Whoa, another A to Z Challenge is done! You can read all of our posts from the challenge here. I think that means it’s time to do something else for a bit, to take a breather and maybe to talk a bit about comics.
A small little art house film is coming out today in the US (already out elsewhere!) called Avengers: Age of Ultron. You may have heard of it, or that one guy who’s directing it… what was it… Joss Whedon? Oh yeah, him.
Well, I figure what we can do today is to open up a space for people to talk about the Avengers. Be it comics, the movie(s), whatever. I imagine this thread will lead to spoilers, so! Be ye warned. Also know that we probably won’t be hitting the thread ourselves until we’ve seen the movie!
Oh yeah, and we haven’t talked about this yet, either. Available tomorrow for Free Comic Book Day!
Image and info: http://marvel.com/news/comics/24338/mark_waid_assembles_the_avengers
Comparative Geeks 
Maybe I’ll start my own thread here… Realizing I could leave some links to some of my Avengers-related posts!
Recent A to Z Avengers posts on Sourcerer:
Avengers
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Ultron
Marvel Phase 3:
From after the Phase 3 movie announcements.
After the announcement of Spider-Man joining in.
Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers
New Avengers
Avengers
Myth and Science – The Comics of Jonathan Hickman
Jonathan Hickman and the Illuminati
Infinity
Prelude
Infinity Review
Where do they go from there?
Characters
The new Thor and other gender-swapped Avengers
Review of the new Thor #1
The new Captain America reveal
Ms. Marvel
There’s more… but I should probably stop there…
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ooh, thanks for the links. Given that the movie came out last week in the UK (it never happens, so I’m allowed to gloat a little!), I’m going to take complete advantage of this thread and talk about how much I loved the movie.
Undoubtedly my favourite part was the cohesion of the characters, now that they’ve learned to work together. Yes they disagree, and there are some huge personalities, but they fit so well together. I enjoyed the familiarity, the inside jokes, the banter. They’re like any other dysfunctional family (well, sort of) and I enjoyed spending time with them.
The relationship between Bruce and Nat was unexpected (even though I’d seen the clips). I know other people called it, but I didn’t see a romantic relationship developing. It worked incredibly well because their connection makes complete sense to me. It should be interesting to see where that goes.
James Spader as Ultron was magnificent – he was absolutely hilarious. And that voice…
It goes without saying that the special effects were awesome. My favourite shot was in the opening scene – where they all went into action together. It goes back to the cohesion again and how tight they are as a unit.
I’m a huge fan of Jarvis, so hearing his voice as Vision was an absolute treat. Paul Bettany did a great job with the character. The hammer scene is particularly memorable, well, both the hammer scenes stand out. And what I noticed is that they all held their own – the different personalities shone through and thrilled in their own unique ways. I could talk about each character, but then it would turn into an essay, so I’ll leave it at that!
Those are my initial thoughts. I’m looking forward to chatting about the movie, the characters, the comics. I’ve waited a week (last time I mention it, I promise), so thanks for providing an avenue to discuss 🙂
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Language!
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lol – that about sums it up 😉 Not only was this running joke one of my favourite parts, it served to remind us that Cap is still struggling to find his place (but he has some pretty cool friends to rely on!). I loved Nick’s line – ‘did you kiss your mother with that mouth?’ – great timing!
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Re-watching The Avengers, Nick Fury had a lot of the great lines (“Is the sun in the sky? Then put it on the left.”) Those got shared out a lot more among everyone else in this one. Which is good! And which worked.
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I totally agree – they got the balance right and showcased everyone in their own way 🙂 Loved that line!
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I picked up Comic Book Day issue mainly because I’ve really grown to like MsMarvel (Kamala) and she’s right there on the cover. 🙂 I have to say, though, that I’m curious and may very well buy the first real issue. We’ll go from there. I’ve not read a lot of the Avengers, mainly some issues where the She-Hulk appears (she’s my favorite!), and those are not very many.
As for the movie — how much graphic violence (as in, blood, guts & gore) is in it? I do like me a good superhero movie, but my gore-tolerance is quite limited.
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Though there is a lot of violence in the movie (destruction/intense action), and battle scenes galore (mainly between the Avengers and robots) there is no gore – so I think your tolerance levels in terms of blood and gore are safe! The movie is extremely entertaining and mainly involves Ultron trying to destroy the Avengers. Of course this puts many people in danger, but there are no close up death scenes and the good guys work to limit the casualties.
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Indeed, I was left wondering if people really died much in the movie… There’s that scene early on when the Hydra agents prove that they aren’t dead, just wounded… They do lots of saving people, and directing them out of harm’s way, and just kind of generally don’t show people dying or being killed directly. We went home and watched The Avengers again, and there’s much of the same… although Nick Fury and Maria Hill definitely shoot some guys. And there’s a moment where Cap kicks a guy and he falls off the Helicarrier… definitely dead. It actually kind of surprised me, because there just aren’t a lot of kills. But there’s not the Batman-type focus on the fact that the one thing they won’t do is kill…
And then there are plot deaths, but I’m not talking about those, and will leave those to the excess spoiler zone!
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I wonder if that’s to balance the violence – they might destroy cities, but they save lives! They got mixed reviews from the public at the end of the first movie, so maybe they’re just trying to be the heroes they are and avoid unnecessary death. Plus, they’re tired of all the killing and are just trying to even the score – balance the scales. I laughed so hard when one of the Hydra agents said ‘No it wasn’t!’ to Tony’s ‘Good talk’ gag. Sooo many great lines…like ‘Right, don’t mention puny Banner!’
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Nah, the saving people element has been an important part from the get go. In Iron Man Tony has to deal with a terrified female driver while trying to safe her. In Iron Man II Pepper evacuates the expo to keep causalities down. In Thor the city gets evacuated when the Destroyer turns up. In Iron Man Tony does a stunt routine in order to rescue all the people falling from the plane. In Guardians of the Galaxy Rocket leads the Ravengers down to the ground in order to protect the people on the ground (who again, are just in the process of evacuation) while the Nova Corps is busy with the blockade. And in The Avengers they set up a “fighting parameter” while the police is evacuation the people inside it. (I just realized that evacuation is at this point nearly a cliché in the MCU…they do it in nearly every movie).
It was a little bit more pronounced this time around, though. But I think that’s a good thing.
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Definitely a good thing – and nice references 🙂
I don’t think it’s a bad ongoing element. Part of what makes the bad guys the bad guys is that they disregard the civilians, and are too powerful for the normal authorities to handle. Thus why we need the heroes – they think about the civilians, and they are powerful enough to handle the villains. So I don’t know about cliche… so much as necessary element.
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It was a little bit the Anti-Man of Steel, which is certainly a good thing.
Yeah, it is kind of necessary for the plot, but still, I never noticed how often it happens in the various Marvel movies before. Usually a “it’s too late to evacuate the people let’s fight” is the more common scenario.
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A) The Vision. I think I could just sit here and cry about the Vision. So good.
B) James Spader. Oh lord help. So good.
C) Loved the villain structure, where Tony’s kind of the villain, if we’re being honest. Not sure yet how it’ll fit into the mega-arc or if it was just thematically following on from Iron Man 3 with a few Shield developments.
D) Lots and lots of characters and things happening, but did a good job of not losing anybody. Left me wanting more of all the characters, but not cheated out of anybody.
E) Kind of pissed that Natasha thinks she’s a monster because she can’t have kids. Way to give the female character a female problem, nice going. It’s borderline, Banner brings up the kid issue first and Nat’s also upset about murder-n-stuff, but I mind. On the other hand, at least Quicksilver’s furthering Wanda’s story instead of the other way around.
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Lol about Vision – I completely agree. So good! And James Spader – genius! I liked Bruce and Nat’s connection but I get what you’re saying. I think Bruce brought it up because he’d seen her interact with Barton’s kids and was using it as an example of what he could never give her. I have mixed feelings about her reaction because she went through some intense conditioning and was led to believe that a woman’s one true weakness is the love for a child, so I get that it messes her up. Perhaps the dialogue could have been better because I don’t think she believes herself a monster for that reason. Perhaps I’m wrong.
I can’t wait to see where they go with Wanda!
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Yeah, I think you’re right there, that it was a dialogue problem and not so much a character motivation problem. 🙂
Yay Wanda!
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A) The Vision. Great. In the comics, he’s kind of overpowered, but I liked how they handled that in the movie. Yes, he’s overpowered in the movie, too – but Ultron filled him with both Vibranium (some good), and with one of the Infinity Stones. So, overpowered is what he should be…
B) James Friggin’ Spader. He might have been channeling a little Raymond Red Reddington there, I must say… that’s alright ^^
C) Tony is now the Mad Scientist. Clearly laying groundwork for Civil War, but I kind of like the idea of the Illuminati forming as well. We’ll see. Civil War is only a year away!!!
D) I agree, it didn’t feel like an excess of plots or like they were setting up too many things… not in the way I felt that, say, Amazing Spider-Man 2 does. Nonetheless, they were setting us up for:
-Thor Ragnarok
-Two Infinity War movies
-Civil War
-Agents of SHIELD shenanigans
-Black Panther
-Experimenting on humans with alien stuff to get superpowers plots (leading into Inhumans and Captain Marvel)
And I kind of picked up on all of that (a downside of all of their movies being announced now), but not in so bad of a way.
E) We’re now too late for Black Widow to make the Lady Monster list on Part-Time Monster, huh?… I kid, but I see what you mean. Sounds like you have thoughts on writing about that more, so I’ll be interested to read them. On the one hand, I feel that it makes sense from what we have seen of the Leviathan training in Agent Carter. And from what we’ve seen from Nat. On the other hand, the time and way of declaring it all? Problematic.
Closing thought: Yay Avengers!
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Yup, I picked up on some (not all) of the setups, but they seemed more in the manner of foreshadowing than anything else, if that makes sense! Which totally works for me.
I believe Natacha is posting about Black Widow on Part Time Monster, so, I’ll wait to see what she says before I get all up in arms. Like Melissa said, I think it’s a dialogue problem more than a fundamental one. I do follow the Nat/Bruce relationship and understand why it happened and why it fell apart, I buy all that, but that one scene just ticked me off. 🙂
Yay Avengers!
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Is it bad of me to think that Banner left because they don’t have him set up to be in Civil War, so they needed a reason for him to be gone a while?…
And maybe biggest reason it could be an annoying scene: they could have changed/removed her whole confession to him and not changed too much of the scene. And a story of her killing someone innocent might have been more on point anyway.
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No, I think you’re probably right. They made a point of adding a lot of new characters, and now that you mention it, maybe it’s because they need a lot of them if they’re gonna sell a war between them!
And yes, exactly! We KNOW she regrets her past murders. That’s something we know about her on a fundamental level, that she regrets her past. She could have sold that scene with no story at all. “Do you think you’re the only monster here?” and a shot of her face. Sold. I do think from the scene that not being able to have kids was just a part of what bothered her, they didn’t make a total turn there and make it all about kids in place of everything else, but I think it was unnecessary.
Maybe it’s true that we always want what we can’t have, so action heroes want “normal” families. I think creators put way too much emphasis on that, though, when most viewers are watching because they want to imagine lives that AREN’T normal.
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The entire movie my storyteller’s brain was going “oh look, Beauty and the Beast!” – I think they piled the extra “look, she thinks she’s broken” thing on top to give more depth to that trope. It kinda turned into “Beast and the Beast” which I liked, because I am not a big fan of “Mary Sue turns Beast into Prince” stories… Does any of this make sense?…
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It does and that’s a good point. And I was thinking back to her Nightmare-scape, when Scarlet Witch whammies her. It’s back to her Widow training. All those feels came back to her. It makes some sense for her to be dwelling on it then…
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Do NOT get me started on Quicksilver… I’m still WTF
XD
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Maybe to not have two competing Quicksilvers in the movies for too long? Maybe because anything they wanted to do with him Fox already did in Days of Future Past? Those are my guesses.
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Nope, Whedon said that he already planed to kill off Quicksilver when he was working at the first Avenger movie. I think his destiny was always to get fridged for Wanda’s character development.
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I saw that too. And as people have mentioned – at least it was the man being fridged for the woman’s story, for once. And bonus for it not being romantic, but family…
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I know, right?
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I fear that The Vision is toast, though. After all, he now has an infinity stone in his head which Thanos really, really wants. I give him until the final of Infinity War I.
I was less pissed about the kids part than about the romance. I think if they had brought it up outside of a relationship, perhaps in a talk with Laura, it would have been by far the better choice.
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I’m worried about that too. 😦
You’re right, that would’ve worked better. I don’t mind the romance, I thought they had interesting chemistry in the first Avengers, but I didn’t see much of that chemistry here.
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I loved it! It was all the fun I ever expected. It was super meta (á la Whedon) at places, and I appreciated that. (“Jarvis is my co-pilot”? 😀 )
My favorite new addition to the team is probably Hawkeye’s personality. He didn’t get a lot of play time in the previous Avengers, and I think they really made up for it in this one. The question of “what’s a guy with bow and arrows doing on a super team?” got addressed beautifully. I am secretly a teeeny bit sad that his personal background didn’t end up being a run-down apartment and a dog, but oh well. Katie Kate might still make a screen appearance sometime. (Hawkguy FTW)
The Hulkwidow thing was a bit out-of-the-blue for me. It worked, but I wish it had been built up more between when we last saw her (stating she needed to find a new identity) and this movie where it was apparently obvious for everyone on the team. I am assuming we missed a lot of stuff that got cut. Whedon said the whole thing is about 4 hours long, so I am assuming he did take his sweet time, it just didn’t fit all on the movie screen. Well, that’s what DVDs are for!
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There definitely feels like a lot we missed – I think some of it is just that they have been taking out Hydra bases ever since the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. They referenced it in the movie… But I wish that it had also come up before that, like in Agents of SHIELD. I guess that was their only opportunity, other than adding half an hour to the start of the movie. Which it sounds like Joss may have shot – so we’ll see in disc! 🙂
Which reminds me – Joss Whedon’s commentary on The Avengers is amazing if you haven’t watched it. I look forward to that for this movie as well 🙂
And I agree – Hawkguy! And where’s Lucky? Oh well… Glad we finally got a bit more of him! And he got to have one of the very best lines…
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Hawkeye’s development was one of my favourite things about the movie. I loved where they went with him, because after being a mindless drone in the first movie, it took him a while to recover from what Loki did to him – what he took. In Ultron we saw the real Barton, and everything he’s capable of. His focus, his humanity, and his deep sense of honour. Yep, I’m a Barton fan!
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That means this thread needs Hawkeye links!
Holly’s Hawkeye Comic review
My “where the heck is Barton” meme.
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Yay! How did I miss that review? Thanks for the links…I’m off to feed my Hawkeye fix 😀
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Some aging links there… I have a pretty good memory of our archives, though 🙂
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I’d say you have an exceptional memory. I can barely remember what I wrote yesterday 😉
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It did make that massive link list I dropped really easy to do… knew exactly what I wanted to link 🙂 Didn’t even think of including Hawkeye, though, and I should have.
If you haven’t read it, Hannah wrote the Ms. Marvel post I linked… good stuff 🙂 Lots of pictures too!
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I think I have, but I’ll go check it out – just in case!
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I’m glad Hawkeye’s finally getting some love!
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Congrats on finishing, beyond hearing of The Avengers I don’t know anything about them, or the movies. I think my age group is to blame.
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The Avengers were recently celebrating their 50 year anniversary… That’s a lot of age groups who have gotten to have them around 😉 Still, they’ve definitely made it to prominence in the last few years! Here’s hoping that this movie makes its way to the top grossing movie of all time… The first movie is the third highest 🙂
Thanks for stopping by! Yay A to Z survivor badge!
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I enjoyed it a lot. And I am hoping this is the rare case where Marvel releases an extended edition to fill in some of the pre-movie events and further develop the characters. If another action scene sneaks in there too I won’t be complaining!
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Hear, hear!
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Just actually looked at this. That list of links is a nice collection for some scheduled tweeting and Facebook posting! 😉
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Happy I could help with the epic Buffer project, then 😉
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If you’re looking for more Avengers: Age of Ultron discussion and review, head on over to the collaborative review on Sourcerer: https://sourcererblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/avengers-age-of-ultron-collaborative-review/
Also, my LitFlix is still in the works – will likely run this Saturday.
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