Extended Ramblings on Age of Ultron Pt. 2
We ended part one of this article on the twins, so lets pick up right there. Again there are going to be big spoilers about Age of Ultron, so if you happen to be one of the last six or so people who haven't gotten around to seeing the movie yet, you should not read any further. Especially since the biggest spoiler of the movie is coming up next. Ok? ok.
Spoilers start now.
We need to talk for a second about Quicksilver, and his eventual fate in the movie. There have been a few reactions to Quicksilver's death, but here's the one that I actually feel strongest about. Now that Quicksilver has died, he needs to stay dead. Let me take you back across some of Marvel's Phase Two collection of movies, starting with the previous Avengers movie. In that movie we watched Coulson die and it was a very powerful moment. It was the dead of someone who we didn't really expect and in may ways didn't know how much we cared about him until he had died. That's what made it really powerful, and it was a great emotional, storytelling moment in the movie. But see then we learn that Coulson isn't really dead. Or rather he died, and then came back to life for the Agents of SHIELD TV show.
Then in Thor 2 We saw Loki die a very emotional death saving his brother. It looked like the complicated story of the Loki character had finally concluded on a bittersweet moment, but no. We see at the very end of the movie that Loki was never even dead. It had been a trick all along. Guardians of the Galaxy did the same thing with Groot. He died a very emotional death sacrificing himself for the safety of his team. It was a powerful moment and Rocky cried about it. Only we learn that any stick from Groot can be planted and will grow back into Groot. The emotion never needed to be there because Groot was never really at risk of dying. The Winter Solder not only does the he died/no he didn't dance with Nick Fury, but it also unkilled Bucky from the previous Captain America movie.
I get that death doesn't really mean much of anything in comic books, but that's not a strength of comic book storytelling, and it's not something that the movies should be striving to emulate. If people keep dying but in that "not really" kind of way its going to be harder to care about their death scenes when we know that they're just going to show up fine and dandy one movie later.
Quicksilver had a good arc in the movie. He started as a villain, struggled with his past and current actions, and eventually got to the point where he sacrificed himself to save the very person he was beating up at the beginning of the movie. It's a powerful one movie character arc, and there's no real reason to mess with it. Let Quicksilver die an honorable death, and let the viewer know that sometimes when someone dies it really means that they're dead and gone.
(It should be noted that Whedon has mentioned that there is a version of that final "Avengers Assemble" scene that does include Quicksilver, so there was at least discussion of him not dying for good in the final battle.)
But we do need to take some time to talk about the Avengers MVP for this movie, which is pretty easily Hawkeye. Part of that reason is that Hawkeye spent a large portion of the first Avengers movie under the control of Loki. And other than that, his only other appearance in the MCU was in the shadows of the first Thor movie for maybe four minutes. This is the first time we get to see Hawkeye shine, not just as an archer but as a character.
There is a saying that the difference between DC characters and Marvel characters is that DC characters are gods pretending to be humans and Marvel characters are humans pretended to be gods. With the exception of Batman, this is pretty accurate, and Hawkeye might be the best example of this. Hawkeye is a guy who really can just shoot a Bow really, really well. And he stands alongside two of the smartest men in the world, a man who has been scientifically engenerred to be the pinical of human potential and a literal Norse god.
Age of Ultron, for the first time actually takes some time to really try and explain why and how Clint is a valuable part of the team, even going so far as to have a scene where his wife tells him exactly why. But that isn't the real defining moment that the movie gives to Hawkeye. That comes when he talks to Scarlet Witch in the middle of the climactic fight. Up until that point, nobody has really stated what it meas to be an Avenger. There have been statements close to that. (If you get killed...walk it off) but Hawkeye really explains what it means to be an Avenger. And because of who Hawkeye is, he might be the only person on the team that can really put into words why this group of people does the things that it does.
So where do we go from here? Well, next up is Ant-Man thought we don't really know how much that one's going to tie into the rest of the Marvel movies. I mean we know it takes place in the same world, but I don't know if this means that Ant-Man will show up in the next Avengers movie. We know that next year Captain America and Iron Man will be facing off in Civil War. We got a glance at that friction in the wood chopping scene but they ended the movie on good terms so who knows how that relationship will go off the rails again. The thing is that at the end of the movie, Captain America is in charge of the new group of Avengers, so will they be on his side for the fight? Does this mean that Iron Man will have a small army of his own? Or will it just be suits that fly themselves? How is War Machine going to handle all of this since he's technically on the new Avengers team now?
It's these discussions and more when we get around to doing Extended Ramblings on Civil War next year.
Spoilers start now.
We need to talk for a second about Quicksilver, and his eventual fate in the movie. There have been a few reactions to Quicksilver's death, but here's the one that I actually feel strongest about. Now that Quicksilver has died, he needs to stay dead. Let me take you back across some of Marvel's Phase Two collection of movies, starting with the previous Avengers movie. In that movie we watched Coulson die and it was a very powerful moment. It was the dead of someone who we didn't really expect and in may ways didn't know how much we cared about him until he had died. That's what made it really powerful, and it was a great emotional, storytelling moment in the movie. But see then we learn that Coulson isn't really dead. Or rather he died, and then came back to life for the Agents of SHIELD TV show.
Then in Thor 2 We saw Loki die a very emotional death saving his brother. It looked like the complicated story of the Loki character had finally concluded on a bittersweet moment, but no. We see at the very end of the movie that Loki was never even dead. It had been a trick all along. Guardians of the Galaxy did the same thing with Groot. He died a very emotional death sacrificing himself for the safety of his team. It was a powerful moment and Rocky cried about it. Only we learn that any stick from Groot can be planted and will grow back into Groot. The emotion never needed to be there because Groot was never really at risk of dying. The Winter Solder not only does the he died/no he didn't dance with Nick Fury, but it also unkilled Bucky from the previous Captain America movie.
I get that death doesn't really mean much of anything in comic books, but that's not a strength of comic book storytelling, and it's not something that the movies should be striving to emulate. If people keep dying but in that "not really" kind of way its going to be harder to care about their death scenes when we know that they're just going to show up fine and dandy one movie later.
Quicksilver had a good arc in the movie. He started as a villain, struggled with his past and current actions, and eventually got to the point where he sacrificed himself to save the very person he was beating up at the beginning of the movie. It's a powerful one movie character arc, and there's no real reason to mess with it. Let Quicksilver die an honorable death, and let the viewer know that sometimes when someone dies it really means that they're dead and gone.
(It should be noted that Whedon has mentioned that there is a version of that final "Avengers Assemble" scene that does include Quicksilver, so there was at least discussion of him not dying for good in the final battle.)
But we do need to take some time to talk about the Avengers MVP for this movie, which is pretty easily Hawkeye. Part of that reason is that Hawkeye spent a large portion of the first Avengers movie under the control of Loki. And other than that, his only other appearance in the MCU was in the shadows of the first Thor movie for maybe four minutes. This is the first time we get to see Hawkeye shine, not just as an archer but as a character.
There is a saying that the difference between DC characters and Marvel characters is that DC characters are gods pretending to be humans and Marvel characters are humans pretended to be gods. With the exception of Batman, this is pretty accurate, and Hawkeye might be the best example of this. Hawkeye is a guy who really can just shoot a Bow really, really well. And he stands alongside two of the smartest men in the world, a man who has been scientifically engenerred to be the pinical of human potential and a literal Norse god.
Age of Ultron, for the first time actually takes some time to really try and explain why and how Clint is a valuable part of the team, even going so far as to have a scene where his wife tells him exactly why. But that isn't the real defining moment that the movie gives to Hawkeye. That comes when he talks to Scarlet Witch in the middle of the climactic fight. Up until that point, nobody has really stated what it meas to be an Avenger. There have been statements close to that. (If you get killed...walk it off) but Hawkeye really explains what it means to be an Avenger. And because of who Hawkeye is, he might be the only person on the team that can really put into words why this group of people does the things that it does.
So where do we go from here? Well, next up is Ant-Man thought we don't really know how much that one's going to tie into the rest of the Marvel movies. I mean we know it takes place in the same world, but I don't know if this means that Ant-Man will show up in the next Avengers movie. We know that next year Captain America and Iron Man will be facing off in Civil War. We got a glance at that friction in the wood chopping scene but they ended the movie on good terms so who knows how that relationship will go off the rails again. The thing is that at the end of the movie, Captain America is in charge of the new group of Avengers, so will they be on his side for the fight? Does this mean that Iron Man will have a small army of his own? Or will it just be suits that fly themselves? How is War Machine going to handle all of this since he's technically on the new Avengers team now?
It's these discussions and more when we get around to doing Extended Ramblings on Civil War next year.
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