Previous Post I saw the reailer last night. It all looks good, so I was surprised to be slightly disappointed by it. I've been trying to work out why ever since. The good: Steve Rogers in an almost proper Cap uniform; a quinjet; some lovely if gloomy cinematography, no shakicam; an unexpected but effective Ultron design; the skittering Ulton army; but... I still didn't get as excited as a brief Cap/Stark interchange made me for Avengers 1. I think first off it was because this trailer seemed so generic, a series of disjointed shots of various battles interspersed with occasional contextless shots of other things, with an ominous voiceover and other random quotes, just like every other portentious disaster/action movie trailer we see today. No quippy one-liners, no indication of emotion other than deep depression and trauma. No sparkle. Good trailers take the viewer on what these days is called "a journey". There's a story there, or at least a series of beats that leads the viewer through a set of cognitive or emotional responses, the last of which is supposed to be "I want to see that." This trailer was a confused clip show, as if someone had been given a tick-list of things it had to show "Make sure we see Samuel L. Jackson. Have the Hulk punch something. Show the heroes in conflict with each other. Show the city in ruins." etc. Thus, what should have been a series of escalating "wow" moments all got crushed together into a confused "wha...?" Secondly it heavily featured the Hulkbuster armour which I have always disliked; it's a given that Hulkbuster armour will always fail. And it showed an image of Cap's broken shield, and the first and last time that was an effective shocker was in the original Secret Wars. Finally, the soundscape and colour palletes were all depressing and sepia (if a soundscape can be sepia this one was). I was reminded of the deleted opening sequence from Avengers 1, presented on the BluRay, with Hill voice-overing a series of shots of the devastated city intercut with ominous clips of the conflict and the heroes devastated. That sequence was cut for good reason. This montage was assembled with considerably less skill and effect. Now I don't expect the movie will be like that at all. Marvel movies and especially the creative team behind Avengers 1 have earned quite a lot of trust and respect from me. Just because the trailer was aimed at Transformers and Dark Knight fans doesn't mean the movie will follow in their footsteps. Some marketing expert has probably carefully harvested the two seccond clips montage to a demographically-tested playbook for a demographic that isn't me. I don't want to be over-harsh. I didn't actively dislike the trailer. I just watched it again now having typed this far and ended up mentally composing a rebuttal to myself, because it's not that bad. The point is, given my absurdly-high expectations, and probably many other people's absurdly-high expectations, that that trailer did not meet them. But if I came to the trailer with high expectations of the movie and came away with slightly diminished ones than that trailer hasn't done its job on me. The next trailer had better have Hawkeye calling Cap "Winghead". Or else. HH

From the sound of things, the footage shown at San Diego comic con would have been more to my tastes, starting with the scene directly before the first version of Ultron shambles into the room and reminding us why we want to spend time with these characters through fun interaction and playful banter, before going over much of the same ground as this Trailer.

I think this trailer also was colored by the announcement that the cinematic universe would be taking cues from the whole "Civil War" storyline following this film. It makes it seem like the turn towards grim and gritty will be all-encompassing and inescapable.

However, I need to remind myself that Avengers 2 is being bracketed by "Guardians of the Galaxy" and Paul Rudd's "Ant Man", so I can pull up some optimism. (Iron Man 3 also had a notoriously gritty trailer that didn't really match the tone of the film itself, much to some enraged fans' lasting ire... Considering that the film made well over a billion, I can't say that Marvel wouldn't repeat the strategy.)

If it is this much of a downer (it looks to be heavily influenced by genocide-based "Ultron Unlimited" more than anything), it is somewhat of a trilogy tradition after "The Empire Strikes Back". But then it was so effective in "Empire" because we didn't see the down ending coming... We weren't beat over the head with "this is going to be dark and tragic" for the entire build-up, let alone the runtime of the film itself.

One quick tangential note on the Hulkbuster Armor... I agree, but in consideration, an Ultron story might be the perfect place to showcase such inevitable results as a sign of hope.