CyanidePie Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 They gave away their two best villains in Doom and Magneto, but they also turned two of their best ones into complete jokes: Ultron and The Mandarin. Marvel's need to make everything campy and funny and jokey is also really hurting their ability to create interesting villains. How about taking something seriously for once, Marvel? Look what happens when you take Wilson Fisk seriously, he immediately becomes your 2nd best villain, and he hasn't even been in a movie yet. They should be getting a big boost with Norman Osborne coming into the fold, assuming they don't cast Chevy Chase and have him just walk around being a goofball. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RumHam Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 They gave away their two best villains in Doom and Magneto, but they also turned two of their best ones into complete jokes: Ultron and The Mandarin. Marvel's need to make everything campy and funny and jokey is also really hurting their ability to create interesting villains. How about taking something seriously for once, Marvel? Look what happens when you take Wilson Fisk seriously, he immediately becomes your 2nd best villain, and he hasn't even been in a movie yet. They should be getting a big boost with Norman Osborne coming into the fold, assuming they don't cast Chevy Chase and have him just walk around being a goofball. I feel like a villain being good in the comic has little to do with the same villain being good onscreen. If they wanted they could make some of these lesser bad guys more interesting. You don't need a well known name to make a compelling villain. I would love to see a movie from the villain's perspective. Where the Avengers or whoever show up in the third act or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyanidePie Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Ultron was pretty terrifying in the trailers, and then once you got into the movie it was just like "what the utter fuck are we doing here?" The idea of A.I. becoming self aware is horrifying and you've just got him quipping around the movie as Red from the Blacklist? We're just gonna let him be actual James Spader? Alright. And The Mandarin, wow was that some brutal stuff at the beginning of the movie. Legitimately scary shit and Ben Kingsley doing some incredible work...and then we got the Fuck You, Nerds twist at the end that was the biggest let down in comic book movie history. Why? The Osama bin Laden stand in was a legitimately fantastic character even if he was nothing like The Mandarin I was fine with that and then they just couldn't fucking help themselves. Ugh, it's so frustrating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RumHam Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Ultron was pretty terrifying in the trailers, and then once you got into the movie it was just like "what the utter fuck are we doing here?" The idea of A.I. becoming self aware is horrifying and you've just got him quipping around the movie as Red from the Blacklist? We're just gonna let him be actual James Spader? Alright. :agree: Ultron had potential in the first scene where he's talking to Jarvis and then just nothing. His hurt feelings about the twins betraying him was pretty much the only interesting part of his character, and it was barely touched on. I do wonder how much of that is a result of Marvels "eh, we'll get it in editing" philosophy. I know Whedon has said there won't be a director's cut, but I hope he changes his mind at some point. I get that long movies turn off a lot of people, but there are a lot of us who wouldn't mind or would pay for extended edition blu-rays. Lord of the Rings should have proved that. More importantly if you know ahead of time you're not going to be allowed to release a three hour movie, then you shouldn't write and film a three hour script and later cut scenes to make the limit. And The Mandarin, wow was that some brutal stuff at the beginning of the movie. Legitimately scary shit and Ben Kingsley doing some incredible work...and then we got the Fuck You, Nerds twist at the end that was the biggest let down in comic book movie history. Why? The Osama bin Laden stand in was a legitimately fantastic character even if he was nothing like The Mandarin I was fine with that and then they just couldn't fucking help themselves. The Mandarin I don't mind. There's apparently a real one out there, after all. I thought the twist was interesting. As you said he was a Bin Laden stand in, and Iron Man versus Bin Laden would not be a very interesting fight. Look at it this way, had Kingsley been the legit Mandarin in Iron Man 3, He almost certainly would not have been the comic book Mandarin with his magic rings. I'm thinking after Guardians, Ant-Man and Dr. Strange he weirdness of the Ten Rings won't seem at all out of place in the MCU. It wasn't really ready for the real Mandarin back then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyanidePie Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 I didn't need to see a fight between The Mandarin and Iron Man for The Mandarin to be a good villain. Him being a shadowy terrorist leader of an organization called The Ten Rings was perfectly fine with me. I don't need him to be a good fighter or to stand toe-to-toe with Stark in some climactic battle. A movie where The Ten Rings are carrying out terrorist hits and attacks across the globe and Iron Man and War Machine have to find out where The Mandarin is to stop it is an infinitely more interesting movie than the one we got. A big action set piece at the end with the two of them storming a Ten Rings compound and finally catching The Mandarin (or even better, wrecking the Ten Rings organization and foiling the "big attack" only to find that he has gone dark and disappeared) would have been much cooler than the clusterfuck of nonsense that was the end of that movie. Scrap the entire A.I.M plot and make The Mandarin real and it's maybe a top 5 Marvel movie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RumHam Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 To be clear I didn't mean a physical fight between Iron Man and Bin Laden/Mandarin. I mean't pretty much what you describe. A "war on terror" where Iron Man replaces / augments the US government. It's hard to say what would have been a cooler movie. There's no guarantee a version of IM3 based on your ideal plot would have been good. Your's sorta sounds like the movie we got, just without the twist. I'm not saying they couldn't have made a straight hero vs. Osama plot interesting, but on paper it doesn't sound that compelling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyanidePie Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 It's a complete cliche story, but I always like that so much better than the "trying too hard to not be cliche" story. I would have definitely had The Mandarin get away at the end though. Or if you do have IM and WM catch him, then have an awesome jailbreak scene at the end of the movie where a team of HYDRA mercenaries breaks him out of jail, or retrieves him mid-transport revealing that he was working with them the whole time. Cliche city and I'm perfectly fine with it. Instead there's fire-breathing humans and whatever the fuck Guy Pierce is and a superpowered Pepper Potts just kill me now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hayyoth Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 It's a complete cliche story, but I always like that so much better than the "trying too hard to not be cliche" story. I would have definitely had The Mandarin get away at the end though. Or if you do have IM and WM catch him, then have an awesome jailbreak scene at the end of the movie where a team of HYDRA mercenaries breaks him out of jail, or retrieves him mid-transport revealing that he was working with them the whole time. Cliche city and I'm perfectly fine with it. Instead there's fire-breathing humans and whatever the fuck Guy Pierce is and a superpowered Pepper Potts just kill me now. Marvel are making kids movies, it's something that really hit me when I was watching Antman and Rudd was talking to the ants like you would to a pet labrador. Even Loki, by far the best Marvel villain, is a a quarter of an inch shy of being all out camp. So no Marvel are never going to have a Dark Knight Joker style lead bad guy, they'll never ever go that dark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Marvel are making kids movies, it's something that really hit me when I was watching Antman and Rudd was talking to the ants like you would to a pet labrador. Even Loki, by far the best Marvel villain, is a a quarter of an inch shy of being all out camp. So no Marvel are never going to have a Dark Knight Joker style lead bad guy, they'll never ever go that dark. Not in movies, no, but at least Daredevil is going that dark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myrddin Posted August 3, 2015 Share Posted August 3, 2015 Saw it last weekend. My boys loved it, my wife even thought it was funny (who had no anticipation of liking it), for me it was just ok. I enjoyed it, thought there were funny parts (especially Peña), but I think most of my enjoyment came from its ties to the MCU, rather than to the individual movie. Dunno. I had lowered expectations going in and they were met. The first thing my 7 year old said as the credits rolled was "I wanna be Ant Man for Halloween." So, the movie definitely hit its core audience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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