Agreed. AoU will be closer to 5 stars than the first. Initially, I thought Avengers was 5, but the more I rewatch it, the more I kind of see how watered down it is. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still oozing bad-ass, but the story is weak as hell. Loki is a weak villain for the Avengers, imo, and I’m plenty fatigued from seeing him as the threat. But the first movie was an origin film or sorts and Marvel needed to get that out of the way to pave the way for the big guns.

Generally speaking, the Marvel sequels are always better, as will be the case with AoU.

I also liked Guardians the best out of Marvel’s catalogue. X-Men: DoFP is a damn close second, and TWS is right behind that.

Temper your expectations there cowboy

I think it always has and always will come down to whether or not the story can support that many characters, and I think you’re right that people shouldn’t just assume that a movie will be bad if there are too many characters. The primary difference with the marvel films is that they are bringing together previously introduced characters for the most part (guardians was a team origin story, so that’s a little different).

With Batman vs. Superman I think people are concerned that they’re introducing so many new characters, and we really haven’t even gotten to know batman or superman very well yet.

In Age of Ultron, they’re really only introducing a few new characters, so as long as the story can support it, I think it’s smooth sailing.

I guess the excuse is always used with Spider-Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man 2. It’s especially a cop-out with Spider-Man 3 because it already had the majority of its characters developed in 1 & 2. TASM2 is just a train wreck all around, with narrative and characters. But too often the “too many characters” excuse is used instead of “the final screenplay was garbage”.

Guardians built it’s characters from scratch, and nailed it. It’s a rare gem and should be held as a standard for all forthcoming ensemble movies.

I tend to agree with that. Guardians impacted me on an emotional level, while avengers was almost a pure roller-coaster ride film experience (all excitement, basically). I still don’t consider that a knock against avengers.

i respectfully disagree with you about the strong villain point. Ronan was basically every sci fi villain ever. he was fine for the purposes of the movie, but he was one of the few things that kept GotG from being truly great. i think the villains is where Marvel needs the most work. they get great actors (for the most part) to give great performances (for the most part), but they’re all still just one-dimensional, mustache-twirling bad guys. i think Loki and the Winter Soldier have been the only complex villains worth spending time with. but Ultron seems like he could be VERY interesting…

Loki from the comics is very different from the movies in that the comics portray him as a straight up bad guy, while the movies make him a little bit more confusing. I personally don’t like Hiddlestone’s Loki. He’s more power hungry child than sinister genius god of chaos. His evil plots are one dimensional and don’t have much creativity to them. Thor 1: kill all of the frost giants? not very threatening/menacing. Avengers: open a portal to unleash an army from another dimension: nothing creative or brilliant about this. Thor 2: does he want to avenge his mother or steal his father’s throne. It’s hard to tell and I think its because he doesn’t know and he is constantly changing his mind about what he wants. I don’t think Loki is that good of an actor (Hiddlestone is great, I’m talking about Loki’s deception abilities) and that he hides his true motives. I think he is just confused.

I agree with you on most of what you’re saying and definitely that I think Guardians is a better movie overall than Avengers, but I feel like the villain aspect wasn’t perfect. In my opinion, I feel that Ronan didn’t have enough of a fleshing out back story about why he is like that and his motives. The execution was a little one-dimensional. I understand that this was most likely to put most of the focus on the bringing together of the Guardians and to keep the movie concise, but I don’t think many people would have mind sitting through an extra 20 or so minutes to get a better understanding of Ronan. I’m sad that he had to die so soon as well because Lee Pace really did a good job with what he was given from the script and had great screen presence. I feel he would have been good to keep alive and come back in another story. Overall though Guardians is a phenomenal movie that I never felt bored through.