Friday, April 24, 2015

The Avengers: Age of Ultron

The few years wait turns out to be quite a disappointment.. Aaaah~~~ Having said that, it is not because the movie is not good. The first Avengers movie sets the bar too high that makes it difficult for the sequels to top it over.

In less than 5 minutes of the movie, I already felt a disappointment with the obvious CG work for the action scenes. I know they want to make cool and over the top action scenes but when the CG becomes too obvious, it defeats the purpose. After all, I want to see a live action movie and not a cartoon. Some of the action scenes also happen too quickly that it is difficult to catch and appreciate what is happening. There are too many mindless destruction that final showdown simply lose its impact. The fight between Hulk vs Hulkbuster is not as good as the trailer. I mean I don't feel any significance or anything great or anything touching from the fight. It is just mindless punching, kicking, and collateral damage to the buildings. The final fight is not as dramatic as the one in the first movie as the aim is to evacuate civilians and just to break apart the floating city before it falls back and destroy the earth upon impact. Even after the mission accomplished, the resolution does not have give invoke emotions like relief etc.

The pace of the movie is rather slow and I felt quite bored at the beginning. However, the plot is quite smoothly presented: why Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch initially sided with Ultron, Iron Man's motives for his plans, how Ultron has his perverted idea of protecting the world, how Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch ends up fighting against Ultron, and how everything leads to the final showdown.

Another aspect that Age of Ultron does worse than its predecessor is the quirky and witty dialogues. I don't think the cinema had a laugh greater than "puny god" previously. Is it because everything seems to be more serious this time? I don't know.

Number of superheroes and screen time for each are always inversely proportional. It is a good thing that on top of the original 6, we also have Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, War Machine, and The Vision. On the flip side, there is less screen time for each person, notably for Iron Man. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch get quite a lot of screen time. In fact, Quicksilver seems to be very powerful here although he seems to be kinda useless in the comics. Haha.. The CG for Scarlet Witch is kinda lame, unfortunately as she is just shooting red beams. Too bad they have to 'kill' Quicksilver senselessly in the end. I say senselessly because I don't see what's the point of killing him. It does not move the plot forward and it does not even cause any crazy impact when Scarlet Witch going bonkers because of that. My friend said that Marvel "killed" him because Fox owns X-men and their Quicksilver. Hmm.. I still want to believe that perhaps he is not dead yet. Otherwise, why would Hawkeye lie next to a dead man when he is recovering from his wound?

Anyway the movie is still interesting, great, and enjoyable to watch. My expectations are too high and these dampen my mood a little bit. But I do not want to take the credit away and I still think that it is worth watching. In fact, I don't mind to watch it a second time. Haha.. Kinda ironic because I did not feel as excited at the end of it as compared to when I watched the first movie.

I don't really like popcorn and never ever in my life I eat popcorn when watching movie. I was so emo and upset because of work yesterday that I succumbed into temptation and got myself a popcorn combo. Actually it was not the combo that I wanted but the collectible that come for it. I don't collect non-anime collectibles but I guess all the Avengers' mood around me made me buy it. Quality-wise it is rather rubbish but hey, I bought it just because of the hype. Lol
Sadly only the big 4 are available. I would actually prefer Black Widow :( It was quite tough for me to choose between Captain America and Thor but I guess I like Chris Evans better than Chris Hemsworth and that is why I went for Captain America. Lol.

Talking about toys, if they ever make a figure of the computer model shown at the end credits, I will want it! Yeah!

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