Writer brain is weird!

That's where the good stuff is.

You realize what that means, of course.

He's writing Doctor Who fanfic?

Saw I Age of Ultron over the weekend. Satisfying 2+-hour ride that would probably fall apart if I looked at it too closely, so I won't. Although my favorite line was the exchange between Ironman and off-screen voice: "Good talk." "No, it wasn't."

My favorite was Cap's "Then we'll do that together, too." I got chills.

Sady Doyle may have convinced me to hate Age of Ultron: [link]

I dunno, I'm only at the point in her piece where she says Thor is a bad movie, and for that I'm giving her the side-eye HARD. But I'll read on...

Oh yeah, I totally disregarded that point and basically skimmed the article, but it seemed compelling!

Okay, having read the whole thing -- I do agree with her that AoU, and Joss's writing/vision/plan, was really hamstrung by what Marvel Studios decided needed to be crammed into the movie. Did they *really* need to go to Wakanda? I don't think so, and I don't even think that it was necessary as a plot point for the Black Panther movie (which I had to explain to Tim wasn't about a 60s civil rights movement). The fact that they had Thor basically leave in the middle of the movie to go be in his own, OTHER weird film (with Eric Selvig thinking, "Why am I always stuck helping this big dumb doof?") just so he could infodump for the audience about the infinity stones was unbelievably clunky and felt like it was tacked on at the end, like the producers realized, "Shit! We need to explain to the audience why they're sitting through all of these movies!" If they needed to infodump about the infinity stones, it could have been done better, is all I'm saying.

After seeing it twice and thinking about it, and reading a LOT of commentary on the issue, I come down on the side of Black Widow calling herself a monster because of everything the Red Room did to her, not just the hysterectomy, that she thought she could be an Avenger but she was really just only good for killing. That said, it was written HORRIBLY, and I get why people take that scene in a different way than I did. I don't actually know if I've read what the real intent behind that scene was, but no matter what the intent was, it was done really poorly.

I'm on the fence about the Natasha/Bruce relationship (or attempt therein) -- I'm not opposed to it in theory, but in this actual movie, I think it was one more thing that was unnecessary and bloated the movie. I think it *could* be done, but not in *this* movie.

Anyway -- very little of what I have some issues with can be pinned on Joss as the sole source. Marvel studios decided this movie needed to do some heavy lifting to get pieces and characters into place for the next phase, and it shows.

But damn it, Thor is a good movie! It's cheerfully uncomplicated and loud, but it's good! The cast just kills it -- I can't think of any actor in it who was poorly chosen -- and my god, Asgard actually looks like it did in the comics. I didn't think that was possible.

As the bulk of my issues are in execution, the bulk of them rest in Whedon's hands.