He seemed to do fine at the end of AoU. And he was pushed off to fall and forcibly become the Hulk.

From what we've seen. Hulk and Banner are their own men for the most part. Banner isn't influenced by Hulk. Though Hulk is influenced. Banner "directs" Hulk's state now when he changes.

The Helicarrier and South Africa moments were out of either's hands in stopping what happened.

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i was really disappointed with this one. everything about it just lacked the fun and spark that i enjoyed about the first. presentation was great, dressing was fine, but story and overreaching story arcs made it a dull mess for me. really disappointed this was the first 3D on my mancave setup. oh well!

this was great!!

Hrm. I thought it had a better plot than the first one. The villain was actually doing things, the fights were better, their one big tracking shot here was better, Whedon flexed his visuals, etc. Among all that there is issues... Thor's dream for example. There's just no way that that wow factor could be on the same level. As a singular piece of a product, it's better. It may not be as entertaining though. Also... there is a lot less fat on this one than the first one.

Whedon was the wrong person for both of these films. I, for one, can't wait to see what a competent director can do with these characters.

More than anything, this one had solid character arcs for almost all the characters, which is no easy task for such a huge cast, not to mention having to move the Marvel cinematic universe chess pieces around midst all that.

Agee that the plot was better and characters had more to do in this one then in the first movie. Disagree that Whedon was the wrong choice for these films. This was his best stuff since the early seasons of Buffy.

Thor's magic jacuzzi. Heh.

I don't like Whedon as a director overall, but I think he did alright here overall, and I think he's several leagues better than the Russo Bros that everybody seems to be championing these days.

Hrmmmmm. No. I don't think he was the wrong one. I think he was probably the only one to properly set up what Marvel wanted and also write it to make some sense of it all. It's not perfect but it was a colossal undertaking for any one director to do.

Yeah. The characters had more to them. People bitch about the Widow/Banner thing but I don't see any issue w/ it. These characters are living things in their world. We don't end a movie and IMMEDIATELY continue off that point in the next one. They do things between films. We fall into their stories. And some of it is constructed for us to follow and other things we fall into cuz these people have lived their lives in between where we jump in and out.


I like him fine. I always thought he had crap staging for framing for the most part. Avengers 1 is framed so much like a TV show that it doesn't feel big enough for the framing he chose.

Saying that, I still think he was the right man for these films. He flexed his muscles in Avengers 2, while also having to be tasked to follow studio wants, and was successful for the most part. BUT The Russos had a huge leap in their directing skills w/ Cap 2. Everything they did was pretty rock solid. Especially the action. Really showing off the characters, the actors too, in doing their thing. I like Cap, the character, but he was never really shown off to the maximum that is Steve Rogers in physicality. Cap 2 was a much better film than Avengers 1. Maybe even Avengers 2 even. They utilized their ration to great efforts in showing off this world. The pace was great too. It was very well synced film.

Whedon wasn't the problem, having to accommodate all the stuff to set up the next umpteenth movies was the problem.

And I know a lot of people mentioned this earlier in the thread, but jesus fuck the SFX are absolutely awful in the opening sequence.

10 Reasons Why Age of Ultron Doesn't Suck: http://furiousfanboys.com/2015/10/10...n-doesnt-suck/

Indeed.

That's just a list of stuff that's cool in the movie. It doesn't have any rebuttals of the various criticisms of the film.

When the movie opened in the theater I thought it was animation or a dream sequence. It was terrible.

It'll be interesting to see how they handle this size cast in Civil War. We'll have all of these characters except for Hulk, plus several new ones.

Visually Whedon's films look like they cost a lot less than they actually did. At times the first Avengers looked like a TV Movie.

On a second viewing, I think the farmhouse would be fine if it weren't for the Banner/Romanov interlude. I never bought the romance between them, even though it could make sense on paper, and the two of them having a pity party about not being able to have kids is insufferable. That one sequence is enough to throw off the entire second act, although to be fair the Thor scrying pool doesn't help either.

I disagree, while the action was pretty solid I felt like any scenes featuring basically anything else was just awkwardly staged. I'm in an extreme minority there but while I liked the movie overall, a lot of it just landed with a thud for me --it was one movie where it was painfully obvious I was watching adults play dress up.

That said, the FX team did phenomenal work in that movie and the pacing was pretty good.

Overall, the film is better on a second viewing, but it goes on too long (which is funny because the first time I saw it I thought it was too short and needed more connective tissue). The Thor vision stuff feels out of place, and the Hulk/Widow romance simply does not work. The third act is way too long. It takes too much time to get from them knocking down Ultron (when Iron Man, Thor, and The Vision simultaneously blast him) to blowing up the floating city. It gets fatiguing.

Whedon had a lot to juggle here and most of it works, but the stuff that doesn't REALLY doesn't and it's jarring.

You're one of the weirdos that don't like most of the MCU movies, right?

yup, and I don't like Whedon so it's weird defending him. I really liked Guardians and the first Iron Man, the rest have been hit or miss with me.

Gave this a second look this weekend and in some ways it worked better for me than the initial theatrical viewing. It's a flawed film and the sense of wonder and novelty of the first has worn off considerably, but it's much more ambitious with it's storytelling. I appreciate that Whedon tries to give each character their own arc, but there's just too much going on to make it work in a 2.5 hour film. Especially when half of that runtime is devoted to endless (and I mean endless) battle scenes. I thought Ultron was a fairly compelling villain and I loved that he sort of represented the dark side of Stark, sarcastic personality and all. Unfortunately, that aspect of the character was never explored in any particularly meaningful way. Not to mention that Tony was let off the hook completely with Vision. I know you can't just make Iron Man a straight up bad guy, but what exactly changed for him by the end of the movie? He basically just got a do over and was lucky that Vision was good where Ultron was bad.

I'd also agree with Supermallett that the Widow/Hulk stuff does not work at all and I continue to think that Johansson (who I generally like) is just completely wrong for that part. Or maybe she's right for the part as written and it's the writing that doesn't work for me. I don't know. That character just does not work for me.

I suppose that in the end, for me, Age of Ultron is a fairly compelling mess of a film. I don't think the first one holds up particularly well on repeat viewings, and while it may be more successful as a straight up spectacle, I think I'll find myself revisiting the sequel more often. The film reeks of Joss Whedon and despite its bloat, feels very personal. The conflict between the film Whedon wanted and the one Marvel wanted permeates the entire film, even if we don't know many of the specifics. In that respect, Age of Ultron is kind of fascinating even if it doesn't quite work as pure entertainment.

I agree that she might not be right for the part in the Avengers films, but she feels completely right for the part in Winter Soldier - so I guess it depends on what they have her do.