Avengers: Ultron Era
(I am having way too much fun translating French movie titles back into English. Is this what being a Babel fish feels like?)
Anyway, I saw Age of Ultron with a group of fannish friends yesterday.
The version I saw is the 2D VOSTFR one (if there are differences between the versions different countries got, the way there was for Winter Soldier, I saw the French version). As usual, I can't speak for any other versions.
Short version: I was entertained, but I have some reservations.
Spoilers ahead of here, don't say I didn't warn you.
I apparently scoffed pretty loudly every time the words "artificial intelligence" were uttered on-screen. I am not even sorry. That was just bullshit. Look, I am already not a big fan of the way 'artifical intelligence' is bandied about in SFF because it is more often a misnomer for 'artificial sentience', but genre convention, fine, whatever. But here? No. The movie was clearly trying to have its cake and eat it too when it came to artificial intelligence. On the one hand, it made a huge deal of Ultron being the first artificial intelligence, but on the other hand, it clearly expected JARVIS's death to have an impact and you can't have both. Either Ultron is the first, in which case JARVIS is not a person and so has not died (due to not being alive in the first place). Or else JARVIS did die and so was alive in the first place and so Ultron was not the first artificial intelligence. I am also side-eye the entire creation of Vision, but I am willing to grant that I have no experience in programming anything involving THE POWER COSMIC and so can't speak to that.
I think Vision getting a cape because Thor has a cape is cute. I do wish they'd borrowed from Ultimates in making Vision female, though. (She could have looked like Doctor Cho, okay.)
I wish we'd gotten to see more of Doctor Cho.
Although, in that case, I doubt there would have been so much Wanda/Vision groundwork laid down (sadly), as the MCU has yet to have any explicitly LGBT characters.
Speaking of Wanda/Vision, I actually don't care about it. I don't ship it, but I don't not ship it, either. Honestly, I think I kind of imprinted on Wanda/Doom and Wanda/Carol as my Wanda ships of choice (and Wanda/Rogue over in X-Men:Evolution) so Wanda/Vision gets a great MEH from me. It does open the possibility of Billy and Tommy existing in the future, which is something I'm really looking forward to, especially Tommy.
(Ant-Man is bring us Cassie. MY KINGDOM FOR ONSCREEN TOMMY + CASSIE BONDING)
((MY OTHER KINGDOM FOR WANDA AND CAROL BEING A COUPLE IN MCU.))
FUCK SOKOVIA MAN FUCK IT HARD. I really disliked that the movie made up an Eastern European country for, what, shit and giggles? LOL I GUESS EASTER EUROPE IS ALL INTERCHANGEABLE LMAO except, you know, it's really really not. Given the size of the country (FRIDAY implies that the city that gets lifted at the end is most of Sokovia), I'm going to say it's probably in the Balkans. It's bad enough when the comics make up countries, but I can understand why you would say Doctor Doom rules Latveria and not Romania. What really gets me though is that Sokovia doesn't exist in the comics. WHY. Why would you pass up the opportunity to be able to point at comics canon and say "see, it's right there?". It's UScentrism and stupid UScentrism at that. I DON'T LIKE IT.
Oh, hey, they namedropped Wakanda too.
One of the people I saw teh movie with is a big Steve fan and she expressed the desire to know whetehr Whedon had even watched Winter Soldier, because Steve entire character act (what little of it there was, imho) felt like a retread of his arc in that movie.
Thor's subplot with the visions and the waters and Selvig was either cut too much or not enough. As it is, it brings nothing but confusion to the plot. (I have with Thor the same problem I have with Steve: I like them in their own movies, not so much in Whedon's.)
There was a brief Bucky reference by Sam. I am chosing to believe, based on nothing at all, that Sam found Bucky and, being the amazing therapist that he is, decided that Bucky didn't need (or even want) to see Steve now. So Sam and Bucky were sharing a beer and watching Steve be an idiot on live TV during the climax of the movie.
Tony and Bruce's debate(s) on Ultron felt a bit hollow to me. I guess it's because, at the end of everything, Tony Stark is an engineer, with an engineer's mind and an engineer's flaw. He didn't make Ultron to protect the world even though that was probably the incentive for the idea, but once he had the idea? He did it to see if he could.
The movie didn't really deal with that, imho, and so it rang hollow to me. Idk, I guess most people aren't interested on hearing the version of the debate that boils down to "scientist vs engineer", even though I think that was really what was going on with Bruce and Tony.
Tony already has 'a suit of armour around the world', after all. It's called the Iron Legion and shows up during the very first fight scene. (By the by, can I say "police state"? POLICE STATE. There. Kind of surprised Steve would go from 'Project Insight is bad!' to 'it's totally cool that this dude I work with can send walking talking WMDs anywhere in the world at his own discretion'. Goes back to wondering if Whedon watched Winter Soldier.)
I am glad Clint's family made it out okay. I really enjoyed their dynamic with Nat. You have no idea how much I love that Nat and Clint are BFFs. No disrespect to anyone who ships them, but it is so rare to see male-female friendship that doesn't turn romantic, especially one where they are so clearly Very Important to each other, that I am going to treasure it. (Nat whispering 'traitor' to the baby who turned out to be Nathaniel instead of Natasha was adorable.)
I have zero feelings on Nat/bruce, either way. I will just say that I thought the lullaby looked an awful lot like neurolinguistic programming. I am also of two minds over Natasha's speech that calls her a monster. My gut feeling in the theater was that she was using her infertility as the reason she's as much of a monster as Bruce is, but while talking it over, I can see why other people thought otherwise. I still think the line could have been better written.
This aside, I think Natasha was super amazing, omg. SHE IS THE BEST I LOVE HER SO MUCH. So many hearts in my eyes, omg. I like that she didn't even try to pick up Mjolnir. It doesn't matter if she (thinks she) is worthy, because either was she's confident in herself enough to give zero shits about the approval of a piece of weaponry from the medieval era.
(Side note: Of people who took part in the final people the only ones who didn't try to lift the hammer at any time are Nat and Wanda.)
I really loved all of Nat so much. WHERE IS MY BLACK WIDOW MOVIE OMG
Without any transition, let's talk about something else that bugged me about the movie: how much Christian imagery there was. Off the top of my head I could remember two (all dialogue) and was told another by the fandom folk afterwards (Vision taking a Christ/cross like pose). The three lines I remember where: Ultron making an explicit reference to Noah's ark ("ask Noah" in a conversation about extinction events) (Old Testament) and Ultron going on about how cool it is that the church is in the center of the city so everyone can be equally distant from god (church, presumably orthodix, and Ultron equating himself with god with the framing of it). I think there were more, but I can't remember them right now. It felt really off to me.
I really enjoyed Rhodey in the movie, even though he should have been an Avengers way back in the first one. I liked his joke and him getting his moments of awesome in the fight at the end. Loved his friendship with Maria Hill, ngl.
But hey, now that Sam and Rhodey are officially Avengers, the team is only 7/9 white! (Not counting Vision either way, because synthezoid.)
It is also only 8/10 male! (Counting Vision this time, because he's referred to with "he" pronouns, as are JARVIS and Ultron.)
It is still 0/10 explicitly and canonly LGBT, though.
I guess it's time to talk about the twins, then? Let's talk about the twins!
There's a conversation early on that outlines their powers as "he's fast and she's weird", which lol no that is not what you just said, Hill, and also neither what you said earlier nor "weird" is Wanda's comic powerset, but okay, I'll roll with it, I suppose it's close-ish enough to her early powerset that I can see how one can look like the other.
Then there's this exchange, between Steve and Hill: Steve: Yeah, what kind of madman would let a German scientist experiment on him to fight for his country?
Hill: We're not at war.
Steve: They are.
This loses a lot of impact on account of Sokovia being fictional and no history being given, but I chose to interpret it as the twins signing up for Strucker's human experimentation program shortly after they became orphans, presumably while their country was still at war.
I did not hate Pietro! I am as surprised as you are, tbh. Iiirc, House of M is the first comic storyline I read with Wanda and/or Pietro in it and while it cemented my an undying love of all things Wanda Maximoff, it also gave me an undying hatred of comics!Pietro. I could tangent this whole post to explain why, but suffice to say I went in there fully expecting to hate Pietro's guts, but I did not. I mostly cared about him inasmuch as Wanda cared about him, but I did care about him, a little.
WANDA THOUGH! I LOVED HER! I mean, I have loved each and every incarnation of Wanda I have ever seen, from the one in X-Men:Evolution to the one in the comics (yes, because of House of M), so it is probably no surprise that I loved her here, but I did. GOSH DRAN SHE WAS AMAZING AND THE BEST AND I LOVE HER SO MUCH. I like that she was an avenger before she was an Avenger, but that as soon as she realised that Ultron was very badly designed she switched her allegiance immediately.
I really liked her interaction with Hawkeye, how he was "not a fan [of the mind-messing-with]" and how he didn't try to guilt her into fighting Ultron, just told her that if she didn't fight, he'd sent Pietro get her to safety. And you know, you just know, that if Wanda had stopped fighting, Pietro would have, too. The whole movie he keeps helping ehr and protecting her.
(Tbh, I enjoyed the Hawkeye + the twins dynamic a lot.)
The only moment Pietro doesn't act to further Wanda's goals or protect her is when he saves Hawkeye (and dies). I was very confused by his death: surely he could have gotten Hawkeye and the kid to safety and/or taken the bullets out of the air? He's fast enough for that.
How Wanda reacted to his death, however, was heartbreaking. OH NO WANDA BABY NO (She makes terrible decisions under emotional duress.)
I am not convinced that Pietro is dead, though. Because COMICS.
ALSO! His last "You didn't see that coming?" is totally meta commentary on this being a Joss Whedon movie: of course someone dies, you really should have seen that coming.
Wanda's straight hair was bothering me, but at the end she got her curly hair back, so that was alright. (Is it me or did her costume call back to Hawkeye's a little?) I know it's not just me, because one of the fandom folk mentionned it too, but I have to admit that I was extremely confused at the end, because she looked East Asian. Also OMG SHE CAN FLY NOW YAY
I want all the fic of Clint taking Wanda under his wing and making her part of his family/adopting her. I would also love the fic where Wanda confronts Tony over her parents' death and how he's still making weapons (hello Iron Legion, hello Ultron). In my heart of hearts, I think the fic I want most is Wanda and Natasha working together with Wanda helping Natasha make sense of what memories are real and which are not.
So there you have it, those are my thoughts on Age of Ultron.
Most of the conversation I had with the fandom folk revolved around the movie, but we did talk about some other things, like ongoing fandom events and dead Romans. Me and one of the fandom folk have taken to texting each other whenever we spot dead Romans in the wild, it's great fun.
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/75969.html and has
comments over there.
Anyway, I saw Age of Ultron with a group of fannish friends yesterday.
The version I saw is the 2D VOSTFR one (if there are differences between the versions different countries got, the way there was for Winter Soldier, I saw the French version). As usual, I can't speak for any other versions.
Short version: I was entertained, but I have some reservations.
Spoilers ahead of here, don't say I didn't warn you.
I apparently scoffed pretty loudly every time the words "artificial intelligence" were uttered on-screen. I am not even sorry. That was just bullshit. Look, I am already not a big fan of the way 'artifical intelligence' is bandied about in SFF because it is more often a misnomer for 'artificial sentience', but genre convention, fine, whatever. But here? No. The movie was clearly trying to have its cake and eat it too when it came to artificial intelligence. On the one hand, it made a huge deal of Ultron being the first artificial intelligence, but on the other hand, it clearly expected JARVIS's death to have an impact and you can't have both. Either Ultron is the first, in which case JARVIS is not a person and so has not died (due to not being alive in the first place). Or else JARVIS did die and so was alive in the first place and so Ultron was not the first artificial intelligence. I am also side-eye the entire creation of Vision, but I am willing to grant that I have no experience in programming anything involving THE POWER COSMIC and so can't speak to that.
I think Vision getting a cape because Thor has a cape is cute. I do wish they'd borrowed from Ultimates in making Vision female, though. (She could have looked like Doctor Cho, okay.)
I wish we'd gotten to see more of Doctor Cho.
Although, in that case, I doubt there would have been so much Wanda/Vision groundwork laid down (sadly), as the MCU has yet to have any explicitly LGBT characters.
Speaking of Wanda/Vision, I actually don't care about it. I don't ship it, but I don't not ship it, either. Honestly, I think I kind of imprinted on Wanda/Doom and Wanda/Carol as my Wanda ships of choice (and Wanda/Rogue over in X-Men:Evolution) so Wanda/Vision gets a great MEH from me. It does open the possibility of Billy and Tommy existing in the future, which is something I'm really looking forward to, especially Tommy.
(Ant-Man is bring us Cassie. MY KINGDOM FOR ONSCREEN TOMMY + CASSIE BONDING)
((MY OTHER KINGDOM FOR WANDA AND CAROL BEING A COUPLE IN MCU.))
FUCK SOKOVIA MAN FUCK IT HARD. I really disliked that the movie made up an Eastern European country for, what, shit and giggles? LOL I GUESS EASTER EUROPE IS ALL INTERCHANGEABLE LMAO except, you know, it's really really not. Given the size of the country (FRIDAY implies that the city that gets lifted at the end is most of Sokovia), I'm going to say it's probably in the Balkans. It's bad enough when the comics make up countries, but I can understand why you would say Doctor Doom rules Latveria and not Romania. What really gets me though is that Sokovia doesn't exist in the comics. WHY. Why would you pass up the opportunity to be able to point at comics canon and say "see, it's right there?". It's UScentrism and stupid UScentrism at that. I DON'T LIKE IT.
Oh, hey, they namedropped Wakanda too.
One of the people I saw teh movie with is a big Steve fan and she expressed the desire to know whetehr Whedon had even watched Winter Soldier, because Steve entire character act (what little of it there was, imho) felt like a retread of his arc in that movie.
Thor's subplot with the visions and the waters and Selvig was either cut too much or not enough. As it is, it brings nothing but confusion to the plot. (I have with Thor the same problem I have with Steve: I like them in their own movies, not so much in Whedon's.)
There was a brief Bucky reference by Sam. I am chosing to believe, based on nothing at all, that Sam found Bucky and, being the amazing therapist that he is, decided that Bucky didn't need (or even want) to see Steve now. So Sam and Bucky were sharing a beer and watching Steve be an idiot on live TV during the climax of the movie.
Tony and Bruce's debate(s) on Ultron felt a bit hollow to me. I guess it's because, at the end of everything, Tony Stark is an engineer, with an engineer's mind and an engineer's flaw. He didn't make Ultron to protect the world even though that was probably the incentive for the idea, but once he had the idea? He did it to see if he could.
The movie didn't really deal with that, imho, and so it rang hollow to me. Idk, I guess most people aren't interested on hearing the version of the debate that boils down to "scientist vs engineer", even though I think that was really what was going on with Bruce and Tony.
Tony already has 'a suit of armour around the world', after all. It's called the Iron Legion and shows up during the very first fight scene. (By the by, can I say "police state"? POLICE STATE. There. Kind of surprised Steve would go from 'Project Insight is bad!' to 'it's totally cool that this dude I work with can send walking talking WMDs anywhere in the world at his own discretion'. Goes back to wondering if Whedon watched Winter Soldier.)
I am glad Clint's family made it out okay. I really enjoyed their dynamic with Nat. You have no idea how much I love that Nat and Clint are BFFs. No disrespect to anyone who ships them, but it is so rare to see male-female friendship that doesn't turn romantic, especially one where they are so clearly Very Important to each other, that I am going to treasure it. (Nat whispering 'traitor' to the baby who turned out to be Nathaniel instead of Natasha was adorable.)
I have zero feelings on Nat/bruce, either way. I will just say that I thought the lullaby looked an awful lot like neurolinguistic programming. I am also of two minds over Natasha's speech that calls her a monster. My gut feeling in the theater was that she was using her infertility as the reason she's as much of a monster as Bruce is, but while talking it over, I can see why other people thought otherwise. I still think the line could have been better written.
This aside, I think Natasha was super amazing, omg. SHE IS THE BEST I LOVE HER SO MUCH. So many hearts in my eyes, omg. I like that she didn't even try to pick up Mjolnir. It doesn't matter if she (thinks she) is worthy, because either was she's confident in herself enough to give zero shits about the approval of a piece of weaponry from the medieval era.
(Side note: Of people who took part in the final people the only ones who didn't try to lift the hammer at any time are Nat and Wanda.)
I really loved all of Nat so much. WHERE IS MY BLACK WIDOW MOVIE OMG
Without any transition, let's talk about something else that bugged me about the movie: how much Christian imagery there was. Off the top of my head I could remember two (all dialogue) and was told another by the fandom folk afterwards (Vision taking a Christ/cross like pose). The three lines I remember where: Ultron making an explicit reference to Noah's ark ("ask Noah" in a conversation about extinction events) (Old Testament) and Ultron going on about how cool it is that the church is in the center of the city so everyone can be equally distant from god (church, presumably orthodix, and Ultron equating himself with god with the framing of it). I think there were more, but I can't remember them right now. It felt really off to me.
I really enjoyed Rhodey in the movie, even though he should have been an Avengers way back in the first one. I liked his joke and him getting his moments of awesome in the fight at the end. Loved his friendship with Maria Hill, ngl.
But hey, now that Sam and Rhodey are officially Avengers, the team is only 7/9 white! (Not counting Vision either way, because synthezoid.)
It is also only 8/10 male! (Counting Vision this time, because he's referred to with "he" pronouns, as are JARVIS and Ultron.)
It is still 0/10 explicitly and canonly LGBT, though.
I guess it's time to talk about the twins, then? Let's talk about the twins!
There's a conversation early on that outlines their powers as "he's fast and she's weird", which lol no that is not what you just said, Hill, and also neither what you said earlier nor "weird" is Wanda's comic powerset, but okay, I'll roll with it, I suppose it's close-ish enough to her early powerset that I can see how one can look like the other.
Then there's this exchange, between Steve and Hill: Steve: Yeah, what kind of madman would let a German scientist experiment on him to fight for his country?
Hill: We're not at war.
Steve: They are.
This loses a lot of impact on account of Sokovia being fictional and no history being given, but I chose to interpret it as the twins signing up for Strucker's human experimentation program shortly after they became orphans, presumably while their country was still at war.
I did not hate Pietro! I am as surprised as you are, tbh. Iiirc, House of M is the first comic storyline I read with Wanda and/or Pietro in it and while it cemented my an undying love of all things Wanda Maximoff, it also gave me an undying hatred of comics!Pietro. I could tangent this whole post to explain why, but suffice to say I went in there fully expecting to hate Pietro's guts, but I did not. I mostly cared about him inasmuch as Wanda cared about him, but I did care about him, a little.
WANDA THOUGH! I LOVED HER! I mean, I have loved each and every incarnation of Wanda I have ever seen, from the one in X-Men:Evolution to the one in the comics (yes, because of House of M), so it is probably no surprise that I loved her here, but I did. GOSH DRAN SHE WAS AMAZING AND THE BEST AND I LOVE HER SO MUCH. I like that she was an avenger before she was an Avenger, but that as soon as she realised that Ultron was very badly designed she switched her allegiance immediately.
I really liked her interaction with Hawkeye, how he was "not a fan [of the mind-messing-with]" and how he didn't try to guilt her into fighting Ultron, just told her that if she didn't fight, he'd sent Pietro get her to safety. And you know, you just know, that if Wanda had stopped fighting, Pietro would have, too. The whole movie he keeps helping ehr and protecting her.
(Tbh, I enjoyed the Hawkeye + the twins dynamic a lot.)
The only moment Pietro doesn't act to further Wanda's goals or protect her is when he saves Hawkeye (and dies). I was very confused by his death: surely he could have gotten Hawkeye and the kid to safety and/or taken the bullets out of the air? He's fast enough for that.
How Wanda reacted to his death, however, was heartbreaking. OH NO WANDA BABY NO (She makes terrible decisions under emotional duress.)
I am not convinced that Pietro is dead, though. Because COMICS.
ALSO! His last "You didn't see that coming?" is totally meta commentary on this being a Joss Whedon movie: of course someone dies, you really should have seen that coming.
Wanda's straight hair was bothering me, but at the end she got her curly hair back, so that was alright. (Is it me or did her costume call back to Hawkeye's a little?) I know it's not just me, because one of the fandom folk mentionned it too, but I have to admit that I was extremely confused at the end, because she looked East Asian. Also OMG SHE CAN FLY NOW YAY
I want all the fic of Clint taking Wanda under his wing and making her part of his family/adopting her. I would also love the fic where Wanda confronts Tony over her parents' death and how he's still making weapons (hello Iron Legion, hello Ultron). In my heart of hearts, I think the fic I want most is Wanda and Natasha working together with Wanda helping Natasha make sense of what memories are real and which are not.
So there you have it, those are my thoughts on Age of Ultron.
Most of the conversation I had with the fandom folk revolved around the movie, but we did talk about some other things, like ongoing fandom events and dead Romans. Me and one of the fandom folk have taken to texting each other whenever we spot dead Romans in the wild, it's great fun.
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/75969.html and has
comments over there.