It is quite an astonishing story of how far Marvel have come since being almost bankrupt around a decade ago. With rivals DC Comics ruling the roost for such a long time, Marvel finally found success in 2000 with X-Men and Spider-Man. But with those two franchises not being primarily ran by Marvel Studios, they were still not getting enough profit to progress.
Then they went on a big gamble by introducing us to characters that are seen as secondary to the more well-known superheroes.
2008 saw huge success for Iron Man, and now we have the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With its interwoven features that would usually be seen in a TV series, Marvel Studios has become a colossal force in the film industry that is leaving DC in its dust. Even with all this record-breaking box-office, Marvel are still taking risks as they know they have to introduce new characters to keep giving the franchise a fresh look and the audience asking for more. I have certainly jumped on the Marvel bandwagon and now a huge Marvel film fan-boy.
Now, we have the final installment of Marvel's second phase with the second Avengers feature.
For the most part I found it very enjoyable early summer popcorn flick that does everything you want it do. Everything was pretty solid all-round, I had a big smile on my face throughout and felt satisfied. But with Marvel setting itself such a high standard, I definitely was expecting something more interesting then what I saw in the end.
Before I say what problems I felt this movie had, I just want to mention that these are all minor ones. I still would recommend this to anyone, whether they love Marvel or not.
The first problem I had when reflecting was the plot and story structure. For me was a bit disappointing as it felt too similar to the first one, and yet inferior. I had hoped for something with a darker tone that the trailer was suggesting and covering interesting subjects from the first Avengers film and all the films in-between.
As for building up Marvel's plans for the next phase of films, it felt poorly hinted. It was as if the film makers just dropped it in without any explanation and felt out of place. The only thing I could think of as to why they did that was to help the general moviegoers be interested in the franchise. I won't mention it for possible spoilers, but I will say that Guardians Of The Galaxy explained it better.
Thankfully, the humor is still vintage Whedon and still keeping the tone of any other Marvel film. I laughed pretty consistently throughout, even at times I never knew I would laugh at.
Sadly, there were some unnecessary attempts of comedy. At one point, it seemed every time a character has a line, they had to end it on a joke. It felt totally unwarranted, it took me out of the moment on multiple occasions and it was like a contest to see who can come up with the wittiest line.
The action is what you would expect in a huge blockbuster. However, I noticed a lot of scenes that was pretty much a copy from the first one. There were also times where the camerawork let itself down during the action set-pieces. There were lots of "shaky-cam" moments that for me felt it hard to follow and have a relax-able viewing experience. I was not expecting to say this, but I felt the CGI to be quite inconsistent. At times it felt impressive, but the other times it looked unfinished or overused.
One big problem that I was hoping to not happen was that there are a lot of characters bunched into this blockbuster and I think this is the problem people feared the first film would contain. A few characters were given very little or almost non-existent screen time. One secondary character in particular is hardly in the film and yet involved in the final scene which was an important one. That sort of frustrated me, because I wanted to know why that person is there in such an important role and there was no development on that whatsoever. For me, there were too many characters and some of them unnecessarily used and they should not have been included at all.
Thankfully, there were enough characters that were solidly developed and that I cared about throughout the film. But I think for the franchise to make really interesting films, they need to get rid of a lot of secondary characters, especially if they want to introduce more new ones.
The most annoying problem was the plot-holes and some of the unnecessary subplots. I will not list all the plot-holes because I think that would be too much nit-picking. But I will mention about my minor frustration about them not addressing the events following from the films between the two Avengers installments. It was like they just ignored it and wanted to just make a blockbuster with lots of super-hero action set-pieces and explosions.
As for the performances, they were pretty solid overall. However, there were a few positive exceptions. Chris Evans was born to play Captain America, his loyalty, passion and goody-two-shoes characteristics is great to watch and he has created the type of character you want to pick first to be in your team.
Scarlett Johansson had her moments and we got to know the history of her character which was nice to see. But for me, the star of the show was Jeremy Renner. Whedon and his team have definitely forgiven the under-usage of Renner's character in the first Avengers film and they have given Hawkeye some great development and gave him some humanity that I can now see him become a popular member of the team.
Downey Jnr. was not as witty as he has been and was definitely knocked down a peg or two in terms of the screen time. However, he was still o.k. Hemsworth felt under-used and had odd subplots and Ruffalo did well with what he had. As for the new characters, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson had nice development and the longer the film went, the more interested I was in their characters. As for Paul Bettaney's character, I think his late arrival in the film means we will get to see more development from him in future films. Also, it was nice to see Andy Serkis have a minor role and as always he played the role well even though he was not doing motion-capture.
James Spader as the voice of the main villain Ultron was as expected. However, I'm afraid I think Ultron has fallen into the over-crowded category of 'weak villain'. All that promise of his menace and high-threat level was not completely washed away, but pretty much averted which was a shame. Also, his development felt patchy. It was as if we missed important scenes and we do not get an explanation of how he got to that stage. For me, Olsen's character was more threatening then any other villain within the film and Loki is still the best villain Marvel Studios have ever created.
Despite all those small frustrating problems, I felt it to be a highly enjoyable sequel and a positive addition to the powerhouse juggernaut that is Marvel. The characters still deliver, their chemistry on-screen is very entertaining, the action is fast-paced and exhilarating and the humor is probably the best part of the movie.
There are definitely parts that were disappointing, but it is overpowered by the positives. I think for future reference, I will purposely not watch anymore Marvel trailers to see if it improves my viewing experience. I did watch the first trailer for this and missed the rest as I was excited to see it anyway. After seeing the other trailers afterwards, I can definitely guarantee that they would have ruined my viewing experience as they showed moments that I was surprised to see in the film.
Joss Whedon has definitely done the best film he could have made. With him trying to make the film his own way and the studio pushing him to tick certain boxes, I think this was the best we could of got. I hear that there will be an extended version of this when it is released on DVD, which also includes an alternate ending. It will be interesting to see what was left out.
For the first time in Marvel Studios history, we do not have a post-credit scene. I'm not sure if they are running out of ideas of things to hint us with, or they are deciding to not show too much this time. Thankfully, there is a mid-credit scene. But to be honest, I was quite gutted as it showed something we pretty much knew would happen anyway. Not only that, it felt massively rushed. I think I would have enjoyed that scene a lot more if they included another character that would make more sense and kept the continuity of the development of the story.
With phase two now in the books, let's see what phase three of Marvel's grand scheme gives us as we approach the climax to where the Avengers clash with the baddest villain Marvel has created.
Rating: 7/10
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