Avengers: Age of Ultron (All of the spoilers. ALL OF THEM!)

I just got back from watching the titular film and I am so excited and happy and I just have to write some stuff about it.
It was amazing. It made me laugh and cry and handflap more times than I could really track, and thankfully I was only sharing the cinema with five other people so that wasn't a big deal.
Hawkeye got a far larger role, and Widow got a good chunk of screen time as well. I have a feeling people are going to be pissed about the turn her story took with Bruce, but I think it works. I hope he comes back so they can have a complicated and adorable flush relationship together that flips pale when a code green goes down.
I may be getting ahead of myself. I'll probably write a proper review once I've calmed down some.
Ultron was incredible, James Spader played him masterfully, and the combination of his incredible voice and that incredibly sexy chassis he was boasting (sorry I'm a helpless robot lover) made me weak kneed. I was so hoping he would get a shot at redemption, his whole arc made my heart hurt and I need a thousand fics yesterday of him being soothed by Vision and coming to adjust his views.
And oh my god, Vision. I can't really put anything into words more complex than hhhhhhhhhhhhhh when it comes to him.
The tidbits revealed by Scarlet Witch of each character's psyche were telling and heartbreaking. At first I was confused because we didn't see Hulk's vision, but then I realized that we didn't need too - he was living it.
I liked the nod to The Winter Soldier - Sam being on the hunt for Bucky while everyone else is trying to keep stuff from imploding works. The shoutouts to Jane and Pepper were great.
Quicksilver dying hurt me. But it was handled well.
The Tony/Ultron hateship is sailing with me. I will need. To draw things.
People who have seen it, tell me what you loved the most :O

 

I totally agree with you about Vision. He was basically hitting all my 'yes pls, and I would like one for take-away too' trope buttons.

Natasha is incredibly pale-shippable, isn't she? I was thinking about Clint<>Natasha more, but I do see Hulk<>Natasha (oh, OH what if Bruce<3Natasha, but also Hulk<>Natasha?) and I'd totally ship Steve<>Natasha too.

I actually liked Quicksilver dying? But it was because it was narratively so well done. There were all those tropes pointing to Clint being the one who bites it (gets backstory, the fatal family photo, him going back to save a kid) and then Quicksilver just yoinked it, took the death, out of his own free will, and yet THAT also made narrative sense, because this poor war orphan boy who hated Avengers so much sacrificing himself for one of them oh nooo. It was painful. But so masterful. I am a masochist for that.

Also, Bruce pulling a Steve with the plane, holy ship. That hurt.

Also, can we please have a HS/AoU crossover, because, really. Ultron is already here (or, well, there. Or doing the thing. I can't remember exact quote right now. Close enough). And knows everything. And has a red woman serving him who will rile other people up against each other and divide them.

I have to admit, I was a bit miffed about the fictional country of Sokovia. It's always a vaguely Russian fictionland in Eastern Europe (I decyphered at least one thing that the background Sokovians yelled and it was badly accented Russian).

 

Oh my gosh yessss Hulk <> Nat, Bruce <3 Nat pushes all of my buttons.
Nat really is super pale-shippable, I agree. She is incredibly stabilizing, but also really needs someone to push back and assert that she has good points too.
Let's talk though, about Nat <3< Tony <3< Steve. Her auspiticizing for those two is practically canon by this point.
Quicksilver dying hurt me. It was well done, but I'd loved to have seen those two grow together under Hawkeye's guidance.
Crossover: Please consider the following
Hal <> Ultron

I need it.

 

The Tony/Thor argument about Pepper and Jane was so great. Just, these two assholes having a chick-measuring contest because they're too dumb to back down. And of course Maria points out that neither woman would appreciate the contest.
But yeah, Nat<>Hulk, and then the Hulk, as the Hulk, deciding to break contact. Bruce breaking contact would have hurt, but the fact that the Hulk made that decision...
I'm not sure if Tony learned any lessons in the end. That was totally a loop, activating Vision; Tony had no way of knowing that Vision would turn out differently than Ultron. But I guess that's Stark's role. He's high INT, low WIS. He leaves the Avengers, sure, but I'm not sure what that indicates.
I liked that they brought up that there are now four Infinity Stones that cropped up. Thor's absences are generally kind of odd; now he has an excuse to be elsewhere that he's actually told people about.

 

my takeaway is that I need Thor with a manbun.

uhh, other stuff comes when it comes I guess.

 

Wait, is that black polyshipping or did you mean Natasha is auspistice for Tony and Steve? Because I'm down with both, but latter a bit more than the former. I mean, everybody is like "Tony. Tony NO" which apparently is the basis for black relationship, but it seems to me that Natasha is likelier to fall in conciliatory quadrants with the others (Tony<3<Steve would totally happen if Steve would be down with it). Because she's usually the calm and collected one who calms other people, but that also means she's kind of removed from others, because she has taken the position of Calming One so often she can't not be the Calming One. And then the times when omeone is pulling her together are even more striking, because contrast.

I think I'm starting to get carried away here. Um.

Squeak!

It does sound like it would work like the common perception of GHB<>Condesce though? Like, they would keep each other happy and calm, but the world would be burning down around them, because I can't see them sanding down each others' rough edges and homicidal asshole tendencies. More like they'd enable each other to be heinous asses?

I'd say it indicates that now no one is really keeping an eye on him and we're all kinda screwed? Like, before there were lots of people around, the probability that someone would wander in at the right moment and go "Tony, put the experiment down, so help me" was much higher.

Also, I'd like to quote hoarmurath here. Skype log edited to use our kintsugi names/all English.

This would be awful, because Steve turning evil oh noo, and yet.

 

Evil is a descriptor we would use when Steve's tendencies would be taken to the max, because I could see an extreme nanny state with constant supervision, complete loss of privacy and coercive mental programming/physical enchancement if Steve decided that everybody needed to be protected from doing stupid things and no one should be unhappy or lonely or unhealthy.

Sadly I am not that good at Steve'ing in fic, so I would love if anyone else took it to the nightmare fuel spiral of awful it could be.

Bonus Steve/Thor wherein Thor tries to hold him back from doing all this stuff, but fails.

 

I actually don't see that as an extreme version of Steve. That's Tony all over, not Steve. In fact, that's Hydra. Steve is protection, sure, but not control.
Extreme Steve, I think, would be more toward anarchy, not because he necessarily wants anarchy but because he would remove leaders, governments, from power once he judges them unfit, without really thinking about the resulting power vacuum.

 

It makes perfect sense in my head so I think it's just interpretation disagreement.

Hydra was way different. They're a lizard that is still shambling along with no head, in my opinion. Once the baron died and Hitler fell, Hydra was essentially left behind. What they do, is a machine doing what it's been told to do, with no new ideas.

Tony would do Ultron all over again, or some other sort of machine. I don't think he'd trust any human government. If he were to go off the deep end, that is.

I mean, it's just an extreme idea, and extremes jive much less with people. I don't agree even with the accepted fandom interpretations of Steve or Tony or Thor most of the time, usually because I think they are reductive and pandering.

Also, anyone found any Laura wank yet? I am quite sure a whole bunch of people are very very mad about that reveal right about now.

 

Perhaps. I'm thinking of the Civil War storyline in particular. Tony was all over the idea of registration, while Steve was firmly against it. We'll see how the MCU handles it in a few years.

 

Yeah, see, I don't consider comics relevant to characterisation since I haven't read them. I go entirely off on the MCU with plots and ideas, and as far as dark!MCU plotbunnies/fics go, this one was fairly benign.

 

Watched it again. I feel like I should write a mini-essay about Ultron and Christian nods somewhere because wow, there were actually several. Perhaps after I have slept properly.

I also have 200% more Maximoff twins feels now. And I think... I actually really like their backstory. I've heard that they are Jewish in comics canon so removing all traces of it is erasure and whitewashing and making them voluntarily sign up for Hydra is Actual Terriblest, but the thing is... I am not a comics reader. I only know Marvel Cinematic. And when I take that discrete piece of media, them volunteering makes sense in a rather awful way. They're Eastern European. "Some of our people fought on the same side as Nazis because the other side was worse" is an unfortunate historical truth around here. (I admit, we don't actually know who exactly the other side was in this case and how allied they were with Americans/Avengers/Stark, but still.)

Tl;dr: Maximoff backstory problematic in wider context, but make terrible sense within the movie.

 

Seconding this actually.

 

Uh, to be honest, I didn't really like the movie all that much. Mostly because the Nat/Bruce thing didn't work for me. At all.
But like, the rest of it was good, and Vision was a cutie. And Thor was shirtless, I can't hate movies with shirtless Thor.

 

Nat/Bruce hurt me deeply every time a scene between them happened. Cringe.
Vision, though. I could write a damn essay about Paul Bettany's acting and the sense of wonder you get from watching him, because he's discovering firsthand how humans work and he's fucking entranced by them.

 

Yeah. Now that a lot of the "AHHHH" wonder has worn off, I've been a little disappointed by some of the turns the movie took :(

 

I did honestly enjoy it, I've just mentally retconned a few things. :P

 

That's where I am at this point, basically.

 

After delays because of husband's sleep schedule and a projector malfunction at the cinema, I have finally seen this movie in full!

Ultron takes after Tony so much that it's scary. To everyone including Ultron.

Homestucky moments: Ultron cannot be delayed because he is Already There, and also did nobody warn Steve about stairs?! (First contact with Wanda.)

I want more Nat<>Steve. There should have been more than just Steve telling Bruce "dude, she is into you".

Hawkeye raised a whole bunch of death flags, and then Pietro grabbed all those flags and ran with them. It's what he does. (Also: "You didn't see that coming!" said Joss Whedon to the audience.)

Plz note that I have dibs on Vision, he was my second-favourite MCU character even back when he was JARVIS. (First goes to Darcy, Jane Foster's intern.) "Well, I *was* born yesterday" is so very much JARVIS's dry wit.

 

The Stark-Ultron family line where all the sons take after fathers and then decide that no, screw you dad, is very important to me. It just keeps happening.