The biggest flaw in AOU for me was, even more so than Ultron quipping, was Whedon just doing whatever the heck he wanted with the characters.
You thought Tony Stark had a life-altering experience and was recommitting to Pepper? Well, Pepper gets written out of the franchise and not only is that change in philosophy never mentioned, his leap into creating robot peacekeepers is a direct contradiction of the lessons he learned in IM3.
You thought Thor chose to leave his place in Asgard to be with the woman he loved? Nope, here Jane barely gets mentioned, they've gone their separate ways, and in the end he returns to Asgard like nothing ever happened.
You thought that TWS would have massive impacts on the Avengers, forcing them to work on their own without SHIELD or Fury as backup? Well, not only are the ramifications of ALL OF SHIELD'S SECRETS BEING RELEASED never addressed, they immediately jump straight to being bankrolled by Stark and, just when things are at their worst, Nick Fury and a bunch of totally-not-SHIELD agents show up in a Helicarrier to save the day. Oh, and the Widow/Captain partnership isn't continued, rather giving her a random romance with Hulk.
And then there's Hawkeye. Who Whedon decided to "make interesting" by warping him into a character completely different from the comics and essentially neutering so much of what makes Clint great, not to mention eternally hindering any future usage of the character.
With all that, the disservice to Ultron and Quicksilver is just unpleasently flavored ice cream on an eternally frustrating cake.
I never noticed how discontinuous these characterizations were before you pointed it out. In that light, I think AOU is one of the best examples of what happens when over-reliance on quipping goes wrong. Instead of relying on character development and drama, Whedon just relied on character chemistry and levity, and that wasn't good enough. Whedon didn't really continue characters in TA, either, he just re-did their solo movie arcs within TA, while giving Hulk the upgrade treatment. I wonder if he tried the same in AoU? If these versions of the MCU characters were how he saw the characters in Phase II, even if that's not actually what ended up in their final films.
I didn't find that comedic, even in the darkest sense. I remember the theater audience gasping because Iron Man was so distraught that he did something that heroes usually don't do: take a cheap shot. It was, in many ways, one of the most real moments in the MCU.
Real and comedic aren't mutually exclusive, and the fact that it was one of the realest moments, and that it was also an abrupt subversive event, which read as comedic for many - but not all - people, is part of the film's weakness.
Exactly. The humour is too overt for us to take the more dramatic moments seriously. If they took TWS as their template, we'd have some seriously great, emotionally powerful movies that took up residence in the memory.
Note that in TA, Coulson's "death" was handled extremely well emotionally. That's what we need more of.
That's not what I'm saying. The humor in GotG was very overt, but it's serious moments were more impactful than all of the "serious" CBMs because of the way it *times* it's comedy, not being less overt. Again, we can go back to Pixar as well. GotG works as a template as well, and honestly, TWS' need to serve the franchises takes some of the drama out of Winter Soldier. GotG had humor, but it didn't rely on humor to cover drama, sadness, or anything other than humor, so it didn't OVER-rely on humor. Even in Avengers, there was comedy IN Coulson's death scene, but it was, for lack of a better word Indy-style. It made his death sadder because it wasn't humor just for the audience, it was for the character.
I've got to agree with all of this, as well. Even beyond the lack of stakes for the heroes themselves, their never felt like any risk for the people they were saving. If they had failed to save the family in the car, that would have been 10x more poignant than killing Quicksilver and also laid some good building blocks for Civil War. Which, now that I mention it, was another big problem. Whedon starts to drive a wedge between Cap and Tony, setting things up perfectly for the next big movie, but then brings them back together by the end, forcing the Russos to start over in CW with driving them apart.
Also agree with this whole line of thought. AoU's stakes were ridiculously empty. Almost as empty as the stakes in a DCEU film.
Can you guys imagine of AoU was just Civil War with an Ultron plot replacing Zemo?
"Are you sure that's what happened? Or did a computer tell you that?"
"I know what I saw, Rogers."
"Did you see it, or did Iron Man?"
"I am Iron Man."
Mask on. Cue big fight with Quicksilver's Death in place of Rhodey's non-death.
What is odd is that TA is a much better *structured* film than TA. It doesn't surprise me that some people liked it better than Avengers since it is, in some ways, AoU is just an upgraded remix of TA. The real weakness of AoU is that we already had a TA, and the trick isn't as engrossing a second time.
he is more like an annoying fly than what he should be, the seemigly unstoppable main threat who is trying to destroy the world.
