After watching this a third time I continue to be astonished at how breathtakingly beautiful the experience is. It is ju
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keekosdoctor — 9 years ago(August 01, 2016 06:40 AM)
I don't do those. Nor do I see how it's relevant.
If you'd like to dispute my argument that Age of Ultron carries through on its themes and character arcs in a way far more solid and sensical than BvS, you're welcome to.
Justice League, Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad, oh my! -
JediJones — 9 years ago(August 01, 2016 12:22 PM)
Age of Ultron is one of the absolute worst Marvel movies, especially in terms of the story and characters. Just look at the Hulk/Iron Man fight. It happens because Hulk gets possessed. What a deep story that is! It's out of a Saturday morning cartoon. BVS did their conflict based on true, realistic, psychological factors. Then you have that horrible romance between Black Widow and Banner, totally unconvincing compared to the fiery chemistry Adams and Cavill have together. You have the death of Quicksilver, which comes across as emotionally hollow compared to the gut-wrenching death of Superman. Eisenberg also creates a much more tense and terrifying villain the cartoonish Ultron. Age of Ultron throws empty action scenes at us with no characters we care about at stake, while BVS delivers suspenseful scenes with Lois, Martha, Batman and Superman all fighting for their lives. Then there's Olsen doing a comically bad Balki from Perfect Strangers accent. The fundamental flaw in the movie is that Tony Stark creates Ultron and then kind of goes "oops" and it's forgotten about. In BVS, Batman makes a mistake and truly shows guilt and atones for it. Age of Ultron is wafer thin storytelling, while BVS is swimming in emotional and thematic depth. BVS' visual style is also much more compelling, while Age of Ultron looks flat and washed out.
Colonel Miles Quaritch is like some sort ofnongiving-uparmy guy! -
keekosdoctor — 9 years ago(August 01, 2016 02:06 PM)
Just look at the Hulk/Iron Man fight. It happens because Hulk gets possessed. What a deep story that is!
The depth of the Hulkbuster fight doesn't come from how it
starts
, but from what it means to the characters, most importantly that it reaffirms for Bruce why he sees himself as a monster, and why he has no safe place on the team. Even with Natasha having developed the lullaby, even on a mission where Buce wasn't needed in the field, something still went wrong and Bruce still ended up hurting people. It brings to the forefront an idea that, for Bruce, has always been there; there's no circumstance where having him around is truly safe and he will always be a monster no matter how much he tempers the hulk, because outside factors that can override his control will always be there.
BVS did their conflict based on true, realistic, psychological factors.
Bruce Wayne is a psychotic drunkard who's reasoning makes no sense and whose "character arc" makes him look both shallow and stupid. Lex Luthor has a god complex and daddy issues, which are serviceable enough reasons to want Superman dead, but nearly enough to justify him using the convoluted methods he does. Clark Kent is the most fully realized of the three characters but the conflict only occurs the way it does because he too is an idiot who never attempts to save his own mom even though he's more than capable.
Then you have that horrible romance between Black Widow and Banner, totally unconvincing compared to the fiery chemistry Adams and Cavill have together.
I disagree. I think both couples have sweet moments together, and actor chemistry is beyond debatable, but Lois and Clark's relationship has a lot of frightening implications (where Ckark literally seems to value her over the entire world) and Lous herself has one scene in the entire movie that really needs her to be there for the sake of the themes.
You have the death of Quicksilver, which comes across as emotionally hollow compared to the gut-wrenching death of Superman
I disagree. This is slightly less of a problem in the Ultimate Cut, where I actually kind of like Clark as a character, but his death rings hollow to me on account of it being so avoidable and contrived. The death serves roughly the same purpose for both characters (affirming their heroism and completing their character arcs) but I believe it more coming from Pietro.
Eisenberg also creates a much more tense and terrifying villain the cartoonish Ultron.
I know I find the robot who would chop your arm off at the slightest provocation more terrifying than some twenty something giggling loon who uses a jar of his urine as an intimidation tactic and who's plan only works because his opponents are either insane or stupid.
Age of Ultron throws empty action scenes at us with no characters we care about at stake, while BVS delivers suspenseful scenes with Lois, Martha, Batman and Superman all fighting for their lives.
I know I care more about the Avengers in any given action scene than any of BvS' cast especially the psychotic, narrowminded, alcoholic Bruce. Tell me, why does the bat mobile chase scene need to be in the film? It can't be there to show us that Bruce has gone overboard, the film's already made that point. It can't be there for him to get the Kryptonite cause he fails to do that. It exists only to be an action scene because we haven't had one for a while and compromising Bruce's character for the sake of cheap thrills is ok by Snyder.
Then there's Olsen doing a comically bad Balki from Perfect Strangers accent.
Meh, never bothered me, especially with it being a fictional accent with no basis for how it's "supposed" to sound.
The fundamental flaw in the movie is that Tony Stark creates Ultron and then kind of goes "oops" and it's forgotten about
Except no it isn't. What, did you want the whole movie to be Tony taken to task for creating the problem by accident? We got multiple extended scenes where he goes over it with the team, particularly Steve and Bruce; why he thought Ultron was necessary, what he'd intended him to do/be, etc.
In BVS, Batman makes a mistake and truly shows guilt and atones for it.
Batman is a crazy person who's atonement comes too little too late after spending the entire film trying to kill a man for selfish, paranoid reasons, to the point that him feeling guilty at all strikes me as unearned. Tony spends the entirety of AoU working to fix his mistake, which he made for completely altruistic reasons.
Age of Ultron is wafer thin storytelling, while BVS is swimming in emotional and thematic depth
BvS brings up the themes/motifs of mortality, god hood, manipulation of public perception, power/powerlessness, revenge, goodness, etc, but only ever skins the surface of those ideas and anything it actually has to say isn't backed up by the events of the film. AoU has definitive statements to make about evolution, morality, man's capacity to be both savior and monster, the concept of perspective an -
JediJones — 9 years ago(August 01, 2016 08:56 PM)
You seriously have to ask why there's a Batmobile chase in the movie, while giving a pass to Marvel for endless gratuitous action scenes and "cheap thrills?" Wayne wanted to steal the kryptonite. This is as clear a motivation as day. The fact that he didn't succeed is irrelevant. Did Ultron succeed in destroying the world? Does his failure mean he had no motivation? And you wanted a Batman movie without a Batmobile chase? C'mon.
Batman may have been paranoid, but NOT selfish. He was trying to save the world from destruction. And for all we know, that vision from the Flash about Superman in the future was true. Batman, like the rest of the world saw Superman's sacrifice to save the world, and this is what firmly changes his perspective on Superman, along with probably many more in the world. Batman is symbolic of the larger world's fear of Superman.
I don't see any deep themes explored in AOU. BVS does far more than skim the surface of those themes. They are fully developed throughout. You need to realize that developing a theme does not require hitting the audience over the head with it, and spelling out your exact meaning and conclusions in dialogue. An artistic movie lets the audience interpret the events they see on their own rather than lecture and dictate meanings to them. It raises questions, but should never answer them unless it wants to drop from an A movie to a B movie. If you've only ever watched Hollywood blockbuster type films, then you may not know how to appreciate a movie that does things right.
Lex's opponents are NOT insane or stupid. He trapped them very cleverly. The one who was stupid was Stark, in two movies in a row now. His character has been totally ruined at this point. He was supposed to be a smart scientist, but now he's a clumsy, selfish oaf, based solely on the flimsily constructed plots of AOU and Civil War that required him to act out of character.
Superman's death was not unnecessary at all. The exact same result happened in the comics with Doomsday, and the animated movie. There was no way to kill Doomsday but to risk his own life by holding the kryptonite. Unless you expected him to pass it to Diana and ask her to risk her life.
Colonel Miles Quaritch is like some sort ofnongiving-uparmy guy! -
keekosdoctor — 9 years ago(August 01, 2016 10:07 PM)
You seriously have to ask why there's a Batmobile chase in the movie, while giving a pass to Marvel for endless gratuitous action scenes and "cheap thrills?"
Yes, yes I do.
Wayne wanted to steal the kryptonite. This is as clear a motivation as day. The fact that he didn't succeed is irrelevant
It's completely relevant because it means the scene accomplished nothing.
Did Ultron succeed in destroying the world? Does his failure mean he had no motivation?
I never said anything about motivation. Ultron wanting to destroy the world serves a purpose regardless of whether or not he succeeds, because that action scene is the basis on which all of the movies themes come together; the Avengers proving themselves as saviors over monsters, while simultaneously proving that they are a force for positive change, and not just stagnation like Ultron believes, The climax of AoU is as much a moral victory as it is a physical slug fest, and to remove that would be to lose an important part of the story.
You lose nothing if you remove the Batmobile chase, except Bruce slaughtering people. Motivation is
not
the issue here. Motivation is just set up. What
matters
is that the scene serves a practical purpose; either something is accomplished moves the plot forward or a statement is made that contributes to the story. The batmobile chase gives us neither. There's nothing to think about in that scene, you're just supposed to turn your brain off and enjoy the pretty explosions. It doesn't matter what the motivation was because in the end it was just an excuse, a hand wave to get something on screen that had no place being there.
Bruce gets the kryptonite later. There's literally no reason these two plot developments couldn't have been conflated into one sequence if a car chase was
really
mandatory.
I don't see any deep themes explored in AOU.
Good on you.
You need to realize that developing a theme does not require hitting the audience over the head with it, and spelling out your exact meaning and conclusions in dialogue. An artistic movie lets the audience interpret the events they see on their own rather than lecture and dictate meanings to them.
You should be explaining this to Zack Snyder. The fact that you see no themes being explored in AoU naturally means that it isn't guilty of doing this at all, unlike BvS which has damn near every dialogue exchange be nothing but plain text sermonizing about what you're supposed to be thinking about. It's problem is that beating the audience over the head with motifs is
all
it's doing, rather than actually exploring anything or drawing any solid conclusions out of those motifs.
An artistic movie lets the audience interpret the events they see on their own rather than lecture and dictate meanings to them. It raises questions, but should never answer them unless it wants to drop from an A movie to a B movie.
A movie can do whatever it wants. Who are you to say that any director/writer/artist has made an inferior product just because they have a clear message to convey with it? You're operating under the assumption that a movie's themes must remain subtext in order to have any legitimacy, which is a fine opinion to have except that you're also operating under the assumption that that opinion is a fact. A movie can lecture all it wants.
So long as it manages to do so in a compelling way it's free to all the A Score's it earns. Who put you in charge of what level of interpretation is necessary for a film to be of a certain quality? Case in point
If you've only ever watched Hollywood blockbuster type films, then you may not know how to appreciate a movie that does things right.
What does "doing things right" even mean? Your standards of storytelling are not paramount. Just because you don't see the merit of being upfront about what you're trying to say with you piece doesn't mean such merit doesn't exist.
And yet again, the ultimate irony is that you yourself exemplify how BvS is far more guilty of what you're talking about than AoU. The fact that you fail to even see themes in AoU shows that that film left more to interpretation than BvS did, and by extension that your interpretation just didn't pick up on anything. That's fine, that's your personal experience, you're free to deny all the themes you want, but the fact is AoU let you think for yourself about what the events of the film are supposed to convey, while BvS has to take as much time as possible to remind you in dialogue that it's about God and Power and yadda yadda.
Which, again, is
fine
. Conveying theme is a large part of why we have dialogue in the first place, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with BvS being upfront about it's message in plain text. The issue is, as I keep saying, that it uses dialogue to raise its ideas, but never explore them.
When Martha tells Clark that he doesn't owe the world a thing, what does Clark think about that? When Lex hits him with his big speech about how he's a fraud, wha -
tjlamb0518 — 9 years ago(August 01, 2016 06:55 AM)
And when knowby/kryptoforming/timelineman/a whole slew of other sock accounts agrees with you, you should just concede the point now.
After all, he is the guy who posted on the X-Men Apocalypse boards last week:
X-Men Movies:
Considered by people as being masterpieces:
Days of Future Past
Deadpool
X2
Considered by people as being brilliant and superior superhero movies:
Apocalypse
X-Men 1
First Class
The Wolverine
Considered by people as being good but disappointing:
The Last Stand
Considered by people as being bad:
Origins
X-MEN wins over any other superhero franchise in terms of reputation.
Bold mine.
Now, he wrote this to disparage the Marvel films, but notice he threw these films under the bus as well. He changes his opinions depending on what board he's on and which audience he wants to suck up to so they'll visit his fanfiction wankery site. -
ranma_st — 9 years ago(August 01, 2016 02:18 PM)
And when knowby/kryptoforming/timelineman/a whole slew of other sock accounts agrees with you, you should just concede the point now.
Exactly OP! as tjlamb explained, you just lost this point by forfeit. Sorry!
FROM:"Save me Batman, please, save me" WB and MOS TO:"Save me Product Placement, save me" WB and BvS