can you talk to me about how you felt about Age of Ultron or maybe direct me to a post or two where you do so? thank you
oh man. other than very briefly after the movie came out, I really haven’t talked much about my feelings, have I? which is...largely a product of how I’m still terrified of the tumblr discourse surrounding Age of Ultron and I do not like to publicly disagree with people, particularly when the overwhelming tide of opinion on my dash has...not meshed with my own.
the short version is: I liked it! I actually really liked it. I was very worried about a lot of things because I’d be spoiled for a few major things before the movie came out, but ended up enjoying it a great deal. do I have criticisms? yes, but I feel like I a) need to watch it again before I develop those further and b) I haven’t felt much of a need to talk about them because of the aforementioned overwhelming tide, which made me inclined to cling to aggressive positivitity.
the slightly longer version, bullet-pointed for convenience:
I did not like Bruce/Natasha. I didn’t think it was the worst thing ever but I did think it was fairly poorly written and unconvincing at best.
I thought the movie did really well by Steve and Thor. Their characterization was strong, I thought, and Steve in particular had some really great lines. I appreciated that Thor got his own stuff to do, though I wish the Infinity Stones reveal had been worked in a little more smoothly.
(Seriously though I’ve seen a lot of rage about Steve’s characterization and I don’t really get it? Also a lot of it makes me twitch because it falls into the camp that everything about Steve must be about Bucky or it is not true to his character and sighs loudly.)
I didn’t hate family man Clint? I actually kind of liked family man Clint which was immensely surprising to me, because that was one of the things I was spoiled for and which I was prepared to be upset about. I loved the relationship Natasha had with his family, both with Laura and the kids, that was really important to me. (OT3: safehouse foreverrrr)
I liked Natasha in this movie. There I said it go ahead and come at me me internet but I did not think this movie reduced her to a love interest, I did not think it assassinated her characterizaton or ruined her forever. And there were some genuinely amazing Natasha moments. (Like, I don’t see a whole lot of people talking about her final reaffirmation of her choice to be a hero, again, and this kind of frustrates me because I love that shit, I really do.)
Did not love that Tony ended up not getting a whole lot of called out for his bullshit, and even got kind of vindicated with the whole Vision thing. Like...are we going to deal more with the consequences of Tony’s war profiteering in later movies? Or is that just going to go away?
Loved loved loved Wanda. Wanda was amazing and I know people were worried about her and yeah, I’m still :\ about the whole “whitewashing” thing but...overall was really pleased with Wanda’s character and her arc.
Did not have a whole lot of feelings about Ultron. I know a lot of people who have a lot of feelings about Ultron, but I did not. Maybe this is because I just do not get the whole robot thing? Because I do not really get the whole robot thing.
Cannot believe we had five named women in this movie and it still didn’t pass the Bechdel Test. Like, seriously though.
LOVE THE NEW AVENGERS LINEUP I hope this means we will get lots of Falcon and War Machine and Wanda especially in future movies.
Also Natasha and Steve leading the New Avengers yes please.
I did a little internal twitch every time someone mentioned Loki because lbr I am that person and I cannot deny.
(Speaking of Loki - I’m trying to figure out how I feel about the whole “Loki didn’t know there was a Mind Stone in the scepter” thing because I don’t feel great about it but I also don’t know how to make it work in my head if he did know.)
(Also speaking of Loki - it’s a good thing I knew ahead of time his scene had been cut because otherwise I would’ve been disappointed, but boy howdy am I looking forward to that deleted scene.)
Also just in general I feel like the movie could’ve used more breathing room? Like maybe the Hulkbuster fight could’ve been cut down more, that felt like it went on even for me and I have a relatively high tolerance for movie fight scenes. But then again I am probably not the action movie fight scene demographic so. But anyway yeah I felt like a lot of my problems could’ve been fixed with just a little more time and space - like especially the one about how the Avengers got from their separate paths in Phase 2 and the end of the first movie to teaming up in the beginning of Age of Ultron.
But yeah overall? It wasn’t a revolutionary movie or whatever but I really enjoyed it nonetheless.
unfortunately what sticks out to me more is how much my experience after watching the movie has kind of soured me on MCU fandom in a big way. I ended up unfollowing a fair number of people, added something like fifteen new tags to my blacklist (which was not, previous to this, very long) and generally spent the first week and a half after the US release in a state of misery over feeling like I was Bad and Wrong to have enjoyed a movie, which may have had to do with my general emotional state at the time but I don’t feel was totally a delusional feeling without source. [shrugs]
