Avengers 2: The SPOILER thread (warning: spoilers NOT in tags)

[RumHam]

Logically both will appear unless The Inhumans are hiding on Attilan the whole time which would make little sense - if they don't emerge with the fate of the universe at stake, what else would bring them into the light? And yet the film is going to be very crowded if each of those has a major role.

Now that the Inhumans movie is coming out after Infinity War Part II I don't expect them to appear. Wouldn't it take too long to give them introductions in an already crowded pair of movies?

[The BlackBear]

I'm still not entirely sure how Fury got himself another gunship. Wasn't he, like, homeless at the end of Winter Soldier?

It was the one from Avengers. Fury still had a number of die hard loyal ex-Shield agents in his corner.

[protar]

Now that the Inhumans movie is coming out after Infinity War Part II I don't expect them to appear. Wouldn't it take too long to give them introductions in an already crowded pair of movies?

That's what I thought but it creates a pretty large plothole: What are the Inhumans doing during IW? It's logical that they could have been hiding on Attilan during the events of other MCU films, which don't effect them or are resolved too quickly for them to be involved. But it isn't logical for them to sit out during an event which could result in the destruction of the universe or whatever. The Inhumans aren't new heroes, they already exist, living on Attilan for hundreds of years.

[Jon AS]

That's what I thought but it creates a pretty large plothole: What are the Inhumans doing during IW?

Well, the comic version gives a convenient excuse for anybody not to show up, since

minor spoilers for the Infinity War comic

Thanos kills 50% of the population of the entire universe to kick things off.

The Inhumans aren't new heroes, they already exist, living on Attilan for hundreds of years.

Is that what they are in the MCU, though?

[Maltaran]

Is that what they are in the MCU, though?

Answering this question seems to be where Agents of Shield is going at the moment.

[The BlackBear]

Is that what they are in the MCU, though?

In the show they're the result of Kree interference, and Terrigenisis. Attilan as it is in the comic has not shown up, and likely does not exist. They have places around the world, the one we've seen is in China somewhere mountainous one would assume it is the Himalayas.

[Tastes like Frey]

I preferred it over the first by quite a bit, although I'm not a huge fan of the first one.

[john]

Issues -

Stark's vision. He's afraid he'll kill the other Avengers by "not doing enough." That doesn't make much sense.

The Hulk can not only nobly sacrifice himself for the greater good but can also fly a plane while doing so. If he's that much in control how is he a threat to civilians exactly?

So, only two little things bothered me. That's pretty good.

[The BlackBear]

The Hulk can not only nobly sacrifice himself for the greater good but can also fly a plane while doing so. If he's that much in control how is he a threat to civilians exactly?

The plane was on autopilot, all the Hulk did was turn off the comms. The Hulks state depends a lot upon Banners when he Hulks out, When he's on a rampage he's not thinking just smashing, all the folk shooting at him didn't help. Natasha being there helped him keep a deal of 'Bruce' at the fore.

[protar]

In the show they're the result of Kree interference, and Terrigenisis. Attilan as it is in the comic has not shown up, and likely does not exist. They have places around the world, the one we've seen is in China somewhere mountainous one would assume it is the Himalayas.

Attilan was initially in the Himalayas though. Getting rid of Attilan and the royal family removes everything unique about the Inhumans.

[The BlackBear]

Attilan was initially in the Himalayas though. Getting rid of Attilan and the royal family removes everything unique about the Inhumans.

Hence why I mentioned it. I don't think we disagree...

[RumHam]

That's what I thought but it creates a pretty large plothole: What are the Inhumans doing during IW? It's logical that they could have been hiding on Attilan during the events of other MCU films, which don't effect them or are resolved too quickly for them to be involved. But it isn't logical for them to sit out during an event which could result in the destruction of the universe or whatever. The Inhumans aren't new heroes, they already exist, living on Attilan for hundreds of years.

My guess is they'll just find a way to write around that. Like "they were hibernating for hundreds of years" or something. Maybe something that occurs in the second Infinity War film wakes them up and we get a post credits teaser that they have awoken.

Well, the comic version gives a convenient excuse for anybody not to show up, since

minor spoilers for the Infinity War comic

Thanos kills 50% of the population of the entire universe to kick things off.

I wonder if they'll actually have some of the heroes wiped out like that. People have been speculating that the original Avengers will sit out part one and return for part two. I wonder if that'll be because Thanos preemptively wiped them out.

As long as we're talking about the MCU in general, should we start taking bets on who gets their arm chopped off in Ant-Man? Feige recently pointed out that someone loses an arm in every phase two movie.

[Jon AS]

In the show they're the result of Kree interference, and Terrigenisis. Attilan as it is in the comic has not shown up, and likely does not exist. They have places around the world, the one we've seen is in China somewhere mountainous one would assume it is the Himalayas.

The first part is no different from the comics, but right now there's no indication that Attilan or the royal family exist within the MCU. The introduction has been extremely vague, but I can't tell it's because the answer to every mystery, big or small, has to be delayed until nobody cares any more on the show or because they aren't allowed to give out more information (which would kinda defeat the purpose of "introducing" the Inhumans on the show).

Stark's vision. He's afraid he'll kill the other Avengers by "not doing enough." That doesn't make much sense.

Not just the Avengers, he's afraid that humanity as a whole will be extinguished because he didn't find the means to adequately protect the planet. He may have gotten over his anxiety attacks, but he's still suffering the after effects of the Battle of New York.

I wonder if they'll actually have some of the heroes wiped out like that. People have been speculating that the original Avengers will sit out part one and return for part two. I wonder if that'll be because Thanos preemptively wiped them out.

In the comics it wasn't even preemptive, he just randonmly killed half the universe. It left plenty of powerful heroes alive to fight him, but of course you can't fight someone who is effectively omnipotent, so most of the story is spent waiting for Thanos to inevitably trip himself up. I hope the movie makes the story a bit more interesting and dynamic.

[john]

Not just the Avengers, he's afraid that humanity as a whole will be extinguished because he didn't find the means to adequately protect the planet. He may have gotten over his anxiety attacks, but he's still suffering the after effects of the Battle of New York.

I can buy his PTSD as a motivation for the building of the Ultron programme but not the SW vision as the final straw that lead to him letting loose an alien AI in his network. The vision was nothing, it just seemed the movie was stretching to provide a cinematic motivation for all the events that followed.

[denstorebog]

Killing off Quicksilver was the right thing to do. He was suffering from the same problem as QS in X-Men, namely that he would have been able to deal with most of the Avengers' problems single-handedly, and with no apparent restrictions. He was dispatched a couple of times in the film, but one of those times, it was kinda suicidal because he went for Thor's hammer, and every time he went down, he decided to stay down even though he was clearly conscious and not really harmed. That was a dead giveaway that the plot required him to stay out of commission once in a while. Would have been uncontrollable in the larger scheme of things, so probably best that he's out.

[williamjm]

I saw the film earlier today. I thought it was good, although not the best of the MCU films, I'd probably say the first Avengers film and The Winter Soldier were better. It did feel a bit formulaic at times, and although I think Whedon did a good job it's maybe not a bad idea that they're changing the director for the next Avengers films (and it'll be interesting to see what Whedon comes up with next outside of the MCU).

A common problem with the Marvel films has been underwhelming villains and anticlimactic endings. I think this had one of the better villains in Ultron, perhaps largely due to some great vocal work by Raymond Reddington James Spader. I think Loki is still the best of the villains and still the only one who really has any interesting character development but Ultron is better than most of the rest. Speaking of underwhelming villains, no matter how many cameos Thanos makes I'm still failing to find him even remotely interesting. I think the biggest problem in terms of villains was that Ultron's drone army at the end seemed even less deadly that the Chitauri in the previous Avengers film. The robot cannon fodder was a problem with the ending but I did think having the final confrontation being done on a city being levitated into the stratosphere did help make it distinctive and make it feel like the stakes were higher than they might otherwise have been.

With all the different characters being involved it did sometimes feel like they were struggling to find enough for some of them to do, but I don't think it went too badly. Whedon's script gives most of the characters some good lines but only some of them get character development. I liked the potential romance between Romanov and Banner. It's good that Hawkeye got a bit more to do this time, I did like Whedon deliberately subverting expectations by not killing him off after doing set-up showing him thinking of spending more time with his family that in most blockbusters would mean he was doomed. I also liked him questioning what he was doing fighting off a robot army with a bow. I wasn't initially that keen on the Twins but I think they became more interesting as they started to have doubts and then switched sides. This film's Quicksilver didn't get anything as memorable as his counterpart in Days of Future Past but he still got some of the more fun action scenes and at least he has a superpower that means he does something other than shooting things or hitting things really hard. I think killing him off did help the movie have a bit of a cost after Avengers 1 had only pretended to kill anyone (hopefully they won't bring him back like Coulsen). Unsurprisingly with a Whedon script there was plenty of humour, occasionally it was a bit forced but mostly it worked well. I did like some of the little character moments like Thor's apprehensive expression when Captain America tried to pick up Mjolnir, which was also a good set-up for Vision proving his trustworthiness by succeeding in picking up the hammer.

I have mixed feeling about the action scenes. They were fine, but I rewatched The Winter Soldier yesterday and I'd say that in comparison the fight scenes in Age of Ultron felt more cartoonish, perhaps partly because they're usually fighting faceless Ultron drones rather than Hydra. I think it's also a problem that many of the characters are so over-powered that a lot of their opponents don't really seem like a credible threat.

[Jon AS]

I can buy his PTSD as a motivation for the building of the Ultron programme but not the SW vision as the final straw that lead to him letting loose an alien AI in his network. The vision was nothing, it just seemed the movie was stretching to provide a cinematic motivation for all the events that followed.

To each their own, I thought the visual of the Chitauri attacking Earth with the Avengers all dead worked well to get the point across quickly, and we later see that Wanda does more than just show people images.

Although this probably also touches on the problem that Wanda's powers are ill-defined.

[red snow]

I have mixed feeling about the action scenes. They were fine, but I rewatched The Winter Soldier yesterday and I'd say that in comparison the fight scenes in Age of Ultron felt more cartoonish, perhaps partly because they're usually fighting faceless Ultron drones rather than Hydra. I think it's also a problem that many of the characters are so over-powered that a lot of their opponents don't really seem like a credible threat.

It also helped that Cap was fighting actual humans in Winter Soldier. 90% of them were nameless stand-ins but they were at least distinct whereas CGI stormtroopers (from the opening) and the Ironbots are all identical. There's zero investment in them and I think it's just lazy to go this route (which is clearly MArvel's favourite). I really hope that Civil War isn't using the iron bots to collect up renegades. At least that set up will hopefully provide characters fighting characters rather than characters fighting cardboard cut-outs.

Maybe they need a few generic supergoons to fight at the end but MArvel's probably saving money using the CGI.

Oh, another weird thing. The end of film credits seemed to be done by the folk who do the Blacksails intro.

[protar]

Killing off Quicksilver was the right thing to do. He was suffering from the same problem as QS in X-Men, namely that he would have been able to deal with most of the Avengers' problems single-handedly, and with no apparent restrictions. He was dispatched a couple of times in the film, but one of those times, it was kinda suicidal because he went for Thor's hammer, and every time he went down, he decided to stay down even though he was clearly conscious and not really harmed. That was a dead giveaway that the plot required him to stay out of commission once in a while. Would have been uncontrollable in the larger scheme of things, so probably best that he's out.

I sort of refuse to believe that it's impossible to make a speedster work in fillm. I mean isn't there a whole TV show about it? Quicksilver in AoU is slower than in DoFP and while he's fast he's not physically durable (except to friction). Against a really powerful foe like Thanos he could probably dodge Thanos' hits, but what can he really do offensively against that sort of threat? Plus there's plenty of ways they could think of to abuse Quicksilver's momentum and use it against him.

[red snow]

I also don't think QS was too powerful here - I mean he was shot so he isn't that fast. He could punch Hulk to little effect I imagine,