Sunday
I woke up on Sunday feeling in fair condition, not quite poor but not altogether good either. I had a really nice Saturday of epic sun and heroic duration, but I had also fallen asleep cranky from a small disagreement with someone near me. I try really hard to be a let not the sun go down upon your wrath person, so I just wanted a tranquil day. I got started on charliework, but then took my friends up on an offer to see the new Avengers movie.
Ultron
Before I go into my thoughts on Avengers: Age of Ultron: Brought to You by Samsung: a Production of the Marvel Superhero Universe (A:AoU:BtYbS:aPotMSU (Ultron)), there are a couple of things we need to stipulate to:
- There’s nothing stupid about superheroes, but a culture in which only superhero movies can make any money is a stupid culture.
- The whole cinematic scheme of the superhero movie is to bang the audience over the head with what they are supposed to feel about any given moment, because otherwise there would be no way to tell what the fuck is going on at any one time.
- There have been so goddamn many of these movies that I no longer believe that we need to keep making them.
I feel old, because I always saw myself as the secret populist, the not a snob. I hated snobby people that wouldn’t watch Batman Begins or whatever because it was a superhero movie. But now I’m one of them and I don’t care anymore. Anyway, here are my thoughts:
- There was one joke I laughed at. I don’t remember what it was, but there was definitely one joke I laughed at.
- All of the actors are fine, but are terrible because the words they have to say for money are bad. I suspect RDJ and Luke Evens are better than average because they also had bad words but I still liked watching them.
- I was very happy to see Andy Serkis.
- The low tide drydock location was pretty cool. It was as close as the movie had to a real location. Unfortunately, there was never any time to give any sense of place or location, so nothing ever felt exotic or interesting.
- Tony Stark is an interesting Joss Whedon figure. What if the ultimate Gen X dude shows his contempt for institutions and the man by never wearing a suit and always wearing jeans but is also a hyperwealthy arms dealer? The anti-authoritarian stance starts to seem churlish, or at the very least Not Cute. Kind of like the scrappy Hollywood upstart that made his bones by deconstructing and spinning the tropes and banter of banal megamovies trying to use the same bag of tricks while making those movies. I like the guy just fine, but I’d rather have fewer campy jokes and more doing something interesting with the big canvas. Or, for fuck’s sake, even just funnier jokes.
- This wasn’t a movie so much as a giant Jenga tower. Remove a single scene and four things fall down. I would rather have watched it fall down.