So ladies and gentlemen, the even you have all been waiting for. The second Avengers movie has hit the big screens. But is it better than the first one?
Warning, spoilers ahead.
Ok, lets get this out of the way at the top. Marvel do not know how to make a bad film in the Avengers franchise. It's a fact. And this film, in all of its near two and a half hour run time, is no exception. But is it better than the first Avengers film, which is the bench mark for superhero films now-a-days (alongside The Dark Knight, but for the sake of Marvel vs. DC lets stick to just one company shall we). Well lets look deeper shall we.
This film is much more eventful than the first film. Stuff is thrown at us left and right right from the get go. The film kicks off with a huge action scene and does not let up until half-way through the movie for about 5-10 minutes of lovely family time with the family Barton, then it's head-first back into the action. Sure you have the couple of down time scenes, the party, the bit after they first get their behinds handed to them, the… the… yeah that's about it apart from the aforementioned Barton quality time. This film has no let up. Imagine the Hulk driving a supertanker filled with atomic bombs and dynamite, you get the picture. And, as one might expect, the action is spectacular. Centring around two massive set piece fights, Hulk verses Iron Man in the Wakandan capital and the final battle between the Avengers and Ultron. The former is the smash fest you'd expect, with plenty of witty one-liners from Stark and plenty of destruction from the Hulk. The later is a monumental battle atop a floating city that sees the Avengers at their finest as a team, saving people, beating the bad guy and being generally heroic. 'nuff said. (And on that note, STAN LEE SAID EXCELSIOR IN THE MOVIE!!!!!! I'M SO DONE!!!!!!!)
And what about our new characters. Well, they kinda nerfed Scarlet Witch, who in the comics is a serious contender for most powerful hero in the Marvel universe. Here, yeah she's got power, but you don't see her use it to the extent she does in the comics. But still, she and Quicksilver were cool, they didn't get any "hell yeah moments" like shooting an alien off his glider thing without looking or smashing a God into the floor, but they did their job in the movie. Shame about the end though, but I guess with a future appearance in another franchise on the cards, it sorta had to happen.
Next up we have Vision… what do I say about this one. *sigh* Ok, I will start off by saying I've always liked Vision. He's never been all that in terms of characters in the Marvel universe, or in the Avengers in general, there's always someone that you like more, but Vision is a good character. He looks daft AF but I like him. But in this film…. oh my god I loved him. He freaking picked up Thors hammer and handed it to him and then just walks off. That was a whole new level dude. He literally owns everyone in the room and walks off without even realising. And the dude has an Infinity Gem in his forehead, move over Solar Gem, this guys rocking out with the mind of an Eternal on his face. And they managed to make him look sorta cool, though I did miss the yellow glowing eyes a bit.
And finally, the big one. Yes, he is easily the best part about this film. Yes, he's mad, cracks jokes and is generally psychopathic and awesome at the same time. But he's also part of two of the three things I didn't actually like about this film. I am of course talking about Ultron. So, what are these two things I don't like I don't hear you ask because I'm typing this up before I can see your comments and those will be typed so I won't hear them so much as see them. Well first of, I'm not a huge fan of the main Ultrons design. The sub-Ultrons look good, but the main one, his face doesn't look right, with those weird circle things on his cheeks, not a fan. Secondly, he was introduced too quickly. There was no explanation for why the experiment should suddenly work as soon as Stark leaves the room, when it had failed before. And the system shock leads him from "what's going on" to "I must kill everyone" in literally 2 seconds. The film was 2 and a half hours long almost and the main villain gets less than a minutes set up?! You could have cut down some of the fights a little to make room, or am I just being pedantic here? But apart from that, he's freaking awesome.
Other stuff, well War machine makes a welcome come back, so does Falcon. It does have the feel of a "best of" at some points. The Wakanda thing and bringing in Klaw in this film sets up a certain stage 3 film oh so perfectly (cannot wait), plus it's Andy Serkis… yeah. Whilst the dream sequences were interesting and all, could have been cut down a tad, but major badass points to Hawkeye for the whole "I've done the mind control thing" bit. Oh and kinda meh on the whole Black Widow/ Hulk shipping thing going on in this film. They did build a bit of Widow's character but there was too much else going on for it to have much of an impact. Oh and the other thing I don't like, Iron Man got to be the guy who saves the day again. I'm not a huge Iron Man fan and this film doesn't help. He spends most of the film being the bad guy wearing a good guy suit, not by design but by his own stupidity, which, for a very smart man, is very disappointing. And he still gets to be the one to blow up the giant thing that's going to kill us all. Why can't Thor hit it with his hammer? Coulda let on of the new guys take a shot, Wanda perhaps. (Iron Man 1 still rocks though, so don't hate me).
So overall, great film. It's an event, more so than any of the other films in the series so far. But we go back to the original question, is it better than the first Avengers?
…….
I don't know. It wasn't as funny, but there were more impressive moments in it. Ultron was great but was he as good as Loki considering Loki had an entire films worth of build up where as Ultron has 2 seconds. This film introduced Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Vision to the team, whereas the first film only really introduced Hawkeye. Overall I'd say no, just because the first film came first, it introduced the idea of these heroes working together to the big screen and showed us it could work. This film shows us it still works and it still works well and that is good enough for me. But not as good as the first time round.
But Vision owned Thor….
I'm not getting over that.
