age of ultron

“You want to protect the world. But you don’t want it to change.”

The Marvel comics universe is overflowing with some of the greatest villains created in any medium, from the regal majesty of Doctor Doom to the saturnine, brooding splendour of Galactus to the cackling, twitching megalomania of Annihilus. And amongst these villains, one of the greatest is, without question…not Ultron.

Just my opinion, mind.

The character was first created in 1968 and introduced in the pages of The Avengers as the creation of Hank Pym, whose long storied history of fucking up we will touch upon at a later point in these chronicles. But make no mistake, Hank Pym fucks up in the same way that Michaelangelo painted. He fucks up like it’s what God put him on this earth to do. Created by Pym as an artificial intelligence based on his own brainwaves, Ultron decided pretty quickly that it hated Hank Pym like the Sharks hate the Jets and tried to kill him. Which, considering that Pym based it on his own mind, should tell you everything you need to know about the state of Pym’s self-esteem (dude needs a hug). Ultron later expanded his to do list to wiping out all human life and returned to bedevil the Avengers and threaten the world again, and again, and again. My problem with Ultron is that there’s just not much “there” there. He’s an angry shouty robot who wants to kill everyone. Have there been good stories with the character? Sure. Have there been writers who found interesting things to do with him? No doubt. But Ultron’s basic default setting has just never grabbed me as particularly compelling. Nevertheless, Ultron is generally regarded as the Avengers’ ultimate arch-enemy, the Moriarty to their Holmes if Sherlock Holmes was a conglomeration of brightly coloured WW2 era adventurers, Norse gods, billionaire tech-messiahs and former circus performers (and who wouldn’t read that?). But even that’s kinda by default. Loki is a Thor villain who sometimes fights the Avengers. Red Skull is a Captain America villain who sometimes fights the Avengers. Ultron would technically be a Hank Pym villain, but since Hank has never been popular enough to headline an ongoing series of his own Ultron just kinda became an arch-enemy for the whole team, like how the rest of the family adopts your little brother’s hamster once it becomes clear he can’t look after it himself. So when it came time for Marvel to follow up The Avengers with a sequel, choosing Ultron to be the villain was about as obvious as having the Joker be the bad guy of The Dark Knight. Who else was it going to be?

Shaddup.

Now, let’s get this out of the way. For all you people who ask why I don’t, for example, review Moana the very second it comes out? This is why. To do a review justice takes time, preparation, fasting and prayerful contemplation. The review/tongue bath I gave Age of Ultron the day after it came out back in 2015 was written while I was still basking in the afterglow of explosions and Whedonisms falling on my ears like confetti and I did not see the plotholes and padding and questionable charecterisations and clear signs of executives sticking their grubby oars in. Honestly if I had it all to do again, I imagine I’d be a lot more critical. Oh hey, look at that. I have it all to do again.

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The Avengers: Age of Ultron (spoiler free review)

Okay, before we get into the actual movie let’s talk about The Ball. As in, “When are Marvel going to drop the ball?” We are now on the eleventh film set in the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe and the studio has yet to release a flick that was worse than the perfectly acceptable Incredible Hulk or the shaggy-but-still-fun Iron Man 2. And Marvel fans are starting to get paranoid. Sooner or later Marvel’s going to drop the ball, law of averages. One of these movies will eventually flop, and when it does, all we can do is hope that it doesn’t flop so badly that it puts the whole MCU project in jeopardy. And with a movie like Age of Ultron, the stakes are even higher. If Ant-Man tanks, Marvel will walk it off.

If Age of Ultron flops, or even performs below expectations, it could bring the whole thing crashing down. So, as a huge fan of these movies, I was more than a little nervous sitting down to last night’s screening and I knew I was not alone. Looking in the eyes of my fellow Marvel cinephiles I saw the same fear that would take the heart of me. Because one day, Marvel will release a colossal turd.

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Random posts combine!

Every so often a collection of things I need to say, otherwise too bitty to put in individual posts, will combine together to form a Voltron-esque combined post. This is such a day.

Okay, first order of business…

The Hangman’s Daughter

As many of you know, I finished serialising my novel, The Hangman’s Daughter last month. Big thanks to all of you who read, commented and gave advice and encouragement. I especially want to give a shout out to Sr. Honkengoose and maxy44 who I’m pretty sure commented on every single chapter and gave me tons of good notes. Legends both. Many of you have been asking when you might be seeing more and after giving it a lot of thought I’ve decided that I’m going to start posting chapters of the second novel in the series, The Devil’s Heir.

However, there is a catch.

As I’ve already mentioned before, The Devil’s Heir is not actually finished yet. Worse, it’s still the sequel to an older draft of The Hangman’s Daughter (one where, amongst other things, Mariana was a dude). This means each chapter will have to be revised and edited so that it’s consistent with the most recent draft of HD, and I don’t have time to do that right now because my life has become an endless looping reel that goes worktoddlerblogplaycomicsleeeeeepworktoddlerblogplaycomicsleeeeeeep. So my brother Eamonn has very, very kindly agreed to edit the Devil’s Heir to get it more in line with the story so far and occasionally make changes that he feels improve the material.

“…and then they all died and the rugged, dashing, one-eyed Mouse was king of the universe. The End.”

So, starting soonish, there will be a new chapter of the Devil’s Heir going up every month. Yes. Month.

“Hey I gotta life too, y’know.”

Moving on!

Age of Ultron

So Avengers 2 is being released in Europe around a week earlier than it is in the States due to…I dunno, the collapse of American hegemony or whatever. Being the massive nerds we are, my wife and I will be at the midnight screening on 23 April and I’ll be posting a review later in the day. This won’t be a full length Unshaved Mouse style review, obviously. Just a few paragraphs about my thoughts on the film and whether I thought it was any cop or not. You know…a review like actual critics do.

And lastly, revenge

So regular readers will know that I recently learned my entire life has been a charade orchestrated by the diabolical warlock known to the world as Walter Elias Disney. You may recall I swore a blood oath of vengeance against Disney, promising to review the very, very worst movie that bears his name. And I need your help to do it. Sound off in the comments, what is the very, very, worst Disney movie that has ever been released and help me stick it to Walt but good.

See you all on the 14^th of May for How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Train my Dragon. Mouse out.

Let’s all take a look at the Avengers 2 trailer now that everyone else has done that.

Howdy peeps,

So while I’m still technically on break a couple of things have arisen that need to be (belatedly) made mention of. Firstly, it appears that the following conversation occurred in the offices of Marvel studios.

“Hey Stan, you hear the Unshaved Mouse is going to start reviewing our movies?”

“What? Isn’t he that guy who reviewed all 53 canon Disney movies in only two years?

“That’s him.”

“Well damn, we’d better crank out some more movies before he burns right through them.”

“There, that oughta hold the bastard.” “Excelsior!”

Honestly, not really much to say at this stage, most of these movies almost certainly haven’t even got a completed script yet. I’m very interested to see that they’ll be tackling Civil War as a Captain America movie rather than an Avengers movie for a number of reasons. As I’ve mentioned before, I love Civil War, flaws and all, and I would love to see a version of it on the big screen (although, what with this coming straight after Captain America 2 it’s starting to look like Cap just fights the American government fulltime nowadays). Also happy to see a Captain Marvel movie on the slate, but the one that really has me psyched is Black Panther. Love the character, love the concept, love the costume, cannot frickin’ wait.

Soem complain that the costume is just like Batman's. And it is. With the crucial difference that it is much, much cooler.

Some complain that the costume is just like Batman’s. And it is. With the crucial difference that it is much, much cooler.

Oh, and peaking of Marvel, and my opinions on it, if you’re craving a fix of Mouse, a certain furry reviewer and his black magic using, mustachioed frenemy may have recently made a cameo appearance over on Newtcave.It’s a cool blog, as my spambots like to say, full of fascinating content that you should share.

So, as you all know I’ve been taking a break from reviews to focus on my writing. I spent the last few week writing in a cottage way out in the middle of the wilds of County Monaghan on Halloween because I’ve never read a Stephen King novel, apparently. I got some good work done, the first draft of my new play is now more or less finished, I’m pretty sure I’ve developed some killer new psychic powers and the army of killer slugs that came for me in the night now call me their Queen. Downside was that internet connection was spotty but I’ve been reading all your comments (and special thanks to the Hangman’s Daughter fans for your continued feedback. Always appreciated, thanks guys).

But of course, the real reason that I’ve had to interrupt my vacation was the fact that Disney/Marvel released the single most Disney/Marvellous thing ever. So, like the last horse asthmatically crossing the finish line of the internet long after everyone stopped caring, let’s take a look at the Avengers 2 trailer.

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