So Avengers: Age of Ultron has been released (haven’t seen it yet, don’t know if I will get the chance to before it hits home video) and the first night or so it made a ton of money and looked like its box office would overtake the original Avengers movie but by the time the weekend was over, the film had earned less than its predecessor.

Not that this lesser haul makes it a financial failure.  But it is a curious turn of events and at the very least may hint to the limits of profits from these features.

I believe it also hints to something regarding group mentality, something I’ve mentioned previously.

Granted I have no evidence to prove this, but I get the feeling the public at large has reached some kind of… I don’t know, tipping/saturation point regarding these particular Marvel heroes.

Where before audiences would go into these movies with an open mind and were willing to ignore plot points that didn’t make sense (there were plenty of them in the first Avengers film as well as my so-far favorite of the Marvel films, Captain America: Winter Soldier), this time around they appear a lot more discerning.  Or perhaps picky.

This sort of thing has happened before.  Remember the Christopher Nolan directed Batman films?  The first was imperfect, at least to my mind (I still feel the way Batman left Ra’s Al Ghul to die on the train was absolutely NOT something Batman would do) but so clearly its own animal that you couldn’t help but be impressed with that take of the Batman mythos.  The second benefited tremendously with the addition of Heath Ledger’s Joker.  But the third film, a film I felt in the end was on par with the others, ie entertaining yet with its share of imperfections, was savaged by many previous fans of the films as a misfire.

Which leads me to reiterate what I said above: Perhaps audiences, when given so much of a good thing, inevitably and more readily find the flaws in said products.  Maybe this is related in some way to expectations.  Your expectations become so big that anything that doesn’t quite reach those lofty realms gets jumped on.

So it goes with Avengers: Age of Ultron.  While audiences and critics in general seem to like the film, I get the feeling the reaction to this movie is far more muted while a fraction of fans have latched on to things they don’t like about the film and are far more vocal in denouncing them.

And it seems the particular thing people don’t like about this film is the way Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow is portrayed:

http://io9.com/black-widow-this-is-why-we-can-t-have-nice-things-1702333037

It’s a most curious firestorm regarding an otherwise well received and successful addition to a movie franchise.

Having not seen the film, I don’t feel I can comment on the accuracy/inaccuracy of the observations presented in this article.  But I do find it curious the way some are now hurling stones at a franchise that, up to this moment, they almost all loved universally.

Perhaps that’s just the way things go.

Unless something really incredible happens, there is little doubt Avengers: Age of Ultron (I’ll refer to it as AoU from here on out to save on typing) will be one of the biggest, if not THE biggest box office draw of the year.  Anticipation for the film is sky high and, while it hasn’t yet been released in the U.S., it was already released in Europe and has so far amassed an incredible amount of money.

But the backlash, it would seem, has begun.

In the world of art, be it literature or paintings or music or film, there is a most curious phenomena regarding the talent behind the product.  As a collective, audiences tend to build up their artistic “heroes”, be they actors/writers/singers/etc. and place them on a very high pedestal only to, inevitably, knock them back down.  Sometimes they’re knocked down so hard they never reach their glorious heights again.

In part this is only natural.  To use a baseball analogy, you can’t and won’t hit a home run every time you come up to the plate.

For AoU,  the high anticipation of this release was somewhat shattered this past week when it reached foreign markets and a vocal segment of those who got to see the film reacted negatively to it.  They felt the work was underwelming…or worse.

Over at AoU’s IMDB.com page, there is a whole commentary devoted to the back and forth between those who feel the film was a disappointment and those who argue it wasn’t.  You can read those comments here.

It’s worth noting, too, the Rottentomatoes.com score for the film has moved downwards, going from a very positive 84% among critics a couple of days ago down to a less impressive (yet still highly positive) 78% (you can read about that here), and this is before the film has formally reached our shores.

There is one other thing that makes some would be fans squeamish: It has already been reported that AoU’s BluRay release will include a longer cut of the film along with an alternate ending.  (For more detailed information, click here)

Further, director/writer Joss Whedon stated in interviews that the original cut of the film was in the area of three and a half hours long, with the final theatrical cut coming in at two hours and eleven minutes.  That’s a lot to cut and, naturally, people wondered if making the film more theatrically friendly might have resulted in a less coherent overall work.

In many ways this situation reminds me of what happened prior to the release of John Carter back in 2012.  The early word quite literally destroyed that movie’s box office well before it was actually released.  People felt the film was a bomb and stayed as far away from it as possible.

I highly doubt the same will happen with AoU, but it is undeniable a vocal public element has emerged at the very least cautioning people to lower their expectations regarding this film.  Will this affect its box office in any noticeable way?

We’ll see soon enough.

I believe this is the first full review of the soon to be released Avengers: Age of Ultron movie:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/21/entertainment/avengers-age-of-ultron-review-feat/index.html

I have little doubt that the film will do terrific box office but I wonder if the film will be as flawed, plotwise, as the first film was.  Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the film for the most part but its one of those features that the more you think about it, the less sense the story makes.  In a curious way, it reminds me of Star Trek: Into Darkness.  When I saw each film I was entertained, but afterwards, sometimes days and weeks afterwards, I found myself thinking about things in the film and shaking my head.

I have both the original Avengers and Star Trek: Into Darkness on BluRay yet haven’t revisited them.  Wonder what I’d feel about either if I were to give them another shot?

Regardless, I’ll probably catch Age of Ultron in theaters.  If nothing else, I really like the cast assembled (ahem) for the feature.  Especially brilliant to get James Spader to do the voice of Ultron.  If he hadn’t made it as an actor, he’d have quite the career for voicing characters, especially evil characters!

QUICK UPDATE: I should have checked rottentomatoes.com before posting this.  Looks like there are several reviews out there…

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avengers_age_of_ultron/

So far, the film is performing quite well.  It has a 84% positive rating among critics.