Looks Like They Finally Got It

Just saw (or, well, paid attention to) a trailer from the new Avengers movie. Finally, Captain America’s costume doesn’t look so stoopit. They had it right in the first Cap film, I kind of liked the “Dark X-Men Cap” of Winter Soldier, but here it looks like they finally got the traditional Cap uniform to look and fit right, and even the helmet looks less goofy than previous.

It’s the little things that bother me.

Ultron sounds nothing at all like I’ve always imagined and i’m not sure I like “wise cracking Ulron.” The film looks great, I sincerely hope, with all that money and CGI up there on the screen, that they actually remembered to buy a script.

10 Comments

  1. Trev Trev says:

    Why does Wanda look like a school girl? Why is she in an outfit and not a costume? That goes for Quicksilver, too. I’ll give it a pass as I don’t know whether they’re just starting out as a super-heroes but I can’t stand the penchant in comic books as well as films to make super-heroes look ‘realistic’ by having them dress in civilian clothing.

    I thought Ultron would sound a bit more robotic something like Soundwave in the original Transformers cartoon of the 80s.

    I’ll probably give it a pass as there’s nothing in the trailer that makes me interested — even though Ultron is my favourite super-villain of all-time.

    • Priest Priest says:

      Well, I assume Wanda and Pietro are not yet “heroes” and thus have not been measured for their spandex 🙂 Actually, I’m rather the opposite: I thought X-Men First Class was amazing until they put the costumes on, after which it bored me silly. The good news about Marvel films is they’re refining the formula. The bad news is they’re using a formula; it’s the same movie every time: “and then they fight!”

      What was both good and bad about “Flight” w/Denzel Washington, was they put the climax right up front. My instinct would have been to skip the plane crash and go directly to Denzel waking up in the hospital, then dole out the action in flashback sequences across the 2nd and 3rd acts. But Robert Zemeckis broke with convention to great dramatic effect but likely lost the pinheads who only came for the action sequence and who, therefore, missed the entire point of the movie.

      I recently pitched a western series to Marvel which would have had an amnesiac Pietro lost in time (Marvel: no thanks). Had the series been greenlit, he’d likely not have worn a traditional SH costume.

      SH comics were originally created for kids, co-opted by teens as part of Marvel strategy (as per DVD’s comments in here somewhere). But now they are clearly targeting adults, which is both good and bad. I really don’t care if Wolverine ever puts a costume on; I’ve kind of outgrown the costumes. In a sound business strategy, Marvel should abandon me and recruit more 13-year olds, but they don’t seem to be doing that: they’re sticking with me, and thus the product is increasingly less juvenile and, therefore, less appealing to the (much larger potential) audience comics were created for. It kind of amazes me that nobody from Disney has stepped in to refocus that business strategy of riding the same 10 fans to the rest home.

  2. Trev Trev says:

    I’ll try not overload your site with posts of my disdain for Marvel’s business strategy of catering for adults, thus contributing to an ever decreasing fanbase instead of catering to a bigger audience. All I can say is that it seems suicidal but, hey.

    I might check out Guardians of The Galaxy as I hear good things about it and can watch the film without my brain automatically and annoyingly trying to analyze it as I know nothing about the characters.

    • Priest Priest says:

      As I mentioned elsewhere, I presume the general strategy in comics publishing is a result of having stocked upper management with fans as opposed to business people. Imagine if Disney was run not by business people but by rabid Mickey Mouse fans who evolved Mickey as the kids grew into teens and adults. “Legends of The Dark Rodent.” I am not sure it is possible, at this point, to fix this; to go get the 8 and 12 year-olds. I don’t imagine many kids read anything they are not forced to, so the film studio and TV strategy may, in fact, be the wiser idea. The industry has allowed the monthly comic to become a niche item. Disney doesn’t publish comics (that I am aware of), but make a fortune from licensing off of their iconic characters. Their films feed the licensing beast. I presume that’s the new model for super-hero entertainment, with Marvel pioneering and DC drafting off of Marvel’s lead. I do give DC the edge in terms of having made genuinely good films in BB, TDK and a brilliant first 2 acts of MOS before the overlong and over-the-top big fight. By comparison, most Marvel films are empty calorie guilty pleasures lacking the depth or potency of Kevin Costner telling Clark, “Of course you’re my son.”

  3. JD DeMotte says:

    Spader doesn’t sound like the Ultron in my head, but I’m so glad that they got a good actor and actually utilized his voice and not hide it under a wash of synthetic nonsense. Ultron shouldn’t sound like, well, a robot. For one thing my phone can’t speak to me in a voice that mostly sounds like a normal person, and it doesn’t have an artificial intelligence attached to it, and secondly Ultron HATES. He hates us smelly, stupid sacks of meat. He hates his father for being imperfect. He even hates himself for being a product of an imperfect creator. And since he’s a mostly CGI creation, getting an actor who can really deliever that is important. While I never heard Ultron as Spader (I thought of him as more a high pitched shouty type) but I’m so glad they’re avoiding the flat-robotic monotone that some of the animated versions have done.

    • Priest Priest says:

      Ok– I see your point. If they can make Siri sound sort of human, surely Ultron can. And I really liked the robot voices in Interstellar (could have sworn that was Ron Eldard).

  4. side note: I’ve harbored a minor fantasy that the film will include some version of the the John Buscema-drawn sequence from Avengers #53 where an African American boy plays with dead Ultron’s head on a junkpile before getting bored and ditching it (framed to the poem “Ozymandias.”)

    Wanda seems to be doing some kind of dancing as she does her spellcasting. Curious.
    I hope Mark Ruffalo gets to do a lot more as Banner this time around. It would be disappointing to “only” use him as the Hulk (and I want the Hulk to start talking! Sentences! The “silent” Hulk from the TV show era is over! Grrr…)
    I’m wondering what Jeremy Renner will get to do now that Hawkeye’s not possessed for half the film. (and what does he do when the arrows run out?) I anticipate that Robert Downey’s improv will get the bulk of character attention, though.
    I’m somewhat disappointed that “robot hordes” have replaced “alien hordes” as the battle fodder; I guess I still want to see some form of the Masters of Evil (even if they gave themselves a more realistic name like the Tea Party or whatever), for some more interesting one-on-one fights.

    • Priest Priest says:

      As long as there are hordes. You have to have a huge crowd of faceless baddie pawns to knock down in order to fit the formula. Rufalo/Banner got a great deal of screen time in the first AV, no reason to suspect we won;t see that in AVU. And, didn’t Hulk say a single word in the first AV film? I kind of like silent Hulk because everybody else in the cast appears to be quick-witted gum-flappers. Renner/Hawkeye will need to be given some dimension. Hawkeye, as I remember him from the old Englehart days, was kind of an idiot at times–strong-willed and competitive in a sophomoric kind of way. Renner appears to be playing a far more disciplined and, thus, less interesting character. And they’ve got Captain America barking orders without the actor bringing enough gravity to the performance. I mean, he’s barking orders, but I don;t *believe* the guy enough to buy it that these powerful people follow him.

  5. Cthulhudrew says:

    It’s interesting/curious to me that both of the superhero archers in the media currently- Green Arrow and Hawkeye- seem to have nothing in common with their comic selves other than using a bow and arrows.

    I enjoy Arrow quite a bit, mind, and I suppose an argument can be made that the tv version bears a resemblance to the Longbow Hunter version of Mike Grell, but Marvel’s Hawkeye? Nothing like the character I know and love from the books.

    He should be impulsive and chafe under Cap’s leadership; getting rid of his carnie background to make him grim and gritty- like the Bullseye doppelganger from the Ultimate Universe- was a huge mistake, IMO. Though if they had kept him more like the comic version of him, I’m not sure Renner could pull it off.

    (It occurs to me that the comic version has been horribly mis-written and turned into a grim version of himself, as well, but I don’t read comics much any more and couldn’t say that with any certainty.)

  6. Ralf Haring says:

    Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye is far from grim.

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