Thursday, October 29, 2015

The Vision Thing

So, we watched the new Avengers movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), and of course I think its the best one yet. It's got Wanda and Pietro, and the Vision.

It starts with the Avengers recovering Loki's scepter from HYDRA in the Eastern European country of Souvlakia. Tony Stark discovers that it hides a gem with artificial intelligence powers, and decides to build it into a robot - which is, of course, a terrible idea. All the rest of the Avengers tell him that, and they are right. It forms itself into a junk contraption and takes off to Sopapilla.

I'll skip most of the middle stuff except to say that Wanda, the Scarlet Witch, and her brother Pietro, Quicksilver, are around to fight the Avengers and then join them to fight Ultron. These two have been favorites of mine since the Kirby days. They are exotic and strange, evil yet noble, like Magneto, who they become linked with (not in this movie, though). We saw Pietro (as Peter), played by a different actor in Days of Future Past, due to rights ownership issues. Doesn't matter, great to see him.

Ultron made a great Frankensteinish villain, played with a bit of hammy humor by James Spader. The Vision, on the other hand, is played by Paul Bettany, the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. Two artificial beings in one movie! I won't tell you where the Vision came from, except to say it was another one of Stark's stupid ideas. In fact, one of the morals of the story is "Keep doing stupid things, and one of them might just work out." Words to live by, my friends.

I'm skipping over lots of good stuff, mostly fights and explosions (Ironman fights Hulk! Sokinajia takes off into the air! Nobody can lift Mjolnir!), just to say that I love the cosmic Vision, and look forward to his romance with the Scarlet Witch, which was just hinted at here.

Now, Ms. Spenser thought this was a little weaker than than the preceding Avengers. Too much going on without enough that matters. She might be right - as I think back over it, a lot is just a blur of the aforementioned fights and explosions. Or maybe she is just annoyed that they shoehorned practically everyone in, but left out Loki, her beloved Tom Hiddleston. Oh well, you can't have everything.

1 comment:

mr. schprock said...

On your recommendation I'll put this in the Netflix queue, but I fear Ms. Spenser will probably be right. The first Avengers movie was too much action and not enough story, pacing, character development, dialogue, and other stuff that people with ADD feel gets in the way. Nice quote from the first President Bush.