Throughout their comics history, the Avengers have had several recurring villains. While Loki brought them together in 1963, he was more Thor’s specific problem. Over the years, they kept coming back to fighting against the various incarnations of the Masters of Evil, the time-traveling tyrant Kang the Conqueror, alien invasions from Kree and Skrull both, and the sentient indestructible robot Ultron.
Therefore, having the second Avengers movie have the team face off against Ultron probably seemed completely natural.
Ultron was originally created by founding Avenger Henry Pym (a.k.a. Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, etc.). It was a classic Frankenstein situation, where the created tries to destroy the creator. Made of indestructible adamantium and programmed with an artificial intelligence based on Pym himself, Ultron has proven an implacable foe to the Avengers over the decades.
One of the best Ultron stories, and one of the primary inspirations for this movie, was the “Ultron Unlimited” storyline by Kurt Busiek and George Pérez in Avengers Volume 2 in 1999 that had Ultron taking over the nation of Slorenia, a story that includes one of the greatest crowning moments of awesome in comics history, when the Avengers—battered and bruised, their costumes in tatters—crash into Ultron’s headquarters, and Thor declares, “Ultron, we would have words with thee.”
Changes needed to be made in order to work Ultron into the MCU. Ant-Man was already in separate development, which made including Pym problematic. Also, while Roy Thomas could get away in 1968 with a biochemist creating a robot with artificial intelligence, even though those are two wildly separate scientific disciplines, it makes much more sense for the guy who created a tin suit that has an A.I. interface be the one to create Ultron. So it’s Tony Stark who creates the monster (aided by Bruce Banner).
Joss Whedon was brought back to write and direct the movie, and besides all the heroes from Avengers, they brought in a few more besides, expanding Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch from their mid-credits cameo in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and also introducing the Vision.
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Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were originally created as villains, members of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, in Uncanny X-Men #4. (Much later, they were revealed to be Magneto’s children.) They, along with another reformed villain, Hawkeye, joined Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in Avengers #16, forming “Cap’s Kooky Quartet,” after the remaining founding Avengers all quit. The Vision was introduced around the same time as Ultron, a creation of the villainous robot that would later turn on his creator (irony!) and become one of the longest-tenured Avengers. A synthozoid formed using the android body of the original Human Torch from World War II and using the brain engrams of Simon Williams (a.k.a. Wonder Man), the Vision would later marry the Scarlet Witch, though their relationship didn’t last.
Because both the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are considered both X-Men and Avengers characters, rights to them had to be negotiated. Marvel Studios got to keep the Witch, while Quicksilver was primarily the domain of Fox’s X-films, with the former getting to use him only in this film.
Back from Iron Man 3 are Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Paul Bettany as J.A.R.V.I.S. (and also debuting as the Vision, which uses Stark’s A.I. as a template), and Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk. Back from Thor: The Dark World are Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Stellan Skarsgård as Eric Selvig, and Idris Elba as Heimdall. Back from Captain America: The Winter Soldier are Chris Evans as Captain America, Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, Anthony Mackie as the Falcon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Quicksilver, Elizabeth Olson as the Scarlet Witch, and Thomas Kretschmann as Baron Strucker. Back from Avengers is Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye. Back from appearances on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter are Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, and Henry Goodman as Dr. List. Back from Guardians of the Galaxy (which we’ll cover next week) is Josh Brolin as Thanos. Introduced in this film are James Spader as the voice of Ultron, Claudia Kim as Dr. Helen Cho, Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue, Julie Delply as Madame B., Linda Cardelini as Laura Barton, and Kerry Condon as F.R.I.D.A.Y.
Downey Jr., Cheadle, Bettany, Olson, Johansson, Renner, and Condon will next appear in Captain America: Civil War. Evans, Mackie, and Atwell will next appear in Ant-Man. Hemsworth will next appear in Dr. Strange. Ruffalo and Elba will next appear in Thor: Ragnarok. Brolin, Jackson, and Smulders will next appear in Avengers: Infinity War. Serkis will next appear in Black Panther.
“We’re mad scientists, we’re monsters—we have to own it”
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Written and directed by Joss Whedon
Produced by Kevin Feige
Original release date: May 1, 2015
While S.H.I.E.L.D. has been destroyed, there are still Hydra remnants around the world—and they have Loki’s scepter. The Avengers reassemble to track down those remnants and to retrieve the scepter. They finally find it in the stronghold of one of Hydra’s leaders, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, who has been using the scepter for human experiments in a base in Sokovia in Eastern Europe. Most have failed, but the two successes were Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, who now have powers—he’s super fast, and she has bizarre telepathic and telekinetic powers that enable her to manipulate energy and also give people visions. At one point, she gives Tony Stark a vision that shows him his greatest fear: the Chitauri returning, and all the Avengers dead (except for him).
The Avengers are triumphant over Hydra, though the Maximoffs get away. Strucker is captured and the scepter is retrieved. Natasha Romanoff is able to talk the Hulk down to get him to change back to Bruce Banner. Stark and Banner ask Thor if they can study the scepter for a few days before he returns it to Asgard, and Thor agrees—plus there needs to be a celebration, since they finally brought down the last of Hydra.
Stark and Banner have been spitballing a notion called “Ultron,” which is a next-level A.I. that can protect the world more efficiently than superheroes. The jewel in the scepter—which is the mind stone, one of the six Infinity Stones (the Tesseract holds another, the space stone, while the Aether from Thor: The Dark World holds the reality stone)—appears to Banner and Stark to be a much more advanced version of the electronic “brain” that is J.A.R.V.I.S. Stark thinks this is the key to making Ultron a reality. Banner is less sanguine, especially since Stark insists on not telling the rest of the team because he doesn’t want to have the argument.
They work for a couple of days, then set it aside for the party—however, during the party, a consciousness awakens…
The party itself includes not just the Avengers, but also Maria Hill (who works for Stark, mostly coordinating the team’s at-home efforts and tech support), Sam Wilson (who mentions that he’s still working on his and Steve Rogers’s “missing persons” case from Captain America: The Winter Soldier), Dr. Helen Cho (who is working on synthetic tissue, which will revolutionize medicine so much that we’ll never hear about it again after this movie), Jim Rhodes, and a bunch of World War II veterans, presumably invited by Rogers (and one of whom looks just like Stan Lee). Hill’s complaint about the lack of women is met with Stark and Thor pridefully going on about how awesome their girlfriends are, with Pepper Potts too busy running Stark Enterprises and Jane Foster too busy working astronomy gigs around the world to attend the shindig.
As the party winds down to just the Avengers (plus Hill and Rhodes), Clint Barton insists that the inability of anybody save Thor to lift the hammer is a trick. Thor insists that only the worthy can lift it, and most everyone takes a shot at it (including both Stark and Rhodes together trying to lift it with their armored gloves). Notably, Rogers actually very briefly budges it a little bit, while Romanoff refuses to even try, saying it’s a question she doesn’t need answered.
Then one of the “Iron Legion”—J.A.R.V.I.S.-controlled robots that are similar to Iron Man—enters speaking in a different voice from J.A.R.V.I.S.’s. This is Ultron, who says he will bring about Stark’s desire for peace in our time. Ultron has seemingly destroyed J.A.R.V.I.S., and now controls the rest of the Iron Legion, who do battle with the Avengers. While Thor is able to destroy the robot itself, Ultron’s consciousness has fled into the Internet and could be anywhere, and the Iron Legion has made off with the scepter.
Thor is pissed that they have to track down the scepter again. Rogers is pissed that Stark kept this from the rest of the team, though Stark is mostly surprised because the A.I. shouldn’t have been this far along.
Ultron retreats to the Hydra base in Sokovia. Strucker was trying to duplicate Stark’s work with robotics, and Ultron takes over one of his robots. He recruits the Maximoffs, who are orphans, their home having been destroyed by missiles made by Stark Enterprises during their weapons-manufacturing days. Ultron’s desire for peace is matched by his desire to destroy the Avengers (a corruption of Stark’s desire to make the Avengers unnecessary), and the Maximoffs are on board for that.
The twins attack several locations around the world, including Strucker’s cell, killing him and spelling “PEACE” on the wall in his blood. The Avengers dig into the files on Strucker (stuck with paper files, as Ultron has erased the online records), and Stark recognizes one of his contacts: Ulysses Klaue, an arms dealer. Thor notices a brand on his neck, which Banner identifies as the character for “thief” in Wakandan. That gets Rogers and Stark’s attention, as Wakanda is the source of vibranium, the metal Cap’s shield is made out of—they’re worried that Klaue may have access to more of it, even though Stark’s Dad thought what he used for the shield was all there was.
The Avengers attack Klaue’s stronghold, but Ultron and the Maximoffs get there first. Ultron pays Klaue an exorbitant amount for the vibranium he’s got in storage for a rainy day, but then cuts off Klaue’s arm—Ultron had said something Stark once said to Klaue, and the arms dealer says Ultron and Stark are alike. This pisses the robot off something fierce.
When the Avengers arrive, they do okay against the robots, but not so well against the Maximoffs. Wanda gives Rogers, Romanoff, and Thor visions. She tries to give Barton one, but he sees her coming and attaches an arrow to her forehead that disrupts her thoughts. (“Already tried the mind-control thing. Not a fan.”) Pietro rescues her and then she gives Banner (who was staying in reserve in the quinjet) a vision. We don’t see what Banner sees, but he changes into the Hulk and starts rampaging through Johannesburg. Iron Man summons “Veronica,” his Hulkbuster armor and fights him, trying and failing to get him out of the city.
Romanoff is unable to help bring him down because she’s catatonic from visions of the Red Room where she was trained/brainwashed back in Russia. (An earlier version of this is also seen in season one of Agent Carter.) Rogers sees himself making it to the end of World War II and getting to dance with Peggy Carter. Thor’s vision is a bit odder, and includes a seemingly blind Heimdall.
Stark manages to subdue Banner, but only after considerable damage, and his rampage is now all over the news. With Banner now public enemy #1, the Avengers need to lay low and recuperate. Barton is the only one in decent shape, so he takes them to a “safe house”: his home in the country, where his pregnant wife and two kids live. Everyone (except Romanoff, who is called “Auntie Nat” by Barton’s kids) is stunned by this, as they had no idea. Barton says that Fury kept his family out of the records. Laura Barton welcomes them to their home. (Romanoff is upset that little Natasha is actually going to be Nathaniel, and she says, “Traitor” to Laura’s womb.)
Fury also shows up and gives the Avengers a pep talk. Thor, however, is concerned about his vision, and goes off on his own. Romanoff flirts more aggressively with Banner, offering to go away with him somewhere, even though they have no chance of the type of life that Barton has. Fury also informs the Avengers that Ultron has been unable to get his hands on missile launch codes, as they apparently have an unknown ally keeping Ultron from getting everything he wants. He does have vibranium, however.
Stark goes to Oslo to try to track down Ultron’s location. Dr. Cho’s work means she might be a target, and sure enough, Ultron is using her synthetic tissue machine to make a new body, which will be powered by the mind stone. As Ultron starts to download himself into the new body, Wanda can read his mind and sees that he intends to destroy the world. Horrified, the Maximoffs betray him, and Ultron is forced to leave without completing his work.
Rogers, Maximoff, and Barton arrive in Korea and get Cho medical help and go after Ultron. The Maximoffs make it clear they’ve switched sides, and help the Avengers fight Ultron. Romanoff is able to steal the synthetic body and give it to Barton, but Ultron escapes with a kidnapped Romanoff.
Stark and Banner discover that J.A.R.V.I.S. only pretended to be destroyed—he’s the one fighting off Ultron in the cybernetic aether. They start to upload J.A.R.V.I.S. into the synthetic creature, but Rogers and the Maximoffs try to stop him.
Then Thor shows up and actually finishes the job. With the help of Eric Selvig he tapped into the vision Wanda gave him—he now knows that the jewel in the scepter is, like the Tesseract and the Aether, one of the Infinity Stones. Ultron’s vision of a perfect synthetic person may be their only hope of defeating him.
The Vision, as he calls himself, actually is able to wield Thor’s hammer, which impresses everyone. While the Vision isn’t sure what he is yet, he knows that Ultron needs to be stopped, and they can only do it together.
Romanoff manages to get a short-wave radio signal out from Sokovia that Barton picks up, and the Avengers—now including Pietro and Wanda—suit up and head to Sokovia.
Ultron has created a crapton of robots that serve him, and has also used the vibranium he bought from Klaue to create a massive engine that can lift the capital city of Sokovia into the air—and then, once it’s high enough, drop it to create an extinction-level event similar to the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs.
Fury shows up with an old helicarrier that he put together with help of the secret remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. (as established in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. series) along with War Machine, and the Avengers work to evacuate the citizens of Sokovia. Banner frees Romanoff, and the latter kisses Banner then pushes him off a ledge so he’ll change, as they need “the other guy.”
Wanda protects the engine’s “off switch” that will make it drop to the earth (this after she freezes during the fight and Barton has to give her a pep talk). The rest of the Avengers fight Ultron and his minions and also evacuate the city onto the helicarrier. Pietro is killed saving Barton and a little boy.
Once the city is evacuated, Stark and Thor are able to blow up the city before it can strike the ground. The last robot that has Ultron’s consciousness is trying to escape in a quinjet, but the Hulk jumps on, throws Ultron out, and flies off, refusing to tell anyone where he’s going. (Fury later thinks that the quinjet may have gone down in the ocean, but we’ll find out in Thor: Ragnarok that he got way further away than that.)
Ultron lands, wounded, on the ground, where he’s confronted by the Vision, who reluctantly destroys him.
While Banner is gone, the rest of the team regroups and recovers. Stark takes an old facility of his in upstate New York and converts it to a new Avengers headquarters, with Fury, Hill, Selvig, Cho, and some more ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agents providing support. Thor needs to find out why so many Infinity Stones are suddenly showing up, and he goes off to do that, while Stark is, once again, quitting being Iron Man. (Which, as usual, will last only until the next movie.) That leaves Rogers in charge of a team that includes himself, a sad Romanoff, Barton, and four new members: the Scarlet Witch (Wanda), the Falcon (Wilson), War Machine (Rhodes), and the Vision.
Somewhere in space, Thanos, having grown frustrated with the inability of his minions to gather the Infinity Stones—and having actually lost the one he had—decides he needs to take matters into his own hands.
“The city is flying and we’re fighting and army of robots and I have a bow and arrow—nothing makes sense”
Age of Ultron comes in for a lot of criticism from several different directions, including the guy who wrote and directed it, as Joss Whedon bristled under Marvel’s creative control, and—after he was one of the driving forces behind Phase 1 and the beginning of Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—this proved Whedon’s swan song in the MCU (beyond his pretty much completely honorary executive producer credit on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.).
The thing is, this is actually a very good Avengers story. It’s a solid team adventure with a major foe, high stakes, lots of true heroism, and some good character development.
It’s not as good an Avengers movie as it could be for a number of reasons. For starters, it’s horribly overstuffed. There’s just so much going on here, and a lot of it gets shortchanged, even with the two-and-a-half-hour running time. Thor’s vision is something of a mess and doesn’t really make any sense (doesn’t he already know about the Infinity Stones, why does he need to go to the Cave Of Magical Visions with Selvig to learn about them?). Baron Strucker—a powerful villain in the Marvel Universe on par with the Red Skull—is here reduced to an idiot who surrenders cravenly to the Avengers and is killed off camera. Dr. Cho is creating a revolutionary technology, but it’s only there as an excuse to create the Vision, and neither she nor her invention is ever even mentioned again. And the Fury ex machina at the end with the helicarrier that was just lying around is poorly done. (At least Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. did some work to set it up, for the few people who were still watching the show at that point.)
The ones who suffer the most are the Maximoff twins. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (though they’re never called that) really are underdeveloped, and are little more than plot devices. Wanda messes with Stark’s head—and that’s it. She doesn’t follow up, just lets the Avengers go, and it’s at least in part due to Wanda’s mind games that he creates Ultron in the first place. Each time she whammies an Avenger, it’s a horrible violation of their privacy and person, and yet later on, she’s accepted into the team with barely a comment. (To be fair, the one who is most accepting of their reforming is Barton, the one person whose mind she didn’t mess with, which was a nice touch, following Hawkeye spending most of Avengers as Loki’s butt-monkey.) More to the point, though, supposedly she wants to defend the innocents in her homeland against warmongering types, yet her manipulation of Banner leads to Johannesburg being trashed. Yes, this tracks with both characters’ arc in the comics of going from villains to heroes (and back again, as both Pietro and Wanda have reverted to evil at various points in their history), but it doesn’t have time to really be acknowledged or dealt with because there’s too much else. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen do quite well in the roles—Taylor-Johnson’s laid-back sarcasm is well played, and Olsen’s face is remarkably expressive—but they don’t have nearly enough to work with. I also still can’t tell you what Wanda’s actual powers are. To be fair, I’m still not entirely sure what the comics character’s powers are, either. In both cases, her powers seem to be “whatever the plot calls for.”
I absolutely adore James Spader as Ultron. Given that it’s a creation of Stark, and given the spectacular smartassery of J.A.R.V.I.S., having Ultron be a version of Stark’s snottiness (by way of Raymond Reddington) makes perfect sense, and Spader’s obviously having such a good time as a sociopathic robot. Mention must also be made of Andy Serkis’s gusto-laden performance as Klaue (which he’ll repeat with even more gusto in Black Panther).
However, as strong as Spader and Serkis are, they aren’t the real villains of this movie—Tony Stark is. It’s his hubris that leads to the creation of Ultron. Yes, he redeems himself somewhat at the end, but still, he’s the one who not only creates Ultron (with Banner’s help, yes, but it’s pretty clear who’s the alpha there—something Stark himself dings Banner for during one of the arguments), but goes to great lengths not to tell the rest of the team because he knows full well that what he’s doing is wrong. If he wasn’t, he’d be okay with everyone else knowing. In particular, of course, he doesn’t want to get into an argument with Captain America, probably because he knows he’ll lose. (Of course, that won’t stop him next time, but we’ll get to that when we cover Captain America: Civil War in the summer.)
In many ways, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a chronicle of Stark’s constant attempts to better himself, repeatedly ruined by his spectacular inability to get out of the way of his own arrogance and certainty that he’s right. He’s a massive narcissist who desperately wants to be a hero, but that very narcissism gets in the way every single time. And the human race is almost extinguished because he refuses to believe that he needs to be accountable.
One of the biggest issues with this film, besides it being overstuffed, is that the script really doesn’t come together. It may be the most boring script with Joss Whedon’s name on it in history. Where Avengers is full of quotable lines and memorable dialogue, there are only flashes of it here. And so much of the scripting is clumsy and unclear. A perfect example is the conversation between Romanoff and Banner, where the former tells the latter about how she was sterilized to remove any distractions from being a killer. She then describes herself as a monster, and this movie came in for a lot of flack for Romanoff saying she was a monster because she couldn’t have kids—that wasn’t what she meant, she was referring to her near-brainwashing as an assassin for the Russians, but the scripting was so klutzy that it was an easy interpretation to make.
Banner’s story arc also moves along nicely, as the Hulk’s rampage through Johannesburg makes it clear that he’s a menace to humanity, and he takes himself off the playing board in the end, making sure no one can follow him. (And they won’t find him until Thor stumbles across him in Thor: Ragnarok.) Having said that, the fight between Iron Man and the Hulk is simply endless, going on about ten minutes too long.
Finally, one thing I particularly admire about this movie is the same one I admired about the last Avengers movie, that their priority is saving lives. I appreciated it a lot more in 2015, two years after suffering through the destruction porn that was Man of Steel, where the only hero who can match Captain America for purity of purpose doesn’t seem to give a shit that he’s leveling an entire city. (We’ll get to that around the end of March.) From the opening fight against Hydra, which was a beautifully choreographed battle, an excellent start to the movie, when Strucker endangers the civilians of Sokovia, to Iron Man’s battle against the Hulk to the final conflict with Ultron, our heroes are, first and foremost, in the business of saving lives. Hell, even Stark’s idiotic plan to put the world in a suit of armor comes from a place of trying to save as many lives as possible.
This is a decent Avengers story, one that shows them settling in as a team. There are some great set pieces, some strong character development, and some spectacular fight scenes. Honestly, the whole movie’s worth it for the scene where half the team tries and fails to lift Thor’s hammer, and for the delightful revelation that Barton has a family (and of course Romanoff’s a virtual part of it). It could’ve been a lot better, but it also isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation.
Next week, we head into outer space and meet the Guardians of the Galaxy.
The next book in Keith R.A. DeCandido’s fantasy/police procedure series, Mermaid Precinct, is now available for preorder on Amazon in both Kindle and trade paperback form. Read an excerpt from the novel here.
Banner didn’t Hulk out and destroy Sokovia’s capital. They were in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Ragnarredbeard: Oh, hell. That’s right. Will fix……..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I agree with you that the overall story arc doesn’t quite come together, especially the bits with Thor and Selvig. Where Avengers was the culmination of Phase 1, Age of Ultron is clearly seeding a lot of story points that will make up Phase 2 and Phase 3, and not all of them come off the way they should. I don’t know if that’s Whedon biting off more than he could chew, studio meddling, or just an impossible task. There are so many small, brilliant moments, though — lifting the hammer at the party is one, but also Steve and Tony’s wood-chopping discussion, and a personal favorite, Tony’s little aside in Strucker’s first base (“Please be a secret door…yay!”). The movie works on the micro level, but not the macro level.
One big plot thread from the entire MCU arc has always bothered me — if Thanos wanted Loki to collect the Tesseract / Space Stone for him, why did he give Loki the scepter / Mind Stone to start with? It seems like a bad exchange, and one that Thanos lost. It’s never explained in the movies that I’ve seen. I would almost have expected a comment in Infinity War that Thanos wanted to reclaim the one stone that was his to start with, but nothing. Did Thanos not know the scepter contained a stone?
Hey Keith, love your column even when we disagree about films, but I need to point out that when the team is wammied by Wanda (yay alliteration), they’re in Africa, which is where Klaue is operating out of, so that’s where the Hulk rampages through (though I’m sure he did some damage when they got to Sokovia later in the film).
This is somewhere near the bottom of the Marvel films for me — better than Incredible Hulk, but that’s about it. Having said which, it’s mostly not bad so much as overstuffed and just kind of there, but seldom less than watchable and with a number of fine moments (mostly pointed out by Brian McDonald above).
Having said which, Ultron’s city-dropping scheme just seems … silly to me. (Did someone ever do the math?)
And if dropping a city from that height WOULD cause global devastation, blowing the city up into tiny pieces that will ALSO all be falling from that height wouldn’t actually solve the problem — it’s still the same mass falling from the same distance, so would have the same kinetic energy when it reaches ground.
Alex Baker: Yeah, you’re not the first to point that out. *laughs* I’ve edited the post accordingly.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
My first reaction opening night was that everyone was way too willing to let Stark off the hook at the end. The movie did a decent job most of the way of showing friction within the team. “We’re working together because there’s a crisis on, but this is YOUR fault, Tony!” But everything’s fine during the epilogue. Shouldn’t Tony be fielding subpoenas from virtually every law enforcement agency on Earth for negligent creation of murderbots?
Of course we’ll see that tension pay off huge in Civil War, but I really think the ending of AOU could have led into it better.
An OK film, but a dish with a few too many ingredients thrown into the pot. You did a good job capturing both its strengths and its weaknesses.
My first comment was going to be about where Klaue is, but that’s been mostly covered. I’ll just add that with the misidentified location, it removes some of your criticism of Scarlet Witch’s character. Now, obviously she is still unconcerned about creating other orphans like she and her brother were orphaned – but that goes with the whole villan/consumed-by-revenge bit.
I agree that this movie was unimpressive, especially when compared to the first Avengers and Winter Soldier. It was a bit of mess with really good parts. Like combining different types of cereal in the same bowl. Occasionally you can find combinations that work, and the individual cereals may all be delicious, but too many and the wrong kinds make for a mess.
My favorite scene in the movie was the farm. I remember some criticisms of the scene when the movie came out, but I loved how seeing that Barton had found a way to carve out a stable life and relationships affected all the Avengers in different ways and helped ground the team and allow them to regroup. I thought it was well done.
@5/hoopmanjh: I addressed the physics of the city-dropping plan in my own blog review of the movie, which was a really long review, so I’ll just link to it here in lieu of commentary:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/lots-of-spoilery-thoughts-on-avengers-age-of-ultron/
In short, the physics is actually unusually plausible for a motion picture.
Yeah, I loved the Hawkeye & family thing, and never would’ve expected him to be the one to carry the emotional core of the movie.
To me, the ultimate failing of this movie was Ultron. They made him way too jokey. Like, not everyone has to be Whedon-esque.
@10/CLB — Thanks! That was an interesting read.
I like the thematic connection that this movie shares with season 4 of Agents of Shield. With both the Mind Stone here and the Darkhold there the good guys just horribly under-estimate just how dangerous mysterious artifacts can be (especially when combined with robots). Their plans to have robotic soldiers or decoys is not inherently bad but combining them with objects beyond human comprehension certainly is. Remember kids unearned power is dangerous power.
Because of the trouble caused by Ultron and Aida however those technologies are forever labelled as evil. The LMD project was actually a good idea up until it was corrupted by the Darkhold and taken too far, a scaled back version could have been very beneficial but no chance of that now. An AI defense system could also work so long as it is handled VERY carefully and respectfully.
I guess we’ll get to it during Civil War, but Stark is much more obviously guilty here than he is in Civil War, where I think it’s pretty obvious he’s right and Cap is wrong.
I have to admit though that one of my favourite gags was actually just Jeremy Renner in the outtake reel torpedoing a serious moment with some sudden dark humour. https://youtu.be/hv-xpjlFRVw
Always like the unpowered heroes better, so was very happy with Hawkeye’s farm arc in this one. Also, one of my favorite MCU scenes is Hawkeye’s speech to Scarlet Witch.
Keith, have you ever published anywhere the order in which you intend to review the films?
@18 This was the order last I checked, with TV pilots for The Flash and The Amazing Spider-Man Thrown in there somewhere.
“Guardians of the Galaxy, and Ant-Man — which will carry us into the 2019 new year. After that, we’ve got the 2010s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flicks, then the two Deadpool movies, then the DCEU — Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Justice League, and Aquaman — then the 1940s Dick Tracy movies, then the two Sin City movies, then the 2015 Fantastic Four, Venom, the two Kingsman movies, and then Phase 3 of the MCU — Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Ant-Man & the Wasp, Thor: Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Marvel, and Avengers: Not Actually Infinity War Part 2 But It May As Well Be — and then Hellboy, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and (assuming it’s ever released) New Mutants.”
“synthetic tissue, which will revolutionize medicine so much that we’ll never hear about it again after this movie”
To be fair, there’s a similar problem in both the Marvel and DC comic-book universes, where the technological advances made by all the brilliant inventor heroes (and the villains, who presumably lose ownership of their patents after they’re arrested) mean that the world ought to be somewhere in between Wakanda and the Jetsons by now. It’s a problem that goes all the way back to pulp novels, where Tom Swift and Doc Savage could invent all kinds of stuff for the purposes of the plot at hand, but the world at large couldn’t ever really change because readers wanted it to remain basically their world.
This is sort of addressed in Warren Ellis’s PLANETARY, where there’s just one guy inventing all the stuff (a parody of Reed Richards) and he keeps it for himself because he’s an asshole.
And pointless too. The fight doesn’t end until the Hulk runs out of steam and starts looking around at the chaos as Banner begins to reassert himself (letting Tony get in a sucker punch); and battling Iron Man actually makes a rampage worse than if they’d just focused on moving people out of Hulk’s way and let him tire himself out (people, learn to just “Leave Hulk alone”). That could be the Tagline for the whole movie “Tony Just Makes Things Worse” and aside from one scene at the farmhouse, it is never really properly examined.
My main criticism of this movie is Joss Whedon’s own filmaking. There was too much quipping subbing for actual dialogue or character, or even plot progression, and Joss’s whole ongoing issues regarding how he sees female characters which have not really changed since the mid-1990s (and what might have passed as progressive back then sure doesn’t now), really drag down a good idea. It is glib and vaguely empty, with only a couple of scenes highlighting the potential which could have been. There is only a couple of places the emotional cues properly land.
I suppose the biggest letdown is that despite the set up, we didn’t get another Avengers movie between this and Captain America: Civil War. I know a lot of that is down to RDJ’s contract, but we get this awesome set up at the end, and then nothing. At least with Thor’s sidequest we get a tie-in to both Ragnarok and Infinity War so that bit of studio meddling actually helps fit it in better to the franchise and movies the franchise forward, but the rest of it is pretty much filler and Whedonisms.
Pietro’s death may be the dumbest thing in the movie. Speedster can’t avoid the bullets?
@15 Cap wrong in Civil War? Heresy of the highest order! But we can argue about that when Keith reviews it.
I agree with this review pretty wholeheartedly. One other thing that made this movie a disappointment for me wasn’t really the movie’s fault – the way they shoehorned in a reference to it on the Agents of SHIELD episode the week that it came out was pretty bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR1W5ZYGVF8
The bits with Coulson aren’t bad, but the stuff with Raina? Ugh. (I always hated what they did to Ruth Negga, the acrtress who played Raina, with the prosthetics. Specifically the nose makeup made it so she always sounded like she had a cold, unable to pronounce any N sounds. “Codsequedses are upod us!”)
I was really hoping for more. The reveal in the movie that it was Coulson’s work that got the Helicarrier back up and running (“Theta Protocol, in the clip”) was nice, but as always, I wanted more integration.
As far as the rest of the movie – yep overstuffed. Not as bad as Spider-Man 3 when THEY had 3 villains though. And impressive that this movie had 5. Six, if you count the out-of-control Hulk.
The length of the Hulk/Hulkbuster showdown was clearly there to appease a chunk of the fanbase who had been clamoring for Hulkbuster armor (and thought they’d get it in Iron Man 3, only to have the “big armor” just show up to brace a platform on the oil rig that was falling*) and yes, it was too long. Some nice moments in it. The “end” of the fight was a bit of a copout though – having the Hulkbuster armor hit the Hulk again, only THIS TIME for some reason it actually knocks him out? I’d have preferred if the Hulk had seen the terror in the civilians as they ran away from him and THAT caused him to revert to Banner. Tony hitting him again would have just made him angry/more powerful again.
Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye was great in this movie. The one-liner “Nobody would know. Nobody. Yeah, The last I saw him, Ultron was sitting on him. Yeah, he’ll be missed, quick little bastard. I miss him already.” was great. He’s criminally underused in the MCU – I guess because he’s not powered, but neither is Black Widow. Though I guess she’s technically only in one more movie than him – but his brief part in Thor doesn’t compare to her supporting actress role in Iron Man 2.
I remember being so hyped for this one after Winter Soldier had upped the bar so high for Avengers-based movies. It was a bit of a let-down. Still a very good and entertaining movie though.
* Speaking of that, when Tony blew up all of his armor at the end, that platform should have fallen and probably ended in the deaths of everyone around.
@22 It was dumb, but he was supposed to be taking the bullets instead of Clint, in a glib Whedonistic callback. Despite that those bullets ought to have come out the other side of him and ripped through Clint anyway, and that we’d already seen him move whole people via superspeed already. I guess he just didn’t have the right soundtrack…
@3 – my personal favourite that gets a laugh every time is
Iron Man: *shoots to disable all the goons* “Good talk”
Random goon: “No it wasn’t!”
@25 It is a great gag, and very reminiscent of the Richard Lester Three Musketeers movie, but it completely undermines the power of the scene. It was the right gag, but in the wrong place.
Sam: I haven’t posted the full schedule, but here’s where I am right now (which updates what spoonfan is quoting) with the caveat that this is all subject to change:
The next two weeks will finish MCU Phase 2 with Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man. The other two weeks in February will be the 2010s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films.
March will be the two Deadpool movies, followed by two 1990s TV pilots: The Flash and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Then we finish March and go into April and the first week in May with the DCEU: Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Justice League, and Aquaman. (Yes, this means I’m doing the Lois & Clark pilot back to back with Man of Steel, which may very well break my brain.)
The rest of May will go all pulpy, as I cover first the 1940s Dick Tracy films (all in one post), then the two Modesty Blaise films (also in one post), then take two weeks to do the two Sin City films.
June and the first half of July will be spent on some standalone adaptations: The Losers, the two Kingsman movies, the 2015 Fantastic Four, and Venom.
In mid-July we kick off MCU Phase 3, which I’m doing in this order (which I think is the right one from a pure story perspective): Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Black Panther, Ant-Man & The Wasp, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. I may move Captain Marvel elsewhere — its status as a prequel means it could easily go before Strange, or somewhere else entirely. I’m reserving judgment until I actually, y’know, see it. :)
That’ll take me to the end of September, at which point I’ll cover the 2019 releases that should have all come out by then: Shazam!, Hellboy, Men in Black International, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, New Mutants, and Spider-Man: Far from Home.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’m glad I’m not alone in recognizing Stark’s villainy.
I disagree about Spader, although that isn’t Spader’s fault. Ultron was so wonderfully menacing in the trailer. He wisecracks suck all of the menace out of the villain in the movie itself, though. Joss Whedon at his worst.
Their dedication to saving lives was what annoyed me about this film. They actually seemed to put saving a number of individual lives as a priority ahead of stopping the city falling and killing *everyone*, when it was not clear that the latter was securely in the bag.
I wouldn’t mind if they took a moment in passing to save somebody, or if they had a completely separate team devoted to rescue. But regardless of how you feel about the archetypal trolley problem, if the world is going to be destroyed you have to focus on that alone.
I know this is off-topic for this particular column, but it is a question about the series in general. Did I miss entries for Sin City and 300 or did they just get skipped? I know they’re not technically superhero movies, but movies like Men in Black and Dick Tracy made it, so I was wondering if those films were going to be covered at some point.
@30 Sin City will be posted later, 300 won’t.
@29 Ah, well that is where they prove they are heroes. Any thug in a cheap suit can justify letting people die for “the greater good” but it takes a hero to resolve to save everyone and the world. That was one of the other emotional cues the movie did manage to hit, when the world was at stake they stepped up to be heroes. Heroes have heart.
Things I liked about Age of Ultron:
– Barton’s family reveal, and the entire sequence following. Tony and Steve chopping wood, “Auntie Nat,” the whole thing. Plus, it makes the bit in the Sokovia fight where he’s commenting on the ridiculousless of the whole affair so much better.
– As tired and predictable as Joss Whedon always is, some of his endless quips are actually pretty funny. Though I didn’t like the portrayal of Ultron as a comedian on the whole, I did enjoy a lot of his lines on a micro level.
Things I perhaps did not like:
– Uh, why does everyone just let Tony off the hook by the end of the movie? At a minimum, thousands of people are dead or wounded, an entire city obliterated and whoever made it out alive on the helicarrier is still homeless, and it is directly his fault. But, hey, it’s cool, just resign from the Avengers for a couple of minutes and drive away from the consequences. Work in the mandatory obnoxious Audi plug while you’re at it. That’s a good boy.
– This is made all the worse by the decision to treat Tony’s support for the Sokovia Accords in Civil War as the spectacular violation worthy of splitting the Avengers down the middle and inciting conflict among them instead. Really? The perfectly reasonable proposal that a collection of superpowered humans operating outside the law be, um, subject to some kind of law? That’s why Tony’s the bad guy? That’s why everyone decides to throw down?
– Wow, Pietro and Wanda sure went from hating the Avengers because of the civilian casualties caused by their global crusade against evil to remorselessly causing those civilian casualties themselves to signing up to be Big Damn Heroes real fast. Did Wanda even care about what happened in Johannesburg? Actually, did anyone? Because neither she, nor Bruce, nor any other team member brings it up ever again. She just joins the roster and it’s a “get out of that time you made the Hulk level half a city free” card?
– Hulkbuster! Hulkbuster! Hulkbust- okay, yes, it’s in the movie and that’s awesome, can we end the scene five or six minutes ago and move on?
– Is Joss Whedon actually aware that dialogue can be written without any snappy one-liners? Like… are we actually sure that anyone’s ever TOLD him? Does he even know he has the option? Because it sure seems like he never uses it at all.
– Hi Pietro! Oh. Oh, okay then. Bye Pietro!
– Hi Strucker! Oh. Oh, okay then. Bye Strucker!
– Ultron as a one-shot is a gross underuse of the character. He’s one of the major recurring Avengers villains. If this really is all we get of him, it was a waste of potential.
– On that thought, what exactly was his goal, anyway? Get a shiny vibranium android body, then genocide humanity because… uh… because…?
– Shipping Natasha and Bruce actually makes sense on a number of levels, but when you have no room left in your ponderous leviathan of a script due to all the other it’s-Joss-Whedon-so-Stuff-Must-Always-Be-Happening content, there was never a chance it could be treated properly, and it comes off feeling stilted and jammed in – and the sheer klutziness of the script, as Keith mentioned, does those few scenes no favours.
An earlier comment brought up Spider-Man 3 as a comparable. While I think this is a decidedly better movie, largely on the strength of better acting, the comparison is apt. It’s overstuffed, and it alternates between rushing through scenes it should have paused on longer and plodding through sequences that shouldn’t have gone on as long as they did.
Other comments I might have made are largely redundant given random22 and KalvinKingsley’s comments above.
Some great set pieces but felt over stuffed on first viewing. Definitely improves on second watch.
Hooray! I actually got to read and comment this one within hours of its posting. I got to see Age of Ultron in Korea while on a business trip (and Black Panther on a different trip, interestingly enough). The Korean audience was delighted with the scenes around Seoul. I remember enjoying the movie at the time, but it doesn’t hold up.
I agree with the others that most of the damage in this movie is can be laid at the feet of Tony Stark, making him the ultimate villain of the story. And he suffers no real consequences for it. As I have said in other threads, he continues to be a problem in Civil War, but I’ll wait until we get to that movie to elaborate (or agree with others).
Speaking of Seoul: Was there some kind of coproduction deal with a South Korean company or some such?
The problem with the advanced medical technology being developed, and then dropped, and Tony developing Ultron, which causes catastrophe, and is then forgotten, is an ongoing problem with comic book stories. Each story must be THE BIGGEST STORY EVER, with HUGE CONSEQUENCES. But then you have to start the next arc of stories, and all the things you thought of that would forever disrupt the status quo suddenly get in the way, and the writers wave their hands, and restore the status quo. Even deaths are undone on a regular basis.
I would much prefer if many of the movies had smaller stakes than the fate of the whole world, or star system, or galaxy, or whatever. There are lots of good tales to tell, and lots of adventure to be had, that don’t turn things up to 11 every time. Then when you do have a big moment, it really does feel big.
@35 / rowanblaze: It’s completely irrelevant, but you reminded me that I also saw this movie while on a business trip. I was in San Francisco for the Microsoft Build conference, and I saw it at the Metreon on opening night, a few hours after the conference ended. I generally despise seeing movies by myself, but I had another trip to a different city the next day, so I didn’t think I could reasonably avoid spoilers for the week it would take before I could get home and see it. The San Francisco crowd seemed to like it.
@29/Gerry_Quinn: Just because the trolley problem is theoretically possible, that doesn’t mean you assume every problem is a trolley problem. That’s anything but heroic. Too many villains use “the greater good” as an excuse to callously sacrifice individuals. Sacrificing individuals should NEVER be the automatic default position.
Besides, the trolley problem is based on limitations — on the assumption that your only option is to switch the trolley to one of two tracks, because that’s the only thing you have the power to affect. The essence of superheroes is that they have more options — that they can use their powers or their brilliance to break free of those limits and save everyone. The trolley problem doesn’t apply to someone who can lift the whole trolley. (Metaphorically or literally.) Indeed, that’s one of the classic superhero tropes — the villain forces the hero to choose between saving their love interest/best pal or saving the city, and the hero finds a way to do both. So what you’re calling a bug of Age of Ultron is in fact a feature of the whole superhero genre.
Hey, KRAD, I saw you reviewed punisher season 1, are you (or soneone else, mods) going to do season 2?
-I thought for sure that they would use the Synthetic Skin to heal Quicksilver, since they did bring his body back.
-I was disappointed that they didn’t have Coulson on the helicarrier to say “Hey guys, I’m actually alive and here to save your butts,” since they revealed in the next week’s episode of AoS that he had a big hand in the reconstruction of the helicarrier, not to mention the moping up of all the Hydra bases he and his team have done up until this last one in the previous weeks’. Though, that would probably have ruined the emotional impact of Quicksilver’s death, as well. (“You came back from being stabbed through the heart? He’s only got a couple dozen bullets in him!” “Sorry, all out of Kree Blood…”)
-Do J.A.R.V.I.S. and F.R.I.D.A.Y. stand for anything?
I remember a tweet from back when the movie came out that I thought was pretty much the perfect commentary to the plot of this overstuffed but fun flick: “The most realistic part of this movie is how Ultron decides to wipe out humanity after spending two minutes on the internet.”
Thank you. I can’t tell you how many arguments I had about that when this movie came out. It’s clear when you break down exactly what is being said and don’t try reading things into it that aren’t there, but some people are just determined to see the worst in everything. I agree that it’s an easy interpretation to make, but the problem is that when faced with the correct interpretation, a very vocal set of folks refused to accept it.
Compared to the first Avengers, This one was a pretty massive letdown. Ultron was a lame villain who didn’t at any point convince that he was a credible threat to the Avengers, The Maximoff Twins and the Vision were both the textbook definition of shoehorned, The Hulk/Black Widow romance added nothing and just came off as awkward, both Cap and Thor were pretty much pretty much completely superfluous but ate up lots of screen time just because and just two many plot points from the first Avengers were repeated (did we really need another Avengers destroy an army of disposable drones set piece?)
“but it also isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation”
I’d say it’s pretty damn close.
If people are griping about technological marvels in previous movies not showing up in future movies, be prepared to be disappointed in how little impact Wakanda going public at the end of Black Panther has on the world in future movies.
@43 If you have to spend time taking apart a piece of dialogue in order to correct what seems to be the most obvious interpretation, then that dialogue has failed in its purpose. The way it is worded and delivered it does seem very obvious that Nat seems to think she is a monster for not being able to have kids, and that you need to sit down later and decode it and listen to a director’s commentary in order to get what the director thinks he was saying means that it was a major screw up. And to be honest, you only get credit for what you put in the movie. What Whedon put in the movie was a badly paced piece of dialogue that seemed to indicate that Nats thought she was a monster for the no-children thing. So that, whether intended or not, is the “correct” interpretation; because that is what was put on the screen.
I just recently re-watched the MCU in order (while recovering from surgery, so some drug-induced memory modification may be involved), but I thought I remembered that the plan was not just to let Sokovia drop, but to actually accelerate it downward beyond what gravity alone would do.
That still doesn’t deal with the issue of “if you’ve got that much energy, why bother with such an indirect method”, but I do like the suggestion of Ultron being into the symbolism.
#46
That’s not necessarily always the case with dialogue. People can be often indirect, evasive or cryptic when speaking about sensitive topics. The problem with that scene is Whedon wrote dialogue for a dour gothic drama within a direct, explodey comic book movie, and sometimes that’s an awkward fit.
My enjoyment of this movie was adversely affected by it coming out the same summer as Mad Max: Fury Road. The actions scenes in Fury Road being used to tell the story so well (while also relying on so much more practical effects) made me all too conscious of how bland a long CGI-filled fight scene where the heroes (seemingly easily) take out wave after unending wave of faceless bad guys could be. Great action movies should follow the same rules as great musicals — each action setpiece/song must advance the story, not just be there for spectacle.
@46 My initial reading of the line of dialogue was actually the (presumably) intended meaning — that Natasha considered herself more of a monster than Bruce because, when given the choice between being able to create life or take life, she chose the latter. However, I 100% agree that it’s not handled well at all. For one thing, the film doesn’t adequately get into the lack of true choice she had in the matter, and the entire romantic subplot would probably have been better off either dedicating a lot more screen time to it, or cutting it entirely.
–Andy
“Finally, one thing I particularly admire about this movie is the same one I admired about the last Avengers movie, that their priority is saving lives.”
@krad- This is actually one thing I wholeheartedly disagree with, and was a major barrier to the start of the movie. When the movie starts in media res, we see all of the Avengers straight up murdering human soldiers and quipping back and forth as they do so. They upbraid Cap for being uptight as they use language, while they are killing anyone that moves. Granted, it’s revealed that these soldiers are Hydra, but only near the end of the scene. Our introduction is these heroes slaughtering everyone they see and joking as they do it.
I understand what you’re saying and by the time they’re in Sokovia, the clear priority is rescuing every civilian that they could, but the opening was still very disconcerting to me.
@41/LazerWulf: “Do J.A.R.V.I.S. and F.R.I.D.A.Y. stand for anything?”
JARVIS has been explained to stand for “Just Another Rather Very Intelligent System,” but we know from Agent Carter that it’s actually named in honor of Howard Stark’s butler Edwin Jarvis (just as in the comics it’s named for Tony Stark’s butler Edwin Jarvis). FRIDAY’s acronym has not been explained, but it’s in reference to the phrase “girl Friday” for a personal assistant or secretary (originally “man Friday,” derived from the character of Friday in Robinson Crusoe).
@46/random22: “The way it is worded and delivered it does seem very obvious that Nat seems to think she is a monster for not being able to have kids, and that you need to sit down later and decode it and listen to a director’s commentary in order to get what the director thinks he was saying means that it was a major screw up.”
I disagree emphatically. To me, it was immediately obvious right there in the theater what she meant: that her handlers made her into a monster, an inhuman killing machine, by doing cruel and dehumanizing things to her, and sterilizing her was just one aspect of that. She didn’t bring it up to condemn herself, she brought it up to condemn what her creators had done to her in order to turn her into a living weapon. It never occurred to me that there was any other way of reading it, and I was surprised when I saw that some people online had taken that one line about sterilization out of context of the larger discussion and grossly missed the point.
A lot of people keep complaining that Ultron made too many jokes. If he’s Tony’s true creation, why is everyone surprised that he snarks like him too? All he lacked was giving people oddball nicknames.
i can’t help noticing that it’s when Wanda joins the team that the cracks become serious, and Tony really suffers doubt. I don’t believe them just bringing her in during this one at all. Unless she’s causing it.
I guess I never thought much about them bringing Wanda into the fold, because that’s what happens in the comics. But thinking about it from a purely MCU perspective…I can still see it. Steve definitely sympathizes with them, as he told Hill back in the beginning. Tony likely feels responsible for their motivations. Hawkeye seems to feel protective toward her, especially since she just lost her brother. Given her powers, she’s probably safest with them, as opposed to being out in the world. And she proved herself fighting against Ultron. It’s true they might have trouble trusting her after the mind-whammies, but they have just as much reason to keep her around.
@22 Quicksilver can dodge bullets, but he can’t dodge Fox’s X-Men’s control that only allowed him to be in this movie.
@33 Wanda read Ultron’s mind and found out he was going to wipe out all human life on the planet. What she thought of the Avengers means next to nothing to stopping Ulton.
@43 I love the scene in the CIVIL WAR version of HOW IT SHOULD HAVE ENDED where all the other Avengers mark out “Sokovia” on the Accords and put “Tony” in its place since all the problems were caused by Tony in the first place. https://youtu.be/fvLw021rVN0
@54 The rationale makes sense, and those explanations certainly fit with their respective characters. But it would have been nice to have even thirty seconds’ worth of dialogue explicitly addressing it nonetheless. Instead, we’re just given a shot of her standing with the rest of the new team in costume. Oh, okay, guess bygones are bygones. What’s a few attempted murders between… friends, now?
@55 Oh, I know that. The prospect of total annihilation has a way of making personal grudges seem rather small. But I’m less interested in the second flip than the first – for someone so motivated by the cost in lives of the Avengers’ actions (and in particular, Tony Stark’s), she doesn’t even hesitate to intentionally unleash the Hulk on a civilian population. For someone so horrified by Ultron’s murderous intentions, she certainly has a comfortable relationship with her own.
Maybe the reason Pietro didn’t dodge the bullets is that he was… tired? He’d been using his powers quite a lot before that, after all. Nobody can keep up a constant level of exertion forever. Sooner or later fatigue kicks in.
!16. ChocolateRob: Yes! I was going to mention that outtake. After all the taunting Hawkeye endures from Pietro (“Keep up old man!”), leading to pointing arrows at him (“Who would know?”), suffocating QS to make sure he’s dead was hilarious. Hawkeye has some insecurity issues apparently.
@@@@@ Austin
Honestly, I felt that way about The Avengers too. I remember watching this at the cinema and my main issue wasn’t so much plot related but more like I couldn’t see what the bloody hell was going on in a lot of the action scenes. I really liked Avengers (Assemble) when it first came out but looking at both it and Ultron now there are so many things that bug me about both of them. The dialogue might be funny in a lot of case but in no way does it convincingly feel like people having a conversation, rather people setting up other people to deliver a punchline. And I could just never buy Ultron as an AI as he just feels too Human in his attitudes. I don’t want him to be all “Human detected!! DESTROY! DESTROY!” but he sounds like someone who woke up after a few too many drinks and is just annoyed and sarcastic at everything.
Ugh. I was actually pleased when JW excited the MCU.
The text you’ve used for the “read more” link is simultaneously the dumbest joke I’ve ever heard and my favorite moment in this film, and actually possibly the MCU. I cheered in the theatre. That is all.
Random Comments: I agree on all counts. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Oh SPARE ME. The destruction porn in “Man of Steel” was no better or worse than the destruction porn in “The Avengers”, “The Incredible Hulk”, “Thor”, “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” and other MCU properties. And yeah . . . Superman and the U.S. Air Force were trying to save lives. It’s damn hard to do against a group of super enhanced beings, particularly one super being who was having a temper tantrum. And the “destruction porn” played a major role in “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice”. So just . . . spare me your crap about “Man of Steel”.
“[T]he human race is almost extinguished because he refuses to believe that he needs to be accountable.”
And then he decides he (and therefore, of course, everyone else) does. Stark’s position in Civil War very much grows out of this film and his own stories, as he looks for something external to restrain him after his previous efforts at self-restraint repeatedly fail with the costs largely being borne by others..
But that one is also fundamentally a conflict between realism and genre: there are excellent reasons why in reality things like vigilantism and unaccountable power are bad and why we incorporate the use of violence into formal structures with prescribed limits. (Which still are frequently far from sufficient to prevent abuse.) But unaccountable violent power is also pretty close to definitionally what superheroes are about.
Cap knows that. And because he’s Cap, he won’t sign an agreement he knows he’ll break if (when) the need arises. (As sure as he went AWOL in WWII to mount a rescue mission, as sure as he wound up telling SHIELD “No, you move.”)
Tony doesn’t want to know it. But of course Tony will be illegally crossing a border to break into a secure facility before the ink is quite dry on the Sokovia Accords. (As will Steve- but he knew himself well enough not to put his name to a promise not to do that sort of thing.)
Conversely for something like Dr. Cho’s technology, a little realism may actually help. Because where superhero technology can go from “here’s an idea!” to a swarm of worldkilling robots in hours, all we need imagine is that Dr Cho’s tech has to go through clinical trials and regulatory approval. It will definitely be changing the world… starting about ten minutes after the curtain falls on the last MCU film.
Granted, it depends how many phases the MCU goes through before it’s rebooted completely. But only four years out from Age of Ultron it’s completely plausible that regeneration hasn’t yet produced enough data to satisfy the FDA.
(And that they may have even more public safety questions after seeing the Vision– “He’s great and all, but just what is the range of effects possible with this technology, anyway?”)
I do rather like this. It’s not a classic, and it’s possibly not that deep compared to the Captain America movies either side of it, but Ultron makes a great villain and there’s a real sense of the Avengers struggling to keep as many people alive as possible while facing an implacable enemy to whom they’re all disposeable. It’s cluttered though, with too many characters already and more being thrown in. Not that the additions are bad. Vision has a wonderfully innocent charm about him and it’s a brilliant moment when he casually picks up Thor’s hammer without having a clue what the significance is. I just about buy Scarlet Witch’s arc, as the tunnel vision of not caring about the collateral damage of her desire for revenge on Tony Stark gets suddenly exploded when she realises just how much collateral damage there’s going to be. Quicksilver’s death works because it happens at a moment when neither we nor Hawkeye are entirely sure we like or trust him, making his sacrifice all the more uncomfortable. But the need to include a role for everyone does lead to weird side journeys like Selvig being dragged in out of contractual obligation for a bunch of pointless scenes. (I seem to recall hearing there was more shot but cut.)
And, um, have we forgotten Evans’ post-credit cameo in Ant-Man since last week?
Cap can lift Thor’s Hammer right?
cap-mjb: Derp! Will fix….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@63
No, he isn’t. Tony is looking for something to absolve him. And he takes refuge in a power structure, because in that nobody is responsible and a committee will be accountable instead of him. And he drags everybody else into it just because he needs something to wash his conscience clean. And he would be in no way restrained because he is one of the ones who is manipulating the committee to get what authorisations he needs when he wants it. CW truly is about power without responsibility, but it is Tony and not Steve seeking it.
Add in Tony trying to find another target other than himself to project his anger over his relationship with his parents and you’ve got another movie which is basically “Tony Makes Everything Worse: Episode MM”. Is he even seeing a therapist?
@65/cap-mjb: I’m not sure the Ant-Man post-credits scene really counts, since it’s not so much a scene in Ant-Man as a teaser clip from Civil War shown at the end of Ant-Man. If a TV episode shows a preview for the next episode at the end, the actors who appear in it are only credited in the next episode.
Christopher: It does, too, count, because it’s the post-credits scene, which the MCU has established as being part of the movie. It’s also why I list Hemsworth’s next appearance as being in Dr. Strange, even though that post-credits scene is also a scene lifted from Ragnarok. It still counts as the character’s next appearance.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@68 / random22: “Is he even seeing a therapist?”
The post-credits scene of Iron Man 3 shows us he’s not — he’s trying to use Bruce as his therapist. And after Bruce vanishes at the end of Ultron (perhaps because Tony never listens to him?), we see in the first scenes of Civil War that Tony’s attempting some kind of holographic regression therapy. We can see the entire larger arc of the MCU as a gigantic statement about the importance of having a good therapist.
@70/krad: I was thinking that the Ant-Man and Ragnarok tag scenes (and the Captain America: The First Avenger tag scene leading directly into an Avengers preview) are more in the vein of “Next time, on Marvel Cinematic Universe…” — more like trailers for the next movie than actual parts of the current movie. But I guess maybe they’re more like the teaser scenes at the end of Lost in Space or The Time Tunnel, where they’d tack on the opening scene for the next episode as a cliffhanger ending for the current episode. I guess those scenes could be considered part of both episodes in which they appear.
My daughter and I just rewatched this one as part of a rainy afternoon double feature with Captain America: Winter Soldier. I was ready for this film to be a big letdown from that – and was really surprised when it wasn’t. Sure, it was overstuffed, but never to the level of, say, Spider-Man 3, which managed to lose sight of its central narrative in a way this film never did (Thor’s story notwithstanding).
I get that the staging of the Quicksilver scene in X-Men: Days of Future Past was better than most everything we got with Pietro in this movie. However, for my money, the portrayal of the character in this film felt much more like the angry, impatient, imperious guy we see in the Avengers comics (a side note; my friend Ed and I always thought it would be a fun one-off issue to see a Team of Heroic Jerks that would include Namor, Quicksilver, Sunfire, etc.).
Is this film as good as the first or third Avengers flicks? No – but it’s still a pretty excellent piece of blockbuster filmmaking
I think I like this one better than most people, but it sure is messy and bloated. Structurally I think it works fine; like Keith says it makes sense as an Avengers film. It’s still an MCU movie, so everyone is doing a good job portraying their characters; things even mostly make sense from a sense of character development. Where things are going wrong here is elements from previous movies are running into each other, and even Joss Whedon cannot figure out how all of this really works together.
This is where the military industrial powers of Iron Man, Captain America’s iron core of decency, and Thor’s goofy mysticism all really start to generate a lot of friction. I think the scene where Iron Man and Cap are about to come to blows over whether Stark can be trusted to create ANOTHER superpowered AI, and Thor comes in and settles it by saying that he has had a mystical vision, encapsulated neatly both what does and doesn’t work about the Avengers. In some ways it is interesting seeing them putting aside their differences and putting their faith in this robot that can lift Thor’s Hammer, but it doesn’t really settle the underlying moral questions.
Stark’s role in these movies makes coherent internal sense–he wants to make up for his past actions as an arms dealer, but the only tools he knows how to use are his skills as an engineer and an arms dealer so he keeps falling into bad patterns. Since these patterns keep leading to supervillains getting hold of terrible weapons, or even Stark accidentally creating genocidal robots, he certainly qualifies as a villain like Keith says. The thing that keeps him sympathetic is that he is not a sociopath; Stark is pained at the outcome of his mistakes, even if he can’t understand himself clearly enough to stop making them. And it’s easy to see how he enlists Banner in his schemes, since Bruce Banner is also desperate to atone, and even more powerless to restrain the damage he can do.
Meanwhile as a follow up to The Winter Soldier, this feels like a real repudiation of Steve Rogers’ choices in that movie. Rogers overrode Fury’s argument that something like SHIELD could be saved; he saw clearly that it was compromised from its very inception, and that an organization that wields the kind of power that SHIELD did is inherently corruptible. But here he is working with the Avengers, basically picking up where SHIELD left off, working alongside SHIELD personnel. Fury shows up again with a helicarrier, and all the movie can do is shrug at us. Fury and Hill were involved in Project Insight, which must have been a financial fiasco, and something that got a lot of people killed and inflicted a bunch of property damage on the DC area. Shouldn’t these people be tainted, and potentially considered criminals? I can see why Stark would give them a pass, but shouldn’t Rogers care?
I kind of resent what these movies do to Captain America. By the end of The Winter Soldier, he feels like a standout moral force in superhero movies that often make violence and domination look too cool. And I think Stark is in a bad place too. I don’t think the MCU wants us to consider Stark a total villain; they want him to have his redemption, at least by the time Downey is ready to step down from the role. But how do they come back from any of this, and from what is yet to come?
The Scarlet witch is a problem too. It’s almost bold to have Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver join up with a Nazi terrorist group because of a grievance against Stark and the United States for bombing their homeland. It would have been bolder to have made them Arabs who joined up with the Ten Rings or something, and still tried to force the audience to sympathize with them. But ultimately I’m not sure why we are supposed to sympathize with the twins; not only did they join up with Nazis, but they are responsible for trashing Johannesburg and don’t seem to feel much remorse about it. It’s only when they figure out that Ultron means to kill them too that they make their heel-face turn. And then Scarlet Witch gets allowed to join the Avengers. No consequences for Stark, or Maximoff; Banner at least feels bad enough to retreat from the world in shame.
The MCU from this point on works best in smaller stories, I think. The first Avengers movie feels like a fluke, where they really got everything to work together. It’s too hard to weave stories that not only do everyone justice, but also make moral sense.
I completely forgot Klaue was in this movie, as I don’t think I’ve seen it since it was out in theaters. Perhaps the Johannesburg sequence just bored me, especially with the overlong Hulkbuster fight. But I didn’t realize immediately that we had seen Klaue before when watching Black Panther.
I instantly recognized Romanoff was saying she was a monster for the whole of the Red Room stuff, but also realized the way it was worded in the scene was…really poorly done and the sterilization part–while making sense for the sort of horrific assassin training she went through–felt clumsily tacked in to highlight that horror, in the wrong way. So I wasn’t surprised for the flak and attention that line got.
The scenes between Banner and Romanoff were almost as cringey, to me personally, as the scenes between Anakin and Padme in the second SW prequel, but only because there wasn’t time for these scenes between two adults who should have been able to speak in more than just Whedon quips. Also, I’m more than a little tired of romance arcs being shoehorned in to big action films just because. Let people be platonic, or keep any romantic stuff background.
Which is sort of why Barton’s family reveal worked for me, I guess. He has a life, but he keeps it separate from the job, and it means his strong relationship with Romanoff is platonic, to found-family levels, which I prefer to the shipping of them pre-Ultron, in the end (I also like how the farm scenes slow things down a bit in the movie; the party with the veterans and trying to lift Thor’s hammer also helped that).
Now, I love romance and shipping myself, but that’s for in between the big movie-worthy adventures, and if it does come up, it has to feel earned, which the Banner/Romanoff ship doesn’t here even though the set up has been there since they met in the first Avengers movie. I think I’m just at a point in media consumption where I want romance, but I want good romance, not just “these characters are getting paired up on the side because we’re ticking production boxes.” Especially when so much of it is unhealthy or based on terrible tropes and stereotypes, or just written poorly by guys like Whedon who like to play at being feminists when their track record shows them as anything but, when you sit back and examine everything over the last 25-ish years.
I like The Vision’s creation and use here–Bettany’s performance was good, his voice especially really working for the role–but it also came with the knowledge they were going to add in the relationship with Wanda in later movies and I was not looking forward to that. It’s especially really awkward after Civil War and going into Infinity War.
I did enjoy the spectacle and found it overall fun, but again, I haven’t seen it since release–it just doesn’t strike me as being as rewatchable as some of the others, and the over-stuffing didn’t help.
@62. Lee Jones: Consider reading this and see if you still feel the same way:
Man of Steel
The main comparison with Superman II, for example, is that Superman flies away when he realizes the collateral damage his fight with Zod causes, risking being called a coward, but taking the battle to an unpopulated area. Add to that the stupidity of Snyder’s Pa Kent raising his son to hide his powers and let people die rather than expose himself. What the hell kinda small town mid-western values are those? At least Pa is willing to sacrifice himself for his beliefs.
And BTW, why doesn’t David Goyer get more blame for the darkness and lack of warmth of his DC scripts? He imported his Blade aesthetics into the DC universe where they didn’t belong and fundamentally misread a character that was always meant to be a sun god, not a grim, brooding Batman wannabe.
Many of the older AVENGER movies are running this weekend on several cable networks, and I just saw the last thirty minutes of CIVIL WAR. Tony has the emotional maturity of Star Lord. They should get together to have toddler squabbles, but, for the love all that is sane, take their dangerous toys away from them.
Lee Jones: You’re really gonna hate my rewatch of Man of Steel……..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Ok, I’m re-watching Age of Ultron tonight, and in the argument about the need for Ultron, Tony reminds everyone of the invaders from space pouring through a hole. Then he says “that’s the endgame”. Clue?
@79/Sophist: “Endgame” is a pretty common word. I doubt it’s a clue.
@79 @80 The Russos have said that the “endgame” comment was deliberate on their part.
@81/MByerly: Yes, but is AoU the only previous time the term “endgame” has been used in the MCU? I think I recall hearing that the word was used in Infinity War, so that seems more likely to be what the title refers to.
@82 Dr. Strange says that they’re in the Endgame now in IW
@82: Given the amount of planning that seems to have gone into this “cinematic universe,” I have to wonder if they didn’t already know that Avengers IV was going to be called “Endgame” and decided to seed it through a couple Avengers movies. After all, the Infinity Gauntlet shows up here in Thor’s vision and in the post-credits scene. If not, then it’s a fun coincidence.
If it were some more unusual word, then maybe, but “endgame” is just too commonplace a word to go spinning conspiracy theories around every stray mention of it. It’s so common that you can’t even really say it’s a coincidence when it gets reused.
Hey Keith, since you’re doing Guardians of the Galaxy, would you consider doing Flash Gordon (1980) as well? Both are comic space-opera, the difference being that Guardians is also set in a shared universe in which Earth has superheroes.
And what about Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)? It got a theatrical release, even though it was a cartoon in the Bruce Timmverse.
@86/Ryamano: I would LOVE a Mask of the Phantasm review. Such a great piece of work.
@86/Ryamano: If Keith did animated superhero movies as well as live-action ones, it would probably take several more years to get through them all, given the sheer number of DC and Marvel direct-to-video movies there have been over the past couple of decades.
@@@@@ 88
Like I said, the difference with Mask of the Phantasm is that it did get a theatrical release, unlike basically almost every other superhero animated movie (except the very recent Spiderman into the spiderverse and Batman the killing joke, which got a very, very limited release). It was not a very successful release in box office terms (US$ 5.8 million against a budget of US$ 6.0 million, so it qualifies as a flop), but it got good reviews. I remember it appearing in “Siskel and Ebert”, with Gene Siskel actually complimenting it and saying it was a much better movie than Batman Forever.
Youtube clip for those who never saw the Siskel review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_KcFFqLggY
@89/Ryamano: It’s not about the quality of the movie or the venue of its release; this particular rewatch series just doesn’t cover animated films. However, Tor.com has covered Mask of the Phantasm in Steven Padnick’s Batman: The Animated Series rewatch back in 2013:
https://www.tor.com/2013/05/28/batman-animated-series-rewatch-mask-of-the-phantasm/
Ryamano: I have been considering adding Flash Gordon, yeah. Both the 1980 film and the pilot for the dreadful 2007 TV series. We’ll see….
As for Mask of the Phantasm, afraid not, for the reasons Christopher gives. This is a rewatch of live-action adaptations specifically. Being theatrically released has nothing to do with it. (I’m doing bunches of TV movies, after all.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I have to admit to preferring the “love is for children” Natasha of the first Avengers movie, but her new outlook matches with her “I need to find new covers” comment from The Winter Soldier.
@91/krad: I will always insist that the 2007 Flash Gordon series only started out dreadful (well, mediocre to poor with one really dreadful episode) but then got much better, by which point it had unfortunately lost most of its audience due to its very weak start. In my opinion, all but one of the show’s bad episodes are on the first disc of the 4-DVD box set.
Of course, the best Flash Gordon movie is the one you wouldn’t be covering because it’s animated — Filmation’s 1979 Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All, which only aired once in 1982 (though the majority of its footage was reused or reanimated for the first season of the 1979 TV series) and never had a US home video release, though it can be found on YouTube. I believe it was suppressed because of Dino DeLaurentiis controlling the movie rights, which is a shame because it’s far superior to the live-action 1980 film, beautifully made and highly authentic to the comics.
Ooh, hang on… If you’re going to do Flash Gordon, then you should probably do the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century pilot movie as well. The Anthony Rogers character originated in a pair of (incredibly racist) 1920s prose novellas, but the version of the character called Buck Rogers originated in a comic strip, as did the outer-space focus and most of the supporting cast. Although there are two different movie-length versions of that — the TV pilot version that was filmed first (syndicated as 2 episodes but originally aired in a 2-hour slot), and the theatrical release that chops out a lot of the story and characterization and tacks on a really inept “James Bond”-style title song sequence.
Hm, is there something that disqualifies Scott Pilgrim vs. the World?
@94/Colin R: Scott Pilgrim isn’t really a superhero comic — it’s a romance comic built around video-game metaphors.
I suppose, but it has the superficial trappings and structure of superheroics. When you’re getting into pulpy stuff like The Phantom, Red Sonja, and Sin City, or police/spy stuff like Dick Tracy and Kingsman, it seems to me like splitting hairs. It’s Keith’s show though, and I know other stuff has been cut off for similar reasons.
The first season of the animated Flash Gordon was really great. The second season was an abomination that should be burned with fire.
@88 Don’t forget the LEGO Batman movie!
Agreed with @96 about Scott Pilgrim. Not just because it’s an awesome movie, but other “comic” movies have been covered that aren’t really superhero related.
I am not going to do Buck Rogers for the same reason I’m not doing The Shadow — the character’s origins are in prose, not comics. And I don’t wanna. :)
And Scott Pilgrim vs. the World isn’t really a superhero comic. And I don’t wanna. :)
Ultimately, both are on the bubble, and I choose throw them over the edge.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Congrats on the @100, krad! So, basically, you have something against Scott Pilgrim. You can’t tell me that Sin City or Dick Tracy are “superhero” comics ;)
I’ll have a longer diatribe when we get to Civil War, but i could never understand why everyone doesn’t stand up, together, to Tony “Look douche-waffle, 90% of the problems are caused by all of us cleaning up your mess. You need to be put in check, and pay restitution to all the people injured by your actions, not lecture the rest of us for doing the best we can”
@96/Colin R: Again, I would say that Scott Pilgrim has the trappings of video games, not superhero fiction.
@97/hoopmanjh: Agreed about the two Flash Gordon seasons, although the rarely-seen movie is even better than the first season, which cut out the more adult and violent content from the movie (like the opening scenes in WWII Europe) and started in medias res.
@100/krad: As I said, most of what we identify with Buck Rogers — the name “Buck,” the outer-space setting, the entire supporting cast besides Wilma Deering — did originate in the comic strip. Tony Rogers was a prose character, but Buck Rogers is a comics character.
Buried in there somewhere, there’s a good story just waiting to be told.
But overall, Ultron is a significant step-down from the previous Avengers. Overstuffed with plotting. Pointless threads, and I never get a sense of what the stakes are. Ultron doesn’t present enough of a threat. And the excess forces everything to be driven at a breakneck pace, leaving little room for character beats.
If anything, the wound licking reunion at the Barton homestead is a welcome set piece.
If the movie is trying to make Tony the villain, it’s not doing the job particularly well, because it never quite delivers in selling Tony’s need to correct everything the way the solo Iron Man films did.
Not nearly enough time spent with the Maximoff twins. The result is a cipher version of Quicksilver, who’s little more than a glorified red shirt. The Bryan Singer X-Men version beats him in every aspect. Scarlet Witch shows more potential, and Elizabeth Olsen radiates expressiveness. Sadly, the fact we only get to see these characters in small doses every two years means we never quite get to know them and see them evolve. Wanda deserved more screentime. From losing her twin brother, to being the focal point of Civil War to developing a friendship to a full-blown romance with Vision, it should have been more developed and given screentime.
To its credit, Ultron does establish the plot elements that will blossom beautifully in Civil War (which I consider to be the essential third Avengers film more than a Cap story). Enough time is spent on the doomed Sokovia for that thread to matter.
The issue of protecting civilians is obviously relevant in any superhero context, and it makes sense for the Avengers to be playing that role (it also justifies Clint and Pietro’s selfless actions). But I do feel that this particular film tries to overplay that aspect, almost as a kneejerk response to the obviously callous way Man of Steel treated the whole issue (as an afterthought, more than anything). I have no problems with focusing on protecting civilians, but it does feel shoehorned in this particular story.
Overall, you get the sense that Whedon was burning out big-time while doing this. It can’t be easy to please so many parties, with so much financials at stake, and still imprint your own take on the material.
@102: Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Tony’s whole arc in Civil War about trying to atone for his life’s mistakes? Like from the very first scene we see him in …
@105 I’d say his arc was about him trying to shift the blame for his screw ups from himself onto other people, rather than trying to atone. He wants absolution without repentance.
@105: Another commentator put it correctly, i cannot recall which, but the gist of it is this: In Civil War, Tony isn’t looking for atonement because he understands that he keeps creating the situations that require such a massive response and collateral damage, he is looking to be absolved of the responsibility and for the governing body of the Accords to take over the decision making so that no one can even attempt to hold him personally accountable the way the mother at the beginning of the movie does when she confronts him at the elevator. I mean, she doesn’t go to the press demanding answers from The Avengers, she very correctly singles out Tony Stark as being responsible. Cap, at least the way he has been presented, never shies away from taking responsibility for his or the teams actions and owns it when there is a mistake. In AoU, Tony sets the plot in motion by creating a murder-bot, and then when given the opportunity later in the film to, literally does the exact same thing all over again and pressures Bruce into helping again. The only things that kept him from creating Ultron 2.0 were straight porting JARVIS into the Vision and Thor’s intervention.
@106: I don’t come to the same conclusion. In fact, I see it that Tony isn’t just willing to atone for his mistakes – he’s actually willing to lose friendships over it. He sees that he’s essentially Pandora, opening the box that leads to chaos, and now he has to make it right.
@108: He doesn’t single himself out, though, as being responsible, but shifts it onto the whole team as needing to be constrained.
This movie was a complete disappointment to me, I found it clunky, and uninteresting. Ultron ended up being an evil stand-up comedian, and it took the menace away from it. I was a bit pissed that War Machine gets to be in the final scenes, but not the Falcon. And no “Avengers Assemble”? I swear, if we don’t get the rallying cry in Endgame, I will hulk out in the theather.
The intro scene with the Avengers taking down the HYDRA base is awesome, I’ll give them that. The Hulkbuster armor too.
@12 – Austin: My thoughts exactly.
@26 – random22: Gags in the wrong place (and too many of them) is my main issue with the MCU (even though I like most of its films).
@73 – twels: RE: less disappointing movies in rewatch, I find that many times the second time around, my expectations are gone, and I can focus on enjoying the good parts.
@104 — I think I saw that they’re developing a Vision/Scarlet Witch series for the new Disney streaming service? With Bettany and Olsen reprising the roles?
@110: It’s true that nobody says the words during the film. But the last words are Cap saying “Avengers [Assemble]. We don’t hear him say the second word, but we know what it is.
I think that makes thematic sense too. The team Cap has at the end is an actual team. Before that, there were just too many individuals joining when they thought it convenient or necessary.
The team at the end has never worked together, they’re just starting training, it seems. They should have just used the rallying cry in the first film, darnit.
@@@@@ 23 – Yes, Captain America is wrong. While he’s invariably a hero and his moral compass is obviously the guiding compass of the Avengers, he’s wrong. And Stark is right. Captain America may be literally perfect, but he’s a shining example of Plato’s question about the perfect king. Cap is an independent military force intervening in the affairs of sovereign governments with impunity, even when they specifically ask him not to. The principle here is important; the world community is coming together to ask Cap to not do this thing, and he’s refusing. And for what? To protect the Winter Soldier, a man who is an outright villain? Even if he’s been brainwashed, it’s not Cap’s call. And what happens when Cap dies or is incapacitated? There are MAJOR issues that each of the rest of the Avengers have, such that it’s perfectly reasonable to have doubts as to letting them run amok.
Cap’s position is that he knows best, but at some point, who is he to decide that? You’ve got hundreds of countries telling him to stay out of their business, but there is he, employing deadly force to enact his own view of justice on the world. And that is highly problematic, especially when you consider that this white man with “America” in his name is being considered a hero, and in the right, when he acts as the moral and ethical arbiter of the world and uses violent force, against the wishes of sovereign states and their people, to enforce that.
@36. hoopmanjh: The Republic of Korea spent about $2 million on Age of Ultron, plus cordoning of sections of the very busy city of Seoul for filming. This is similar to several other governmental film commissions in various states and countries that encourage productions in their territories. It was cool to recognize bits of the city from my own visits, including the cultural center on the Han River representing the exterior of Dr. Cho’s lab.
But they’re no less Avengers for all that. That was the point of Clint’s speech to Wanda: “If you go back out there, you’re an Avenger.”
andrewrm: While I don’t disagree with you, I don’t agree with you either, and that’s in part due to specifically what happens in Civil War. But this isn’t the place for that argument. *laughs* Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll discuss it at great length when we get to the next Captain America movie in the summer………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@115
I don’t think that’s the right read on Captain America’s arc–and Civil War really is a Captain America movie, not an Avengers movie, so it’s really about him. Iron Man and Captain America are both right on their own technical merits; they’re both wrong because they both ultimately fail as heroes. The two big brawls between them take place because they’re putting their egos and their needs before their responsibilities to others.
Steve Rogers understands his failure and knows he is done being Captain America; of all the Marvel superheroes, he is always the one who has a clear and cool head about what he is doing and why. Tony Stark is always the character at the end of Iron Man 3: he is resolved to atone but can’t, because he doesn’t know himself and doesn’t understand what he did wrong or why he did it.
The sour note about Civil War is that is the end of Captain America’s arc: Cap turning his back on the role. Yes, I am sure he will suit up again in Endgame, but that’s just a formal obligation of the last hurrah. I don’t expect the moral conflict from AoU and CW to be resolved.
@116/Rowanblaze — Thanks! I thought I remembered hearing about some kind of arrangement like that, but didn’t remember any details.
@117 – Sophist: My point is that they’re no more a team than the original was, so they don’t have more right to the battle cry.
Vision’s final talk with Ultron is one of my favorite scenes in the MCU, and my second favorite of the movie after the hammer scene in the bar.
@122: Yes, and my point was that those who stayed with Cap actually *are* a team. They’re not the ones whose egos dominate them. They’re actual team players.
I think the implied use of the rallying cry at the end makes sense, even if it’s a cruel tease. The first two Avengers movies tell a mostly coherent story. The first movie is an impromptu team-up, complete with the initial heroic conflict caused by misunderstanding that is resolved when everyone teams up to face the bad guys. At the end everyone steps back from making the team a formal organization, and they go their separate ways.
Age of Ultron looks like an attempt to explain how the group goes from an impromptu thing to an actual organization, with an actual headquarters that isn’t just Tony Stark’s converted loft, and the ability for the team to remain intact even as the membership rotates. This all happens over the course of the movie. It is messy, but it makes sense.
You said it better than I did.
@@@@@ 119 – See, I just can’t get behind this interpretation. The idea that giving up being “Captain America” is somehow an act of atonement doesn’t jive with the facts. Captain America is called out by Stark, and rightly so, for putting the Winter Soldier as a greater priority than the Avengers or the wishes of the governments of the world. He leaves the shield because he knows Stark is right. However much Bucky’s actions may be a result of his brainwashing, Steve is still choosing to shield him from any kind of trial or attempt at justice. Stark makes some ego-driven decisions, especially in AoU, but in CA:CW he’s in the right, every step of the way. No one is making these people be heroes, no one is making them pursue criminals and terrorists to all corners of the globe; they do it because it is right. Which means that when they’re told in no uncertain terms that no one wants that, they don’t get to decide to go their own way. They’re not being told to serve the UN or go to prison; they’re told to do so or stop blowing shit up in other countries without their permission. That is eminently reasonable. Cap is totally unwilling to admit that, just maybe, a sovereign nation has a right to decide who has the legal right to use armed force within their borders.
He makes a clear declaration that protecting known criminals comes before acceding to the wishes of legitimate governments. And while he may have an unshakable moral foundation, he’s also asserting those same rights for Scarlet Witch (recently an out-and-out villain assisting in the extinction of humanity), the Vision (a ultra-powerful robot whose programming is 1/2 Ultron and tempered by a massively powerful alien gemstone no one really understands), and the Winter Soldier. That is wrong. You’re so scarred by realizing SHIELD was a HYDRA front and don’t trust government organizations? Great. Buy a gun, move to West Virginia, and pretend that you’re the only thing standing between government tyranny and freedom. Don’t go blowing up airports and chasing criminals and solving mysteries in direct contravention of a massive UN resolution. You can’t have it both ways.
I didn’t say Steve Rogers was seeking atonement–Stark is.
I’ll save further discussion of the movie for when we get to it, but keep in mind the order of events, and what is happening in the final scenes of Civil War. They aren’t fighting over the law anymore or abstract concepts of accountability at the end; they had already called a truce over that. The conflict is completely personal. Tony Stark wants to murder Bucky Barnes (for the record: he is wrong) and Steve Rogers stops him. Tony is being petty and childish when he calls out Rogers. I mean he just tried to murder someone, how can he have the moral high ground?
Steve Rogers knows exactly what he did, and he would do it again. He is aware that his decisions are not compatible with being Captain America, so he stops being Captain America. He’s not seeking atonement, because he has made peace with not being Captain America anymore.
The Civil War Thread will probably break the record for comments on this rewatch just based off what’s happening here (Currently held by TDKR)
@129:That wouldn’t surprise me – partly because the Civil War movie (unlike the comic its name is taken from, IMHO) gives each protagonist a reasonable justification for his actions throughout the film – at least until Tony is given the chance to avenge himself on his parents’ killer and realizes Cap lied to him.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the record for most comments is going to be made by Man of Steel in the end…………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@131 Is there a lot of discussion in “No, just no”? I suppose some people might throw in a “yuck” or “stop reading fucking Ayn Rand”, but I don’t see that going beyond 30 or so. It is a bad movie, with a bad philosophy behind it, and is pretty much indefensible on every level. And if anyone disagrees then they are so beyond the pale that it is a complete 404 Concept Not Found in trying to understand them. Might as well ask a fish to explain not living in water as try to understand someone who likes that movie.
I have been studiously avoiding Man of Steel, so please don’t tempt me to watch it just so I can complain about it! :)
random22: There are plenty of people who like Man of Steel. One of them posted in this very comments section. Mind you, I am most assuredly not one of those people, but if you think it won’t prompt a major in-depth discussion (as it did in 2013 when it came out), then I question your familiarity with, y’know, the Internet. And comics fans. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@@@@@ 128 – they have in no way “called a truce” on anything. Cap is fleeing from justice; he is not above the law, despite what he may want to believe.
And we as viewers may know that Bucky isn’t morally responsible for his actions, but Tony doesn’t. He knows there is something hinky going on with the brainwashing, but not the extent to which it influenced his actions or the extent to which it has worn off. Tony is an agent of the government, according to the Sokovia Accords; he’s actually perfectly within his rights to kill the Winter Soldier, a confirmed murderer, terrorist, and current fugitive from justice. Mind you, all of this is Steve’s fault anyway, and we can all agree that Tony’s reaction is, if not “right” than at least understandable (emotional distress). If Steve doesn’t hide the truth, if Steve doesn’t aid and abet the flight of a known international terrorist and assassin, none of this happens. Steve Rogers would probably be the first person to tell you that what feels good, and what is just, are two different concepts. In his supreme selfishness, he thinks that “saving” his childhood friend is a priority over helping bring to justice one of the most notorious killers in the world. Like Tony, like T’Challa, there are countless kids out there who are orphaned because of Bucky, who might gain some closure from knowing their parent’s killer was brought to justice. That never occurs to Steve. Never occurs to him, apparently, that the end result of his actions (basically, imprisoning Bucky in Wakanda and also helping him regain his mind) was a fairly plausible end result if he did what he was supposed to!
I get it, governments have “agendas” (what a stupid thing to say, BTW) and he’s scarred from the events CA:WS, but at some point he has to know that consideration is given for circumstances like being brainwashed!!! It’s highly plausible that Bucky is, if not exonerated, then perhaps remanded into the custody of a group that can help him. You know who goes tot he Raft? Super powered individuals who display a callous disregard for the law, for national sovereignty, for anyone’s “agenda” but their own. We have no evidence that mentally ill or traumatized folks who are clearly not fully responsible for their actions go there.
@135– while I agree that perhaps Steve should have come forward with the information about Bucky and Stark’s parents sooner, I do have to disagree with your assessment of his defense of Bucky. As T’Challa himself said, Bucky was as much a victim as his father. Steve defended him because nobody else in the world would. If he hadn’t, Bucky would have been killed either by the T’Challa or the soldiers with the orders to shoot to kill. And I have to wonder what Stark would think if he knew that his own father, while under the influence of a much simpler hypnotic effect created by the same person who created Bucky’s brainwashing, almost dropped a mad bomb into a crowded area in New York City (Agent Carter season one)?
Doing my part to contribute to the comment count ;) But I’ll try to keep it brief:
-I remember liking this movie better than the initial Avengers. It seemed to have a more interesting plot, and more character development. But when I had first seen the Avengers, I had not seen most of the phase I movies (the first Iron Man was the exception) and so I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I did on later viewings. Reading this review I think you do make a lot of good points for how stuffed and, in some ways, under developed certain parts of it are.
-We’ll get there when we get there but I have definitely been enjoying reading the throughts on Stark vs. Cap and how accountability actually works in these scenarios. I’ve read things on both sides that have ‘convinced’ me and I’m honestly still not sure where I stand on it.
-When the controversy around Black Widow came out I was honestly surprised. To me I never took her statements as anything other than referring to her being shaped into a killing machine, and forced sterilization was brought up as an example of the extent the Red Room folks went through in order to shape her specifically for their purposes and deny her own personhood/agency and removing anything not directly related to that purpose; not a statement on childlessness specifically. But I also at the time had a few friends struggling with the pain of infertility and so I could also (indirectly) relate to her pain over that and how it was a violation given that it was forced on her. Obviously YMMV.
I love how the scope of this column keeps increasing, lol.
@137. Lisamarie: Haven’t looked at the source material for Stark v. Rogers debate, mostly the Civil War event, in ages, but it was a bit confusing on the political side. You would expect Captain America to support the government position, yet he took a pure principled position (freedom from gov’t control), which essentially propped up vigilantes, like Spider-Man, having secret identities. It could also be argued that it was a libertarian stance.
Iron Man adopted the government stance. May have had something to do with Tony Stark coming off a stint as the Secretary of Defense under a Republican administration. Not sure the MCU Stark is a Republican, but as a billionaire defense contractor, that would be his niche. He also co-opted Peter Parker by having him reveal his identity, which led to one of the worst and ill-conceived Spider-Man stories of all time, One More Day, which featured Aunt May being shot and the abrupt end of Peter’s marriage to Mary Jane.
The MCU makes a lot of their disagreement personal, which is an improvement in terms of motivation, but the source material has some pretty muddled politics.
@138/Sunspear: Captain America has never just blindly followed the government line. Some of his most memorable storylines in the comics have been ones where he challenged a government policy that went against America’s core principles. It’s those principles that he stands for, and one of them is that the will of the people is supreme, not the will of the state. So if the state is acting against the people, there is nothing more American than speaking out against it. (Heck, in the Secret Empire storyline Steve Englehart wrote in the ’70s, the archvillain that Cap defeated turned out to be the President of the US — strongly implied to be Nixon — and he committed suicide in the Oval Office when Cap unmasked him. Which led Cap to give up his identity and become Nomad for a while.)
And there’s nothing “libertarian” about that. I’m so sick of libertarians co-opting basic principles of democracy and claiming to have the copyright on them — it’s a complete lie, because libertarianism is just about wanting absolute freedom for yourself and the hell with everyone else, while liberal democracy is about wanting the maximum possible freedom for every individual, even if that means you have to compromise some of your own so that others get a fair share too.
@CLB: I agree with you about libertarians co-opting the old-fashioned values Cap represents. Not sure that’s how it plays out in the comics version of Civil War. As I said, it’s very muddled. Marvel Comics sometimes has some atrocious cross-over events that make less and less sense as time goes by. See One More Day and 2017’s Secret Empire. They really messed up Steve’s character with the latter.
@138 – Sunspear: The only way you’d expect Captain America to support registration is if you hadn’t read many Captain America comics before. As Chris says, Cap has challenged government policies on principle. He’s not a government stooge.
@141. I get that, which is why I keep specifying the writing in the Civil War comics, which is more confounding than it needs to be. Cap’s stance is confusing to some of his old allies, as if they don’t even know him. This was made far worse by the time Marvel got to Secret Empire, where they almost ruined Steve Rogers. Both you and Chris are operating on the traditional version of Cap. Marvel has done a lot of damage to the idealism of the character in the last few years. Rogers as the Head of Hydra goes far beyond what his readers were willing to accept.
I’ve largely stopped reading current comics, at least Marvel event style ones, so not sure if the damage has been undone. Coates’ version seemed to get a promising start.
(I won’t even get into a similar situation years earlier where Marvel almost ruined Iron Man by turning Stark into a murderer. He’s then killed and replaced by a time traveling teenage version. It’s been awhile, but that’s the gist of it and Tony got better.)
Rogers as head of HYDRA was obviously something that was going to be reversed, and that it would turn out to be a villanous plan by someone else, not Cap turned bad. That’s “telling a story”, not “damaging the character’s idealism”.
@142/Sunspear: As MaGnUs says, the whole “Cap is Hydra” thing was fake, the result of the Red Skull rewriting reality. Obviously the real Cap would never be compromised that way. It was an ill-considered and ill-timed storyline, yes, but claiming that it was meant to represent the real Cap or his beliefs in any way is just deeply and utterly wrong.
As for the comics’ Civil War, I haven’t really heard a lot of complaints about Cap’s role in that before. Usually people seem to think it’s Iron Man who was badly out of character, along with Mr. Fantastic and others on the pro-registration side who ended up embracing basically fascist views and becoming more like supervillains than heroes.
142: I am going to defend Secret Empire here on a few counts.
Firstly, it showed the fallacy of thinking that “there are good people on both sides” when it comes to fascism. The HYDRA Cap has a lot of Steve’s better qualities: He’s loyal, driven and believes he is doing what is best for the greatest number. He wants to maintain the friendships he’s built up over the years and there are multiple indications that he doesn’t relish working with the likes of Dr. Faustus. But ultimately, he is fighting for a system that is inherently harmful – no matter what his intent is. When we see him attempt to use the Cosmic Cube to rewrite reality, we get a clear picture that even though HYDRA Cap thinks he has good intentions, what he wants to accomplish is a total nightmare.
Secondly, it shows the fallacy of the thought process that says “it can’t happen here” regarding strongman rule in the United States – at a time when that is especially relevant in the US and other liberal democracies. And also, Of course, the dangers of allowing sinister forces to influence the workings of our government behind the scenes is also a theme that is pretty relevant these days …
Does Nick Spencer’s writing sometimes fall a little short of the mark? Yeah, it kinda does. But the ambition of that arc – and what it set up in terms of the story Ta-Nehisi Coates is telling – is something I found to be quite intriguing.
I think there was a little bit of “Last Jedi” syndrome going on with that story, in that it wasn’t the kind of story a certain segment of the fan base had written in their heads regarding Steve’s return to the uniform, and so they vocally reacted against it.
@144. CLB: ” but claiming that it was meant to represent the real Cap or his beliefs in any way is just deeply and utterly wrong.”
Who’s claiming that? The real Cap was obliterated and a corrupted version replaced him. Fans understandably revolted against the storyline and, although sales were good initially, it ended badly. Also, if we’re accepting comic conventions (reality can be changed, then changed back), there was nothing fake about the setup. It happened. Hydra Cap exists still. Don’t fall for “fake news” nonsense.
@145. twels: Spencer was either a bit too ambitious in scope of concept or he didn’t go far enough, especially since Marvel is keeping Hydra Cap around. Perhaps if they’d ended things similar to the Hatemonger story to nail down their critique of current fascist leanings.
@Magnus: perhaps I worded it wrong, but what I meant was Marvel doing damage to what the character represents. Maybe the Secret Empire would’ve gone down better if someone else had become Hydra Supreme and they had never tarnished someone named Steve Rogers, even though they were thinking of him as “Steve Rogers.”
(I may have to walk some of this back, since as I said, not following the comics currently. hehe)
@146/Sunspear: “Who’s claiming that?”
You said in comment #142: ” This was made far worse by the time Marvel got to Secret Empire, where they almost ruined Steve Rogers…. Marvel has done a lot of damage to the idealism of the character in the last few years. Rogers as the Head of Hydra goes far beyond what his readers were willing to accept.”
That certainly sounds like you were saying that the actual Rogers was the head of Hydra — after all, an impostor/altered version of Rogers being the head of Hydra doesn’t “damage… the idealism of the character” in the least, any more than any other evil twin or impostor in fiction damages the genuine article.
And since you actually acknowledge to MaGnUs that you chose your words misleadingly, then why the hell are you being so rude to me for questioning the exact same choice of words?
As always, we ask that you keep the tone of your comments civil and not make disagreements and criticisms personal. Our full moderation policy can be found here.
@CLB: have you actually read Secret Empire? I started it, then dropped the main series, read some of the aftermath, and started the new Coates series. You need some of that to understand what I said. Perhaps someone who’s read even more current Cap stories can fill in some of the details.
But here’s my understanding: the public’s trust in Steve Rogers was broken in the aftermath. People remember what happened. Even though he wasn’t the historical Steve, his face was/is associated with oppression and the Hydra takeover. There was no full reset when the event was over. That “Steve” still exists, currently imprisoned. Knowing comics, he will get out eventually.
The returned Steve faced skepticism and distrust. The automatic “Cap is good” of the past was shattered. As I said, more up to date readers can say how and to what extent that’s been repaired. This is not an event that was imaginary, erased from continuity. Cap has been damaged. It’s fine that you lean on the old idealistic image, but you seem to be misreading what I said. There was no intention to “mislead.” It apparently wasn’t clear enough.
@149/Sunspear: You’re missing my point. I’m aware of the facts you mention; I just don’t agree with your interpretation that they taint the real Steve in any way. Why should they? Yes, in the story, the public’s faith in Steve has been tainted, but you were talking about readers’ perception of the character, and that’s a completely different subject. The readers know that Hydra Steve didn’t represent the beliefs of the real Steve in any way. Anyone who believed for a single second that it would turn out to be real or lasting was critically lacking in genre-savviness.
CLB: true enough. But there were many readers disturbed by the storyline as it ran and many abandoned it exactly because they didn’t like what they thought was being done with/to the character. In the moment, they had the reaction that you describe with benefit of hindsight. Some were specifically offended by having anyone named Steve Rogers, whether alternate or temporary, associated with a Nazi-inflected organization. Some specifically protested at the time that the character created by Jewish-Americans to punch Hitler in the face was being used in this way.
So readers and story were both affected. Read some of the reactions from a couple years ago.
@151/Sunspear: You didn’t need hindsight — you just needed experience with comics “events.” It was always obvious to me from the start that it would turn out to be fake in some way, that Marvel would never destroy one of its most popular characters for the rest of time merely for the sake of a short-term storyline. Comics always reset their “huge” changes sooner or later. Heck, Cap had already come back from the dead not long before, and that’s supposed to be the most irreversible change there is. So it should’ve been obvious that this change would be reset at the end of the storyline as well.
“Some were specifically offended by having anyone named Steve Rogers, whether alternate or temporary, associated with a Nazi-inflected organization. Some specifically protested at the time that the character created by Jewish-Americans to punch Hitler in the face was being used in this way.”
Okay, when you put it that way, I can sort of see what you mean by “tainting the character.” Not actually compromising the character as a person, but doing unfortunate things with his name and image. I guess that shock value was the intended point, and maybe the idea was that it was such an absurd extreme that nobody would genuinely believe it was true of the real Captain America. But even despite that, many people felt it was going too far into poor taste. And I agree with that. I just don’t agree it will cause any lasting damage to the character, since all these things are ephemeral. There have been other bad story decisions that have tainted a title for a while and that the title has eventually recovered from, because time has passed, new writers have come in, and so on.
Heck, I utterly loathed One More Day, but it didn’t ruin Spidey comics for me, and I think that what Dan Slott and his collaborators did with the title from Brand New Day onward was a fantastic creative renaissance for the book. Even if a series has a horrible installment, it can recover in the next installment if there’s a new creative team with new ideas.
@146 – Sunspear: No, because the real Steve Rogers is never evil. It’s not the first time an impersonator (cosmic-cube altered or otherwise) does evil in the name of a hero. It’s even happeend to Cap, Red Skull worse his face for a time. And making this storyline with another character would not have had the same impact in universe.
Tainting Steve Rogers in the face of the MU in universe public is an interesting development, because any sensible reader knows he won’t actually be evil, but it makes for good conflict in the meantime. We buy into the fact that many of the other characters believe it’s actually Steve, and “enjoy” their suffering, with suspension of disbelief.
I read the comics, and it’s all in universe. Marvel, as a company, did not tarnish Steve Rogers’ idealism outside of the comics, and hasn’t even affected the actual character’s idealism. As Chris says, anyone who’s read a few superhero comics doesn’t need hindsight at all.
And the same Jewish authors that created Captain America had him hypnotized by the Red Skull and sieg-heiling in their own comics. Something that, by the way, has been pointed out since the first complaints about “Hail HYDRA” Cap started coming in.
@153. Magnus: Sure, but we’re still at the place we started. Yes, anyone who’s read comics should know that nothing, not even death is permanent. The fact is that readers were disturbed at the time the series ran. It was even reported in more mainstream media. It seems weird to me at this point to insist otherwise. Not sure if it’s a jaded attitude, “comics never stick,” or a nostalgic one clinging to a character version that will never change.
It wasn’t all in-universe when Marvel turned Tony Stark into a murderer. Readers fell away in droves. Same thing happened with Secret Empire. Despite returning the character to a default state, the disillusionment and dislike of the readers at the time was real. Marvel wouldn’t have had to repair the impact otherwise. Fans, long-time readers, who should have been more savvy, nevertheless became disgusted with the direction of the story.
Insisting on a Platonic meta version of Steve Rogers is fine. That’s a baseline. It’s what you’d get in a handbook. Denying that Marvel never fucks that up is another matter.
“Readers” is too many people. “Some readers” cried out in social media, and that’s what the mainstream press picked up.
Not liking how the story was developed, that’s one thing, and it’s each reader’s prerogative. Objecting to the concept itself, when it’s been done before without this outrage, is a different thing.
And we’re not saying that Marvel can’t screw up, we’re saying that the character itself hasn’t really been affected.
@154: I think there’s a lot more at work with the Secret Empire reaction than that. The period in which Sam Wilson was Cap hadn’t come all that long after Brubaker’s Bucky as Cap adventures. During both of these periods, Steve was either sidelined or dead. I think fans were particularly unhappy about the bait and switch that occurred – in which the new Cap was working for an evil organization. Like I said earlier, it seemed to me that this was a Last Jedi situation in which the story we got didn’t match the one that was in fans’ minds regarding their favorite hero’s return.
I thought that it was a fascinating look at what Captain America stands for in that we see his image used in the darkest possible way. That the trust and belief in him as an incorruptible guiding light could be misplaced.
The difference, big difference, with TLJ, is that while we probably won’t get what some fans were expecting with Luke for a long time (and definitely not with Mark Hamill); nobody in their right senses could think that we wouldn’t get a restored Captain America very soon.
@156. twels: “I thought that it was a fascinating look at what Captain America stands for in that we see his image used in the darkest possible way. That the trust and belief in him as an incorruptible guiding light could be misplaced.”
Yep, exactly. That’s what they were going for. But denying that enough readers rebelled against that and sales were affected still seems weird. It was enough of an impact that it took Marvel by surprise and at least one editor made an appeal to give Spencer story a chance to play out.
If it needs to be spelled out (not sure why it would), I was amused by what they were attempting. It seemed like a mistake at the time. I remember telling my girlfriend about it. (She’s a MCU fan, but doesn’t read comics.) As usual, she rolled her eyes at me an my geeky nonsense. If it was an attempt to comment on the rise of fascist or supremacist elements in America, it failed to get the response they wanted. Tying those elements to a paragon of virtue was misguided. Readers (insert sales figure numbers here) did not want a story where a beloved icon was so thoroughly fucked with. That’s why the trope of having a good guy turn evil (regardless of the mechanism) was a bad choice here. The corruption should’ve come from another source. What if it was revealed in Winter Soldier that the cancer of Hydra had affected Rogers himself? That’s what we get in Secret Empire.
Perhaps the comparison with Last Jedi is apt as another instance where fans’ expectations were subverted. In that case, I thought the movie didn’t go far enough. I wanted Grey Jedis to be introduced. Neither light, nor dark, but embodying both. Balance within the individual, not on a cosmic level. But that’s another side argument.
@157. magnus: “nobody in their right senses could think that we wouldn’t get a restored Captain America very soon.”
Not sure why you keep saying this. It happened, with seasoned fans, who got severely riled up.
And again, if it needs spelling out, I wasn’t one of them. It’s not a personal stance. It’s a description.
Then they’re deluded. It’s like watching baseball your whole life, and one day expecting the sport to stop using bats, and then get upset because they still use them.
@160. magnus: They were/are not deluded. They adhered to an ideal image of Cap that they didn’t want messed with. It’s not that far off from “the real Steve Rogers is never evil.” In their case, it was simply “Steve Rogers is never evil.” Regardless of storytelling circumstances, Cap can never be a Nazi. The established comics convention that it can be undone isn’t relevant. The irate fans likely knew it would be undone and still got mad.
Consider this another way, a more positive example: would you apply the same principle to Infinity War? Most fans who read the original story knew that the Snap was coming and that it would be reversed in Avengers 4. Should that affect their experience of watching the film? Some enjoyed it despite the inside knowledge. Some viewers likely knew about actors’ contracts, or that the next Spidey movie was already underway. The movie becomes flat and dead if you insist on the meta view that none of it matters because it will be undone. The story matters in the moment and can still be enjoyed (or hated).
The important thing is the experience of the event, whether reading comics or watching film. Your meta or real world knowledge may color how you consume the entertainment, but it doesn’t preclude a more immediate emotional experience when you engage with it. Some knew Peter was coming back, yet still sobbed in the theater when he turned to ash. Most comic veterans knew Cap would be restored, yet still hated the version they were reading right then (the noisy ones anyway).
@twels: adding to the sidelining of Cap was having Rogers run around just prior to this event as a chronological 90 year old.
@161/Sunspear: I still say there’s an inherent contradiction in your argument. Yes, fans got mad about Secret Empire because it was problematical to turn Cap into a Nazi even as a reality manipulation. But that’s not the same thing as saying that the image of Cap was fundamentally tainted or compromised. On the contrary, they objected to the story because their own personal image of Cap remained pure and informed their reaction to the story. Storylines come and go. They’re ephemeral things. A good, meaningful storyline can “stick” and change a character forever, because the writers and the audience want it to. But a bad, ill-considered storyline is more likely to just be swept under the rug and ignored, leaving no permanent impact on the character in the long term. So any “taint” upon the character is fleeting and superficial.
Again, all manner of characters, including Cap, and by his own creators, have been temporarily been turned evil, and then it has been undone. It’s part of the nature of superhero comics, and it has been since basically its inception.
Though I liked Secret Empire more than most, I do get Sunspear’s argument that the story turned some readers off the book. I think the execution was flawed partly because, like the Clone Saga before it, it dragged on for about twice as long as it should have (I wonder if they hadn’t had to accommodate the Secret Wars II event, how long the event would’ve lasted).
I also think there was a great deal of debate about what to do with Cap in the aftermath, which accounted for Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s anemic (seriously, if there’s a greater example of pablum in modern comics, I’ve yet to see it). I like the fact that Coates actually used the ambivalence about Cap, post-Secret Empire, to his narrative advantage.
@164/twels: I can understand being turned off by a single storyline, or by a specific author’s work, but I think it’s often overreacting to give up a whole series because of that work. Like I said, I absolutely detested Spider-Man: One More Day, but what came right after it from the subsequent creative team was a fresh start that revitalized the series and was very worthwhile. Similarly, the back half of the third season of Sliders (its last on FOX) was some of the most unwatchably awful television I’ve ever seen, and yet when the series came back on the Sci-Fi Channel under a new creative team, it was better than it had been since the first season.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that will happen in every case, but at least one should keep an open mind. The reason I continued reading Spidey comics was because I heard how good the post-OMD stuff was and gave it a chance.
I agree that One More Day was completely awful (I’ve always said that the only way that story could’ve been redeemed was to have MJ be the one who got shot and have Peter make the sacrifice of the marriage to Mephisto to save Mary Jane’s life Magainst the advice of Aunt May). I actually liked what came next, but sometimes the “written in committee” nature of the stories showed through. It seems like subplots would rise and fall depending on who was at the helm any given month. When Dan Scott finally took over entirely, the book got a LOT better.
I do think that Cap came out of Secret Empire in kind of the same position. Unfortunately, like I said earlier, Mark Waid’s last run on the book was awful. The first issue wasn’t bad as a palate cleanser, but the run went downhill fast afterward.
Guys, we’re drifting waaaaaay off topic here…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Thread drift occurring? That’s unpossible.
However, this thread has no officially surpassed the DKR thread, so there’s that ;)
@krad: But… but… we’re laying the groundwork for the next few Avengers movies…
@CLB: “But that’s not the same thing as saying that the image of Cap was fundamentally tainted or compromised. On the contrary, they objected to the story because their own personal image of Cap remained pure and informed their reaction to the story.”
Yes, the fans that rebelled had a Platonic, idealistic version in their minds. I don’t think Cap was fundamentally altered. He was altered in the moment, for the duration of the event and it’s aftermath. It’s why the event still reverberates and why Coates’ run has been about a rediscovery and centering of what Cap represents. twels gets it.
@170/Sunspear: You’re not a telepath, so you have no right to make assumptions about why other people have a certain reaction. Please try to keep your comments limited to the ideas instead of casting gratuitous and conjectural aspersions on the judgment or beliefs of other people. That is the thing that discredits your argument, because it’s going too far when you make it about the person rather than the idea.
Once again, please keep the tone of the discussion civil and avoid making disagreements personal. Thanks!
One thing that’s always struck me about this film is just how well they incorporated Paul Bettany as the Vision into the team. Obviously, his having been JARVIS helped in terms of generating familiarity, but the bit where he lifts the hammer is a perfect bit of writing
@CLB: I don’t think I’ve made any argument about a particular person. How strange.
I also never said what you chose to interpret in my statements. Never said Cap has been altered forever, permanently, or fundamentally. I’ve said repeatedly that because of a specific comics event a character was affected enough, deviated enough from his ideal state, that it required a course correction. Which is still ongoing. It wasn’t the usual clean reset to default state.
Part of my struggle here is that I don’t see that as difficult to understand.