>Avengers is generally seen as a better film than Age of Ultron

>>91923506
But Civil War and Vol 2 were still pretty good, while Ultron was pretty bad there's a difference

Like with every good film series, things get worse as it gets more successful and thus more corporately controlled.

When the first movie receives widespread acclaim people always perceive the sequel as falling short of reaching those heights again.

All the great cape movie sequels such as Spider-Man 2 or X-Men 2 are preceded by movies that were considered so-so at the time of their release.

>>91924412
>When the first movie receives widespread acclaim people always perceive the sequel as falling short of reaching those heights again.
But Winter Soldier was a sequel, if we're going by OP's post.

>>91923506
You're right about Avengers and GotG, but TWS is not seen as being a better film than Civil War outside of /co/. Civil War has 90% on RT compared to Winter Soldier's 89% and on imdb it has 7.9 compared to Winter Soldier's 7.8.

Personally I think TWS is better than Civil War (while I liked it I found CW slightly overrated), but that's not the popular opinion. No matter how much /co/ tries to make Civil War into some flop, the truth is that the general audience loved it.

I feel like Ultron could have been salvagable if the execs just let Joss do what he wanted.
Obviously there still would have been shit like the Hulk/Widow romance, but there wouldn't have been so much compromise with everything so it would have felt like a more complete picture.

>>91924484
It's not a sequel any more than Brubaker's Cap is a sequel to Gruenwald's Cap.

>>91924631
/co/ loved it too, until it became trendy to shit on it.

Marvel syndrome, /co/ starts hating every Marvel movie about a month after release regardless of previous attitudes toward it.

I think Age of Ultron was both a problem of both director and studio making bad decisions. For example, Joss should have had Iron Man just be making Ultron from the start instead of having another Iron Man suit. It would fit the ending of Iron Man 3 and have Tony's arc realize that he can't just make robots do the work for him and has to become Iron Man again.

The studios fault because so much of the film was sidetracked into promoting future films. We did not need to know about the Infinity Stones now. Nor did we need Civil War setup or Thor Ragnarok set up. Just focus on the subject at hand. Promises of future events throughout your film diminishes the climax tension. Hell, having Loki's staff go from blue to a yellow stone shows that they didn't think this one that far ahead.

>>91925095
Mmm. There's a problem where the earlier Marvel films felt like they were building a universe, enhancing the film you were already watching by making it feel like there's actually a wider world at play. Of course, they wanted you to watch their other films too, but it didn't come across as out of place in the film. Lately, it's been feeling more like advertisement.

You've also got the issue where Marvel's house style (i.e. comedic tones + uniform elements of visual style) is becoming more and more apparent. I get why, it works for them, but personally I have gotten a bit bored of it.

Then again, I was younger when I watched the earlier Marvel stuff so maybe I'm just tiring of blockbusters in general lel.

>>91925305
>but it didn't come across as out of place in the film. Lately, it's been feeling more like advertisement.
Man, Iron Man 2 is still the worst offender of this so I'm not sure about that. Out of all the Phase 2 movies, I thought the only one that overdid it with the advertising for future movies was Age of Ultron. The others were fine and I never felt like they had out of place moments like in Ultron.

>>91925389
Yeah, I forgot about Iron Man 2 to be fair. I think the reception to that scared them off the concept for a little while.

>>91924484
and first avenger was shit so point proven anon

>>91923506
>Why can't these directors keep up their streak?

Not their fault people overhype these like the second coming.

>>91924484
First Avenger is my favourite Marvel film by a fair bit but it wasn't that widely acclaimed. It got solid reviews but they were mostly of the 'eh, pretty good' variety. Didn't make a stupid amount of bank either, for a summer blockbuster.

Winter Soldier, people went crazy for.

>>91925501
I loved First Avenger a lot when it came out (still is my second favorite MCU movie after TWS lol) and I was always really frustrated that people ignored Cap and didn't see that he was a good character.

I'm glad Winter Soldier managed to change that perception and I get why it did. The first movie is harder to swallow because of the WW2 setting and people saw him as the corny goody two shoes all American dude. He was not very cool, you know? Avengers was too preoccupied with sucking Stark's dick to give Cap much time to shine, but Winter Soldier made him very badass in the eye of the public. He was still the goody two shoes all American dude, but he was much more fun to watch because they changed his fighting style. He smashed motherfuckers left and right on that ship in the beginning, so I'm not surprised people went crazy for him from that moment on. It's quite interesting how a more interesting, aggressive fighting style can change the audience's perception of a character. Personality wise, he's still the same guy from the first movie.

>>91924698
>I feel like Ultron could have been salvagable if the execs just let Joss do what he wanted.

They did. Their only notable demand was the Thor subplot to set up Thanos.

>>91924698

Whedon really isn't that good. He's painfully limited as a writer/director and the Avengers movies showcase that perfectly. The Russos made him look like an amateur with their movies.

>>91923506
>>Winter Soldier is generally seen as a better film than Civil War

Not really. The Russos made two solid movies. Anyone can argue that one is better than the other. I have faith Infinity War will be decent because we haven't experienced a dip in quality from the brothers yet. The only reason we expect a dip in quality is because that's how superhero movies have been in the past.

Your complain falls on its ass the moment you remember this is the first Avengers movie by the Russo's.

>inb4 Civil War
That one is judged as a Captain America movie, as an Avengers movie is pretty damn good, better than Avengers 1 and AoU.

>>91925806
>Whedon really isn't that good. He's painfully limited as a writer/director and the Avengers movies showcase that perfectly. The Russos made him look like an amateur with their movies.
100% agree. He's best left to television and even then he's pretty one note.

>>91925756

They also demanded that he cut just under an hour of footage from his first edit of the film, so that it would be around the same length as the first Avengers movie.

>>91928411
Whedon was the one that wanted the movie to be shorter.