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We saw Age of Ultron today
No spoilers outside the cut! Thank you, Internet, for keeping me ... well, as unspoiled as I was, but people were generally pretty good about it. :)
I'm not going to discuss the movie a whole lot outside my own LJ, I think, because I get the impression a lot of people didn't like it and I really enjoyed it. I mean, it's not like I can't see why people wouldn't like it. A lot of the movie felt like they were trying to cram too much in, and the Natasha/Bruce romance in particular felt very pasted-on, with a lot of it striking false character notes for me (especially the whole scene where they're talking about having kids: a) why would Bruce think for a minute that Natasha wants a suburban house-and-two-kids life, and b) yay medical horror involving women's reproductive organs OH WAIT I MEAN THE OPPOSITE BECAUSE I HATE THAT PLOT A LOT; and c) of all the things she's done, her biggest regrets all center around not having kids suddenly?).
But I liked it! It was gloriously, bombastically comic-booky. And I was spoiled for a major thing that actually made the movie better for me! I had accidentally gotten spoiled that there was a character death in the movie, but I didn't know who. This made the final battle scene unbearably tense, because every time someone was threatened, it was all, "AUGH NO, NOT THEM!" I was pretty happy with the way it actually went -- I mean, not happy in the sense that I wanted Quicksilver to be dead in the MCU, but as far as not losing anyone I cared about more, plus the "character loses everything and rebuilds themselves from the ashes" theme is one I adore, and I really love that Wanda gets to have that. (In fic if not in the actual movie.)
Here, have a non-comprehensive list of other things I really enjoyed:
- The humor. Okay, yes, I know Joss's quippy dialogue doesn't work for a lot of people, and (like Warren Ellis) he's one of those writers whose characters tend to largely sound alike, but the movie made me laugh a lot (HAWKEYE'S PEP TALK TO WANDA, OH MY GOD). I'm here to be entertained, and I was.
- I love how much of the movie was about saving civilians. Like, that's always been something I've liked about the Marvel movies generally -- there is a body count, but they do their best to minimize it -- and that was pretty much the entire thrust of the whole climactic battle (while also acknowledging that blowing up the city might be necessary to save the Earth -- but they were all prepared to die to try to avert all those civilian deaths). And I loved that.
- I know that people who ship Natasha/Clint got an arrow driven straight through their ship in this movie, but for my part, I loved that they were solidly established to be very close, platonic friends. She called him her best friend! And his kids call her Aunt Nat! OMG. :D :D (Not being invested in any Clint ships, I loved his seeekrit!family a lot.)
- Tony and Nick Fury's friendship was a point of unexpected awesome.
- So was all the Sam and Rhodey! RHODEY GETS TO BE AWESOME IN THE FINAL BATTLE. AND THEY ARE AVENGERS NOW, OMG EEEEEEEEEEEE! ♥
- Speaking of ... I really loved the general feel of passing the torch to the new Avengers team. In the comics, the Avengers aren't a constant, but an ever-shifting organization that changes all the time, and I had SUDDEN UNEXPECTED FEELS over the new team at the end.
- Another thing I had UNEXPECTED FEELS about: the Vision saving Wanda. I'm not really invested in them in the comics as a couple ... like, at all! But I was on total tenterhooks after Pietro's death about her survival, and she didn't care if she lived or died, and then Vision swoops down and saves her LIKE A BOSS. And there were feels. \o/
(I really want ALLLLLLL the Wanda recovery-and-fitting-into-the-team fic, by the way.)
Leading up to the movie, there was a fair amount of criticism about Tony building Ultron being OOC, but I felt like the movie sold it pretty well as an in-character thing for him to do, given the circumstances surrounding it. Also, I'm married to a person I think of as my Tony Stark without the issues (he's an inventor and techie sort of person) and we talked about it a bit on the way home, and it makes sense to him -- I think it's easy for those of us who aren't techie people to go, "Obvious mistake, no one would do that" but for someone like Tony (or Orion), tech is the solution to most problems, and there are few problems which cannot be solved by building better tech. So, basically, I can see the argument that it was a dumb thing to do (and I'm not saying y'all are wrong), but it worked for me character-wise as the sort of dumb thing that Tony would do, especially given the kind of extraterrestrial enemies they're up against so ... *shrugs*. I understand why people are unhappy with it, but I didn't feel like it ruined Tony for me, which I was a little worried about beforehand.
Also, the movie Jossed (LITERALLY) my Sam-and-Bucky fic in a completely unexpected way. I'm probably going to go ahead and stick with my original plan with a "written before AoU" note on it, though.
In short: it's not my favorite movie in the franchise, but I really enjoyed it, and I have ALL THE SUPERHERO FEELS now.
I'm not going to discuss the movie a whole lot outside my own LJ, I think, because I get the impression a lot of people didn't like it and I really enjoyed it. I mean, it's not like I can't see why people wouldn't like it. A lot of the movie felt like they were trying to cram too much in, and the Natasha/Bruce romance in particular felt very pasted-on, with a lot of it striking false character notes for me (especially the whole scene where they're talking about having kids: a) why would Bruce think for a minute that Natasha wants a suburban house-and-two-kids life, and b) yay medical horror involving women's reproductive organs OH WAIT I MEAN THE OPPOSITE BECAUSE I HATE THAT PLOT A LOT; and c) of all the things she's done, her biggest regrets all center around not having kids suddenly?).
But I liked it! It was gloriously, bombastically comic-booky. And I was spoiled for a major thing that actually made the movie better for me! I had accidentally gotten spoiled that there was a character death in the movie, but I didn't know who. This made the final battle scene unbearably tense, because every time someone was threatened, it was all, "AUGH NO, NOT THEM!" I was pretty happy with the way it actually went -- I mean, not happy in the sense that I wanted Quicksilver to be dead in the MCU, but as far as not losing anyone I cared about more, plus the "character loses everything and rebuilds themselves from the ashes" theme is one I adore, and I really love that Wanda gets to have that. (In fic if not in the actual movie.)
Here, have a non-comprehensive list of other things I really enjoyed:
- The humor. Okay, yes, I know Joss's quippy dialogue doesn't work for a lot of people, and (like Warren Ellis) he's one of those writers whose characters tend to largely sound alike, but the movie made me laugh a lot (HAWKEYE'S PEP TALK TO WANDA, OH MY GOD). I'm here to be entertained, and I was.
- I love how much of the movie was about saving civilians. Like, that's always been something I've liked about the Marvel movies generally -- there is a body count, but they do their best to minimize it -- and that was pretty much the entire thrust of the whole climactic battle (while also acknowledging that blowing up the city might be necessary to save the Earth -- but they were all prepared to die to try to avert all those civilian deaths). And I loved that.
- I know that people who ship Natasha/Clint got an arrow driven straight through their ship in this movie, but for my part, I loved that they were solidly established to be very close, platonic friends. She called him her best friend! And his kids call her Aunt Nat! OMG. :D :D (Not being invested in any Clint ships, I loved his seeekrit!family a lot.)
- Tony and Nick Fury's friendship was a point of unexpected awesome.
- So was all the Sam and Rhodey! RHODEY GETS TO BE AWESOME IN THE FINAL BATTLE. AND THEY ARE AVENGERS NOW, OMG EEEEEEEEEEEE! ♥
- Speaking of ... I really loved the general feel of passing the torch to the new Avengers team. In the comics, the Avengers aren't a constant, but an ever-shifting organization that changes all the time, and I had SUDDEN UNEXPECTED FEELS over the new team at the end.
- Another thing I had UNEXPECTED FEELS about: the Vision saving Wanda. I'm not really invested in them in the comics as a couple ... like, at all! But I was on total tenterhooks after Pietro's death about her survival, and she didn't care if she lived or died, and then Vision swoops down and saves her LIKE A BOSS. And there were feels. \o/
(I really want ALLLLLLL the Wanda recovery-and-fitting-into-the-team fic, by the way.)
Leading up to the movie, there was a fair amount of criticism about Tony building Ultron being OOC, but I felt like the movie sold it pretty well as an in-character thing for him to do, given the circumstances surrounding it. Also, I'm married to a person I think of as my Tony Stark without the issues (he's an inventor and techie sort of person) and we talked about it a bit on the way home, and it makes sense to him -- I think it's easy for those of us who aren't techie people to go, "Obvious mistake, no one would do that" but for someone like Tony (or Orion), tech is the solution to most problems, and there are few problems which cannot be solved by building better tech. So, basically, I can see the argument that it was a dumb thing to do (and I'm not saying y'all are wrong), but it worked for me character-wise as the sort of dumb thing that Tony would do, especially given the kind of extraterrestrial enemies they're up against so ... *shrugs*. I understand why people are unhappy with it, but I didn't feel like it ruined Tony for me, which I was a little worried about beforehand.
Also, the movie Jossed (LITERALLY) my Sam-and-Bucky fic in a completely unexpected way. I'm probably going to go ahead and stick with my original plan with a "written before AoU" note on it, though.
In short: it's not my favorite movie in the franchise, but I really enjoyed it, and I have ALL THE SUPERHERO FEELS now.
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Which both totally sums up why for me with that as a backdrop all the flaws become something I can't handle, but made it totally fun for you. :) (I am really not a trad-comic-book-girl and part of what I loved about the MCU up till now is that it was super-heroes WITHOUT the things about comic books that make my brain go :| and throw up its hands.)
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(Mostly my crit was limited to the Natasha stuff, as it's really the only stuff where it's actually a thing I have a PROBLEM with rather than " . . . THIS CAT IS NOT A CHEESECAKE!" I happily own it when it's "this cat is not a cheesecake.")
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.... hmm, yes, it kind of does, doesn't it. XD
But lord, almost everything to do with Natasha in the movie was AWFUL. Like, literally the only Natasha-related things in the movie I actually liked were her friendship with Clint (which ended up being pretty much spot-on for how they work in my head) and her friendship with Steve (what little there was of it). Everything else was pretty much THE WORST. Even the Nat + Nick Fury interaction didn't hit the notes I wanted it to! Going into the movie I was braced to have to handwave Steve's characterization, but actually this movie got the snarky-little-bastard side of him a lot better than I was expecting, IMHO. But Nat is one long AAAARGH and DID YOU REALLY and OH YOU DIDN'T JUST.
ETA for your ETA: no apologies, you can dork at me anytime! <3
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The movie was a hot mess but I find it's growing on me and I want to see it again in the theater to try to understand it better.
I was not averse in theory to Natasha/Bruce, but I was really scratching my head at some of the things they had them say.
I read elsewhere that the movie had way too much in the way of shot scenes and had to be drastically cut by the editors; that may explain a lot…. Or maybe there was just more incomprehensible stuff, I dunno.
I never want to harsh anyone's squee! I didn't instantly adore it like I did some of the other MCU movies, but I want to see it again and try to grok more of it.
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I look forward to seeing the cut scenes eventually! Though I'll probably need to buy the Blu-Ray for that ...
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I was pretty upset on the 'we had to kill someone.. oh ..him' on killing off Pietro :(
Really, the problem? WAY TO MANY CHARACTERS! OMG! Let's just throw in the kitchen sink here! sheesh.
I also didn't care for the Nat/Bruce romance - Wha? The 'sudden family' Clint - Wha?
I did like Wanda. She was interesting and their switch of loyalties was also played well.