1. Despite being one of the most fun parts of the movie the Hulk Buster scene does not progress the movie in any way and is a completely shoehorned in non sequitur. It both starts and ends as though the scene was written out of context of the rest of the movie. It happens because wanda decided it should happen and ends when it runs out of gas, Iron Man punching hulk and cut to black. Its a pretty long sequence around 10 minutes and when you get back to the movie you have to remind yourself whats happening because this had nothing to do with it.
I felt that scene, was mostly there to show for the audience, just WHY Bruce is afraid of "Code Green." They make a point, to show everyone else on the team, mostly disregarding, even mocking his terror at possibly killing people while in Hulk form. And so that scene was basically saying "THIS is why he hates being the Hulk. Why he hates losing control. It just took the finger waggles of one girl with a grudge and an agenda, and he leveled an entire section of a city before being brought down."
I also wonder if they came down with a mandate of "Write Hulk out at the end, because we need him somewhere else." Or something similar. Not that they knew Ragnarok was coming, but just something vaguely Planet Hulk-y was maybe on the drawing board, and that means him going to space.
I agree it doesn't move the plot forward, other than to just raise the stakes, by removing their Green I Win Button.
2. Thors Infinity War commercial. This is the most well known issue with the film, being the primary reason Joss quit working with Marvel. Theres a huge back story behind this, but essentially mid production Joss was made to film scenes at Ike Perlmutters demand to advertise the plans for infinity War. Thor leaves because reasons, has a dream about stones and creates vision cause stones. Its a sharp, distractingly weird, cut in the movie and though the footage doesn't exist, there's likely storyboards showing a different final creation scene for vision without it.
Yep, that sequence was weird and completely without any connection to the rest of the film. The Hulk scene at least was a result of the antagonist stirring the pot, and weakening the team of heroes before the final fight, which is pretty standard "Tricky Badguy" tactics, just look at Loki from the first Avengers film. The Thor scene...just...yeah it's totally out there. It felt like something out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Some coked up fever dream.
3. Widow and Hulk fall in love for a bit. I have some real uncomfortable feelings about this that's changed my perspective on Joss Wedon. Reading between the lines of Black Widows dialog in this and Avengers I had a distinct feeling that Joss doesn't respect black widow and maybe he really does objectify women. If you watch the films Joss Wedon is not involved in Black widow is much more of a soldier, not a cold fish or a hard ass, but contains her emotions. Being blunt Widow comes off as a whiny and emotional "woman" in this. A one dimensional cartoon. Theres also really not any build up of chemistry between Romanov and Banner. I can't for the life of me figure out why this subplot is in the movie. After this movie it's only subtly referenced, like they immediately threw it out and only grudgingly have one more nod between them in endgame. It serves no purpose in the film and the ending is retconned in Thor: Ragnarok from him landing in the sea to him going to space. It never really gelled with her character.
Aside from this I noticed Widow shows a lot of cleavage in this and is clearly wearing a push-up bra. Theres a cringy scene in this where Banner falls face first into her cleavage, that happens again in Wedons Justice league between Flash and wonder woman. Look it up, its shot for shot. She's "sexy" in this where as she wears much more tactical clothing and suit design in the post-wedon films. Iron man even makes a joke later telling her she and hulk "better not be playing hide the zucchini". I wanna make it clear, I don't look for these things. It kinda just stood out. SJ credited wedon at some point in interviews for helping build her strong female character so I could be talking out of my butt, but apparently I'm not alone there were a lot of complaints online about these scenes being misogynistic when this first came out. I question whether these interviews were the pointed kind where she was directed to say that. She hasn't worked with him since.
I think you could literally cut out all these scenes and still have the exact same movie. I bet some fans wouldnt even notice.
Yeah Widow in that film was a bit strange. Like, I don't have a problem with her being shown sexy, as she's a spy, and it's been established that she was trained to use sex and sexual attraction to lure in her targets. So the idea that she might casually wear her outfit with some cleavage showing, doesn't really seem out of place to me. It's mostly not mentioned by anyone, it's not like every dude in the cast is leering at her tits, and making honking gestures or whatnot. And...well regarding Tony telling what is essentially two of his coworkers to "try and leash in your very obvious relationship when it's business time"....honestly I can empathize with that. I've literally got 2 coworkers who are about as subtle with their relationship, as a pair of horny teenagers, and they are in their 40s. I've literally walked into an office, finding them hugging, and they did the *quickly jump away from each other and fail to look innocent* thing. And I've had to do something similar to basically say "We see it, you're not hiding it well, if you're trying to keep it from us, you need to do better at being subtle" I recall Tony said it mostly in jest, because let's be honest, of all the people to actually CARE if two people are fucking, it's NOT going to be Tony. The man with a stripper pole in his private jet, is hardly going to actually be bothered by two people that he genuinely cares for, being sexually happy with each other. I think he just enjoyed watching them blush and squirm a bit, thinking they hadn't made it painfully obvious.
What I don't like about Widow, is the well known thing about "I can't have kids, so I'm the real monster" line. That was just.....SO weird. Equating infertility with inhumanity, was so out of left field for me. I remember literally blinking in disbelief, and kind of shaking my head, like that one classic gif of the guy being mildly surprised at hearing something.
One point about Ultron that personally annoyed me, was the really cliche "I'm an A.I. made to protect humanity, and within 0.0004 nanoseconds of being alive, I've digested all human knowledge/history, and decided the best way to protect humanity is to DESTROY ALL HUMANS!! BEEP BEEP BOOP BOOP!! It's just, I'm SO sick of that trope. It's one of the lamest ones I personally ever see, it's really low hanging fruit as far as A.I antagonist motivations.
