Avengers: Age of Ultron (spoilers)

[MarkB]

Now if it was Iron Man 4, I'd do an ending where his suit gets so damaged/constrained that he steps out and has to finish the job as Tony Stark (and not just the last 10 seconds).

They pretty much did that in the middle of Iron Man 3, when he attacks the Mandarin's compound.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Yeah when my wife watched it with me she prefered those bit to the fights, which she found a bit boring after awhile.

Please pass that XP along to your wife.

I think Whedon did a great job balancing action, character development, and plot for so many main characters. It isn't easy.

 

[Jester David]

Saw it on opening day (matinee showing) and rather liked it. With the usual asterix postscript that I didn't like it as much as the previous one. Which is the film's largest sin: it just wasn't as good as a freakin' amazing bar setting film.

There's a lot of complaints aimed at the movie and I think most of them can be distilled to that. People walked out thinking "that wasn't as good, and so I'm disappointed: how do I quantify this feeling?" Just like The Dark Knight Rises, which had just as many plot holes and weird days as The Dark Knight, but wasn't as good so the problems become something people latch onto to complain. People need to justify and explain away this dislike, and seem unable to rate a movie between "amazeballs" and "terrible".
There was no way Age of Ultron could possibly be as good. Even if the story, acting, jokes, and action scenes were all better it would lack the sheer thrill of seeing all these characters come together at the same time in the same movie.
(It doesn't help that the best action scenes and most iconic shot was at the beginning so people didn't walk out of the theatre with that in mind. Instead, it ended with Captain America *almost* saying "Avengers Assemble" but not, leaving us feeling teased.)

I've seen people complain that Age of Ultron is unsatisfying as a big dumb popcorn movie for not being big or dumb enough.
I've seen people complain about the lack of character growth, as if it were possible to have all the characters change from a single story (and the first movie didn't do this either). This is extra odd since few popcorn movies have any character growth at all, or a circular growth where they have a moment of doubt and questioning after a failure and they end up back where they started.
There's the whole feminist angle, which is sprawling out into people critiquing Joss Whedon's previous work with the relish of attacking a fallen icon. ("Finally I can attack Buffy the Vampire Slayer for being imperfect!") Which seems especially odd when you compare Whedon to most of the other big name directors. Imagine what Michael Bay would have done with Black Widow. *shudder*. Or even Spielberg or Cameron.

The movie does have its problems, much of which can be attributed to the rigid formula the movies have fallen into. The first movie was a culmination. It was a big climax and the future movies reacted to its events. This one is right in the middle of a huge arc that has been building for some time and will continue to build, and does more setting-up of stories than resolving. It's the middle child. How well the movie fares depends so much on how these future arcs and threads are resolved.

 

[Richards]

My biggest gripe about the movie was a personal one: the plot point that Ultron's consciousness was in the Internet and he was actively trying to access the nuclear launch codes. (And then Tony piping up that he had "hacked into the Pentagon and accessed the launch codes" as a teenager.)

As someone who's worked with the ICBM launch codes in one way or the other since 1987, I can only laugh at the very concept that the codes used to launch our nuclear forces would be stored somewhere on the Internet, where they'd be victim to any competent hacker. You disappoint me, Joss.

To a missileer (or an ICBM code controller), "launch codes on the Internet" is right up there on the groanworthiness scale with "ICBMs are launched by pushing a big red button."

Johnathan

 

[Deuce Traveler]

My favorite part about the action sequences: The heroes actually go out of their way to try and save civilians. How crazy is that...

 

[Morrus]

My favorite part about the action sequences: The heroes actually go out of their way to try and save civilians. How crazy is that...

And boy do they make sure you know it! They mention it every 8 seconds or so. "Hey, guys, we're concerned about civilians, unlike our rival franchise! Lookee see!" You'd almost think there had been some kind of scriptwriters meeting after MoS about how to make absolutely sure everybody gets the point.

 

[billd91]

My biggest gripe about the movie was a personal one: the plot point that Ultron's consciousness was in the Internet and he was actively trying to access the nuclear launch codes. (And then Tony piping up that he had "hacked into the Pentagon and accessed the launch codes" as a teenager.)

As someone who's worked with the ICBM launch codes in one way or the other since 1987, I can only laugh at the very concept that the codes used to launch our nuclear forces would be stored somewhere on the Internet, where they'd be victim to any competent hacker. You disappoint me, Joss.

I think you'd be pretty disappointed with the whole cyberpunk genre, then. One of the conceits of any story that relies on hackers is that stuff that a movie-goer (or reader) would find compelling as a threat is available on an accessible network. Identity theft stuff is all personally vexing, but it's not really compelling to a whole audience like nuclear weaponry is - no matter how stupid it would be to have that sort of information or power on a network with any sort of public connection.

Of course, superhero comics involving rebellious AIs usually extend exactly what the AI can control. Computo attacked Lightning Lad remotely with a robotic arc welder, for god's sake. Could there be connections between the computer systems with the codes through other microchipped devices? A set of uniterruptable power systems that could exert some safe-shutdown control over the important and otherwise secure computer systems and are, themselves, connected to other monitoring equipment capable of signaling administrators when failures occur? If you start to accept the improbable abilities of the supers (where does Banner get the extra mass that is the Hulk?), then you can see that Ultron may have other machine controlling powers far beyond normal computer hacking.

 

[Rabulias]

As someone who's worked with the ICBM launch codes in one way or the other since 1987, I can only laugh at the very concept that the codes used to launch our nuclear forces would be stored somewhere on the Internet, where they'd be victim to any competent hacker.

I guess it depends on how the launch codes are authenticated. If it's all via paper copies at each end that are read out over a secure voice line, then it does make a lot of spy/action movie scenes invalid. :-(

But if the codes are stored in any system that accepts a remote order to launch, then they are slightly more vulnerable.

No disrespect intended to you or the military; I am sure that control of our nuclear weapons arsenal is highly secured against intrusion or false commands, just not against alien-influenced artificial intelligences!

 

[Morrus]

Plus it's the Marvel Universe. Nuclear launch codes are clearly different in the Marvel Universe.

 

[Scott DeWar]

"I got no strings to hold me down . . . . ."

Ok, my take is this. the launch codes are generated by a computer that is hooked up to another computer, blah blah, that is connected to the interwebs and can be accessed by some mega hacking by an alien born artificial intelligence.