The difficulty of the group drama has obviously reached a new height in the era of Ultron, not only has the All-Star Avengers lineup, but also several newly added characters. Most of them have movies with their respective protagonists. How to balance the scenes in an effective time? How to balance the character history and new contradictions? How to make new characters impress the audience quickly?
For Marvel, such challenges are both technical and commercial. Taking into account their grand Marvel universe plan, the new image is to accumulate popularity for future plans, and the new development of the old characters, as well as the tension between them, is to pave the way for the civil war, which is the subject of much-anticipated. Whether the group drama is well written or not, although it does not affect the box office of the movie, it is related to the quality of the entire movie and the smooth implementation of the most ambitious and huge plan in the history of the movie.
I was not worried about this at first, because the ability to write group dramas shown by Joes Weiden in the first film is almost unmatched in blockbuster films. But what is really surprising is that in the era of Ultron, they missed a lot. To put it simply, how well "Avengers" is doing, how bad is "Era of Ultron".
Let’s start with the villain. The No. 1 villain of Avengers is Loki. The first aspect of the villain’s charm is to be strong enough to make the audience feel the same hatred. Loki took the S.H.I.E.L.D. base as soon as he appeared, and every step thereafter basically had a strategic goal and was basically achieved. Even if he was caught, it was still in his plan. The scene in which humans kneel down perfectly demonstrates the purpose and abomination of the characters. The second aspect of the villain’s charm is that it has layers. It is naturally unnecessary to mention how coquettish Loki himself is. Even if the audience does not understand the history of his love and killing with Thor, they can still feel it in some details. For example, Thor's classic line: He's my brother...He's adopted, which not only has a laugh, but also shows the complicated relationship between the two. This is also the best part of the first part: interspersing the relationship between the characters in the two most entertaining points of funny or action scenes, complementing each other.
On the other hand, Ultron was originally a very powerful villain in Marvel's original book. In the movie, the creator was changed to Iron Man. This is not a problem, and it even laid clues for the tension of the characters. However, Ultron’s own charm is very limited. Among the above two points, firstly, it is not challenging enough for Fulian. He is very strong in setting and can get what we want on the Internet, but it does not show an advantage in the confrontation with Fulian. , But almost every step is mastered by Fulian. In face-to-face fighting, he can only rely on the robot's human tactics. The reunion was wounded twice, the first time was due to the Scarlet Witch, and the second time was the Hulk inside, none of which had anything to do with the strength of the villain. Why doesn't Ultron take advantage of your illness to kill you? In the movie, the phrase "rather than let them die like heroes, it is better to make them painful" to solve this perfunctorily. This is a serious laziness in the play. At the character level, his motive is simply to save the earth and destroy humans first, with a rectum, and there is no spark in the communication with the vision. Of course, this is also related to the extreme flatness of the visual vision.
Let’s take a look at the innumerable insiders of Fulian. The advantage of the previous game is to appear one by one. Characters can be shaped with the development of the plot. For example, the chaos of Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America. Bringing it out, and thus naturally transitioning the driving force to how to unite and unite with the outside world. Ultron continued this idea and became a three-phase unity-division-unity. It's just that this time I didn't achieve the economic compactness of the previous game. Action drama and literary drama are basically separated. Action drama is just about playing, and literary drama is responsible for explaining these changes. But the literary drama didn't dare to shoot more, so it must have been insufficiently prepared. The reason for the split was that everyone was hesitated by the witch implanted in the heart demon, but why did they split? The plot abruptly arranged a family for Hawkeye, letting Fulian heal at his home and then unite again, but this lengthy piece of literary drama did not show why they could not unite against the enemy, and what the fundamental differences they now exist are. Although the plot really allows everyone to do their own things, there is no development and change in the relationship between the characters. Oh, maybe the love between the widow and the Hulk is part of it, but this is like the Hawkeye's family drama, and it does not have an organic connection and entanglement with the main storyline. (Does it count to save the black widow before the Hulk war? But lost the scepter and took a black widow back, and was finally rescued easily by mortals. This again reflects the villain’s incompetence.) In fact, they are not divided, so in the end they also There is no talk of unity again.
The biggest contradiction within the team is whether to create a fantasy world or develop a stronger force to protect humans. This is also the biggest difference between Iron Man and Captain America, which has become the foreshadowing of the future civil war. But when the internal conflicts were so intense that they fought, it was Thor's appearance that solved the problem, but why did he change from supporting the US team to supporting Iron Man? The explanation in the film is that he went to a pond and took a bath, and then he turned a hundred and eighty degrees. What kind of magical pond it was, the movie didn't even think about it. This is also the most disappointing and most traumatic point for fans: the main creative is too perfunctory.
The three newly added characters also failed. The opportunity for Kuaiyin and the witch, the prodigal son, and the prodigal girl to turn around was to see Ultron’s true evil plan (by the way, once again reflecting the villain’s incompetence). It's too simple. The main creator may also be aware of this. In the final battle, Kuaiyin was arranged to save people and die, as if to say that after all, human love is the most appealing. But here, it seems even more blunt and perfunctory. Vision is a mystery, a mystery without a mystery and no answer. Everyone is wondering whether he is good or bad, and what kind of ability does he have? But regardless of the front and the side, it did not reflect his inner plot, we only know that he is on the side of the good guy now.
The ability design of these three characters also appeared casual. In the first hydra remnant battle, the abilities of Kuaiyin and the witch were clear and interesting, but later, how did the witch’s telepathic energy become a light wave cannon, Kuaiyin ran fast. I can understand that the momentum can break the robot, but how can his body stand it? What is the function of the magic stone on the top of the vision? There is no special feature when playing.
Not to mention several other purely functional roles such as the director and the three members of the new association.
The unclear motives of the characters lead to the lack of tension between the characters and the single driving force of the plot: there is a bad guy who wants to destroy the earth, let's go and fuck him! The sense of hierarchy and urgency are not provided by this perfunctory script. If popcorn blockbusters rely on big scenes to attract people, then the weakening of the characters will actually affect the appreciation of the action scenes. For example, in the previous game, the performance of the characters in the final battle is actually closely related to their personality and motivation. The Hulk punched the Thunder God because there was Liangzi before, and Iron Man finally gave up his life to save the earth, which has repeatedly shaped his image of a sense of responsibility for small things and big things. In the Age of Ultron, there is no such sophisticated design, but a hypocritical design of "saving everyone's life".
Even at the technical level, the visibility of the Ultron era action scenes is far worse than the previous one. Comparing with the last battle, the Alien Legion in the previous game was a multi-armed joint combat and three-dimensional attack. On the contrary, the division of labor and the style of play are also different. And the whole of New York is a battlefield from highways to high-rise buildings, from the open to the air, with the ingeniously designed dispatch and the rhythm of relaxation, it is full of hearty feeling. The opponent that Ultron faced in the final battle was the iron torrent that had long been tired of seeing in the front. Even the CG model was similar to Iron Man, copying and pasting again and again, this is not a perfunctory. And the process of beating is that these robots were smashed by Iron Man, smashed by Captain America’s shield, smashed by Thor’s hammer, smashed by Hawkeye’s arrow, smashed by the Scarlet Witch, and smashed by Fast Silver. Through-or broken... This caused serious aesthetic fatigue to the audience in the fighting scene. The scheduling is also chaotic, with one hammer and one stick, except for the occasional jokes that reflect the level of Joes Weiden, it is really the level of "Transformers".
Why is there such a comprehensive regression? Obviously, both the script and the scene design are slow work and meticulous work, without much effort, naturally there is no good quality. Ordinary viewers may not be able to tell the specifics which is not good, but it is not good enough or it is easy to feel. Marvel’s strategy to build a huge empire is to go fast and bloom more, so the perfunctory attitude reflected in this drama is almost inevitable. After all, the new film will be launched quickly without losing the box office. And continue to broaden the entire Marvel universe is their strategic goal. It's just that for those movie fans who are full of expectations, they may suffer spiritual damage under anticipation.
But can such a strategy really guarantee the success of Marvel? Film is precisely an industry that pays attention to business logic and cannot ignore the pursuit of art. A film that is perfunctory and repeats itself may not cause serious losses to the image of the entire brand. After all, a blockbuster of this level cannot rely solely on the fan economy. It is too much to consider strategic issues from a commercial point of view. On the contrary, it may commit strategic mistakes and move towards a traumatized era.
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