So...I finally saw Age of Ultron last night.
It's funny, because some "agenda" folks have labeled me a "Marvel fanboy" but I most certainly am not. I remember Netflixing or Redboxing the first Iron Man film, and I never finished watching it. I was like who are these people and why do I care? I actually didn't see a Marvel movie proper until I accidentally got Captain America from Disney Movie Club.
I still have never seen more than the 1st half of Iron Man, or any of it's sequels, and I haven't seen the Thor films. Unlike some folks who use everything to push their own agendas, in spite of the fact I've only seen half of the films, it doesn't prevent me from realizing how popular they are or what a good purchase it was for Disney.
However, I really enjoyed Captain America, Avengers, Winter Soldier, GoG, and now Avengers 2.
It was a great film, but of course I had this thread in my mind as I watched it. And also just learning that Joss Whedon isn't going to be involved in future Avengers films that was on my mind, as well.
I do think the one hurdle they are going to have to overcome is the loss of Joss. It may seem like these films "write/direct themselves" but Joss Whedon was very evident in Avengers (as much as could be considering it was such an origin story with so much to cover), but he was splattered all over Avengers 2. It's everything inherent to Joss' work that keeps them from being bloated CGI fests.
It's both deceptively easy and difficult to quantify at once - I think the best comparison I can think of is that Joss Whedon's signature of dialogue, story, and pacing is like Hitchcock's signature in framing and camera movements. It's so unique to him, and just like Hitchcock, when someone else tries to break it down to it's elements and replicate it, it just comes off as derivative and vapid. It doesn't work. You can add all the same ingredients but the genius is in the part you can't quantify - the genius of how it's put together, the instinctual part that cannot be replicated. The way Whedon makes you just fall in love with all the characters.
For example, one aspect of Whedon is the pressing up against the 4th wall with brief shot of irreverent humor but not breaking it. In the first minute or two of Avengers 2 that would be represented in the "Language!" joke with Captain America. It was so perfect for the characters, tells you just what you need to know about this team (even for folks who have never seen a Marvel film), where they are at, and placing it in the center of a battle sequence as a brief tonal switch - all in the space of a few seconds and less than a dozen words of dialogue. it's just so perfectly Whedon.
Now, when writers try to emulate that (and they have, after Buffy there were so many many shows that tried to replicate it and failed miserably), they say "insert self-effacing banter, OK, we got it - check." But they don't realize that again, it's just one cog in the wheel of what makes Whedon such a unique voice, and is just like someone trying to do a "Hitchcockian" shot in a film - it stands out like a sore thumb as a pale imitation. And it goes way beyond the humor - that's just one surface aspect (what happened in the development of Quicksilver was another very different tone of the same thing, as was every moment between Banner/Hulk/BW - it was all over the film).
All that said - that doesn't mean they are lost without him. There are other approaches they can take which could be as successful. It's just that they really need to find that new approach, and not try to emulate Whedon's very unique style or it will just come off as an imitation. Particularly in a two-part epic. They need to do something other than a hollow imitation of Whedon's style - an entirely different approach.
