Okay, so now that I've returned to the crib, let's expand on that previous post, lol. Mostly SPOILER FREE I should add.
I'm not sure where to start, so let me start by saying the theater fukked up and the movie began with the theater background music still on and no movie audio, so people started shouting and screaming (but none of them bothered to get up and actually tell an usher) while the movie was playing with a Madonna soundtrack. Anyway, what little glimpses I saw as I tried to avert my eyes pretty much set the tone, because the movie starts with all-out action. And it's goddamn great all-out action. As I've said in my mid-marathon post, I thought the first half of the original movie (pretty much up until the point they're all gathered together on the SHIELD carrier) is slow, ugly looking tv-production level film making. Like they knew the team had to get together and it needed some time but no one was invested in actually making it interesting cinema. This one hits it off right from the start and just keeps going. It feels so goddamn big and every action sequence builds on the one before it, it's just crazy.
The plot moves at a ridiculous pace as well, mostly because so much stuff happens. I myself wouldn't say it's convoluted as some early reports claimed but I can see how it might seem that way to people who aren't familiar with comics and don't know all these characters, because it basically goes from Hydra to Maximoffs to Ultron to Klaw to Maximoffs to Ultron to Vision and then I looked at my watch in a quiet moment and there was still an hour to go! It's go with the flow or drown. The movie does occasionally slow down to give us some more in-depth character moments, with heavy focus on Barton (unexpected angle) and the Natasha/Banner romance. That last part was probably my biggest issue with the movie, it felt kinda forced and the comic book guy in me was really bothered that there was just no mention of Betty Ross or anything. Like they basically have Banner in here as a character with no supporting cast or life of his own outside of the Avengers.
Another thing that threw me off initially was Ultron's personality, specifically the fact that it came with a lot of humor. It felt super weird but it starts to make sense when they build on the fact that Ultron's personality is basically a take on Stark's, so he has that same kind of wittiness to his speech, but with a hint of alienation to it as he has a dry, detached way of communicating his evil antics. This actually helped make Ultron more interesting as the movie went on, and despite the humor he still came off as extremely threatening with Spader delivering tenfold with the voice acting.
And as expected after the first Avengers movie, it's chock full off of banter. The heroes banter, Ultron and the Maximoffs banter, everybody banters. Even Baron Strucker banters (although I wasn't a fan of that one), but it all stays true to the characters and that's why it works. One of the movie's running jokes is Cap checking Stark on his use of bad language which has the whole team cracking jokes about him being "old fashioned" and stuff. Meanwhile the fan service is all-time level high. I'm sure we all know about the scene where the team tries to lift Mjölnir but I guarantee it's even better in the movie. It's even better though when later in that movie it turns out that scene was in there for a specific reason and one of the movie's biggest 'marking out' moments happened. Meanwhile mid-action everybody is constantly double teaming moves and Thor and Cap especially got a couple of classics in store that will make you do full on banderas-smilies in the audience.
There's one thing I pretty much like to expand on, but before that I have to address another 'issue', which is the inclusion of a character that's clearly built around the Asian market. It's not Transformers 3 bad with the Asian pandering because she actually does play a vital part in the story, but it's still noticeable pandering.
Now to the last part, which may be the most important part of them all, which ties into the big discussion we've been having all week again, the MoS destruction argument. Because in every single action scene in the movie, every. single. one. the Avengers show concern in protecting innocent lives. They show so much damn concern it made me want to shed a tear. Even if they can't control all the destruction or the damage, they're constantly going out of their way to rescue people. Hell, a huge part of the final half hour battle is devoted on evacuating and saving as many people as they can from the war zone. It was such a consistent aspect of every action scene that it really felt like a direct response to DC/WB, and there's one scene that was definitely a direct jab. At some point Cap almost fails to save someone but Thor kicks in with the assist and Cap manages to save the woman after all to his great relief. One of Ultron's bots then comes at Cap like "You really think you can save them all?" and issues some threat I can't remember the exact words to but Cap just smashes the thing to pieces, throws it over the edge and goes "What was that, you didn't finish your sentence!" and you can just feel the burn that Snyder and Goyer and all the WB studio heads are going to feel when they see that shyt.
So in the end, yeah, I fukking loved it. It's not perfect and once the adrenaline and hype disappears I'll probably end up being a bit more critical with some of the issues I had (another one that I just thought of is that Marvel shows additional lack of longevity planning with certain character deaths, that like a certain character's death in Daredevil, feels like they really aren't thinking as long term as they like you to believe they are), but goddamn it if this movie doesn't deliver on the entertainment from the opening to the end.
Yeah I definitely disagree on that.
real question is which is more overrated, Logan or Deadpool.
