Marvel successfully got fans on Twitter to do its bidding today, encouraging them to tweet using the hashtag #AvengersAssemble to “unlock” a new Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer that, presumably, could have also been unlocked by just waiting another day or so. But fans responded, as anyone could have expected them to, and so Marvel was obliged to release the trailer from whatever tower, dungeon or sharedrive in which they’d had it imprisoned.
It’s nothing mind-blowing, but it looks good. In some places it looks very good. In fact, why the hell wasn’t the scene at around the 1:08 mark the actual poster? Instead they delivered this photoshop-trocity. Even the shot around ten seconds later featuring the team awkardly standing around in somebody’s living room would have been better than the official poster. I digress.
I mentioned Vision up there in the title, didn’t I? About that; when I say it’s a glimpse, it really is just that. Sorry to get your hopes up. He doesn’t do anything in this trailer besides show up at the very end–after all of the action has passed–and open his eyes. I find the teasing of Vision’s appearance in this film interesting, if a little strange. Is there that big of a Vision fanbase that people are going to go nuts in the theater when he appears? Are there that many Avengers film fans–not comic book fans–who even know who the hell Vision is? Granted, I’ve witnessed audiences inexplicably burst into spontaneous, congratulatory applause (as opposed to sarcastic and derisive applause, I suppose) at the end of Clash of the Titans and Wrath of the Titans, so it wouldn’t exactly surprise me if peopel were to stand and cheer Vision’s big screen debut. But for now it seems Much Ado About a Second-Stringer.
Some other observations about this trailer:
- I love that Ultron isn’t just a case of heartless Artificial Intelligence gone haywire. He’s a cruel, hateful prick. He’s going to take our hope away first? That’s not even called for.
- As good as this looks, this trailer also really makes this sequel look like Avengers 1: Redux. We have a character with seemingly “magical” powers playing mind games to turn the Avengers against one another–a la Loki–and an epic battle in an urban landscape with the team hopelessly outnumbered by countless enemies that looks exactly like the climactic battle with the Chitauri from the first movie. I’m not exactly against “more of the same” if it’s executed well, but I’d have thought they wouldn’t be so blatant about it in the trailers. Maybe this earns points for truth in advertising, though?
- Black Widow’s new electric-laser-light-dagger hand-things look pretty cool, but I think I’d still rather have some kind of gun. She should have spoken up to Fury when they made her trade in the pistols for those. “Can’t you guys give me something that shoots these glowing blades at the enemy? You know, so I can attack from a distance. I might be great in hand-to-hand combat against people, but I’d rather not engage in close-quarters combat with flying robots and aliens and shit. I’m not Thor.”