Amph "You think you're the only superhero in the world?" - The Marvel Cinematic Universe

The best thing about Age of Ultron was how Ultron's motivation for destroying humanity was spending ten seconds on the internet.

 

Hey, look, one of the Avengers screenwriters actually watched Jessica Jones! (also this is a big interview with them re. infinity war but Netflix Marvel getting a shout-out)

http://www.slashfilm.com/infinity-war-writers-interview/2/

Stephen McFeely: What I want to point out, is that my favorite two [villains] in the entire MCU are Loki and Kilgrave, because he’s creepy and awful, but really cares in a strange way.

 

Hmm yeah, I kinda agree about the Vader/Grievous thing. I was definitely expecting Ultron to be more Vader-like, instead of what we got. Is the Ultron that we got necessarily a bad thing...well, I guess I can't decide now. I do still like this film though...maybe it's because it's their second outing, but it feels like the characters fit together more naturally than they did in the first Avengers.

 

Yes when disrespecting the MCU's resident bow hunter Hawkguy is the preferred nomenclature.

 

the way Ultron's mouth was drawn in the comics i always thought he'd be more ...screamy, instead he was calm basically

 

I did like how Whedon wrote him as excessively chatty. I like excessively chatty killer robots, it's pretty fun.

Also doesn't Spider-Man find the prime Ultron head in a Damage Control stashaway?



That makes slightly less sense to me considering you'd figure it'd be an Ultron sentry head. (and they're using Ultron sentry parts to make Vulture crew's weapons). Although it doesn't have to be the final final Ultron head, he goes through at least one body in between V.1 and the final one (that he tears apart in front of Black Widow to make a dramatic point)

 

I heard that they basically just made Ultron into Reddington from The Blacklist. True?

 

Style-wise you could say they did, copying Red's chatty-amiability-juxtaposed-with-threats-and-menace; then again, Reddington from The Blacklist is simply Orson Wells' Harry Lime from The Third Man & radio serial The Lives of Harry Lime, right down to the Fedora.

 

And

Spoiler

Looks Chris Evans is officially done with Cap after Avengers 4 reshoots "For now, he has no plans to return to the franchise (“You want to get off the train before they push you off,” he said), and expects that planned reshoots in the fall will mark the end of his tenure in the familiar red, white and blue super suit."

We kind of knew that.

...and now we know where Henry Cavill's mustache went...

 

Yeah, that's the reason why I felt the farm scene in Age of Ultron was an item on a checklist was because of Renner's complaint of the treatment in Hawkeye in the original Avengers flick. I mean, Fury, Black Widow and Hawkeye would know any numerous amounts of safe house locals that were off the books, but the ended up at Hawkeye's farm. Moreover, since Hawkeye didn't get mind **** by Wanda, he got the farm scene. So we could check off Hawkeye from the "needs more character background" material of the list like the rest of the Avengers. Again, the dialogue between Clint and his wife really didn't fit as it paints the idea that Hawkeye is the key/glue member of the Avengers team. Bizarre creative decision.

Also, the Natasha and Bruce relationship felt so forced and out of place, it felt like something that Whedon wanted to add in, as if he had a checklist of things he wanted. It really didn't help the overall narrative of the film, and hurt the story more than it helped. And as @The2ndQuest pointed out earlier, the thing about Natasha's inability to have children is "monster" like, created alot of backlash and indeed ruin the film to a certain degree.

Yeah, the Iron Legion plays into the Tony's motivation to protect the world by creating an Iron suit to cover the world. However, the way Iron Man 3 ended, where he did an "Order 66" on his "House Party Protocol" whereby he destroyed all his suits of armor is in contradiction so when we last saw the character. It's a minor thing, but it's not a smooth transition from Iron Man 3 to Avengers: Age of Ultron.

But, in some ways, I think Age of Ultron would work better as Iron Man 4. As I mentioned previously, Phase II didn't build up to Age of Ultron the same way Phase I built up to the original Avengers film or the way Phase III is building up to Infinity War. As @The2ndQuest posted earlier, Nick Fury and Agent Coulson really helped with the "Avengers Initiative." Meaning, Phase I was building towards creating the Avengers. And the Avengers movie was a perfect closure to Phase I, as it was pretty much a completion of the story arc of Phase I. Of course, Phase III is the completion of all the Phases with Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet. Age of Ultron really didn't feel like a fitting closure to Phase II, but a set up for three with Hulk and Thor leaving the scene. Moreover, Age of Ultron closed with a new Avengers team. (Which Whedon wanted to include Captain Marvel). And of course, we don't actually see Cap say, "Avengers Assemble!"



I don't have Age of Ultron, nor do I think it's a bad film. However, I don't feel it has a strong central plot as it's mired with all these poor subplots and it wasn't a good closure to Phase II.

 

It was? I seem to just remember the show going on its own thing, and then suddenly *blam* they drop in the mention of Sokovia and evil robots and that was about it.

 

I think Merk was referring to hunting down Hydra assets and bases, which was treated as a big deal. Makes it seem like there was a reason to be hunting for them going into "Age Of Ultron", rather than they're just happening to have done so, if you didn't watch the show.

 

Oh okay, I remember now. I dunno, that still felt to me like a rather weak and contrived buildup, if it counted as one. Anyway, it doesn't seem to me like Phase 2 is the odd one out...I don't think any of them really did much buildup to a climax. With all three it's just the heroes doing their own thing, and then all the sudden Loki/Ultron/Thanos shows up and they have to band together to defeat the threat.

 

Agreed. Nice call on Age of Ultron as a more of an Iron Man 4. Civil War felt more like an Avengers movie than AoU did. It's kind of a shame that Infinity War and/or Avengers 4 has to wipe the mess of Clint's MCU life clean, so he can actually have a good arc and not just have a few great action moments and one-liners.

I disliked Natasha until Winter Soldier and completely ignored her in AoU. Markus and McFeeley know how to write Black Widow, as they do many of the Avengers, whatever Whedon was trying to do with Black Widow was an epic fail (as @The2ndQuest pointed out earlier); it was obvious Joss couldn't write the entire team (Cap, Natasha, Clint being the prime examples) nor a truly menacing villain. Though another reason why I love the Captain America movies is due to the villains; sometimes O.T.T. / other times very subtle). For me, the subtle villains have worked best in the MCU (such as Pierce, Ego, Obediah - and interestingly, I just realized that these are portrayed by mature actors).

I'll stop my tangent right here as you'll probably say something far more eloquent than I will about this.

 

I maintain that Civil War is certainly Avengers-y but I think at it's core it's still a Cap film, he just happened to run up against his Avengers co-workers.

 

I can finally agree with that perspective. It took several viewings of Civil War to convince me, but that's on point.

and interview with Don Cheadle about Rhodey.

 

I feel like every time Agents of SHIELD tries to mention the movie events, it just seems really awkward. It just draws attention to the fact that Coulson and company are the B-team. Not to mention that the tone of the show is much more dark and somber compared to the movies which still feel rather lighthearted that they don't even feel like part of the same universe.

 

Nope, ‘epic fail’ was my opinion not yours - my bad. And I stand by that thought.

 

Indeed. There was nothing progressive about the threat they faced in Avengers. Some guy pretty randomly decides to steal some thing that opens a portal to let out endless bad guys. We didn't know of such a portal, we didn't know the thing allowed him to do that, we didn't know that those bad guys are particularly bad, the heroes mostly don't know one another, and the only villain that any of them have a connection to is not the endless bad guys that constitute the movie's man threat, which the film itself acknowledges.

So really, what was "set up" at all?

 

Someone definitely feels and encourages the notion that AOS and the MCU stand in alternate, separate universes. Yes, there's the very real fact that there's a good chunk of people that don't see AOS and - as incredible as it may sound to any of us - don't know that Coulson is alive and well. But to the hardcore fans that do, it is incredibly annoying that he and his team haven't popped up to lend a hand or even say "hi" because of some stupid comment by Whedon about how Coulson being alive lessens the impact of that scene in Avengers 1.

Was Whedon right? Maybe, maybe not. Me, I honestly don't care. I was used to that sorta crap reading comics, even if the execution was more often than not awful. But if from the getgo you wanted to sell your show to the movie audience, at the very least acknowledge both in tv land and the movies that they are part of the same universe. Conflicting movie and tv production schedules be damned, it shouldn't be that hard.

 

AOS season 1 managed to run alongside TDW and TWS decently enough. Especially in that one episode where Agent Sitwell is assigned to the Lemurian Star, which presumably was filmed after principal photography of TWS was completed.

I haven’t seen the later seasons yet, so I can’t comment on the connections there.