Pathé

Yesterday was the first time since my surgery that I went to the movies again. I hadn’t dared try before since I’m still experiencing discomfort and minor chest muscle pain when I’m sitting for a long time. It’s also only been since this week that I’ve been working a full 8 hour day again (the week before I did 6 hour days, and the two weeks before that, half days). So I felt movies in the evening after working was probably not yet a good idea. But Wednesday, as usual, I worked my half day at home and then went to the city to meet up with Gert.

During the non-movie weeks, I of course missed a bunch of movies I still wanted to see. First and foremost of those was Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s only playing really early in the day and really late now, which is a sign it will be leaving theaters soon. Gert had already seen it, but didn’t mind watching it again.

I was pleasantly surprised by the movie, I’ve gotten used to trailers spoiling huge parts of movie plots, or even the entire plot, and here there was a whole extra dimension to the plot not shown in the trailer. I enjoyed the bit with Jarvis and Ultron, when he has just formed; and really enjoyed Vision. I hope he gets to stick around.

I had hoped, after the previous movies, that the the Avengers would really be a team by now, but there is still the same distrust and lack of cohesion between the lot of them when it comes down to it. Tony specifically needs to learn to trust other people and talk to them. Banner has his issues, but he at least is making progress and I really like how the relationship between him and Natasha was shown.

I loved the bit where they take refuge in Clint’s house and we get to meet his family, that no-one knew he had… Yet another sign that the team isn’t really a team. The interactions between Clint and his family, were lovely and it was fun to see how the others react to being in such a normal, and peaceful, environment. It was also a nice break between the battling in the first half and the battling in the second half.

The twins were interesting, I like their presence and I am sad that Quicksilver died. It would’ve been nice to see what he could do later on. I am pleased, also, that War Machine and Falcon got to play, and that the group of them is set up to be Avengers also. I do hope, though, it is not a sign that we will see less of the big names in further Avengers movies. It’s not really the Avengers without the core group.

After the Avengers we went on to see Tomorrowland (or Project T, as my cinema seems to want to call it…). It’s a bit of an uneven movie. The visuals are stunning and I want so badly to walk around in that city and explore! The intro part takes too long (I even muttered out loud for them to “get on with it”), and then when we get the part where Casey is recruited and runs away, and finds Frank and has to convince Frank, and then they all together have to run away some more and find a way to get to Tomorrowland to fix whatever the fuck is wrong takes very long.

In contrast, once they are back in Tomorrowland, it all happens to move rather fast. They talk some with Governor Nix, learn what the fuck is wrong, figure out how to stop it, and go about doing that. There’s some final battling to create a will-they-won’t-they feeling, but it’s never quite convincing enough. You know they will get it done. The final scene with Athena, though, is quite touching.

Overall, the film has a good adventure vibe, nice scifi ideas, good actors, but unbalanced plot and pacing, and is too heavy handed on the message (The apocalypse is near and it is your own fault, if humans would just DO something, they can still turn it around. Go DO that something, now).