by jellydonut25 » Sat May 02, 2015 1:18 am
I think Iron Man is a pretty good example of how the "the point is to show where the characters are" argument in favor of Phase 2 falls flat. That's what I was specifically criticizing with regards to Phase 2. I don't need Mandarin or Winter Soldier to appear or anything but it'd be nice if the Phase 2 films didn't just get steamrolled because it was Avengers time.
At the end of Iron Man 3, we get strong hints that Stark is done with being Iron Man, and he blows up all his armor, and then it's Avengers time so BAM! He's just back in the suit...AND he's got TONS of variants, AGAIN. So, I had all of Iron Man 3 for what? To explain why his shirts won't have a glowing object underneath them anymore?
Also, at the end of Thor 2, they hand over the Aether to The Collector specifically because they don't want to have two infinity stones in Asgaard, but here Thor is, wanting to take another infinity stone back to Asgaard because it's Avengers time so we need a (bad) excuse to bring in Thor.
AND at the end of Cap 2, Cap is basically insanely distrustful of anybody who might be like SHIELD and pursue the "greater good" at the expense of full disclosure and all that stuff but here he is BUDDIES with Stark because it's Avengers time so he and Tony both have to bond over Thor's hammer.
I'm good with something like Guardians just being flat-out ignored, because that IS a movie setting up characters and at least Whedon didn't steamroll those characters just for Avengers purposes. He might have had Gamora be all "Infinity Stone? Never heard of one of those before...<whistle and walk away>"
I just think it's not a well-written film at all...and for something that Whedon worked on for FOUR YEARS, I give it less of a pass. He should have thought about who and what the characters were and what he wanted them to be and how to get them from A to B without sacrificing the other films, OR the characters themselves.
And when I say the characters themselves, yeah, I'm talking about Ultron:
I think Ultron is the biggest writing guffaw of the movie, which is a damn shame because it's really just his dialogue that does him in (well, and the lips which ARE a terrible aesthetic choice). Ultron wasn't in the other movies so the longest amount of time could theoretically have gone into developing him...and it's like Whedon couldn't decide if he wanted Ultron to be evil or misunderstood. There's so much effort put into saying he's not evil and he certainly doesn't see himself that way but then he says "wanna hear my evil plan?"
Wait. Are you evil? I thought you thought you were doing your mission. I didn't think you thought it was evil...so now I don't know what you are.
And for a character whose motivations are BELABORED in this nearly 3 hr test of my patience and bladder they don't really go into the WHY very much. I mean, you're gonna take time to tell me what he's FEELING but nothing to illuminate WHY at all? Come on. I think this movie had no respect for its audience's ability to see emotions from a machine and wasted time and hurt the look of a major character just to ram those emotions into our heads.
I mean, these are kind of ALL my complaints condensed into one thing, so I definitely can understand anyone reading me as not liking the movie...I liked it, I just didn't LOVE it the way I did the first one and I really didn't CARE about anything that was happening. For a major crossover event movie, this one felt kinda irrelevant, and I can be on board with irrelevant fun...but I am less-so when that irrelevant fun sucks away as much of my time as this movie did.