The Big Picture - ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ | Marvel Month

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

In the penultimate episode of our Marvel Month preview series, we sit down to discuss ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron.’ How does AI function as a villain in the Marvel universe? Does the movie jump from location to location too frequently? Is this movie better now than when it actually came out? Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Micah Peters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. I was recently driving over the weekend looking for a new home to live in, and I came across railroad tracks. And it's a typical thing, you come across the tracks, the sign's coming down, red lights are flashing, and you're like, you know what, I really can't deal with this traffic, I gotta get through here. And I did, and I stopped wisely, of course, which is what you're always supposed to do. Because think about this, in 2018 alone, 270 people were killed at railroad crossings. 270. So stop, because trains can't. I'm Sean Fennessy, Editor-in-Chief of The Ringer,

and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am joined today by one of our most sentient beings. It is Micah Peters. Micah, hello. I've got no strings on me. That, of course, is a reference from Ultron, because we are talking today in the Marvel Month installment, number four, about Avengers colon Age of Ultron. This is the second Avengers team-up movie.

Micah, you're here for a couple of reasons to talk about this movie. One, you are, I think, a thoughtful and considerate fan of Marvel films. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're welcome. You had a couple of personal tales about the press junketeering around this film that you'll share. I did go to the press junket before this movie.

Hung out with Mark Ruffalo for a while. He's one of the nicest people I've met in my young life. Don't spoil too much of that story. We're going to need to drag people through an hour of this podcast. And I think it's going to be also interesting to look at not just what's happening inside of this movie and inside of this franchise, but also where the MCU was in terms of its public presentation around the time of Ultron. By this point, I think it is when it officially became official that Marvel was going at it full bore. Yes.

The Infinity Gauntlet was on. They were holding all the K bore. Yes. The Infinity Gauntlet was on. You know, it was, they were holding all the Quan. Yeah, there was definitely like, they rolled out that whole, like, the tiers and the phases and whatever. And like, this is going to go on for the next 10 years or so. It's probably going to be longer than that. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think, it's interesting to think about it in this regard too.

This is the second to last movie in phase two of the MCU phases. And heading into three is when, I I guess things really kick into high gear. But, you know, we talked about Guardians of the Galaxy last week with David Shoemaker. And we saw that the story really came together, the story that they were trying to tell about the Infinity Gems and Thanos and what he wanted and the intergalactic nature of all these stories. But this is the movie where it becomes evident what the plot is, what the actual big-time plot is. Right before we started recording this, we noted that the phrase Endgame appears in this movie for the first time. Yes, yes it does.

Which is notable because that, of course, is the name of the forthcoming Avengers movie. What did you think about this movie just as a fan when you were entering into it? You were sort of working as a journalist, but you were also a person that was interested in where the stories were going. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was definitely a situation where i was just like all right well um this is how it happened in the comics i wonder if everybody's gonna die because the way that they they have it in the comic is that like ultron is standing on top of like a pile of bodies

and you can see it's kind of like the thing that uh it's basically the the image that tony stark sees when um scarlet witch gets in his head in the first 10 minutes of the movie or whatever. Like, that is what is supposed to happen. A kind of like End Day's apocalypse destruction moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, and really it was just kind of like, you're not thinking about whether or like what the, forgive me, the end game is you're just like you're this is big and colorful and loud and they're like storming a hydra stronghold in the first 10 minutes and like the camera's moving all around you don't really care about where it's going it's just like at that point i was just like this is

i'm not thinking about this critically like yeah the opening sequence of the movie is very interesting it basically picks up right where it the original avengers left the opening sequence of the movie is very interesting it basically picks up right where it the original avengers left off in terms of the way that it's shot and the way that the action sequence is set up like you said that sort of warring cameras big time action set pieces sequences that in unbroken shots show what every single avenger is doing to fight people like the hulk throws this person through a tree and just then Black Widow rides by that tree on her motorcycle and she shoots another person

and then Hawkeye is right. You know, it's just, yeah, it's peripatetic. Yeah, and it also seems episodic in a way. You know, when we pick up in that, we're just like, oh, the Avengers are on a mission. You know, that's what the Avengers do. Bad things happen and they go to where the bad is

and they go to take care of it. Yeah. And you think that that's what the movie is ultimately going to be, you know, through that first, as you say, 10 minutes or so. And then it takes a pretty hard shift and it starts off in what I guess is ultimately closer to world building and problem solving. And it is a problem of their own design. What did you make of the way that they sort of switched gears very quickly and then internalized in a lot of ways, not just inside of Ultron and

inside of Jarvis, but inside of Avengers Tower and the way that the movie sort of resets itself very quickly to say, this is much more about the enemy that is within. Yeah. I mean, like it's kind of playing off of that conversation that Captain America and Nick Fury were having in the elevator during Winter Soldier. He's just like, you're holding a gun to the world's head and calling it protection like the movie after the first 20 minutes turns into another convert like one of the first conference the second conversation around you know like what are what is the what are the limits and constitutionality of power like because tony stark is just like i want to create a net around the world and like uh captain america again it's just like, that sounds pretty dark. Like, you know, like, so yeah, that's what it has.

I mean, like, it's basically you get to see more about the personal philosophy of each character as it pertains to protection, power, this, that, the other thing, policing, you know, the world really. Yeah. And I love to have generation gap conversations with you. And I think that this theme is a little bit of a generation gap, despite the fact that Captain America is probably a hundred years old, give or take 75 years in ice. Can we just, can we just, can we pause for a second and talk about how wild it is that he is the most affable and nice character? If you were frozen for a hundred years talk about how wild it is that he is the most affable and nice character if you

were frozen for a hundred years you would come out the most reactionary motherfucker alive wild grouchy yeah no question it's a good point but i think that there's something uh dispositionally calm in steve rogers because he is jacked and he cannot be hurt he's he can he can lift like a a an oil tanker with his with one arm, and he can nearly lift Thor's hammer, which is something we'll talk about too, a great scene in this movie. But I think despite the fact that Captain America is 100 years old and Iron Man is only 50, you know, Steve Rogers has the attitude of a 30-something and Iron Man has the attitude of like a late 40s or early 50s something. And I think when you get a little bit older, you think like,

I just want to build something so I don't have to deal with shit. You know, it's like, maybe I'll just get a security system in my house so I don't have to worry about having a gun in my house. Like there are things that people do where they're just like, I don't want to deal with this. And the plot that Tony Stark, with the help of Mark Ruffalo's Dr. Banner, tries to institute when they're inside of Avengers Towers, to use the power of the stone that they have come across inside of the scepter.

They basically gave, after they storm the stronghold, they take the scepter. First of all, they're holding off everybody outside, and Tony's just supposed to go in and get the scepter and come out. And he's just like, there's a lot of computers in here. I think I'm going to download everything. Like, and then the same thing happens where they're just like, yeah, Tony, you can hold on this for safekeeping. And he's just like, how many days do I have it for? And they're like, three or four. And he's just like, okay, I'm going to build a sentient being using this thing.

I mean, it's a bit of a crackpot scheme. It's a billionaire genius scheme. And of course, it goes terribly awry. We're going to talk about how it goes awry when we talk about Ultron, which I think we'll spend a lot of time discussing the power of vitality and maybe failures of that character, for lack of a better word. Before I do that, let's just give some key data points about Avengers Age of Ultron. This movie, of course, was directed by Joss Whedon, as was its predecessor,

The Avengers. You know, his previous films we talked about in the last show with Chris Ryan were Serenity, and he developed the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show. He wrote Toy Story. He wrote Firefly. He wrote Alien Resurrection. He wrote Titan AE. He wrote The Cabin in the Woods. As I noted last time, he's really a deconstructionist, and this is a deconstructionist, I think, of the evil cyborg fable, which hopefully we'll talk about here too. The movie, of course, stars all your faves, Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans and Mark Ruffalo, your pal, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Colby Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård makes a return, Sam Jackson as Nick Fury makes a return. Anthony Mackie is here, as are James Spader, Hayley Atwell, and Idris Elba.

And there are two new characters, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, portrayed by Aaron Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen. This movie came out on May 1st, 2015. We are officially at the four-year mark. And the box office for the movie was $429 million in the U.S. and $1.405 billion worldwide. I would say this movie was not as beloved in America as the first Avengers movie, but it was certainly more beloved around the world,

which is a fascinating thing that tends to happen with sequels. The runtime is 141 minutes. And as you can see, we are creeping into Marvel time creep with a movie like this. I'm not totally sure this movie needs to be two hours and 20 minutes. We can really get rid of Thor's entire side quest. Very good point. You know, the last film in this series specifically was Guardians, which we talked about last week.

And the film that follows it is Ant-Man. And those are interesting bookends for a lot of reasons because they're both important but not essential necessarily. I think what happens in Ant-Man is a bit of a palate cleanser. This movie has a 75% Rotten Tomatoes score, an 83% score from the audience, and an A Cinema score. Looking back on it, did you feel like, oh, this is a really good movie. I like this movie a lot. Deep sigh. I like a sigh. No, it's not like I'm thinking like this is awesome, this is great. I more so had that experience with like Winter Soldier just because they hired like a bunch of MMA fighters to do all the fight choreography.

And they zoomed out and like they had these massive set pieces where the fighting was like actually great to watch. This is just like, let's just explode the scale again. Let's try to crater the planet with one of its own cities. This is like, it's fine. I don't necessarily think that it was, it wasn't my favorite. I didn't like it as much as the first one, which was really, the first one was just like,

this is a novel thing. And the second one was just kind of like, all right, well, that happened. It was cool, like whatever. It's funny that you say that too about the scope, because in March 2012, right before the release of the first Avengers film, Whedon said that he would want to take a sequel to a smaller place and make it more personal and more painful by being the next thing that should happen to these characters

and not just a rehash of what seemed to work the first time by having a theme that is completely fresh and organic to itself. I would say that he succeeded on the latter,

that the theme is new and the ideas are new and it's, like I said, much more internalized, but it's much, it feels much bigger. It's much bigger. Much bigger.

It's not, it's not intergalactic invasion from an alien species, and yet somehow... Yeah, but they're in several locales. They blow up ships. They destroy entire cities. And also, yeah, there's a giant 10-foot cyborg walking around. It's a fascinating thing.

So we discussed at the top a little bit of how Tony Stark comes to develop Ultron and what Ultron means. Ultron, of course, is voiced by the great James Spader. And I had a good time re-watching a featurette from the movie and seeing Spader in all of the CGI green screen mo-cap stuff, which was fantastic. Because, a lot of these actors are obviously quite fit and they're quite strong. Even like Andy Serkis, who is perhaps the most celebrated mo-cap performer of this time. Yeah, and James Spader just

stepped off the set for Boston Legal and was just like, I'm going to put on this gimp suit and talk for a while. He kind of looks like he's in a BDSM dungeon, you know? He's got a big paunch and he looks kind of like clinging lycra leather. But it's so funny because watching him, he's got a big paunch and he's got, it looks like kind of like clinging lycra leather. But he's, it's so funny because watching him, you know, he's obviously a tremendously charismatic and talented actor and has a kind of power that even I think some of the best Marvel stars don't have.

And so when you watch him reading dialogue, they've done something very interesting with the mocap. Since you say as he's 10 feet tall, what they did is they put essentially a rod on his back and it runs about four feet over his head. And at the top of the rod are three flashing red lights. And the reason that's there is because the actors are meant to look at those red lights instead of into James Spader's eyes. Because James Spader, you know,

is supposed to be 10 feet tall as character. And Elizabeth Olsen said that when she was acting, her eyes were sort of fluttering back and forth, up and down, up and down, because she was so compelled by what Spader was doing when they were acting in this mocap situation, which I thought was fascinating. You can low-key kind of see that when he shuts her in the dungeon, when he's just like, you know, he does the scary thing where he reaches through his own android and kills it, and

then like closes the gate in front of her. You can kind of see her going up and down a little bit. Up and down, up and down, yeah. And, you know, it's understandable. I think if you were encountering a 10 foot tall android with AI power, you might be just kind of looking it over, up and down, up and down. But I'm not sure that Ultron, what we see on the screen is as compelling as what Elizabeth Olsen was seeing when she was acting opposite James Spader. What do you think about kind of the design of that character and the origin of that character? I think introduction is very powerful yeah well i mean like okay so you know that he has the

the daddy issues of tony stark that's interesting or whatever but really it's i feel like there's a couple of different versions of this uh in the comics but like really if you search it like the first thing that'll come up is the version where um ultron has like kind of a familial tie with Hank Pym instead of instead of Tony Stark you can kind of see in the way that the head is designed that it looks almost like Ant-Man's helmet that's very true so I mean like honestly it's as far as giant CGI robots go it looks pretty cool and I also enjoy the camp that spader brings to the character um just because he is obviously like homicidal and psychotic and all these other things but does it in the kind of charming way yeah and he's like he's noshing on the scenery you know

he's kind of chewing around the edges every time he can yeah yeah he's just kind of like making he's kind of poking fun at everybody like and i enjoy that even like the end where he is trying to escape and then the hulk jumps into the back of the quinjet and he's just like oh for christ's sake yeah it's funny because i think that is true to comic book execution. You know, like the kind of chattering, sighing, like almost like Lex Luthor-ing of a cyborg, you know, where there's a lot of commentary. There's almost a meta-ness to the way that they talk about it. It feels very comfortable, but it also makes the stakes seem a movie are quite grand. It literally is, at the end of the film, a city hovering above the earth, potentially ready to crash down upon it, resulting in the death of, I think, billions is the phrase that is used. Yeah, he's basically creating an asteroid out of an imaginary, vaguely Slavic city.

Yes, Eastern European of some kind. We're talking, of course, about Sokovia. Before we get into Sokovia, let's talk about the rest of the places this goes. You mentioned that this is a locale hopper, if ever there was one. Where do we go in this movie? We go to the outskirts of Wakanda.

We are also in New York. We are in upstate New York, where I assume the Avengers Tower is. Then you are also in... where's the first scene in is that like somewhere in russia or that was my perception just because of baron strucker but it's hard to say and then and then we're in korea as well yeah and in that great chase sequence um it's funny like the scale of these movies and all of the locale hopping it seems to be fun for the people making the movie. I'm not so sure that at this stage it was necessarily fun for the viewer.

I found it to be a little bit confusing why they had to go places. And inevitably what you get in a movie like this is there's a sequence where five Avengers around, around a table and they're looking at some sort of holographic projection and they say, there's a problem here. some sort of holographic projection and they say there's a problem here we have to fix this problem and they say okay let's get on the jet and then they get on the jet and then they go to Korea and you're like why are we in Korea?

What's in Korea? Hold on. And even though this is probably the third or fourth time I've seen this movie I found myself wondering like why are we here? It's definitely it has the feeling of like a crime procedural where like if Sherlock is involved, he does all of the lead work for all of the other characters, including the viewer.

So he's just like, I'm going to explain all of this in the next minute and a half, and I hope you can keep up because we're going to go to the next point after that. When Ultron first escapes and gets out into the world with the scepter or whatever. Thor goes and is chasing it down. And everybody is back at Stark Tower arguing over, how could you do this? What are you doing? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And there's a sequence where War Machine and Black Widow are talking to each other. And it is so leading. He's just kind of like, so Ultron is like so leading. He's just kind of like

so Ultron is in the files he's in the internet what if he decides to access something more interesting and Black Widow is just like nuclear codes. He's just like what the fuck is this?

It's a little bit like Alfred Hitchcock Presents where it's like overly explicative. I think anybody could have imagined that if there is an evolving all-powerful sentient being that is both physically destructive can adapt into new indestructible life forms views like human life as a bit of a disease yes you can imagine that he's probably going to access some nuclear codes among other things yeah as well as lifting a city above your... I'm sure there's some crazy shit that you can buy on the dark web. It's very true. Ultron's interesting though because he

represents the next step in a long history of a kind of evil cyborg. And I feel like there is... I think the quintessential is probably HAL 9000 from 2001 A Space Odyssey. But as we get into the 70s and 80s, we start to experience a significantly more violent kind of cyborg. We get certainly the total recalls of the world,

but more specifically Skynet and the Terminator and T2. And it's an interesting kind of villain. I will say personally, I can fear that villain, but it doesn't feel the emotional stakes are never high enough for me because it's not flesh you know the lack of flesh for whatever reason I'm a little bit confused as to why Ultron is so evil is it just because Tony Stark has a level

of insecurity that breeds that kind of intelligence if you're a crew he was created for the express purpose of save humanity from itself. And when he first flickers on in the lab or whatever and he's interfacing with Jarvis and he just starts accessing everything.

Ultra. In the flesh. Or no, not yet. Not this Christmas. But I'm ready. I'm on mission. What mission? Peace in our time.

So there's this cartoon called Yu Yu Hakusho, and there's this, in the show, there is this thing called the black tape, which is basically all of the atrocities committed by man over the course of history on a single tape. And basically if you watch like five minutes of it, you become evil because it's just kind of like humans are bad. We need to kill all of them.

So in a, in essence, that's basically what happens in the lab with Jarvis is that you see them going through like all these uh black and white VHSs of you know um death camps and you know public executions and you know tanks rolling over civilians you know like and he's just kind of like wow this is awful and you're meant to think that like in the court in the span of basically two minutes, he's like, no, I've decided that I need to kill all the humans.

What do you think about a superhero movie that needs to affirm for us that humanity is good? I found that to be a fascinating subtext of this movie. And it specifically comes to light near the end when you have this final sort of confrontation between the vision and Ultron and we'll talk about vision as well a little bit here but there is a sort of good overwhelming evil finality to that but also one that indicates you know humans are destined to fail but ultimately they are striving towards a greater good and I find that to be such a weird theme of so many superhero movies, you know, that humans are worth saving. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, like it's because if you introduce a character that can shoot beams from his forehead and also fly and, you know, leap tall buildings in a single bound, what is it that keeps that person from doing terrible things? Like it has buildings in a single bound, what is it that keeps that person from doing terrible things? Like it has to be a faith in, I guess, like ostensibly lesser beings

because otherwise it's just like, you know, an ant doesn't have a quarrel with like a boot doesn't have a quarrel with an ant, but you step on it anyway. It's true. This is sort of the core conflict, I think, between Professor X and Magneto in the X-Men series, you know, sort of like, are we greater than and thus should we rule? Or are we all meant to live harmoniously?

Ultron is obviously ultimately even more savage. And they all have subtext in World War history. Yeah. Magneto in World War II and Nazis and Ultron and getting a good look up front. You know, he only really analyzes like 100 years of american history yeah he's not really looking at like asia in the 1400s you know where there's like an incredible intense

amount of violence or the roman empire or through all through history the sort of you could make the case that we have evolved somewhat over that time but he only seems to be looking at sort of the steve rogers highlight reel yeah uh But there's something fascinating about these movies feeling the need to make us feel better about the persistence of our survival. I can't really wrap my head around why that needs to be so meaningful. Maybe that just builds expectation around where Thanos is going with his story later on. Well, yeah. I mean, I guess that is true because if you're also thinking about just his quote

unquote simple calculus is just kind of like some people deserve to live and some people don't. And it does not like, and I'm going to pick at random so that this seems fair, but it's not like, if you think about like during infinity war, where, where vision is just like, you know, one life can't stand in between saving billions of people and not, or whatever, or saving half of the universe and not literally.

And Captain America is like, but it should. And it's just kind of like, well, actually, you know, if y'all just would have handled this, it might not have even this, the last hour of the movie doesn't need to happen. Yeah. It's something that is,

it precomes pretty clear when you think about the infinity gems throughout this series is just how badly mishandled all of them are. Like the whole, every movie is about the quest to either get to the bottom of what is causing a huge problem or acquire one of these gems and then protect it. And inevitably, this movie, you know, we come across Loki's scepter very early on in the movie. That scepter is powered by the Mind Stone. The Mind Stone is what informs Ultron, and then the Mind Stone is ultimately what creates Vision.

And Vision is really the only stone throughout the rest of this series. You know, he possesses the only stone that is really protected in any meaningful way. All of the other stones, it seems like it's pretty easy for Thanos to get his hands on. Yeah. And one of the things that I like about the movie is also something that I find frustrating about the movie, which is that, you know, we talk about the Stingers in these movies on this show, and the Stinger is a very famous one. We get a glimpse right after the first round of credits of Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet.

And he slips his hand into the gauntlet. And there are no gems in the gauntlet. He says, fine, I'll do it myself. Fine. I'll do it myself. Yeah. And if he could do it himself... He's a lighter shade of purple.

He is. They've slightly changed his design over time but I just don't understand it makes the rest of these movies feel like throat clearing and that's something that I struggle with a little bit part of what I liked about Guardians of the Galaxy was I liked just experiencing new figures and learning about a team that we didn't really understand this is a movie that ultimately

when you get to the end of it, I kind of just felt a little betrayed. Like that was a little bit of a waste of time. You know, when you're, when you've got a story that is mapping an end game in this way and it doesn't, it's odd because it doesn't feel this way to me reading comic books. And I wonder if you feel differently, but sometimes when I'm reading, say a special run of a comic book, I know, I know we're going somewhere. I know there's going to be a conclusion. We're going to reach episode or, you to reach edition six and it'll be done. But in a movie like this, maybe it's just because of the huge gap of time.

You come to the end of a story like Ultron and you're like, well, all these Sokovians died. That city's destroyed forever. The Avengers are scattering and now Thanos is coming. And Thanos is going to do something that Ronan,

the accuser couldn't do that. Red skull couldn't do that. All of these figures that the, the, uh, you know, the, all the figures in Thor,

the dark world and the ether couldn't do. Um, and you just realize that we've been just driving towards this one Uber powerful being just being like, fuck it. I got this like hero ball. Like, like Thanos is Russell Westbrook is what I'm saying. Like, wow. Um, I know that you're only saying that because you want to fight, but, um, you know, I'm, I'm going to be, I'm going to be

reasonable here and say that I also agree with the fact that like, this does begin to feel a little bit like throat clearing but I mean it's really just in that is on you know basically where you place the emphasis I mean like if you're reading a comic book and if I'm reading if I'm reading east of west and I get to the end of a collective volume I'm just like where is the next one like it's like that's it's a very real like feeling to have but then the next one comes out in a month which is a little different than what we get here yeah yeah yeah i mean like yeah but also they were teasing thanos in 2008 like so i mean this is where it was going and i mean like, he kind of is just on the order of what you can get away with putting on a movie screen. Because I mean, honestly, the end of the Infinity War saga

in the comic books is supposed to involve the Celestials. I have no idea how you would make that work on screen and not have it be ridiculous. They're pushing the limits in terms of what's legible. Yeah. But at the same time

it's just kind of like you need, like they would not have been able to make a movie like Infinity War in 2008 even if they had the story up to that point.

Like, and I feel like it's just a bit like the next cube that with Steve Jobs is just like, I don't have anything that can actually

make this run yet, but like it looks cool, doesn't it? Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like there is a tension among different options. What's the difference really

between a teaser, a cliffhanger, and a taunt? And rewatching this, I felt a little bit taunted. I felt a little bit like, yeah, well,

sorry about the last seven movies that we made. Now the real shit's going to start to happen yeah i mean but also like if you think about captain marvel was fun you know but like it again it felt like a two and a half hour cut scene because i knew that this is like you know that this is just so that you can get the the thing after the credit i do agree with you on that point and and this in some cases it's just that like I wasn't thinking about that when Ultron came out. It's like now, but now a couple of years later,

where I have been thinking and writing and doing stuff about them, you know, that kind of poisons your sense of accepting this as we're trying to recreate the experience of a comic book on screen. I think this is the thing that makes people a little bit fatalistic about some of these movies at times. In March of 2013, Whedon said that he looked to The Empire Strikes Back and The Godfather Part II as inspirations, which I think are interesting choices. The Empire Strikes Back, of course, is famously a downer ending. You know, Han is locked in carboniteite and we feel like the fate of the Jedi

is completely screwed. Luke Skywalker has just learned that his father is Darth Vader and there's something crushing at the end of that movie. And yet we know ultimately by the time we get to the Return of the Jedi, things are probably going to work out in some form or fashion. People are going to die. There's going to be some battles, but things are going to work out. The Godfather 2, I don't think anybody got to the end of The Godfather 2 and was like, where's The Godfather 3 at? Isn't that just like the one where the clock is chiming and everybody's dead? There is like a consequential montage in which many people are killed while a child is being

christened. The thing is... Oh, it was church bells. Yes. Okay. That's the sound I was trying to remember. Yes. I think that there's just something very complicated

about expectation building and what is conclusion. I thought about this a lot in relation to Endgame while I was watching this movie because Endgame is meant to be the literal conclusion of phase three. So this 11-year journey that Marvel has created for viewers is wrapping up. And as you say, if the introduction of the Celestials means this becomes a super intergalactic story going forward

and Marvel goes pure sci-fi, you know, I guess I wouldn't be shocked, but I would be surprised. Yeah. I'm just waiting on them to do Secret Wars. That is going to be the most insane shit ever. I think that they are going to do that. And I wonder if that's where it goes next.

But maybe we can wait for a post-Endgame pod to talk about that. Yeah. Let's take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Philo. Say goodbye to expensive TV bills and horrible customer service with Philo. Philo is the cheapest way to watch over 50 of your favorite channels like the Discovery Channel, Science Channel, Hallmark, VH1, MTV. Catch the biggest shows like The Walking Dead, Live PD, Spongebob,

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So to start that free trial, visit philo.tv backslash big picture. That's philo.tv backslash big picture. Let's talk a little bit about the new Avengers introduced into this movie. So we meet Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch early on. let's talk a little bit about the, the new Avengers introduced into this movie. Um, so we meet Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch early on. They're introduced as heavies at first. Uh, they are essentially survivors of,

of a war torn Russia. And they have a grudge to bear against Tony Stark, who taunted their family with the unexploded bomb that sat in their home for many days. The story that Quicksilver tells to Ultron to explicate, I guess, their motivations. Or does he tell it to Ulysses Klaw, actually? I'm pretty sure he says that to Ultron. Okay.

Yeah. And then, of course, there's Vision. So, you know, what do you think about, as a reader and a fan of these comic books, like the interpretations of these characters into this new story? I mean, Pietro is supposed to be, be like is not one of the more interesting characters that i've read um so i mean like i didn't really care that they changed the character and that they introduced

them in this way but it was just it's it's very telegraphing like we are now starting to think about the fallout of you know us kicking ass in large you know like metropolitan areas there's definitely some collateral damage and quicksilver is in the movie specifically to lead us towards that like uh to have us think about it in that way you know i'm saying And this is another thing that continues on for the next couple of films where they're just kind of like, you know,

this is, some of this is our fault. I don't think I needed to see him for another movie. So, you know, like. Good news, you don't have to. Yeah, I don't have to.

But yeah, I mean, I don't really, I mean, what did you think about the way that they introduced the character? It's okay.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of hard to have an opinion about it, right? because you know that it's specifically for this thing and he becomes he does that job and it's over and like you he also got his own pair of running shoes that came out alongside the movie is that true yeah they were like some under maybe they're i can't remember their ideas are under but whichever the ones are that he puts on right before they, you know,

go out for the last hurrah in Sokovia. Once they've become good. Yeah, once they've become good. Yeah, I think Quicksilver's okay. Quicksilver's confusing

because he's also a character in the X-Men universe, which is produced by Fox, and so you've got these concurrent characters living side by side in some ways.

I'm curious to see how they reconcile that, if at all, once Fox essentially brings the X-Men universe into the Disney Marvel universe. Yeah. I think Aaron Taylor-Johnson is perfectly fine. I think that both of the accents that Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen bring to this movie... Everybody's afraid of something. You didn't see that coming? Leave me a little bit wanting.

I'm slightly confused. I find it to be highly notable that Elizabeth Olsen's character no longer has a Russian accent. It's just very funny that they're just like, just pour on the Zs, you know? Just don't even think about like any kind of specific locale

that you're trying to be from just be vaguely russian it's just so boris and natasha from rocky and bullwinkle you know just like what are you doing yeah exactly having powers i just cannot believe that anybody they sound like nico from grand theft auto 4 that's what he sounds like it's all it's all very transylvanian in a way you know there's a little bit of i've come to suck your blood and that's fine it's okay I don't I find

Elizabeth Olsen to be a strong enough actress she has a similar problem her character has a similar problem to Captain Marvel and it's interesting

and she's very much like Dark Phoenix and Jean Grey in this way and it's interesting that all three of those characters are female in that they're too powerful they're too powerful for their own world Dark Phoenix and Jean Grey in this way. And it's interesting that all three of those characters are female.

And that they're too powerful. They're too powerful for their own world. And it's almost like men don't understand women. And they tend to give them powers that they're like, you are elusive to me and you can change everything with one hand motion. You know what I mean? And it's just like you have no idea exactly

how powerful these characters are. And it's just, it almost feels kind of condescending in a way like it's just like definitely does i'm just like yo man like scarlet witch can both get inside your mind and destroy a city with lasers so she's pretty powerful captain marvel is has literally the power of a supernova and can fly at light speed. And you'd have to spend the entire movie just being like, all right, when is she going to realize some stuff about herself? Right. And, and, and that is Scarlet Witch too. You know, Scarlet Witch starts out as this very aggrieved, frustrated, angry, evil force. She gets this, you know, I think one of the best scenes in the movie is when she's cowering during the major

battle sequence in Sokovia, and she and Hawkeye find their way inside of this decrepit building, and they have a little chat. Hawkeye's finest moment. Look, I just need to know, because the city is flying. Okay, look, the city is flying. We're fighting an army of robots. And I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense.

It might be. It is an extraordinarily meta conversation. Let's listen to that conversation. Stay in here, you're good. I'll send your brother to come find you. But if you step out that door, you are an Avenger. So I love the idea of Hawkeye acknowledging

that he just has a bow and arrow. That's just great stuff. It's great. He's just like, yeah, you that he just has a bow and arrow. That's just great stuff. It's great. He's just like, yeah, you know, I got a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense. So it's kind of unfortunate that Hawkeye needs to put a battery in Wanda's back. You know, they need the man to inspire the woman to get her shit together to be an incredibly dominant force on the playing field.

But nevertheless, he does that and he does it. Interestingly, I want to talk about this because I want to talk about Hawkeye. Hawkeye in the first movie, Jeremy Renner, I don't think really gets his due because within five minutes, he immediately becomes one of Loki's soldiers thanks to this same mind stone.

He was in the first Thor movie. That's true. He was in the first Thor movie. He was just like, you know, he was trying to go back into the black site to get his hammer. And he was just like, I got to he was trying to go back into the black site to get his hammer and he was just like, I gotta tell you,

I'm starting to root for this guy. Like, he's always had that sort of like, campy, like, you know,

I'm the lunch pail guy. I hustle. That's my job. Yes, which I find to be broadly a massive diss to Jeremy Renner, the actor,

but specifically very funny in these movies. We also get a lot of Hawkeye's home life we go to that that farm in upstate new york as you mentioned and tony stark the captain america literally chop wood chopping wood earth's mightiest heroes pulled us apart like cotton candy seems like you walked away all right is that a problem i don't trust a guy without a dark side. Showing off their masculinity.

And we meet Linda Cardellini's character, who is Hawkeye's girlfriend, who is a mother and who is pregnant. And we get a domesticated view of an Avenger. That to me is classic Joss Whedon. That is the humanity inside of these superheroic figures. That is deconstructionist. That is people talking about, you know, I've, I support your avenging. You know, there, there are a lot of great moments for Linda Cardellini in that sequence that make her a little bit of the, like, um, she's, they do a good job of not making her a nagging force. You know what I mean?

She's just like, you know, but, um, uh, Captain America can, you know, like run at 50 miles an hour and can lift 800 pounds. And like, you know, Thor is a literal God and you have a bow and arrow. I just want to be sure that you know what you're getting yourself into is all. Yes, this series lives to undermine Jeremy Renner. And there's something very funny about that farmhouse sequence. In researching the movie, I learned that Disney and some executives really didn't like this part of the movie, which I find strange because I think that these are the scenes, you know, both that party sequence in the beginning before Ultron appears in robot form and also the farmhouse sequence are really the things that stick with me the most. These are the most fun scenes in the movie. They feature the best dialogue. They feature our heroes interacting in a way that doesn't feature punching and kicking.

There is character building going on here, which is sort of what distinguishes, I think, these movies from, I don't know, maybe you're fast and furious kind of a movie. You're sort of like standard operating procedure, super violent, very fun but sort of frivolous action movie. You can say that there's something a little bit deeper going on in Marvel because we're getting to know people who just happen to have superpowers. What do you think about the way that these movies balance these emotional, humanistic moments

with a lot of humor against major violent set pieces? I think that that's a part that like, that's where Marvel succeeds and DC doesn't really. It's just kind of like, even the private moments in DC are gravely serious for the most part, or they were in the Snyderverse. But like, this is- That's starting to change. Yeah, that is starting to change with Shazam,

which was like incredible. And like, yeah, but anyway, uh, back to your point about how these scenes are set up. Yeah. Those are like really enjoyable. Those are the ones that you remember. But like, I remember more about the scene at Hawkeye's house and the party than I do about them being on, uh, the big tanker ship or, you know or the big set piece battle at the end of it except for a few lines where Captain America's just like,

if you get hurt, hurt him back. If you get killed, walk it off or whatever. And then also in the tanker scene where Thor's just like, the witch tried to distort my mind, but fortunately I am mighty. Yeah, this is also, I think, the movie where Thor starts to become

a bit of a meta-commentary character as well. In that party sequence that we're talking about, there's, of course, that great moment where each of the Avengers tries to lift Thor's hammer. Can you pronounce Thor's hammer's name? Mjolnir. Oh, nice. I don't know if I ever learned that.

So they all, I don't think any character says that. Nobody really says it out there. They, like me, are afraid to say that word. But they all try to lift it. No one, of course, can lift it. Captain America gets a little real. Wait, they actually, they didn't start calling the Hammer by its name

until it had an easier name. Because it was, What did it used to be? Well, no, it was Mjolnir. It's been Mjolnir through all the movies, but then in Infinity War, when he finally gets the new one, there's just Stormbreaker

is something that everybody understands. Yes. I mean, that's a good name. What does Mjolnir mean in Norse mythology? What does that stand for? Does it just mean hammer? I don't even know. Can you do the rest of this podcast

in Norse mythic language? Uh, no. Okay. No, is not in the Norse mythic language. Unfortunately, unfortunately I cannot.

That's too bad. Yeah. I don't know what Mjolnir means. I just know that it's like, it's supposed to, it has always been Thor's hammer throughout Norse mythology. And it's supposed to be quote unquote, capable of splitting mountains. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. I think that objects are such a huge part of this. You know, we've already talked about the scepter and the infinity gems and Mjolnir. Did I do that correctly? Close enough. And we talked about Ultron and his design. There's something about the way that things fit together that is important on the downside of this.

And I felt this when, when Chris and I talked about the first Avengers movie is every single one of these major tentpole Avengers movies need some sort of battle against thousands of something. So thousands of Chitauri, which is not a, an alien race we know anything about really. And then there are thousands of Iron

Men cyborg characters built and designed, I guess by Ultron that keep cropping up out of nowhere. And likewise in Infinity War we have this battle on Wakanda with all these like dog men animal werewolves. They're called Reavers. Reavers. Yeah. But I mean like

at least that's what they're called in the comic books. That sounds right. These movies are so sophisticated in a lot of ways Not just the Sort of depth And the broad Aspect of the storytelling But some of the humanity

That they introduce The incredible world building I sometimes find myself Dismayed when They just turn into A lot of robots Fighting a lot of guys In front of a green screen

At this stage of things How do you feel about That kind of a big top action set piece because i want to use this as an opportunity to talk about what's good about the action in this movie um at this point i it just kind of you like when you know when the set piece is coming you're just kind of like oh here we go again versus like there being say at the end of civil war like killing off all of the all of the other winter soldiers as a choice and i like the the three like the the three people just working out their differences with their fists and in a closed space like i like that more than i like you know the we are doing we're wiping off wave and wave and wave after

wave after wave after wave of whatever these things are. Like, it's just kind of, I can't follow all of that in my head. Yeah, I feel similarly. And I think the best action sequence, maybe the best action sequence in all the Avengers movies, I'm open-minded about this, is Hulk versus the Hulkbuster. You listening, man? That little witch is messing with your mind. You're stronger than her. You're smarter than her. You're Bruce Banner.

Right, right, right. Don't mention puny Banner. I think the reason that it works is because we're invested in the two people that are punching each other. Yeah. And there's a little bit of cool, creative, comic book-y design in the Tony Stark Hulkbuster, which eventually comes back in Infinity War. And, you know, I think they've done a good job setting up who Hulk is and why he is the way that he is

and why they're fighting each other. But you really need creatures you know, figures you know, doing this to each other in order to really get invested. And I guess that there is a contingent of the population. A lot of fans are just like, to each other in order to really get invested. And I guess that there is a contingent of the population.

A lot of fans are just like, show me Thor and Hulk and Iron Man and Captain America and Vision and Scarlet Witch and all of these guys fighting all at once. You know, there is something kind of funny about that twofold page in the comic book that comes right where the staple is. And you're like, oh, wow, this is what it's like when they all they take on the brood and next yeah i mean like it's basically like i i like to see that on a comic book page where it's like across the fold in um the infinity comic i think was written by john hickman in 2013 i can't remember if it was exactly that maybe that was just the collected edition but anyway um when like sanos's forces show up in wakanda it's like there is across the across the staple it is black panther leading the front line against cole obsidian which is like the big

guy with the horns on his head in in infinity war i don't think they ever say his name they don't okay i'm more of an ebony moss stan as our producer bobby knows um and he's leading like you know a bunch of like the outriders i said reavers earlier it's they're actually called outriders i forgot but it's just kind of like you know i like to see that on a page i did in the movie it just seems kind of like it's too busy. Yeah. You don't really get a sense of what it is that you're looking at. Yeah. I think that there are levels to it. In Thor Ragnarok, when you see Thor crashing down as the Led Zeppelin song kicks in and he rides the rainbow trail to battle whatever those creatures are. It's manageable. It's intellectually manageable.

But too often, I feel like these movies get into a space where they need to create this enormous scale. And so that enormous scale tends to, I don't know, I feel like it holds back where these movies are going. Let's pull back a little bit. We've talked about a lot of details of these movies. What do you think this movie actually means to the story of the MCU?

What do you think it qualitatively represents? I really do think that the point of Ultron is to introduce more of the stuff about these are the larger themes we want these movies to be about. We want to address fallout from these huge set piece battles that we have. We also want to ground the way that these characters move throughout the world with something more than a random congressional hearing,

like in this Batman versus versus superman universe or whatever like we want to be able to make this feel more like it's happening somewhere in the world at the moment versus this just being like like let's destroy all of new york and then go out for for for ke. Shawarma. Yeah, that. That too. Well, what about for you personally? Tell me where you were in your life and how you covered this movie. Where was I in my life? I was working at USA Today.

I was just saying yes to everything. Not like now. I ended up going to the press junket. Describe what those are like. Describe what the press junkets are like? Yeah. I mean, like, okay. I don't think most people know.

I mean, like, you go into the Disney lot and you wander around and go to, like, three wrong buildings before you end up at wherever the screening is supposed to be. And then there's like, you'll watch the movie with a bunch of other journalists. And then at the end, there will be a large Q&A session led by a moderator. They're like all the people sitting at the table. Basically the videos that you see from Comic-Con, it's that in front of the screen. And then after that, they will each go to one room

in this one building, and then they'll just cycle journalists through those rooms so you can ask your questions of whomever. I think I got to talk to Joss Whedon, Mark Ruffalo. I got five seconds with Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen. Why just five seconds? Did you offend them in some way? No, because it wasn't part of the interview process.

I happened to be riding an elevator with them. That was a lot. That's sad. What kind of questions are you bringing to interviews like that? The questions that you're bringing into the event are general ones that you think about for a while, like a couple days leading up to it, but you don't really write them down. But you have some in the back of your head, and then as you watch the movie, you have more questions that you want to ask the actors that you actually get to talk to and then you

also have some other stuff where you're just kind of like this would make good content if i if i asked joss whedon about his favorite comic books and you know like who is his favorite authors we talked about watchmen for like 10 minutes the rest of the stuff is just kind of yeah i mean like it's you you you have a couple of questions that you go into like maybe three or four that you're going to ask everybody and then you have more questions that you get at from watching the movie outside of that you just see where the conversation goes were you pleased with the material you received from the cast and crew of avengers age of ultron i honestly cannot remember what I did or did not get.

I don't even remember what it was that I wrote after it. But it was, I guess I was pleased for like, just because of the interactions I was having, like Mark Ruffalo is, he was just so psyched to be talking about being in an Avengers movie. Like about how much time he actually gets to spend on screen versus how much he's in CGI,

like talking about being in mo-cap suits and stuff. He's also wearing a wood bead necklace, which I thought was just like, he's just such like a, he's just so cool dad. He's just wearing a wood bead necklace, which I thought was just like, he's just such like a, he's just so cool dad. He's just a chill dad. That's exactly what I was thinking. He's a chill dad. There's a great moment in that featurette I was mentioning earlier about the making of this movie where Ruffalo is geeking out because he gets to act in a mocap suit opposite James Spader in a mocap suit. And he's like, I feel like I tricked the

world into letting me do this and I was like that looks terrible he's so it's just yeah it was like that he's just got a great spirit about him he's a very happy fellow it really improved my day oh that's nice what else

anything else that comes out of an event like so and then you go back and you have to write five different pieces with five different angles about five different junket moments. Basically. It's kind of like you are going to a junket to just see what you can get. It's not like you are going there with a fixed plan about what it is. You're just like, I'm going to see this thing and talk to some people and talk to as many people as I can,

and hopefully something interesting comes out of it. Does that experience make you appreciate the movie more, less neutral? Kind of a neutral thing. It's the thing that I've was like, it felt separate from the movie because this was like one of the first times that I had done anything like this. So it's kind of like,

it doesn't really change. It didn't change my experience in the movie at all. It was a thing that was separate from that. I mean, I guess after seeing it a second time

in an actual theater, I was just like, oh, I talked to this person, you know, that was a novel thing that I, like a thing

that I hadn't experienced before, but it's not like it really changes anything Michael we already talked about the stinger in this movie but I do want to use these final moments

to hear from you about what you actually want out of these movies at this stage because as I said at the end of Ultron we see

we're set on our final course sure you know phase 3 is essentially coming Thanos is going to be appearing in our lives more frequently I suspect he will be a figure of some consequence in Avengers Endgame. Where do you want that movie and the rest of these kinds of movies to go, especially as you age in your own life and you think about the time you spent engaging with all of this?

Are you talking about what I want from Endgame? Are you talking about what I want from superhero movies in general? Because what I want from Endgame is that I want to see the conclusion just like everybody else. It's not like I'm thinking I have these expectations for the movie because I know at this point you're getting what you're getting there's there's no like I I don't necessarily have any hand-wringing about you know like what I want this movie to be because I mean like the course is set if we're talking about what I would like out of superhero movies in general from from uh from now that like I want a superman movie that is like nine like 85 percent like clark kent and then like 15 superman why do you want that i don't know it just feels like there's this

there's this one comic there's this one comic and i cannot remember who wrote it or even what it's titled but it deals with like the like superman realizing that he has power like it's like he realizes that he has powers like later on in life like in his 30s and it's just kind of like what the fuck is going on with me and he can't leave his apartment and it's just kind of like what would it feel like to be a person that walks around in a in a world made of cardboard. There's something interesting about it. I don't know exactly how long. I don't know how you would make that work even, but it seems like the only way that you can actually make the Superman character interesting.

That's fascinating. I mean, there's a movie coming out in May that I mentioned on the last episode called Brightburn. It was produced by James Gunn. It is sort of an inversion of that. It's a superhero origin story about a young boy who realizes he has superpowers, but rather than become an avenging angel, he becomes a devil. And it's sort of Rosemary's baby superhero. And I'm fascinated by the idea of subverting the expectations of these kinds of movies. Yeah. but in terms of the bigger marquee stuff,

like this is, we were doing this, we've been plugging away at this for 15 years or whatever. I just want a good conclusion to the story. And down the line again, I would like to see Secret Wars. I'd like somebody to make that happen. But yeah, I mean, in terms of what I want from superhero movies down the line, some version of tropes and the weirder stuff, get more independent comics to make movies.

Make a sex criminals movie. Make an East of West. I guess get outside of like the bigger like action figure stuff yeah I mean like it's like I would like weirder in the future I guess I don't think I can guarantee that

in next week's episode of this show we're going to be talking about a movie that I think is actually quite the opposite of that it's Spider-Man Homecoming going to be having that chat with Adam Neiman I think that part of the opposite of that. It's Spider-Man Homecoming. Going to be having that chat with Adam Neiman. I think that part of the charm of that movie is that it scales back and it gets a little more groundbound, except for when Spider-Man is skyward.

And those are also great. That's the thing. There's a tension. Sometimes just leveling down actually can be very powerful. Yes, the same thing with Shazam is that the biggest stakes are internal. It's just kind of like, how do I forgive this person in my life for the thing that they did to me?

And how does that translate to me being able to be a superhero and a complete human being? Those are also interesting stories. I enjoy those a lot. I agree. Micah, this has been a fitting conclusion, at least to this podcast, if not to Endgame. Thank you for doing this. Of course.

Thanks again to Micah Peters for coming on the show today. Please tune into The Big Picture later this week. We'll have an interview with a very famous actor. Check that out on Friday. And this week's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by NHTSA. Here's good news. The number of collisions involving a train at a railway crossing is down 83% from its peak in the 1970s. Here's the bad news. There's still more than 2,000 incidents a year. Stop. Trains can't. Today's episode of The Big Picture is also brought to you by Philo. Philo has over 50 of your favorite channels like Discovery, Science Channel, Hallmark, Lifetime, History, Nickelodeon. Enjoy live on-demand TV plus unlimited recording for only $20 a month with no contract needed.

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