There are no strings on me

Yay I was so keen to finally have a Saturday off work because of ANZAC day, so I was super super keen to watch Avengers: Age of Ultron! After my review, I also talk about all the trailers that have been getting released lately!

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

8.4/10 on IMDb
80% on Rotten Tomatoes
Set after last year's Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron focuses on the creation and terror of Ultron. Ultron, in this film, is a sentient software (kind of like Jarvis) uploaded in to a robot designed to be a protector of the world. He is created by Tony Stark in the hopes of retiring the Avengers team (with a super and omnipresent protector of Earth, why need the Avengers any more?). And yet, as we all know and have seen before, artificial intelligence isn't something to be taken lightly. When wanting to create peace, humans may instead create destruction. And so this film delves into the chaos that Ultron brings, and the effects this has on the Avengers, each battling their own internal issues, as well as needing to battle the opposing perspectives of their team mates.

The film opens up right smack bang in the middle of an action-packed crazy mission, with a great tracking sequence (one of many) that makes us know we're in for a treat.

Indeed, the action sequences were pretty amazing in this movie, and that first scene was a great indicator of the rest of the film. Throughot the film's course, you've got great shots of them working as a well-established team, and we have all seen from the first Avengers how long it took them to actually establish that trust and rapport with each other.

However, this film tries to rip apart whatever good it's done in the first Avengers, with the characters being exposed to some of their worst internal demons and fears, and, as I said before, struggling with the dynamics of the team itself. If you look at it, you've got quite a lot of variety of characters, in terms of both backgrounds, ideals, and personalities. Sure, they've all established that teamwork and trust, but with such opposing ideals there's no way that tension will remain submerged. No doubt this film is setting us up for the next Captain America film, Civil War (which I don't know too much about, but I think I know enough to see that this film has done a good job in trying to introduce the conflicting personalities of the team).

Because of these internal demons spilling forth, this film becomes quite a deep and dark film. It also has a lot more character development for some of the team's members. We've seen a lot of Iron Man, we've seen Captain America and Thor before, and I guess you can say we've seen a bit of Hulk (even though... not really?), but what's Black Widow's story? Or even Hawkeye? Do people even care about him anymore?

And yet, this film's writer/director Joss Whedon shows that hey, this film can still be good even if it goes into Hawkeye's character more.

YEP, this film does the impossible: it makes us actually care about our least favourite bow-and-arrow hero.

While I will say that some parts of his development were kind of pushing it for me in terms of the dialogue being not that great, and it's slow-paced section of the film contrasting heavily to the fast-paced scenes we were just exposed to, it was still a good way of making us understand more of Hawkeye and his personal life (although Hawkeye isn't completely to blame for this slow period; Thor goes on a side mission for literally like two seconds).

It also went a bit more into Black Widow's background, which was really good because I'd love to see a Black Widow standalone movie and see a bit more of how she was trained, but seeing as we won't get that, this is probably the closest we'll get to seeing Black Widow's background, so it still pleased me.

Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff was still great in this film. I love badass women and I love Black Widow's fighting style (which is really similar to Mystique's). Whilst some don't like her romance with Hulk/Bruce Banner, I thought this film handled it well. I'm still trying to get over that massive plothole of how on earth the Hulk can just 'control' his rage (like how he focuses it on the enemies and not the team members), but if we just accept that huge loophole, then I liked the romance. I also liked the different dynamics that the two characters brought together. Sure, their chemistry wasn't the best, but maybe that's just because when you put Mark Ruffalo, who looks quite... well, rough... (see what I did there?), against the beauty that is Scarlett Johansson, the chemistry might seem a little bit off. But I did like this better than the weird flirting in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (maybe because Captain America and Black Widow are both good looking, arrogant and great fighters, whereas Hulk and Black Widow have really different personalities and perspectives). Also, the romance added to that internal struggle we see in all of the characters, where they have to ask themselves whether or not this romance is right, or even safe, for them.

Okay, I've spent a lot of time talking about our original Avengers cast, so let's move on to the other cast members and extra characters briefly. I liked Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Quicksilver (which was surprising because I did not like Godzilla at all, and I didn't really like the posters of him in the lead up to this film's release). Of course, I loved Evan Peters' Quicksiler in Days of Future Past, but this was still a good portrayal. Their Russian accents (or rather, Eastern European accents - but I still think they're Russian) slip at times and kind of makes their punch lines a bit cheesy, but I understand why they chose to include those accents in the film.

Andy Serkis plays a minor role, and it was definitely exciting to see him in person playing someone completely different to his normal self (and no I don't mean that his normal self is being the king of CGI characters, I mean his actual normal, human self).

As for Vision, I think that was a great add to the film. It made an already exciting film REALLY exciting and even just a little bit crazy.

Overall, I think this is definitely better than the first Avengers film, which I still liked and thought was pretty darn cool, but it just didn't have a convincing villain in Loki. Here, Ultron's evil motives, contrasted with the crazy awesome Vision, made him a great villain. The character development of Hawkeye and even a bit of Black Widow, together with the additions of the Maximoff twins, and the crazy awesome action sequences, makes this a worthy film to watch in theatres. However, I'm still trying to toss up between which is the better Marvel film: The Winter Soldier, or Age of Ultron. I think a second viewing would be needed to determine that though.

A few side notes:

My mum absolutely loved the Hulkbuster ("Veronica")

Thor claiming he's too strong to be influenced by Scarlet Witch

Nobody being worthy enough for Thor's hammer (until...)

Avengers... Assemble! (There, I said it)

Remember, there is NO end credits scene (they announced it a few weeks ago), but stay for the mid-credits scene, which occurs after the really cool shots of the marble-statue-like Avengers (which is really cool because it makes them look like gods). It's not even that great, but it's literally an extra two minutes worth of waiting time, so why not?


So now that that's done, I feel obligated to talk about all the trailers that have been released in the past week or so.

So there have been six movie trailers I've seen in the past week, which are: Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, Jurassic World, Terminator Genisys, Tomorrowland, Fantastic Four and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

By far the best was Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens. That last scene made me so happy and I let out an audible "ngawwwww". It seriously hit home on the nostalgia and I CAN'T WAIT to see it. The rest of the trailer was also pretty cool, especially the voice over on top of the montage near the beginning. All I can say is that I'm super keen, especially for BB8!


The next trailer I found super cool was Tomorrowland. Ever since the first teaser hit us I was so intrigued. Over time, the trailers have given us more and more information, but it's still keeping us in the dark on most of the plot and storyline, which is WHAT IT'S MEANT TO DO (yes, I'm glaring at you Terminator Genisys). The most recent trailer made me so super keen for this film, which is only coming out in about a month!!! I'm also keen because it'll be the first original 2015 film that I see. I haven't even seen that many 2015 movies but of the one's I've seen, Kingsman (which is technically a 2014 film) was based off a comic book, Cinderella off the fairytale classic and Insurgent was off the Divergent novels. Yeh, I haven't seen many films this year in cinemas, which is why I'm so keen for Tomorrowland (and I can't imagine why they didn't show this trailer in front of Avengers: Age of Ultron!!!).

Before you watch this trailer though, be sure to watch the first teaser trailer here!!


The trailer that is THE ABSOLUTE WORST for me is Terminator Genisys. This gave out WAY TOO MUCH. I'm not even going to put the trailer in here because I don't believe you should watch it. It spoils a major plot twist in the film, which makes me super angry. Of course, they might just be really clever and make it seem like it's a plot twist and that the film is heading into one direction while it actually swerves into another (kind of like the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, where you thought you knew where the movie was headed from the trailer, but the actual film turned out completely different), but I really don't think so. In short, if you want to watch Terminator Genisys, DON'T WATCH ANY OF THE TRAILERS. (Actually I was going to tell my family not to watch this trailer but then it appears before Avengers: Age of Ultron in theatres, so I was like wow they can't even avoid it)

The other trailers I will just gloss over. Jurassic World didn't seem to give much more information, but some people are saying it's giving away too much. I really don't see what they're giving away, because I thought it was covered in the previous trailer (just really quickly, and now they've expanded it). It does seem like they're just milking a good franchise with a popular actor, but hey, I'm still down to watch it.


Does nobody ever learn?

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was an alright trailer. Sure, some people are complaining that it's showing what we already know, but I mean, it's a film about Batman and Superman going up against each other; of course it needs to show that. And it's so far away, just give it a break. On one hand people say that trailers are giving away too much, then they look at this trailer and say it's not giving anything away. I think it's really hard to please people these days, but I thought this trailer was alright. They'll release more over time anyway.


I actually think this Batman voice is worse than Christian Bale's

The Fantastic Four trailer was also released. I'm still a bit unsure of the cast, because they seem too young, especially Sue Storm. However, I think this Fantastic Four trailer was only alright for me. It didn't excite me much but still looked decent.

April is a really slow month for movies...

Insurgent (2015)

7.0/10 on IMDB
31% on Rotten Romatoes
Insurgent continues shortly after the events of Divergent, as Tris, Four, Caleb and Peter, now wanted criminals, are on the run from Jeanine and her Dauntless army.

So as I stated before, the novels aren't spectacular, and even though Insurgent was (in my opinion) the best novel in the trilogy, I think this film fared much better than it's novel counterpart, and definitely heaps better than it's prequel, Divergent.

I think I stated in a previous post that in the trailer you could see how they changed quite a lot of features from what actually happened in the novels, probably to make it more dramatic and get it to translate better on screen.

The plot is much the same, but the way Veronica Roth writes makes the novels seem all over the place, as if she doesn't really have a clear goal set out for the novels except to show the readers what the other factions look like. In the first novel and film, we see Abnegation, a lot of Dauntless, and a little bit of Erudite. In this sequel, we see more of Amity and Candor, the remaining two factions.

However, apart from that, there's also something strange that Jeanine, the leader of Erudite, is hiding from the public. In the novel, it's just a simple video stored on a hard drive that is hard to access, but in the film, it's a very dramatic looking box. In order to open this box, we need a Divergent. But not just any Divergent, we need a Divergent that can pass through the tests of all five factions. And surprise surprise, it's Tris.

This added element of a box and needing to pass through tests certainly helped the film out. It provided more dramatic moments, it provided a clearer plot direction and it also provided an opportunity for intense sequences heavily laid with special effects.

The special effects from this film definitely make this film trump the first film of the series, and definitely make the movie worth the watch. There are more action sequences as a result, and this balances the slow and boring scenes that overwhelmed the first film.

The actors were alright in this film. Shailene Woodley is still pretty good here, and Miles Teller was good too. Unfortunately, the other characters didn't have much to contribute as they weren't designated many lines. They also introduced some more of the characters we get familiar with in the books, but they don't get given more than 5 lines each. Most of the film revolves around Tris and Four though, so I can understand why they chose not to include too much of the other characters.

One casting decision I was unsettled by was Naomi Watts playing Evelyn. I know she's 45 in real life, but the way her hair was done, and her make up, made her look super young. Also, the make up was way too dramatic for her character (who is meant to be essentially homeless), so that was quite a distraction.

Lastly, the directing was still a bit weird. The first film's directing was really slow and boring, and while this film was more action packed, there were some really weird moments. In one scene, the camera awkwardly like closed in quite quickly onto Tris' face and it was so weird, but it was one of those one-off moments where you can just bet the director thought, "Man this would look so cool", but it really wasn't. There was also a lot of unnecessarily dramatic moments were everything was in slow-mo, or scenes where the overall tone of the scene was just weirdly dramatic.

Overall, I think it was a good film for fans of the novel/series. It's definitely better than it's prequel, or even the novel. Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller and the action sequences make it worth the watch, giving it that rewatchability factor that Divergent lacked. But if you're not a fan of the series you can give this a skip.


Star Trek (2009)

8.0/10 on IMDB
95% on Rotten Tomatoes
Based off the popular TV show, Star Trek shows us the origins of James Kirk's captaincy of the Starship Enterprise. Being an origin film, we also get to look at some of the backgrounds of the other main characters too, particularly Spock and Bones. We get a bit of Uhura, Sulu and Scott too, as the film attempts to provide some back story for the formation of our favourite Starfleet group.

To be honest, I can't remember much of the actual plot, as I watched this some time ago. The most notable thing was the back stories of all the characters, which was pretty fun.

I've watched a few episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, so whilst I don't know everything, I'm still slightly familiar with the main crew of the Enterprise. My brother's been getting into it in the last year or so, and he's been writing down all the good episodes for me to watch after (because, let's face it, some of those episodes are really really weird)!

Because I didn't watch the Original Series from the start, I didn't know too much about Captain Kirk's background, or if they even introduced one, so it was pretty interesting seeing this film's take on Kirk starting off as a rebellious kid and adult, always getting into trouble and quite literally being very close to the brink of death. He constantly breaks the invisible rules that society abides by, and he is consistently the smart-arse in the group. Because of this, Chris Pine is pretty great as this version of Kirk, and his dashing good looks don't harm the film either.

Yet, this spin on Kirk's character was not enough for the filmmakers. Nope, they had to put a spin on Uhura and Spock's characters, and that was straight up weird. I love Zoe Saldana though, and Zachary Quinto was really great as Spock here, so I'll let it slide. Honestly, the make up was perfect for him, and he really did look just like a younger version of young Leonard Nimoy's Spock. I also enjoyed the personal background they gave Spock, continuing to show how Spock, despite always saying that he has no emotions, still actually is a very emotional, and human, being.

Also funny was them making some good references to the original series. I watched it a while back so I can't really remember all of them anymore, but I remember them referencing Sulu's fencing abilities, which was quite a funny nod to one particular episode.

Overall, I think it was quite an interesting take on Star Trek's Original Series, which is quite different. In the Original Series, the action is extremely crude and unrefined (on the rare occasion where action actually exists), and some of the episodes have really weird plotlines that not intense at all (in fact, quite a few of the episodes are a bit laughable or cringeworthy).

So in the end I think it is a good film to watch. I think people who were really hardcore Trekkies liked it, but if you weren't much of a fan, or if you had no idea what Star Trek even was going in, it's still very enjoyable as it caters for both fans and non-fans.

On a side note, can I just say how revolutionary Star Trek: The Original Series was? Like, it had in it's main cast, an Asian actor (George Takei as Sulu) and a black woman (Nichelle Nichols as Uhura). Obviously I wasn't alive back then, but I'm pretty sure not a lot of movies or TV shows had such diversity in their main cast. I think I read somewhere that when Whoopi Goldberg saw a black woman in the main cast on a TV show, she realised that there was that potential for her to make it big as an actress too.


Star Trek Into Darkness 2013

7.8/10 on IMDb
87% on Rotten Tomatoes
So my family actually watched the original Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) film before watching this film so we could understand what this film was alluding to. Unfortunately, I really did not like The Wrath of Khan. It was quite slow and boring. While I remembered the episode with Khan in the Original Series, and while they did elaborate on his character in this film, for some reason it wasn't that enjoyable for me, despite it being highly acclaimed.

However, since Hollywood is Hollywood, they made the plot to Star Trek Into Darkness more action packed and enjoyable. It was actually quite enjoyable, but obviously some moments were too unrealistic.

Benedict Cumberbatch was Khan this time around, and he was a great actor in this, but he just looked nothing like Khan; so much so that it was quite distracting. In the original film, Khan was like this native American guy who dressed like he was a tribal leader. Here, Benedict Cumberbatch looks like he just got out of the Matrix or something.

It was also weird how they changed the ending from the original.

~SPOILER on the Wrath of Khan ending!~

In The Wrath of Khan, Spock dies because of the radiation he is exposed to when saving the rest of the crew

I understand how they wanted it to be evident that, since there was an element of time travel in here, things from the original timeline would change, but I dunno... it was just weird. They added something after that bit anyway so they could have just kept it the same, and that so called "plot twist" just became really unnecessary.

~SPOILERS on Into Darkness ending!~

What I mean is that they just add the part about how Khan's blood can save Kirk, so why didn't they just keep it to Spock being the one that was exposed to the radiation?

So I still think this film was good, but Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan was pretty distracting, and the bit at the end threw me off a lot, so much so that those two were two of the few things I remembered from the film.