Age of Ultron Age of Ultron SPOILER thread, DO NOT enter if you don't want to be spoiled!!! - Part 4

[gildedmuse]

I don't get that complaint.

The the only character flat out died was Coulson.
Loki never died, it was a trick, same with Fury. I don't THINK Bucky died, I'm not sure.

Plus that's part of the damn winter soldier arc, he has to die in the mind of steve.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of people exaggerate the idea that death means nothing in the MCU. There is exactly one case of someone dying and being resurrected and that was given a lot of explanation and huge consequences. It was hardly just a snap of the fingers and suddenly everything was reset. Coulson's character and storyline are still being effected. The whole current arc on AoS would have never happened if Fury hadn't used questionable scientific experiments to resurrect a non-consenting Coulson.

Every other "death" is a fake out, most of which have the reveal taking place in the same movie. To me, that has a very different feel than what they did with Coulson. Maybe it's because I watch every film as a very in the moment kind of way and being self-contained even when it's a direct sequel. So when Fury gets killed in TWS I'm not thinking "hey, haven't they already done the fake out death with Loki?" I'm just thinking of it's effects on the current landscape and in that context having people like Fury and Loki fake their deaths makes perfect sense. Having Pepper, Groot, and Bucky survive their accidents works because their ability to regenerate has been established earlier in the film (although Bucky's case is slightly different since his takes place across two movies and also the hints that he'd been injected with a serum similar to Steve's were a bit more subtle).

I guess I'm just more concerned with the "death" working for the character within the narrative than worrying about if it's establishing some pattern outside the movie for the universe in general. Every film is going to have it's tropes and cliches that it relies on. They are not automatically a bad thing, it's all about making sure it works in context.

Having just said that, Pietro's death very much reminded me of Wash's in Serenity. It served the same function, which is basically to show that even towards the end of the movie when you want to believe everyone is safe the bad guys can still come in and destroy everything. I think this is the one time I've really been effected by the whole idea that the main characters aren't going to die because we already know they have sequels lined up. Usually that has zero impact on my viewing because like I said, I tend to watch movies from a very in the moment perspective but after Pietro's death there was actually a sense that everyone else would survive because of him. With Wash- oh man, that just lead me to fear for literally every single other character. Maybe it's because after that I understood just how much of a last run this was for the series, but I seriously thought they were all doomed.

 

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