It's a big, dopey comic book movie. In many ways, it's the biggest, dopiest and most comic-book-y Marvel movie yet, so it's a hard film to hate if you're into that. It's riddled with inconsistencies, gaping holes in logic, obvious plot machinations, egregious contrivances, nonsensical and overlong battle scenes, way too many knowing winks at the audience. It's about as messy and weirdly disjointed as Iron Man 2. It also seems to undo (or, in true comic book fashion, retcon) key character and story developments from Winter Soldier and Iron Man 3 (especially the latter), and sort of waves these inconsistencies off with throwaway lines. A lot of the dialogue is cheesier than action film since Troy. And a disturbing amount of the film is concerned with SETTING UP future events-- entire sequences that have no reason to be there except to tease things that are irrelevant to the plot of THIS film. It's nowhere near as "fun" as the first one. But there's something special about seeing these characters interact on screen. A lot of the fight scenes are dazzling. The international setting is great. There are really wonderful moments of humor, as well as some touching character moments. And Ultron is really fucking cool. Altogether a worthwhile superhero blockbuster: loud, obnoxious, kinda hokey, kinda cookie-cutter, kinda let's-set-up-the-next-installment-y (yes, I made that an adjective) but a rollicking good time.
I've found that Iron Man 2 has been the weakest of the marvel movies? Do you think this one is better, and you're just pointing out a similar flaw that they share, or that they're comparable in terms of quality as well.
stip wrote:I've found that Iron Man 2 has been the weakest of the marvel movies? Do you think this one is better, and you're just pointing out a similar flaw that they share, or that they're comparable in terms of quality as well.
Age of Ultron is for sure better. They're just similar in how strangely disjointed they get right along the second act.
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
stip wrote:I've found that Iron Man 2 has been the weakest of the marvel movies? Do you think this one is better, and you're just pointing out a similar flaw that they share, or that they're comparable in terms of quality as well.
Age of Ultron is for sure better. They're just similar in how strangely disjointed they get right along the second act.
I wonder (time will tell) if some of the choices made in ultron that seem disjointed now will pay off--things that may not work as well in a particular film might, in hindsight, end up really cool because of what they ultimately set up. Right now it sounds like we have set up that disrupts the short term narrative, but if the film is thought of as part of a larger whole rather than an end in itself it may change things.
I have no idea. Maybe this was just stuff that wasn't artfully done. But it's also trying something that seems new.
I really enjoyed Iron Man 3 quite a bit more than I thought I would.
Skitch's Marvel Rankings!
1. Winter Soldier
2. Avengers
3. Iron Man
4. Captain America the First Avenger
5. Guardians (if you had asked me right after seeing it in the theater, this would probably be 3. Maybe 2. The rewatch did not hold up nearly as well for me.)
6. Iron Man 3
Then there is a pretty dramatic fall of to the thors and Iron Man 2. That's all of them, right?
I thought it was more engaging, more stylish and more sharply directed than the previous Iron Man films or Avengers. Funnier, too. Other than a few key things
(such as the super-rushed and underdeveloped ending of "oh also we fixed Pepper and I got the arc reactor out of my chest")
I like it quite a bit. I like the journey and where it left Tony in terms of his character arc. It's a shame they decided to pretty much just undo it with Age of Ultron.
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
theplatypus wrote:I thought it was more engaging, more stylish and more sharply directed than the previous Iron Man films or Avengers. Funnier, too. Other than a few key things
(such as the super-rushed and underdeveloped ending of "oh also we fixed Pepper and I got the arc reactor out of my chest")
I like it quite a bit. I like the journey and where it left Tony in terms of his character arc. It's a shame they decided to pretty much just undo it with Age of Ultron.
It's probably that I'm not much of a fan of the character Iron Man. He's OK in a team setting but by himself not so much. I've tried a dozen times to read his comics over the years and I can never last long. RDJ is awesome though and totally makes the movies watchable. They just don't set my world on fire. Forgettable rogues gallery doesn't help.
