -script and Spader's treatment of it made the mad Robot come across like a heel from a late-night wrestling show in a run-down American Legion hall. Loki was infinitely more palatable in the first movie, and perhaps in large part because we already had an understanding of him from the previous Thor film. In this one, we got an alien AI that goes from being the intended sentinel of humanity to it's destroyer in about three milliseconds. There you go, instant world-destroying bad guy. Again, it just seemed hollow and empty, and I really couldn't buy it.

 

The Ugly:

 

- Really, enjoyed 75% of the movie and thought it was well constructed (outside of Ultron), but I couldn't help feeling like I did watching Kingdom of Heaven in the theatres; that there were large, crucial chunks of the movie missing and my understanding/enjoyment of the movie hinged on my imagination filling in those missing pieces. I HATE that. BTW, for anyone who has ever seen both theatrical and director's cut versions of KOH, you know what I mean...they are totally different movies, with the director's cut giving you much more background and understanding of the characters and their motivations.

 

With AOU, I felt like I went to go see a Four Act Play, left for intermission after Act I and returned as Act 3 was about to get underway. I understand that as far as editing goes, scenes that develop backstory are always the first to go, but they shouldn't be if they leave the main antagonist as a hollow, one dimensional bad guy. As some have noted earlier, the transition from Ultron leaving Avengers HQ shortly after his "birth" via the net, to meeting with the Romanoffs in the church (with new body and all) was way too abrupt. Clearly, we missed something important in between. Of course, the decision on how and what to cut largely falls on the Director and the Editor, but I can't imagine Joss Whedon really thought a three hour movie was going to be what the studio wanted, so a large portion of the blame falls on him for the bloated plot having to be shoe-horned into a clunky, final edit. I suppose they always could've cut out a few more superfluous action scenes and kept more of the storyline intact, but that wouldn't appease the studio who wants to keep as many expensive 3D sequences in as possible. And now, Marvel will have a whole new built-in revenue stream as loyalists and fellow fanboys clamor for what will hopefully be a more satisfying Director's Cut when the Blu-Ray is released. Genius really.

 

All in all, a B- from me. I'll happily view the Director's Cut when its released, but I won't be buying any more tickets to watch this one in the theatres. Unlike Captain America: Winter Soldier (which was a near perfect superhero movie that I saw three times in the theatre), this movie won't be getting any more of my money.

 

 

 

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SW3D

SW3D

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Posted

Awesome review! I'm going to see it today and I had this feeling things were going to be truncated due to an event movie that deserves a 3 hour running to tell its full story versus the studio forcing it to be chopped to allow more showtimes.

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JiveTurkeyMoFo

JiveTurkeyMoFo

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Posted

Some more elaboration on my perspective of the Ultron character....

 

 

Remember the scene where Vision told Tony that Ultron hated him most of all.....why? Why would Ultron hate Tony Stark, his own creator? Why did he keep insisting on being free from his "strings"? Because, I didn't see either strings or a basis for Ultron's hate in the movie, as far as a basis for his motivation. I keep thinking the deleted scenes would have more interaction between the Ultron AI and Stark...perhaps a creator/creation angle, or father/son dynamic, which would've made Ultron more of a three dimensional character. Instead, we got what we got. The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am with Whedon's treatment of the character in the theatrical cut.

 

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Mr Sneeze

Mr Sneeze

Posted
Posted
So, the wife and I finally got to see it last night.....here are some thoughts and observations:

 

 

The Good:

 

- Enjoyed the final set-piece scene quite a bit. Yeah, it was another army of generic bad guys to Smash, but the idea of creating your own meteor out of a city to hasten along an extinction level event was a nice departure from the usual bad-guy-wants-to-destroy-the-world scenario. Didn't realize the importance of the church and the do-hickey inside until I remembered Ultron's comment from earlier in the movie on how the elders built it in the middle of the city, making it crucial for his plan . All in all, an excellent final scene.

 

- The down-time at Barton's "safehouse" was a good way to consolidate previous events and to further character development. Enjoyed it and virtually all of the interactions between the main characters.

 

The Bad:

 

- James Spader is a talented, witty, sardonic character actor with a great voice. Sadly, at some point it was decided that he should supply more then just the voice of Ultron, but the personality as well. I didn't think it worked, AT ALL. Perhaps largely due to the missing development of Ultron as a character, but the -script and Spader's treatment of it made the mad Robot come across like a heel from a late-night wrestling show in a run-down American Legion hall. Loki was infinitely more palatable in the first movie, and perhaps in large part because we already had an understanding of him from the previous Thor film. In this one, we got an alien AI that goes from being the intended sentinel of humanity to it's destroyer in about three milliseconds. There you go, instant world-destroying bad guy. Again, it just seemed hollow and empty, and I really couldn't buy it.

 

The Ugly:

 

- Really, enjoyed 75% of the movie and thought it was well constructed (outside of Ultron), but I couldn't help feeling like I did watching Kingdom of Heaven in the theatres; that there were large, crucial chunks of the movie missing and my understanding/enjoyment of the movie hinged on my imagination filling in those missing pieces. I HATE that. BTW, for anyone who has ever seen both theatrical and director's cut versions of KOH, you know what I mean...they are totally different movies, with the director's cut giving you much more background and understanding of the characters and their motivations.

 

With AOU, I felt like I went to go see a Four Act Play, left for intermission after Act I and returned as Act 3 was about to get underway. I understand that as far as editing goes, scenes that develop backstory are always the first to go, but they shouldn't be if they leave the main antagonist as a hollow, one dimensional bad guy. As some have noted earlier, the transition from Ultron leaving Avengers HQ shortly after his "birth" via the net, to meeting with the Romanoffs in the church (with new body and all) was way too abrupt. Clearly, we missed something important in between. Of course, the decision on how and what to cut largely falls on the Director and the Editor, but I can't imagine Joss Whedon really thought a three hour movie was going to be what the studio wanted, so a large portion of the blame falls on him for the bloated plot having to be shoe-horned into a clunky, final edit. I suppose they always could've cut out a few more superfluous action scenes and kept more of the storyline intact, but that wouldn't appease the studio who wants to keep as many expensive 3D sequences in as possible. And now, Marvel will have a whole new built-in revenue stream as loyalists and fellow fanboys clamor for what will hopefully be a more satisfying Director's Cut when the Blu-Ray is released. Genius really.

 

All in all, a B- from me. I'll happily view the Director's Cut when its released, but I won't be buying any more tickets to watch this one in the theatres. Unlike Captain America: Winter Soldier (which was a near perfect superhero movie that I saw three times in the theatre), this movie won't be getting any more of my money.

 

 

 

Great review with some good insights.

 

 

I really enjoyed the movie as I don't really put a lot of demands on the genre and willfully blind myself to some glaring plot holes. It's all good fun and great entertainment. But one thing made me almost laugh out loud, which was the idea that lifting a city into the air and dropping it is going to cause an extinction event.

 

The Chicxulub meteor impacted the Earth with an estimated speed of 30000m/s, the city afloat in AoU (if suspended from 1km) would impact at approximately 500m/s. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the velocity so if you do the math, the city's kinetic energy on impact would be 0.03% of the Chicxulub meteor.

 

Chicxulub had an estimated yield of 130 000 000 mega tons so at 0.03% that leaves the city impact with a yield of about 0.5 mega tons - hardly extinction level (I wouldn't want to be under it though).

 

I know there are holes in the reasoning and maybe I am missing something completely but I thought it was kind of funny.

 

 

 

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Mr. Hog

Mr. Hog

Posted
Posted
So, the wife and I finally got to see it last night.....here are some thoughts and observations:

 

 

The Good:

 

- Enjoyed the final set-piece scene quite a bit. Yeah, it was another army of generic bad guys to Smash, but the idea of creating your own meteor out of a city to hasten along an extinction level event was a nice departure from the usual bad-guy-wants-to-destroy-the-world scenario. Didn't realize the importance of the church and the do-hickey inside until I remembered Ultron's comment from earlier in the movie on how the elders built it in the middle of the city, making it crucial for his plan . All in all, an excellent final scene.

 

- The down-time at Barton's "safehouse" was a good way to consolidate previous events and to further character development. Enjoyed it and virtually all of the interactions between the main characters.

 

The Bad:

 

- James Spader is a talented, witty, sardonic character actor with a great voice. Sadly, at some point it was decided that he should supply more then just the voice of Ultron, but the personality as well. I didn't think it worked, AT ALL. Perhaps largely due to the missing development of Ultron as a character, but the -script and Spader's treatment of it made the mad Robot come across like a heel from a late-night wrestling show in a run-down American Legion hall. Loki was infinitely more palatable in the first movie, and perhaps in large part because we already had an understanding of him from the previous Thor film. In this one, we got an alien AI that goes from being the intended sentinel of humanity to it's destroyer in about three milliseconds. There you go, instant world-destroying bad guy. Again, it just seemed hollow and empty, and I really couldn't buy it.

 

The Ugly:

 

- Really, enjoyed 75% of the movie and thought it was well constructed (outside of Ultron), but I couldn't help feeling like I did watching Kingdom of Heaven in the theatres; that there were large, crucial chunks of the movie missing and my understanding/enjoyment of the movie hinged on my imagination filling in those missing pieces. I HATE that. BTW, for anyone who has ever seen both theatrical and director's cut versions of KOH, you know what I mean...they are totally different movies, with the director's cut giving you much more background and understanding of the characters and their motivations.

 

With AOU, I felt like I went to go see a Four Act Play, left for intermission after Act I and returned as Act 3 was about to get underway. I understand that as far as editing goes, scenes that develop backstory are always the first to go, but they shouldn't be if they leave the main antagonist as a hollow, one dimensional bad guy. As some have noted earlier, the transition from Ultron leaving Avengers HQ shortly after his "birth" via the net, to meeting with the Romanoffs in the church (with new body and all) was way too abrupt. Clearly, we missed something important in between. Of course, the decision on how and what to cut largely falls on the Director and the Editor, but I can't imagine Joss Whedon really thought a three hour movie was going to be what the studio wanted, so a large portion of the blame falls on him for the bloated plot having to be shoe-horned into a clunky, final edit. I suppose they always could've cut out a few more superfluous action scenes and kept more of the storyline intact, but that wouldn't appease the studio who wants to keep as many expensive 3D sequences in as possible. And now, Marvel will have a whole new built-in revenue stream as loyalists and fellow fanboys clamor for what will hopefully be a more satisfying Director's Cut when the Blu-Ray is released. Genius really.

 

All in all, a B- from me. I'll happily view the Director's Cut when its released, but I won't be buying any more tickets to watch this one in the theatres. Unlike Captain America: Winter Soldier (which was a near perfect superhero movie that I saw three times in the theatre), this movie won't be getting any more of my money.

 

 

 

Great review with some good insights.

 

 

I really enjoyed the movie as I don't really put a lot of demands on the genre and willfully blind myself to some glaring plot holes. It's all good fun and great entertainment. But one thing made me almost laugh out loud, which was the idea that lifting a city into the air and dropping it is going to cause an extinction event.

 

The Chicxulub meteor impacted the Earth with an estimated speed of 30000m/s, the city afloat in AoU (if suspended from 1km) would impact at approximately 500m/s. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the velocity so if you do the math, the city's kinetic energy on impact would be 0.03% of the Chicxulub meteor.

 

Chicxulub had an estimated yield of 130 000 000 mega tons so at 0.03% that leaves the city impact with a yield of about 0.5 mega tons - hardly extinction level (I wouldn't want to be under it though).

 

I know there are holes in the reasoning and maybe I am missing something completely but I thought it was kind of funny.

 

 

 

 

This just gave me such a nerd chubby, you have no idea.

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MetalPSI

MetalPSI

Posted
Posted
So, the wife and I finally got to see it last night.....here are some thoughts and observations:

 

 

The Good:

 

- Enjoyed the final set-piece scene quite a bit. Yeah, it was another army of generic bad guys to Smash, but the idea of creating your own meteor out of a city to hasten along an extinction level event was a nice departure from the usual bad-guy-wants-to-destroy-the-world scenario. Didn't realize the importance of the church and the do-hickey inside until I remembered Ultron's comment from earlier in the movie on how the elders built it in the middle of the city, making it crucial for his plan . All in all, an excellent final scene.

 

- The down-time at Barton's "safehouse" was a good way to consolidate previous events and to further character development. Enjoyed it and virtually all of the interactions between the main characters.

 

The Bad:

 

- James Spader is a talented, witty, sardonic character actor with a great voice. Sadly, at some point it was decided that he should supply more then just the voice of Ultron, but the personality as well. I didn't think it worked, AT ALL. Perhaps largely due to the missing development of Ultron as a character, but the -script and Spader's treatment of it made the mad Robot come across like a heel from a late-night wrestling show in a run-down American Legion hall. Loki was infinitely more palatable in the first movie, and perhaps in large part because we already had an understanding of him from the previous Thor film. In this one, we got an alien AI that goes from being the intended sentinel of humanity to it's destroyer in about three milliseconds. There you go, instant world-destroying bad guy. Again, it just seemed hollow and empty, and I really couldn't buy it.

 

The Ugly:

 

- Really, enjoyed 75% of the movie and thought it was well constructed (outside of Ultron), but I couldn't help feeling like I did watching Kingdom of Heaven in the theatres; that there were large, crucial chunks of the movie missing and my understanding/enjoyment of the movie hinged on my imagination filling in those missing pieces. I HATE that. BTW, for anyone who has ever seen both theatrical and director's cut versions of KOH, you know what I mean...they are totally different movies, with the director's cut giving you much more background and understanding of the characters and their motivations.

 

With AOU, I felt like I went to go see a Four Act Play, left for intermission after Act I and returned as Act 3 was about to get underway. I understand that as far as editing goes, scenes that develop backstory are always the first to go, but they shouldn't be if they leave the main antagonist as a hollow, one dimensional bad guy. As some have noted earlier, the transition from Ultron leaving Avengers HQ shortly after his "birth" via the net, to meeting with the Romanoffs in the church (with new body and all) was way too abrupt. Clearly, we missed something important in between. Of course, the decision on how and what to cut largely falls on the Director and the Editor, but I can't imagine Joss Whedon really thought a three hour movie was going to be what the studio wanted, so a large portion of the blame falls on him for the bloated plot having to be shoe-horned into a clunky, final edit. I suppose they always could've cut out a few more superfluous action scenes and kept more of the storyline intact, but that wouldn't appease the studio who wants to keep as many expensive 3D sequences in as possible. And now, Marvel will have a whole new built-in revenue stream as loyalists and fellow fanboys clamor for what will hopefully be a more satisfying Director's Cut when the Blu-Ray is released. Genius really.

 

All in all, a B- from me. I'll happily view the Director's Cut when its released, but I won't be buying any more tickets to watch this one in the theatres. Unlike Captain America: Winter Soldier (which was a near perfect superhero movie that I saw three times in the theatre), this movie won't be getting any more of my money.

 

 

 

Great review with some good insights.

 

 

I really enjoyed the movie as I don't really put a lot of demands on the genre and willfully blind myself to some glaring plot holes. It's all good fun and great entertainment. But one thing made me almost laugh out loud, which was the idea that lifting a city into the air and dropping it is going to cause an extinction event.

 

The Chicxulub meteor impacted the Earth with an estimated speed of 30000m/s, the city afloat in AoU (if suspended from 1km) would impact at approximately 500m/s. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the velocity so if you do the math, the city's kinetic energy on impact would be 0.03% of the Chicxulub meteor.

 

Chicxulub had an estimated yield of 130 000 000 mega tons so at 0.03% that leaves the city impact with a yield of about 0.5 mega tons - hardly extinction level (I wouldn't want to be under it though).

 

I know there are holes in the reasoning and maybe I am missing something completely but I thought it was kind of funny.

 

 

 

 

This just gave me such a nerd chubby, you have no idea.

 

I also found this laughable, but was funny to see how others in the theater were riveted to their seats

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Comicopolis

Comicopolis

Posted
Posted
So, the wife and I finally got to see it last night.....here are some thoughts and observations:

 

 

The Good:

 

- Enjoyed the final set-piece scene quite a bit. Yeah, it was another army of generic bad guys to Smash, but the idea of creating your own meteor out of a city to hasten along an extinction level event was a nice departure from the usual bad-guy-wants-to-destroy-the-world scenario. Didn't realize the importance of the church and the do-hickey inside until I remembered Ultron's comment from earlier in the movie on how the elders built it in the middle of the city, making it crucial for his plan . All in all, an excellent final scene.

 

- The down-time at Barton's "safehouse" was a good way to consolidate previous events and to further character development. Enjoyed it and virtually all of the interactions between the main characters.

 

The Bad:

 

- James Spader is a talented, witty, sardonic character actor with a great voice. Sadly, at some point it was decided that he should supply more then just the voice of Ultron, but the personality as well. I didn't think it worked, AT ALL. Perhaps largely due to the missing development of Ultron as a character, but the -script and Spader's treatment of it made the mad Robot come across like a heel from a late-night wrestling show in a run-down American Legion hall. Loki was infinitely more palatable in the first movie, and perhaps in large part because we already had an understanding of him from the previous Thor film. In this one, we got an alien AI that goes from being the intended sentinel of humanity to it's destroyer in about three milliseconds. There you go, instant world-destroying bad guy. Again, it just seemed hollow and empty, and I really couldn't buy it.

 

The Ugly:

 

- Really, enjoyed 75% of the movie and thought it was well constructed (outside of Ultron), but I couldn't help feeling like I did watching Kingdom of Heaven in the theatres; that there were large, crucial chunks of the movie missing and my understanding/enjoyment of the movie hinged on my imagination filling in those missing pieces. I HATE that. BTW, for anyone who has ever seen both theatrical and director's cut versions of KOH, you know what I mean...they are totally different movies, with the director's cut giving you much more background and understanding of the characters and their motivations.

 

With AOU, I felt like I went to go see a Four Act Play, left for intermission after Act I and returned as Act 3 was about to get underway. I understand that as far as editing goes, scenes that develop backstory are always the first to go, but they shouldn't be if they leave the main antagonist as a hollow, one dimensional bad guy. As some have noted earlier, the transition from Ultron leaving Avengers HQ shortly after his "birth" via the net, to meeting with the Romanoffs in the church (with new body and all) was way too abrupt. Clearly, we missed something important in between. Of course, the decision on how and what to cut largely falls on the Director and the Editor, but I can't imagine Joss Whedon really thought a three hour movie was going to be what the studio wanted, so a large portion of the blame falls on him for the bloated plot having to be shoe-horned into a clunky, final edit. I suppose they always could've cut out a few more superfluous action scenes and kept more of the storyline intact, but that wouldn't appease the studio who wants to keep as many expensive 3D sequences in as possible. And now, Marvel will have a whole new built-in revenue stream as loyalists and fellow fanboys clamor for what will hopefully be a more satisfying Director's Cut when the Blu-Ray is released. Genius really.

 

All in all, a B- from me. I'll happily view the Director's Cut when its released, but I won't be buying any more tickets to watch this one in the theatres. Unlike Captain America: Winter Soldier (which was a near perfect superhero movie that I saw three times in the theatre), this movie won't be getting any more of my money.

 

 

 

Great review with some good insights.

 

 

I really enjoyed the movie as I don't really put a lot of demands on the genre and willfully blind myself to some glaring plot holes. It's all good fun and great entertainment. But one thing made me almost laugh out loud, which was the idea that lifting a city into the air and dropping it is going to cause an extinction event.

 

The Chicxulub meteor impacted the Earth with an estimated speed of 30000m/s, the city afloat in AoU (if suspended from 1km) would impact at approximately 500m/s. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the velocity so if you do the math, the city's kinetic energy on impact would be 0.03% of the Chicxulub meteor.

 

Chicxulub had an estimated yield of 130 000 000 mega tons so at 0.03% that leaves the city impact with a yield of about 0.5 mega tons - hardly extinction level (I wouldn't want to be under it though).

 

I know there are holes in the reasoning and maybe I am missing something completely but I thought it was kind of funny.

 

 

 

 

This just gave me such a nerd chubby, you have no idea.

 

I also found this laughable, but was funny to see how others in the theater were riveted to their seats

 

How far up did the city get then?

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JiveTurkeyMoFo

JiveTurkeyMoFo

Posted
Posted
So, the wife and I finally got to see it last night.....here are some thoughts and observations:

 

 

The Good:

 

- Enjoyed the final set-piece scene quite a bit. Yeah, it was another army of generic bad guys to Smash, but the idea of creating your own meteor out of a city to hasten along an extinction level event was a nice departure from the usual bad-guy-wants-to-destroy-the-world scenario. Didn't realize the importance of the church and the do-hickey inside until I remembered Ultron's comment from earlier in the movie on how the elders built it in the middle of the city, making it crucial for his plan . All in all, an excellent final scene.

 

- The down-time at Barton's "safehouse" was a good way to consolidate previous events and to further character development. Enjoyed it and virtually all of the interactions between the main characters.

 

The Bad:

 

- James Spader is a talented, witty, sardonic character actor with a great voice. Sadly, at some point it was decided that he should supply more then just the voice of Ultron, but the personality as well. I didn't think it worked, AT ALL. Perhaps largely due to the missing development of Ultron as a character, but the -script and Spader's treatment of it made the mad Robot come across like a heel from a late-night wrestling show in a run-down American Legion hall. Loki was infinitely more palatable in the first movie, and perhaps in large part because we already had an understanding of him from the previous Thor film. In this one, we got an alien AI that goes from being the intended sentinel of humanity to it's destroyer in about three milliseconds. There you go, instant world-destroying bad guy. Again, it just seemed hollow and empty, and I really couldn't buy it.

 

The Ugly:

 

- Really, enjoyed 75% of the movie and thought it was well constructed (outside of Ultron), but I couldn't help feeling like I did watching Kingdom of Heaven in the theatres; that there were large, crucial chunks of the movie missing and my understanding/enjoyment of the movie hinged on my imagination filling in those missing pieces. I HATE that. BTW, for anyone who has ever seen both theatrical and director's cut versions of KOH, you know what I mean...they are totally different movies, with the director's cut giving you much more background and understanding of the characters and their motivations.

 

With AOU, I felt like I went to go see a Four Act Play, left for intermission after Act I and returned as Act 3 was about to get underway. I understand that as far as editing goes, scenes that develop backstory are always the first to go, but they shouldn't be if they leave the main antagonist as a hollow, one dimensional bad guy. As some have noted earlier, the transition from Ultron leaving Avengers HQ shortly after his "birth" via the net, to meeting with the Romanoffs in the church (with new body and all) was way too abrupt. Clearly, we missed something important in between. Of course, the decision on how and what to cut largely falls on the Director and the Editor, but I can't imagine Joss Whedon really thought a three hour movie was going to be what the studio wanted, so a large portion of the blame falls on him for the bloated plot having to be shoe-horned into a clunky, final edit. I suppose they always could've cut out a few more superfluous action scenes and kept more of the storyline intact, but that wouldn't appease the studio who wants to keep as many expensive 3D sequences in as possible. And now, Marvel will have a whole new built-in revenue stream as loyalists and fellow fanboys clamor for what will hopefully be a more satisfying Director's Cut when the Blu-Ray is released. Genius really.

 

All in all, a B- from me. I'll happily view the Director's Cut when its released, but I won't be buying any more tickets to watch this one in the theatres. Unlike Captain America: Winter Soldier (which was a near perfect superhero movie that I saw three times in the theatre), this movie won't be getting any more of my money.

 

 

 

Great review with some good insights.

 

 

I really enjoyed the movie as I don't really put a lot of demands on the genre and willfully blind myself to some glaring plot holes. It's all good fun and great entertainment. But one thing made me almost laugh out loud, which was the idea that lifting a city into the air and dropping it is going to cause an extinction event.

 

The Chicxulub meteor impacted the Earth with an estimated speed of 30000m/s, the city afloat in AoU (if suspended from 1km) would impact at approximately 500m/s. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the velocity so if you do the math, the city's kinetic energy on impact would be 0.03% of the Chicxulub meteor.

 

Chicxulub had an estimated yield of 130 000 000 mega tons so at 0.03% that leaves the city impact with a yield of about 0.5 mega tons - hardly extinction level (I wouldn't want to be under it though).

 

I know there are holes in the reasoning and maybe I am missing something completely but I thought it was kind of funny.

 

 

 

 

This just gave me such a nerd chubby, you have no idea.

 

I also found this laughable, but was funny to see how others in the theater were riveted to their seats

 

How far up did the city get then?

 

 

I seem to remember it being well above the clouds at one point when Widow commented that there were worse ways to die....and Cap remarked that the air was getting pretty thin right before the last lifeboat left. Several (2-3) miles for sure it would seem.

 

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Mr Sneeze

Mr Sneeze

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So, the wife and I finally got to see it last night.....here are some thoughts and observations:

 

 

The Good:

 

- Enjoyed the final set-piece scene quite a bit. Yeah, it was another army of generic bad guys to Smash, but the idea of creating your own meteor out of a city to hasten along an extinction level event was a nice departure from the usual bad-guy-wants-to-destroy-the-world scenario. Didn't realize the importance of the church and the do-hickey inside until I remembered Ultron's comment from earlier in the movie on how the elders built it in the middle of the city, making it crucial for his plan . All in all, an excellent final scene.

 

- The down-time at Barton's "safehouse" was a good way to consolidate previous events and to further character development. Enjoyed it and virtually all of the interactions between the main characters.

 

The Bad:

 

- James Spader is a talented, witty, sardonic character actor with a great voice. Sadly, at some point it was decided that he should supply more then just the voice of Ultron, but the personality as well. I didn't think it worked, AT ALL. Perhaps largely due to the missing development of Ultron as a character, but the -script and Spader's treatment of it made the mad Robot come across like a heel from a late-night wrestling show in a run-down American Legion hall. Loki was infinitely more palatable in the first movie, and perhaps in large part because we already had an understanding of him from the previous Thor film. In this one, we got an alien AI that goes from being the intended sentinel of humanity to it's destroyer in about three milliseconds. There you go, instant world-destroying bad guy. Again, it just seemed hollow and empty, and I really couldn't buy it.

 

The Ugly:

 

- Really, enjoyed 75% of the movie and thought it was well constructed (outside of Ultron), but I couldn't help feeling like I did watching Kingdom of Heaven in the theatres; that there were large, crucial chunks of the movie missing and my understanding/enjoyment of the movie hinged on my imagination filling in those missing pieces. I HATE that. BTW, for anyone who has ever seen both theatrical and director's cut versions of KOH, you know what I mean...they are totally different movies, with the director's cut giving you much more background and understanding of the characters and their motivations.

 

With AOU, I felt like I went to go see a Four Act Play, left for intermission after Act I and returned as Act 3 was about to get underway. I understand that as far as editing goes, scenes that develop backstory are always the first to go, but they shouldn't be if they leave the main antagonist as a hollow, one dimensional bad guy. As some have noted earlier, the transition from Ultron leaving Avengers HQ shortly after his "birth" via the net, to meeting with the Romanoffs in the church (with new body and all) was way too abrupt. Clearly, we missed something important in between. Of course, the decision on how and what to cut largely falls on the Director and the Editor, but I can't imagine Joss Whedon really thought a three hour movie was going to be what the studio wanted, so a large portion of the blame falls on him for the bloated plot having to be shoe-horned into a clunky, final edit. I suppose they always could've cut out a few more superfluous action scenes and kept more of the storyline intact, but that wouldn't appease the studio who wants to keep as many expensive 3D sequences in as possible. And now, Marvel will have a whole new built-in revenue stream as loyalists and fellow fanboys clamor for what will hopefully be a more satisfying Director's Cut when the Blu-Ray is released. Genius really.

 

All in all, a B- from me. I'll happily view the Director's Cut when its released, but I won't be buying any more tickets to watch this one in the theatres. Unlike Captain America: Winter Soldier (which was a near perfect superhero movie that I saw three times in the theatre), this movie won't be getting any more of my money.

 

 

 

Great review with some good insights.

 

 

I really enjoyed the movie as I don't really put a lot of demands on the genre and willfully blind myself to some glaring plot holes. It's all good fun and great entertainment. But one thing made me almost laugh out loud, which was the idea that lifting a city into the air and dropping it is going to cause an extinction event.

 

The Chicxulub meteor impacted the Earth with an estimated speed of 30000m/s, the city afloat in AoU (if suspended from 1km) would impact at approximately 500m/s. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the velocity so if you do the math, the city's kinetic energy on impact would be 0.03% of the Chicxulub meteor.

 

Chicxulub had an estimated yield of 130 000 000 mega tons so at 0.03% that leaves the city impact with a yield of about 0.5 mega tons - hardly extinction level (I wouldn't want to be under it though).

 

I know there are holes in the reasoning and maybe I am missing something completely but I thought it was kind of funny.

 

 

 

 

This just gave me such a nerd chubby, you have no idea.

 

I also found this laughable, but was funny to see how others in the theater were riveted to their seats

 

How far up did the city get then?

 

 

 

:boo:

 

I guess I need to hand in my pocket protector! My first calculation was for the city dropping from 10km not 1km so no big deal there. However 0.03% of 130 000 000 mega tons is 39 000 mega tons (not the 0.5 mega tons I have above - sorry about that) Extinction level? (shrug) I would guess yes.

 

But since I have a healthy sized foot in my mouth now, The Chicxulub meteor was estimated to be 10k in diameter and I'm guessing the city was maybe 1km across and suspended 1km. It would then land with a speed of 140m/s with a mass 1/10 of Chicxulub with a yield of 280 mega tons. Extinction level? maybe (shrug)

 

Neat!

 

 

 

 

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