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Welcome to the main discussion thread for the Marvel Cinematic Universe! This pinned post is here to establish some basic guidelines. All of the Media Forum rules still apply.

  • This thread is for talking about the live-action films, TV shows, animated works, and related content that use the Marvel brand, currently owned by Disney.
  • While mild digressions are okay, discussion of the comic books should go in this thread. Extended digressions may be thumped as off-topic.
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If you're posting tagged spoilers, make sure that the film or series is clearly identified outside the spoiler tagging. People need to know what will be spoiled before they choose to read the post.

    Original post 
Since Thor and now Captain America came out this year, I wanted to get what Tropers thought of the concept and execution of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. Personally I love the idea and wonder why this idea hasn't been seriously tried before. It sorta seems to me like the DCAU in movie form (And well, ummm, with Marvel), and really 'gets' the comic book feel of a shared universe while not being completely alienating.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM

comicwriter Since: Sep, 2011
#68476: Apr 10th 2017 at 7:47:56 PM

[up][up]Someone cited Ultron as a broader problem in superhero movies now where the villain's plot makes no fucking sense and seems to change depending on what the plot requires at the moment. I remember Whedon trying to justify that by saying Ultron is insane so of course his plan was stupid and made no sense to anyone but him, but that seems like a copout for lazy writing.

KarkatTheDalek Not as angry as the name would suggest. from Somwhere in Time/Space Since: Mar, 2012 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
#68477: Apr 10th 2017 at 7:55:37 PM

What doesn't make sense about his plan, again?

Oh God! Natural light!
AdricDePsycho Rock on, Gold Dust Woman from Never Going Back Again Since: Oct, 2014 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Rock on, Gold Dust Woman
#68478: Apr 10th 2017 at 7:59:31 PM

I mean, I can kind of see it with Ultron. I always thought they could've fleshed him out by making it clearer how he's ultimately a newborn child lashing out at the outside world but doesn't really think too far ahead. When you get down to it he's just a robotic teenage punk who read a couple pages of Nietzsche and is in his nihilism phase. They could've made that idea so frighting by playing out as much horror as they could draw from it. Unfortunately that part of his character is inconsistent like everything in the movie.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Nightwire Since: Feb, 2010
#68479: Apr 10th 2017 at 8:04:50 PM

I liked Ultron's character too, because he's welcomed break from the whole "evil emotionless AI" cliche, but I agree that the character could have been executed better.

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#68480: Apr 10th 2017 at 8:07:37 PM

It was more important to Whedon that Age of Ultron be shorter than Avengers

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Unsung it's a living from a tenement of clay Since: Jun, 2016
it's a living
#68481: Apr 10th 2017 at 8:11:33 PM

Why was that important again?

comicwriter Since: Sep, 2011
#68482: Apr 10th 2017 at 8:15:43 PM

His stated goal was to make it smaller and more intimate than the first one so that's probably related. He also had the benefit of not having to spend the first hour of the movie getting the team together, which ideally would've meant it wouldn't need to be as long.

AdricDePsycho Rock on, Gold Dust Woman from Never Going Back Again Since: Oct, 2014 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Rock on, Gold Dust Woman
#68483: Apr 10th 2017 at 8:23:12 PM

Fat lot of good that did, the movie felt half an hour too long and the plot structure was all over the place. I'd already talked a while back about how the film had two "darkest hour" moments, one at the barn and one after Natasha is kidnapped. The entire final battle was like a bad attempt at redoing the Battle of New York but making it even bigger and longer.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Unsung it's a living from a tenement of clay Since: Jun, 2016
it's a living
#68484: Apr 10th 2017 at 9:18:48 PM

Smaller and more intimate tends to mean more time spent on dialogue and characters interacting, which I'm not sure is how you make a movie shorter. Cheaper, maybe. But time's already at a premium given you've got like three new villains (four including Strucker) and Vision to introduce, and then you're also adding Hawkeye's family, Amadeus Cho's mom, and a whole fictional country to boot.

It's not that you can't do all those things, if you budget your time well and script judiciously. But I'm not sure 'small and intimate' is how I'd describe the movie they were trying to make.

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#68485: Apr 10th 2017 at 9:31:59 PM

By being written such that doing so wouldn't leave him dominated every time.
Except the Avengers include Thor and the Hulk (whose power is literally "strongest one there is"). So there is no possible way to have him dominate the Avengers if the Avengers are all together — which is why the movie finds ways of separating the Avengers.

Notice in the first Avengers film how Loki never actually fought the entire Avengers team? Sure, he fought Captain America and he stabbed Thor one time, but he never actually went up against the entire team. Hell, when he tries to go up against the Hulk, Loki gets pounded. You could say that this is because Loki isn't a big fighter, more of a schemer...but then again, so is Ultron. Ultron is not a big fighter either.

The fact that, say, his perfect adamantium body went down like a house of cards the moment the Avengers actually started trying to beat it was a writer's decision.
His Vibranium body actually took a lot of punishment — it got hit by a goddamn Infinity Stone before it finally fell to the Scarlet Witch (I believe).

They don't really have him scheme or use his resources either.
I disagree. He uses quite a lot of resources and schemes for quite a bit — hell, his entire plan in the beginning is to download himself into an indestructible body with an Infinity Stone, which would have meant the Avengers were fucked. But they managed to get the Cradle away from him, so he had to switch his plans.

Ultron's plan is highly inconsistent and it's difficult to tell how planned out his last ditch effort really was.
People say it's highly inconsistent because he never explains it and because he changes his plans throughout the film. He's basically playing Xanatos Speed Chess throughout the film, constantly adjusting his plan to account for new circumstances.

He big plan is to drop what amounts to a big bomb, and beat up the heroes long enough that they can't stop it
Which, let's face it, is a pretty good plan, considering that they barely stop him.

he's primarily used as a physical threat in the film, and as such the fact that he is not actually physically threatening to the heroes is a problem.
Except he's never a physical threat in the film until the very end, where he sends hordes of himself into battle. He's always running away because he knows that his plan is done yet.

Someone cited Ultron as a broader problem in superhero movies now where the villain's plot makes no fucking sense and seems to change depending on what the plot requires at the moment.
No, it changes due to what happens, because Ultron changes it due to different circumstances. He no longer has the Twins to back him up, he no longer has the Infinity Stone, et cetera.

I remember Whedon trying to justify that by saying Ultron is insane so of course his plan was stupid and made no sense to anyone but him, but that seems like a copout for lazy writing.
I don't believe Joss ever said that. Joss would never call Ultron "crazy," because to Joss, Ultron is very much human. Here's what Joss said about Ultron:
“Ultron's pain is very, very real to me,” said Whedon. “He can't control the way his pain makes him behave.” Whedon paused, his soft voice grown even softer. “And I can relate to that.”

Sure, there are problems with Age of Ultron. I agree that it's too short — apparently, Joss's original cut was over three hours, but they cut it down to 1 hour and 42 minutes. Honestly, I wish they left it closer to two hours, because the movie really needs more time to breathe. And I wish they cut out that stupid "magic pool" scene and left in the scene where Thor is possessed by one of the Norns, because it was so much cooler, but that's one of the cases of "Test audiences are stupid" because fucking test audiences didn't understand it.

Other than that, though, I still love the movie. It tries to do something different and, for the most part, it works.

edited 10th Apr '17 9:32:50 PM by alliterator

KJMackley Since: Jan, 2001
#68486: Apr 11th 2017 at 12:11:58 AM

The thing about the character conflicts in Avengers was that it was all based around ego. They all knew what the goal was but couldn't agree on the course of action. They were in the same room but it's not like not working as a team was preventing them from stopping the problem. Banner's "time bomb" analogy didn't quite work because it is obvious when the threat comes all their arguments would fall away because it was just petty ego, almost literally in the case of Steve and Tony.

I had a teacher who would call certain artistic choices a "punt," neither fair nor foul. That's how I would describe that approach to character conflict, it works in the moment but eventually draws attention to the fact the story had nowhere to go until the helicarrier is attacked. There is very little they can do but argue. And even the Battle of New York has no real goal but Hold the Line, they know they need to turn off the portal but that happens incidentally rather than a tangible goal they are working towards.

The better approach is to have each character with a different goal in mind, what they expect to get out of the resolution of the plot. That way, when certain parts of the plot IS resolved it coincides with a characters' arc. In Kingdom Come Aquaman has a classic line when Superman comes asking for assistance, "You have hundreds of champions to protect a few land masses. I protect the other 70 percent of the world, and there is only one of me." It's not ego that puts him in conflict with Superman, but responsibility to his people. That is his only real scene in the book, but it shows what I'm talking about. The Justice League movie seems to be taking cues from that idea, where Aquaman doesn't get involved until it has an impact on Atlantis.

PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#68487: Apr 11th 2017 at 1:05:37 AM

Screw all y'all, Age of Ultron is still my favorite movie.

So, Thor: Ragnarok looks great!

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#68488: Apr 11th 2017 at 1:22:33 AM

The Dark Word is for me actually an example of good studio meddling. As is Ant-man. If I piece the story together correctly, Taylor had originally free hand with the movie, but after the Test audience saw it and gave it a terrible score, Marvel went and fixed it by adding more Loki scenes. They couldn't fix the whole movie, but the Loki scenes managed to push it from god-awful to "oh, well, at least there is a great Loki-movie in the middle of it". And if Wright had gotten his way, Janet would now be dead and not lost in another realm.

Galadriel Since: Feb, 2015
#68489: Apr 11th 2017 at 4:01:08 AM

I agree with the idea that a stronger sense of peril would give the movies more impact, and that most of the MCU doesn't really have it. Someone compared it to James Bond, but I never found the Brosnan Bond films engaging for precisely that reason - he feels like he could be sleepwalking through everything, it's so easy for him. The first two Craig movies were more my speed.

The best that most superhero movies seem to be able to do in this regard is to create a villain or a conflict that's a threat to the hero(es) on a moral, psychological,or emotional level (Dark Knight, Winter Soldier, Civil War), but Civil War really weakened itself by having an ending that neutered all the film's impact by turning around and saying "Never mind, everything's going to be OK".

The MCU feels pretty determined to make movies that are nothing more than entertaining fluff.

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#68490: Apr 11th 2017 at 6:08:14 AM

Everything is okay from Steve's perspective. Tony may be a little less okay

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
comicwriter Since: Sep, 2011
#68491: Apr 11th 2017 at 6:09:41 AM

Ah, walls of text about why people who dislike AOU are wrong. We truly are back in 2015.tongue

Anyway, yeah. Hoping Hela doesn't suffer from the same problems as Ultron. So far I'm liking what I'm seeing with her though. That scene with destroying Mjolnir was badass. If I didn't already know it was coming that'd be an "Oh shit" moment in the theater when the trailer first came on.

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#68492: Apr 11th 2017 at 6:13:06 AM

[up][up][up] Totally disagree! Civil War is pretty much the antithesis of a movie which made me think that everything will be okay in the end.

Age of Ultron and Thor: The Dark World both have issues because the villains are pretty ineffectual because their henchmen are the ones who do the actual work. Once the Kursed is dead and the twins team up with the Avengers, there is no sense that those villains are a big threat (though the raising city at least creates a moment in which everything seems lost).

Civil War on the other hand is excellent in slowly raising the stakes, until the airport fight escalates. And the final battle - oh boy, for a second I really thought that Steve would kill Tony at the end.

edited 11th Apr '17 6:13:21 AM by Swanpride

TargetmasterJoe from Velocitron Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: I like big bots and I can not lie
#68494: Apr 11th 2017 at 7:33:06 AM

[up][lol]

Actually, did they establish when Ragnarok takes place? Like does it take place during Civil War or after it or what?

Because [up] would be even funnier if it was happening at the same time as Civil War.

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#68495: Apr 11th 2017 at 9:12:07 AM

Except the Avengers include Thor and the Hulk (whose power is literally "strongest one there is"). So there is no possible way to have him dominate the Avengers if the Avengers are all together — which is why the movie finds ways of separating the Avengers.

Notice in the first Avengers film how Loki never actually fought the entire Avengers team? Sure, he fought Captain America and he stabbed Thor one time, but he never actually went up against the entire team. Hell, when he tries to go up against the Hulk, Loki gets pounded. You could say that this is because Loki isn't a big fighter, more of a schemer...but then again, so is Ultron. Ultron is not a big fighter either.

Of course he can. Making Hulk and Thor literally unbeatable is neither required nor prerequisite (quite the opposite, in fact), and specifically writing the villain such that they can't win against them in a fight is also a writer's decision.

Note that Ultron has fought teams involving Thor and Hulk multiple times over several decades, and has been a physical threat for many of them. Earth's Mightiest Heroes' version has him outright nearly kill Thor and curbstomp Hulk in his first appearance, thus requiring the heroes to use an intelligent solution rather than a physical one.

In the movie, Loki was established as an "intelligent" threat rather than a physical one, which is to say that he was all about plans and using other people's resources - and as such, the primary threat of Avengers isn't necessarily the Chitauri, but in shutting down Loki's device before the Chitauri become impossible to beat. That's why they never truly fight him, because we already know he can't win in a fight - Thor already showed that.

But as I noted before, the series falters on making Ultron an intelligent threat and put a large amount o focus on making him a physical one, and then screws themselves over by neutering him as one despite devoting large portions of the film to hyping up how strong he supposedly is, how powerful his ultimate body is, having him crow about beating down the heroes, and making a point of how powerful his army of himself supposedly is. But there's no sense, as in Avengers, that the Ultrons might have worn the Avengers down with sheer numbers had they not been stopped fast enough. Unspoken Plan Guarantee is averted with taking down the doomsday device - its destruction is a foregone conclusion from early into the fight. Ultron himself is easily dispatched (multiple times, in fact) once they started trying.

As noted earlier, there's no real stakes to the final battle. It's just the heroes knocking the villain down. And while that's sometimes a neat idea (Oceans Thirteen was a good use of it), in a movie attempting to have epic stakes it's a total waste.

edited 11th Apr '17 9:22:30 AM by KnownUnknown

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#68496: Apr 11th 2017 at 9:20:03 AM

Note that Ultron has fought teams involving Thor and Hulk multiple times over several decades, and has been a physical threat for many of them.
With the amount of power that both Thor and the Hulk wield, for Ultron to beat them physically is just a massive example of The Worf Effect. In fact, comics use The Worf Effect in large part to show how strong a villain is, which I'm grateful that AOU didn't. "Oh, this villain is so strong, he can even defeat the Hulk!"

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#68497: Apr 11th 2017 at 9:25:21 AM

That's not a bad thing in the slightest. Thor and Hulk's own movies routinely feature villains that overpower them, specifically because the heroes are supposed to be physical powerhouses and thus greater physical threats are required to maintain tension.

The Avengers series is for antagonists even greater than that, antagonists that require all the heroes to fight together rather than being easily defeated by one of them. And again, if they weren't going to have Ultron be powerful enough to back up the setup they did to his strength, then the movie should not have had that set-up in the first place. Either way, it's a failure of the writing.

edited 11th Apr '17 9:26:43 AM by KnownUnknown

windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#68498: Apr 11th 2017 at 9:27:34 AM

[up][up] Having Thor or the Hulk steam roll any enemy they come across isn't any better either. Why do you think Thor spent half of his first film de powered?

SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#68499: Apr 11th 2017 at 9:30:26 AM

Hell, it looks like that's still going to be a thing going by a first look I watched about Infinity War.

"How is Thanos going to be this ultimate threat that the Avengers can't overcome? Oh, 'cause the team's all busted up."

How about, I dunno, because he's the Mad Titan and way stronger than all of them?

My various fanfics.
Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#68500: Apr 11th 2017 at 9:33:21 AM

The Worf Effect is only a bad thing when it's done badly (as the trope is now, at any rate, when it started off it was explicitly a bad thing but I digress). If Ultron punched out Hulk and Thor with a flick of his wrist, that'd be absurd, if Ultron managed to handle both Hulk and Thor without being smashed to smithereens, that'd be great.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

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