The Flaw In Avengers: Age of Ultron

Okay so I'll say it. I didn't enjoy Age of Ultron as much as the first Avengers. Not because of a lot of the complaints. I don't consider the twins being from Solklovia white washing. To be the children of holocaust survivors they'd have to be helluva way older. You'd have to make them grand kids. Even then, there's still that clusterfuck of shared custody with Fox. I didn't consider Black Widow getting nabbed as sexist. I rather like the Bruce/Natasha Dynamic. And I get that the portion of Africa we saw was not actually Wakanda.

No, my problem was the same as it usually is when Marvel movies go wrong.
Too many plots.

Don't follow? Remember Iron Man 2?
It ran, oh, three or four plots.

• Tony defending his right to be Iron Man
• Tony dying because hs is Iron Man and managing to piss off everyone in the process.
• An old crazy Russian Enemy tries to kill Tony because of his father
• Tony Stark meets SHIELD.
• And oh yeah somewhere in there we met an idiot who was supposed to be his rival and wanted to steal his designs.

So five plots. This was too much. Just meeting SHIELD and dealing with the Russian would have been fine. Why did Iron Man work?

• Tony Stark becomes Iron Man and discovers a conspiracy within his company. He takes back the power and kicks ass.

DONE.

Captain America: The First Avenger, love it or hate it, it held together better.

• Steve Rogers is selected to become Captain America and fights the forces of Hydra and Red Skull

Thor? If rushed, it still flowed better.

• Asgardian prince is sent to earth to learn humility and become worthy of his powers once again.

Avengers?

• Oh fuck Loki's loose and he's aiming to let an alien army loose on earth we have to stop him.

Iron Man 3:

• Tony has to uncover the location and identity of the terrorist Mandarin while dealing with PTSD obtained from Avengers.

Thor: Dark World

• Well crap. Dark Elves.

Captain America: Winter Soldier

• Secret conspiracy within SHIELD discovered
• Other top secret super soldier is Cap's thought dead best friend

See? All the plots here are fairly simple.

Now lets visit Age of Ultron.

• Meet the Maximoffs!
• Why do we let Tony do anything? Meet Ultron!
• Meet Vision!
• Hulk Buster
• Whoops more infinity gems
• Oh Hawkeye is married with kids
• Here have some foreshadow to Civil War

The official term for this is a Cluster Fuck.

It can also be seen in Amazing Spider Man 2:

• Here meet Electro
• Gwen and Peter are still conflicted but in love
• Meet Harry Osborn. Who suddenly has a genetic disease.
• Meet the Green Goblin.
• Meet the Rhino in the last five seconds even though we sold a lot on Paul Giamatti playing him.
• Foreshadowing for Sinister Six

Note one, I dislike when superhero movies feel the need to get super dramatic. Especially about romance. You spent valuable time tossing Gwen and Peter together awkwardly you could have been using to flesh out one of your other sub plots.

TO BE FAIR the Electro sub plot was going pretty good until Sony decided they needed to toss in more shit.

Also please note:

Spiderman 3

• Mary Jane and Peter break up because he kissed Gwen. Continuity aside, superhero movies; STOP THIS SHIT. NO MORE INTRUSIVE ROMANCE DRAMA IN MY SUPERHERO MOVIES
• Symbiote Spider/Emo Dancing Peter
• Sandman
• Harry Osborn the Green Goblins
• Venom

Literally any one of these plots would have been enough for a whole movie. Nope. Instead, lets mash them all together. Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 may have had complications, but they kept on track. I count one major super villain in both. Which is all you really need in a Super Hero movie. The Romance with Mary Jane wasn't too dramatic. The first movie had a little bit of a love triangle, and the second movie was the awkward "I love you but I'm scared because superhero". These I respect. They don't intrude on the plot too much.

Now let's glance at Fox.

The X-Men movie

X-Men: The Last Stand

• Jean has returned as Phoenix
• Jean is Dark Phoenix
• There's a cure for the mutant gene now
• Stupid love triangle with Rogue, Ice Man, and Shadow Cat
• Angel appears.
• Magneto is up to shit with the Brotherhood.

See the point? Jean's return as a Phoenix could have been a lot more gradual into Dark Phoenix. Also, it didn't need to be combined with the other features. Angel, the Cure for the Mutant Gene, and Magneto being up to Magneto stuff are kind of more then enough to work with.

Think I'm crazy? Lets leave Marvel. Lets go to DC.

Batman and Robin

• Enter Batgirl
• Enter Poison Ivy
• Enter Mr. Frost
• ALSO Alfred is dying.

To be fair they only went one too far there. Previous Batman movies had done fine with two villains at a time.

Hell, while I'm not a huge fan, even The Dark Knight handled two villains pretty well. Batman Begins juggled its things well.

Dark Knight Rises....

• Enter Cat Woman
• Enter chick who turns out to be major character that Bruce sleeps with instead of Cat Woman
• Bruce is somehow severely injured because of all his Batman Hijinx.
• Enter Anarchist Bane.
• Gotham City is taken over by Bane.
• Bruce Wayne has to somehow heal and climb out of an impossible prison
• Also we're trying to blow up the city

I am in fact a little worried about Civil War. More worried about Rise of Justice. DC has proven they can't have nice things. Now they have a vs between two heroes who really don't need to be doing a whole movie fighting WHILE introducing about three other heroes. Maybe only two. I'm not quite sure at this point.

Now to be fair, I know Captain America and Iron Man's comic squabbles did come to a head in the Civil War comic arc. That said, it was not the only thing going on. A lot of readers consider a lot of what happened in that plot line extremely out of character. Marvel has been retconing it for a while.

(Reasons why I'm a little concerned for Marvel doing Civil War)

That said I wholeheartedly approve Ant Man.

Now some of you might be wondering "Wait but you said no intrusive romance drams but you like Natasha Bruce"

Yes. There 'dramatic' side was NOT intrusive. It was woven into the narrative.

The problem was the narrative itself.

If you ask me, you could have had a whole movie about the Maximoff Twins. Scarlet Witch grabs the sceptre, she and Pietro take off. Destroy Stark Junk.Wanda, affected by vicinity of the scepter, starts picking off world leaders trying to become Queen of Earth. Avengers clash with her. Pietro gets nervous when innocents are almost hurt. He goes to the Avengers for help.

Somewhere in here I really feel like there should have been a Hawkeye and Black Widow movie. One each. Mostly because in all my knowledge of Marvel, Clint's wife came out of no where. She's not one of his main squeezes. WHICH might be a good thing, as those generally end badly. Still, a little background would be awesome.

Also we just. Really need that Black Widow movie. I hear Solid Snake might be helping out.

Anyway. SO THEN you have the Maximoffs on the team slow but steady. Maybe thats a point of clash in Civil War, if you insist on bringing it out.

(I'll take it Fox has the Krull? No Secret Wars?)

THAT SAID Ultron could READILY get his own movie. Thats where you introduce Vision. He could still do his drop Sokolov plan. You just don't need to do as much in between.

ALSO then the Maximoff's have more skin in the game. They fucked up last time. This is their home land.

[Also OH MY GOD given Hank Prym was really old in Ant Man you could have just had Tony construct Ultron without permission based on designs he made. No need to have anyone let Tony play with the sceptre]

So yeah. Super hero Movies take note.

Stop jumbling your plot.

Lay of the rom com drama.
Lay off the chick flick drama.

One villain at a time. He can have lackies-see X-Men: First Class, but don't have insane team ups.