Black Widow

[RDU Neil]

On ‎1‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 4:51 PM, Matt the Bruins said:

Sign me up as cheering for the controlling corporate masters, because after the fact the majority of the stuff Whedon said he fought to keep or wanted more of in Age of Ultron would have been better left on the cutting room floor IMHO. The man writes friendship and camaraderie well but over the past decade and a half he's almost always faceplanted when trying to deal with romance.

 

I'm interested in what you know on this, because from my POV, AoU suffered because of everything that was forced to be in it by the studio. It seemed to be height of studio interference (aside from GoTG2, which was abysmally stupid). I'd read that they tried to axe the farmhouse scenes, which I thought were the best part of the movie, forcing in the infinity stone stuff with Thor, etc.

 

Granted, Whedon has never demonstrated any belief in a working romantic relationship, even to juxtapose it against other drama, but what else was he supposedly going to do that you didn't like?

[Cassandra]

5 minutes ago, Bazza said:

What A Black Widow Movie Should Explore, According To Scarlett Johansson

https://amp.cinemablend.com/news/2388262/what-a-black-widow-movie-should-explore-according-to-scarlett-johansson

 

Or at least should have Ginger Rogers, and The Brain that Wouldn't Die.

[RDU Neil]

Personally, if they don't get Kathryn Bigelow to help script and then direct the movie, they are totally missing out.

 

Zero Dark Thirty, Hurt Locker and going back to Point Break and Near Dark... some of my favorite movies. I'd love to see her technical precision and emotional weight to a Marvel film, and just think of what she could do with Black Widow.

 

If they can go gonzo, psychedelic comedy with Thor... they can go dark, brutal and traumatic with Black Widow.

A pipe dream I know, but I can only hope. (Can you imagine Jessica Chastain as a nemesis? Holy crap that would be most excellent.)

[zslane]

I'm a Bigelow fan as well. I liked Near Dark and loved Strange Days. I'd like to see what she could do with a Black Widow movie. But it all comes down to the script.

[Matt the Bruins]

We know she can wring an excellent performance out of Renner, which would be a plus.

 

1 hour ago, RDU Neil said:

 

I'm interested in what you know on this, because from my POV, AoU suffered because of everything that was forced to be in it by the studio. It seemed to be height of studio interference (aside from GoTG2, which was abysmally stupid). I'd read that they tried to axe the farmhouse scenes, which I thought were the best part of the movie, forcing in the infinity stone stuff with Thor, etc.

 

Granted, Whedon has never demonstrated any belief in a working romantic relationship, even to juxtapose it against other drama, but what else was he supposedly going to do that you didn't like?

 

The whole farmhouse Hawkeye-is-a-surprise-family-man setup complete with super-understanding, supportive 1950s housewife and postcard children, the extremely poorly executed Black Widow/Banner romance, and his (thankfully cut) depiction of Pietro as "an incredible pussy hound"  were the main things he pushed and/or fought for that I loathed. Well, I also despised Ultron snarking and cracking full-on jokes but in a Whedon movie there was never any chance of the main villain not doing that.

 

I'll give him that the Scarlet Witch-induced hallucinations were very effective, so there was one thing he fought to keep that I actually think improved the movie.

[zslane]

53 minutes ago, Matt the Bruins said:

Well, I also despised Ultron snarking and cracking full-on jokes but in a Whedon movie there was never any chance of the main villain not doing that.

 

I sense a non-Buffy fan in our midst.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Buffy was  okay... but Whedon seems to think one size fits all.  Like he only has one story to tell and just mixes up the name and appearances of the characters.  I agree with Matt's analysis and criticisms.

 

Well those, and how was Scarlet Witch, new to her powers and so unable to control them that she idiotically flings an explosion at the only building in the area with people in it able to magically teleport around unseen and use her powers on everyone perfectly?  Even if Quicksilver was running her around she'd be disoriented, still unable to control her brand new powers, and unlike the X-Men version, Quicksilver wasn't that fast.

 

Avengers 2 wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good enough to make me forget its many flaws and plot holes.

[zslane]

Well then, it's a darned good thing Joss Whedon will probably never make another superhero movie, eh?

[wcw43921]

That's a heck of a note, ain't it?  I remember after the first Avengers movie people were saying, "Joss Whedon should make ALL the superhero movies!"

 

How quickly people's minds change.

[Christopher R Taylor]

There were some minor concerns, but yeah Avengers hit almost every note just right and it was very fun in the process.  Then he made Age of Ultron and got most of the notes wrong, or at least flat.

[Bazza]

They weren't A# and it B flat? 

[zslane]

(OT: The Avengers main theme is in B-flat, yes, but Age of Ultron's main theme ("Heroes") appears to be in D.)

[Lord Liaden]

I honestly don't understand the frequent pronounced negativism I hear over Age of Ultron. I enjoyed it a lot. Not as much as the first Avengers, and there are certainly some choices I would have made differently if it had been up to me. And I have no problem with people disliking the whole package. But I saw nothing egregious, and much that I thought was effectively executed.

[Bazza]

Ditto, LL. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'd watch it again, it wasn't awful, it just was... not that great, certainly not up to the first Avengers level.  It just kind of meandered, and none of the characters were very sharp, the bad guy wasn't very interesting except in his first scene, and the big crisis was kind of confusing and didn't' seem very ominous.  I could just hear the bad guys anonymous meeting about that plot.

 

"So your big plan was to... float a city nobody has heard of in some obscure country?"

"yeah but it would blow up the world, somehow"
"but why a city floating?  And why there, again?"

 

And the whole "Avengers mope around in the farm for half an hour (at least it felt like that long) until Nick Fury makes a speech" bit just didn't work at all.  And the pointless Quicksilver death.  It just was like someone had a pile of ideas written on notes and Joss Whedon had to make them all fit in a movie.  It wasn't very coherent, smooth, or even compelling.  Forgettable isn't really a description you want for a blockbuster action superhero film.

 

And Black Widow's entire job in the film was to... be a prisoner.  I figured she'd pull something cool off, learn something, trick Ultron, get something.  No, she just kinda hung out.  To bring it back to the topic.

[Teflon Billy]

4 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I honestly don't understand the frequent pronounced negativism I hear over Age of Ultron. I enjoyed it a lot. Not as much as the first Avengers, and there are certainly some choices I would have made differently if it had been up to me. And I have no problem with people disliking the whole package. But I saw nothing egregious, and much that I thought was effectively executed.

My main issues with it were that Ultron was horribly miscast (James Spader?), there was never any menace from him, he was entirely too human in mannerism and motivation (Ultron needs to be more inhuman in his frame of reference, Agent Smith from the Matrix would have been better even if still too human in mannerisms). That's why Vision is so much more than Ultron, he has humanity which Ultron lacks.

Whedon completely ruined Black Widow as a character coming off of her exceptional role in Winter Soldier, she was a clinging, overly emotional basket case for Bruce Banner, which had zero plot foreshadowing in any of the other movies, and when coupled with how Whedon showed their interactions in Avengers 1 it comes off as fairly creepy IMO. Banner nearly killed her in Avengers 1 (it was a great scene, don't get me wrong, it demonstrated in no uncertain terms that the normals should not be near the gods when they play.) So you have this whole underlying abusive aspect, then Whedon throws in the totally unnecessary and frankly gratuitous sterilization of the Black Widow's character (as if having her murder other Red Room trainees wasn't dehumanizing enough of an upbringing to show what Romanov has had to rise above) Whedon takes it just that one step too far.

Then the whole plot was just another example of the relatively new Hollywood convention of being nothing more than barely connected whitty dialogue spliced between disjointed overly long actions scenes (the Hydra Base assault, Hulk trashing the African City, the Chase through the American City for the Ultron Growth Pod, and the final Destruction of Sokovia). None of this made a whole lot of narrative sense, and could have been done much much better if someone with actually writing talent had written it. The Last Jedi was an even worse example of this kind of movie, but this core failing is riven throughout AoU.

[Starlord]

12 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I honestly don't understand the frequent pronounced negativism I hear over Age of Ultron. I enjoyed it a lot. Not as much as the first Avengers, and there are certainly some choices I would have made differently if it had been up to me. And I have no problem with people disliking the whole package. But I saw nothing egregious, and much that I thought was effectively executed.

 

While I wouldn't call it bad, it was profoundly...uninteresting.  While8 it is not the worst MCU movie, it is the one MCU film I have not rewatched.  The best scene in the movie was the after-party bonding trying to lift Thor's hammer and Ultron's initial appearance.  Ultron should be a cackling,-bat-bleep-crazy-Jokeresque-unstoppable-robot-on-crack, instead he just put me to sleep.

[zslane]

Unfortunately, Ultron had less than an hour to develop as a character. Like the majority of MCU villains he was killed off, likely to never be seen again, and so any chance he might have had to evolve into something more fleshed out and interesting is simply gone. I think that's why the Netflix series tend to have better villains; they have more time to develop them into something compelling (Fisk, Kilgrave, Punisher). Even Loki, a character who was fun and interesting from the start, has benefited from the luxury of never being killed off and being worked into the plotlines of multiple movies. I think something similar can also be said for Yondu, who had a second movie in which to become way deeper as a character (before being killed off).

 

My advice to Marvel is to make sure their villains have compelling, comprehensible motivations for their actions, represent an opposing ideology from the hero(es), force the hero(es) to change as character(s), and aren't killed off at the end. By securing those goals first and foremost, I think any script they come up with has a much better chance of yielding a movie that audiences will remember and talk about for years to come.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Like the majority of MCU villains he was killed off, likely to never be seen again

 

Maybe.  It was off camera, who knows what happened to Ultron?  He may have used a final trick and taken over Vision, waiting for his opportunity -- Infinity War?  Who knows.  It was off in the distance in a big flash of light for a reason, not random dramatic impact.  But I agree, Ultron was never handled correctly and never developed well at all.  He was too weird and yet too human, more like a demented person rather than an artificial intelligence gone mad.

[zslane]

12 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Maybe.  It was off camera, who knows what happened to Ultron?  He may have used a final trick and taken over Vision, waiting for his opportunity -- Infinity War?  Who knows. 

 

The Law of Conservation of Villains pretty much insures that you won't have both Ultron and Thanos as villains in Infinity War. I think it is safe to say Ultron is gone for good. Even long term, I just can't see Feige bothering to use Ultron again. After all, once Thanos is dealt with and the Fox acquisition is completed, Marvel Studios will be too busy figuring out how to make Galactus their next big universe-threatening villain.

[Christopher R Taylor]

It seems likely, but a callback to what you thought was once a dead villain is a classic comic book and Vision has gone nuts several times in the past (almost taking over the world, once).

[zslane]

Oh I agree. I just don't see Feige and crew using Ultron again. Though the Vision-goes-crazy bit could get cribbed for a future Avengers movie, you never know. But even if it did, I doubt it would involve Ultron per se; maybe the briefest of callbacks to remind viewers how Vision came to be, but I seriously doubt Ultron will ever be the villain of an MCU movie again.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

I didn't like Age of Ultron mainly due to the poor portrayal of the main villain. While Ultron does have human emotions(mostly negative ones), his humor wouldn't be of the quipy type. They also had a major fail in his general personality. Ultron is a classic megalomaniac...so utterly convinced of his superiority that he literally invites attacks during his many encounters with The Avengers in the comics. When Ulton ran from the heroes in the movie...it completely derailed the entire thing for me...forever leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I know part of this characterization was because he wasn't made of Adamantium, but they could have kept his basic personality at least. This issue alone made Age of Ultron a major miss for me.

[Hyper-Man]

Adamantlum wouldn't have helped much since the FOXverse allowed it to pierce itself when in bullet form. 

[Lord Liaden]

I'm not going to try to dissuade people from feeling what they feel about AoU. I don't share all of those perceptions, but everyone reacts to things in their own way.

 

However, many people seem to view Ultron in that movie negatively because his behavior and motivations don't match what they saw of him in other media, or what they would have preferred from him in the movie. In the comics, Ultron views himself as Henry Pym's son, for whom he holds Oedipal resentment and jealousy. For me, it made a great deal of difference that in AoU, he is effectively Tony Stark's son. You can see in Ultron's behavior, particularly when talking about or interacting with Stark, that for all his professed hatred for Tony and what he stands for, they're very much cut from the same cloth. Ultron has Tony's brilliance, his sarcastic wit, his egotistical certainty of his own rightness, his need to control everything, and his savior complex. Even what he aspires to do is just Tony's programming for him to save the world, taken to its ultimate, horrifying, logical conclusion. But he lacks the experience of humanity that Stark does -- Ultron is all metal, unlike Iron Man who only wears it.

 

I'll just add one more note about Black Widow in AoU. Personally, I found the revelations about the horrors she'd been put through in her past to be compelling. But as for her attempt at relationship with Bruce Banner, she begins to lay her motivation out while talking with him at the bar during the party scene: Banner is not like any man she's ever known before. Then at the Bartons' farm, she reveals that she feels like a monster, just as he does. I bought that these factors were enough to spark attraction between them. The trauma they both went through as a result of Wanda's mind games just concentrated and accelerated those feelings, as stressful situations are wont to do.