String Theory: The Trailer for AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

I've never done an analysis of a trailer before. Trailers are such contentious pieces of entertainment. Some people wait with bated breath for the release of trailers, and ogle them ten, twenty, a hundred times before the movie arrives in theaters. For them, anticipation reaches a fever pitch--and they are often disappointed, as I was with the release of Spider-Man 3. I had watched the trailer so many times that the real film paled in comparison to the ideal film that reeled around in my head. My feelings were kind of hurt.

Other folks avoid trailers as if they were sources of eye infection. The idea behind swearing off a trailer is that you want to come into the movie fresh, on its own terms, free of bias and expectation. I believe I adopted this method before seeing The Grand Budapest Hotel. I knew it was a critically acclaimed Wes Anderson film, so I needed no further information to convince me to see it. Thus, I had an excellent movie-watching experience in which Anderson's colorful world unfolded before my very eyes, complete with unexpected cameos and untainted gags.

Right now I fall in between these two camps. Ideally I like the purism of the second approach, as it seems the most fair to let a movie express itself outside the dirty, necessary confines of advertisement. On the other, trailers are exciting. They give you a glimpse into a new world and let you hope for the best.

It's with both of those attitudes in mind that I dig into an analysis of the hot-off-the-presses Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer. There was no way I was going to avoid this one, especially because we all already have loose expectations about the film. Why not use it as a platform for speculation and observation? Besides, the movie doesn't come out until May. We'll both have forgotten that I wrote this by then.

See my Age of Ultron review here.

Just as I outlined a dichotomy of trailer-watchers above, I believe there is a dichotomy of trailers: those that shamelessly embrace their nature as an advertisement, and those that attempt to be an artistic statement on their own terms (albeit always beholden to the as-yet-unseen film from which they draw their footage). Most trailers we get are of the former type, tossing moneyshot after moneyshot at us in the dangling-carrotest way they know how. Some trailers, like this or this or this, try to represent the movie thematically, or tonally, rather than just offering enticing snippets.

Again, Age of Ultron splits the difference. It provides some much-desired content in advance, but it also has some really great thematic flourishes. It gives us reveals, while realizing that the reveals mean nothing if they're not grounded in character or story.

This attitude is why Disney/Marvel handled the events of a few days ago perfectly. It had been spread around that the new Avengers trailer was to be revealed during an Agents of SHIELD commercial break for this coming week's episode. This was a savvy business strategy: SHIELD struggled throughout season 1, but the critics have agreed that season 2 is better so far. The hope was that folks would tune in to the show for the trailer reveal, and be enticed back into regular viewership of Coulson's team.

That changed two days ago when the new trailer leaked to Vimeo, then spread like wildfire. Rather than crusading across the internet and silencing the sites that featured the trailer, Marvel went ahead and released the high res trailer. If people were going to be seeing the trailer anyway, they wanted them to see it officially, in its most visually pleasing form. It's hard to imagine this sort of fan-pleasing snap reaction from J. J. Abrams and his mystery-fetish attitude over in the Star Wars realm, or from Warner Bros. and their bumbling paranoia surrounding Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Marvel excels at understanding the nature and difficulties of providing entertainment. They even capped the whole fiasco with this tweet:

So that's that. Enough with the preliminaries, lets get to the trailer. Watch it here if you have or haven't already:

0:06 - We open with a beautiful cityscape shot, slightly askew, the first indicator in this trailer that Joss Whedon has stepped up his game when it comes to visual stylization. As a director, he has never been known for his visuals, which makes sense considering much of his background is in television. Even surrounding the almost universal acclaim of The Avengers were niggling complaints about the somewhat sterile visual compositions.

This landscape shot is aptly capped with the growled phrase: "I'm gonna show you something beautiful."

0:13 - Now we enter what is perhaps the most obligatory and least interesting few seconds of the trailer. People screaming, running around, cars on fire, hysterics. These are the sort of contextual shots that we have seen time and time again in the mass destruction/superheroism era of cinema.

0:22 - We get our establishing shots of heroes--Captain America's back, Thor's back, Hawkeye's face, as if to say Hey look everyone, Hawkeye is still part of us! You remember Hawkeye?

But more interesting than that is the voiceover: "You want to protect the world, but you don't want it to change." This trailer, much like the first trailer for the first Avengers, begins with scenes of destruction set to the menacing voiceover of the main villain. "You were made to be ruled," Loki sneers, etc. etc. There are a few differences, one of which being that Ultron's monologue here is no less sinister but much more pointed. One of the thematic complaints leveled against the idea of superheroism is that it is an inherently conservative act. Superheroes strive to defend peace, justice, and the status quo. They do so using their sense of right and wrong, as well as their sense of being able to beat people up. As many ethical quandaries as they face, might ultimately makes right.

Ultron is subverting the glorification of superheroism with his monologue--tugging at that conservative thread, as it were. This potentially contradictory idea of wanting to protect the world without wanting to allow change was explored to fantastic effect in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and it looks like we'll see our heroes continue down that dark and morally perplexing path.

0:28 - This is my favorite one-two punch of the trailer.

Some serious trauma has just gone down. Where's Tony? Why can't anybody look at each other? And most importantly, why is Bruce so effed up that he is in a fetal position, wrapped up in a blanket that evokes a straightjacket?

0:32 - Ultron staggers to life like a demented robotic Frankenstein's monster as the Avengers look on in mixed horror and confusion. The imagery fits the monologue perfectly, Ultron as a puppet learning to walk without the strings that supported him--and bound him. This is our first good look at the new bad guy, other than the Entertainment Weekly cover that I used at the beginning of this post, in which Ultron casually photobombs Stark and Cap.

At this point we start to realize that we may have the MCU's very first truly terrifying villain on our hands. Think about it. There was that beardy guy in Iron Man, the underutilized Whiplash in Iron Man 2, the red herring of Iron Man 3, the underwhelming Red Skull, the too-cheeky-to-be-disturbing regular villain Loki, the stupid Dark Elf guy from Thor 2. The villains were the least interesting part of Guardians of the Galaxy. The closest we've probably come was the Winter Soldier, and even he lost his menace as the movie rolled on. Also he had a baby face.

Now we have Ultron, a lesser known villain. But whoever conceptualized this trailer was wise to construct it entirely around the new villain, as we will continue to see. As my younger brother said after watching this trailer, "I didn't even know who that guy was, and I'm already scared of him."

0:45 - In what is the best example of corporate synergy in recent history, the famous song from Disney's Pinocchio wails to life over the Marvel logo and contextualizes the coming scenes of stress and destruction. This is nothing less than a stroke of genius as far as I'm concerned. It feels plaintive, melancholy, unsettling. Every horror filmmaker knows that the disembodied voices of children singing are psychologically disturbing. This trailer takes it one step further and perverts our memories of a beloved Disney classic.

0:58 - Bruce Banner collapses in a gothic snowy forest in what is the first of several lovely shots in a row.

Wherever Black Widow is (hangar? dance studio?), boy does she look lonely. Check out that fractured reflection of her in the wall of mirrors. We're seeing more evidence of superior visual style at play here.

A lot of folks complain that Whedon overuses Dutch angles. My ignorant layman's explanation of a Dutch angle is that it is the sort of camera angle that happens when you lower the camera from its typical horizontal plane (generally face-level), and tilt it upward at a character. This technique was first used in 1920's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and is generally used to represent a character's unstable mental condition. Some directors use this inappropriately to make a scene seem more dramatic or something, and its overuse feels insanely melodramatic. Anyway, there's a good example with the above Banner shot, one that I find wholly effective considering that Banner looks like he's either pre- or post-transformation.

1:03 - Wonder twin powers, activate! We get our first live action look at Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, who are apparently at least sometimes working with Ultron. You may remember them from that dumb post-credit coda in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. They were the two mutants being experimented on or whatever.

Anyway, Quicksilver is really fast (a different version of him was featured in the jailbreak scene of X-Men: Days of Future Past) and Scarlet Witch is telekinetic. Apparently she can also inspire disturbing visions, which I'm guessing explains some of the odd upcoming flashes in the trailer.

They are played by the husband and wife in Godzilla, and I hope they have learned charisma since then. (Just kidding, I know their dullness was mostly the script's fault.)

1:05 - A bunch of evil Iron Mans shoot out of the water. Some fans have expressed misgivings about their functional similarity to the Chitauri of the last movie--disposable baddies meant to be slaughtered in droves. Maybe they'll innovate on that formula somehow. We'll see.

1:12 - Robert Downey Jr. has been catching a lot of flak recently. He's the highest paid actor in the world, yet he's gotten a reputation for being a one-trick snarky between his glut of Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes movies. Folks say they can't take him seriously when he's trying to be serious. I tend to have the opposite reaction. His flippant attitude makes his dramatic moments more effective and unexpected in my experience. I loved his PTSD in Iron Man 3 because I had spent so much time being disarmed by his charisma that his vulnerability caught me in a vulnerable place.

I get the feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of Tony Stark's vulnerability in this movie. His admission of guilt here concerning the creation of Ultron is just the tip of the iceberg. There is about to be a huge wedge hammered in between the members of the Avengers.

1:22 - Hulkbuster armor! I love how the Iron Man suit's head gets covered by another bigger Iron Man suit head. And is it just me or does the CGI Hulkface look more upset than usual? To quote Robert Downey Jr., "It can't just be a good fight, it's gotta be about something. And the great thing in Age of Ultron is, [in that fight between the Hulk and Tony Stark], nobody wins when two people who are friends fight."

1:32 - Andy Serkis is in the house! Everybody's favorite motion capture mogul is actually playing a dude without motion capture (for now). His scowling beardiness has made comics fans speculate that he is playing Ulysses Klaw. He's a dude who gets transformed into solid sound, and a regular villain of the Fantastic Four, Avengers, and Black Panther. Hopefully this means Marvel is laying the groundwork for Black Panther--Marvel could really use some people of color who aren't sidekicks in their film universe.

1:34 - What I want to know is why Thor is having such a bad time in the hot tub.

Following that are a few more lovely shots--one of the Hulk reaching out for a terrified Black Widow, and an incongruous shot of a bunch of ballerinas. Make what you will of that.

1:40 - I love Tony's face when Thor grabs him by the throat. I really really want to know what brings this scene about.

1:53 - What more evocative image in superhero history than Captain America's shattered shield? I believe this symbol stands in for the catastrophic and long-lasting effects this movie will have moving into Phase 3 of the Marvel movie universe.

1:55 - And the trailer ends with our first shot of Ultron speaking: "There are no strings on me," finally weaving the voiceover and the visuals together in one climactic line of dialogue. Thus the trailer begins and ends with Ultron, and his menace pervades its entirety thanks to the haunting rendition of the song from Pinocchio. Kudos go to James Spader's voicework. The whole Pinocchio motif really should have been too cheesy to work, but Spader sells it all the way. People are surprised his voice isn't more robot-y, and I think they absolutely made the right choice on that. He feels like a more tangible threat this way.

Whereas the original Avengers trailer establishes Loki straight off with a voiceover, he gets cast aside in favor of hero reveals and an underwhelming rock and roll track. The Age of Ultron trailer leans heavy on the villain throughout, letting us know that this guy means business.

I'm about done talking about this. Overall, I'm sold on Ultron, and the movie in general. I'm expecting this to be the next big event in blockbuster filmmaking, redefining popular cinema once again, as Marvel has done several times already. Marvel has big plans on the horizon with the Civil War plot and the impending arrival of Thanos. But our heroes have enough on their hands already, and by all appearances they won't make it out unscathed.