Sunday, April 26, 2015

On Avengers Age of Ultron


Watched the Avengers with lots of anticipation and to be honest, it disappointed. Yes the production quality was good and it was an ambitious project that somewhat delivered but it was a huge let down to comic book fans in several ways. Furthermore their meaningless inclusion of certain beloved characters and brutal treatment of the same just reflects how petty Marvel's squabbles with Fox are. Overall, I give this show a B4 grading. *SPOILERS* below.

If you haven't watched the show, you can stop reading here because.... *SPOILERS*

What went right:



1)     Hulkbuster Armour Ironman vs the Hulk: Seeing Iron Man have a go against the Hulk in his signature Hulkbuster Armour is probably the best part of the movie. I would pay good money to watch a well produced movie that is entirely about a rich man in a suit vs an invincible god-like monster who is also a superhero with cameos from other superheroes. On second thoughts, I think I have just described the plot of Batman v Superman. Dear Zack Snyder, if you are reading this, please don't screw up.



2)     Greater emphasis on Hawkeye and the Hulk: After the fridging of Hawkeye in the first movie, it was a relief to see some action from him this time round and a greater emphasis on his back story. Hawkeye having a family and kids was a pleasant twist. Although not canon, it was believable and added to the overall feel of the movie.

What went wrong:


1)     Ultron tells lame jokes: Ultron, the titular villain is supposed to be an extremely menacing, stone cold AI who is nearly invincible and in the comics, destroyed the Avengers all on his own after acquiring the Vibranium required to build an invincible body. Instead what we get is a psychologically tortured soul who tells lame jokes, forgets his lines and who despite being made out of vibranium seems to be relatively easily destroyed. In the trailers, we see Captain America's shield ripped in half. And that had a huge psychological effect because we knew how indestructible Vibranium is and if Ultron were built with Vibranium, he should be even stronger. However, it turned out that the above-mentioned scene was just a "vision" (pun unintended). In contrast, Ultron even in his Vibranium suit was easily ripped apart by the Vision and 2 other guys who had visions. This villain decay is reminiscent of Shane Black's treatment of the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, who turned out to be another phony.


2)     Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch: The inclusion of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch was completely unnecessary. There are many Avengers/pseudo- Avengers who could be included and yet they chose to use 2 characters whose rights they sort of didn't have. The complicated legal loopholes they had to jump through to use characters whose rights belonged to Fox resulted in them trying extremely hard to describe the wonder twins in a way which didn't include the words mutant, quicksilver or scarlet witch. It was almost as painful as watching the Amazing Spiderman not say, "with great power comes great responsibility". Finally, they killed off Quicksilver in the most ridiculous way. For a speedster to be killed by a bullet is like letting a cheetah be killed by a snail. It was done obviously in a way to give a huge middle finger to Fox for not returning the rights of X-men back to Marvel.


3)     Forced romance between the Black Widow and the Hulk: You could blame it on the lack of screen time/back story/whatever but the on-screen romance between Black Widow and the Hulk was extremely forced especially after seeing greater chemistry between her and Captain America and Hawkeye. When they finally kissed, it sent chills down my spine in a manner similar to how Christian Grey kissed Anastasia Steele in 50 Shades of Grey, cold and senseless.



4)     The whole thing about the Vision: This iteration of the Vision was weird, felt weird and is weird. Vision is an extremely cool character (albeit a ripoff of the Martian Manhunter and the Red Tornado). His character and powers are somewhat legendary. However, instead of eliciting a "wow" reaction from the audience, all I heard after leaving the cinema was, "who is the weird guy with the red painted face".

Overall, it is a decently produced blockbuster movie which is extremely ambitious. It is still a delight to see childhood comic book heroes brought to screen however, Ultron, the titular villain is not believable as an AI much less a villain. Finally, the movie sacrificed viewing pleasure to spite Fox by including a beloved X-men character, mutilating his back story on screen and finally killing him off in a senseless way.

L.A.M.


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