New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Kim Hollis: Last weekend, we all indicated our expectation that Age of Ultron would earn more than its predecessor during its opening weekend. Why do you think it failed to do so?

Jason Barney: I don’t think the Rotten Tomatoes rating should be a concern, as this is a film worth seeing. It may not be as high as the first, but I took my son to see it on Friday night. He loved it and I enjoyed it. And this is part of my amazement with just exactly what Disney and Marvel are able to pull off here. This was not a second film where the creative team decided to hold off the major villain to peak interest in fans. There was no Khan or Joker. Marvel threw out a villain, Ultron, whom none of us had ever really heard of, and they were able to grab the second largest opening of all time. People are still very much in love with these characters, and having them together in one film is a treat. The primary reason why it didn’t reach $207 million is perhaps….$207 million is hard to reach?

Edwin Davies: Personally, I think my mistake in predicting the trajectory of the opening weekend was built on the assumption that the momentum that saw Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier open to much bigger numbers post-Avengers would create a kind of feedback loop where the next Avengers film's success would be boosted by all the films which benefitted from the first Avengers. While the success of those films probably did a lot to stoke the flames for Age of Ultron and helped ensure it would open to a huge number, I think they also made it seem a little less special. All three of those films had plots that revolved around a force trying to take over the world, and all three of them basically said that the Avengers individually can handle themselves pretty well. That makes the idea of a team-up a lot less impressive because they're saving the world in every movie. Plus the novelty of seeing these characters on screen together was lost after the first film, and in the little moments in the subsequent films where one or more of the team showed up for a scene or two. Those moments were fun at the time, but I think they probably made Age of Ultron feel like less of an event than the first one.

Maybe the bigger problem was the sense that this was just a stepping stone on the way to an even bigger conflict in the next movie. The first Avengers felt like a pretty definitive endpoint to the version of the MCU that existed before it. Since we know that Marvel has their next five years of movies planned out, this felt less like a finale and more like the halfway point.

Felix Quinonez: Actually we didn't all predict that Age of Ultron would beat its predecessor. I don't know if I was the only one who said it. But I specifically said that I found it hard to believe that it could top the opening of the first one. I really think that the novelty of the first movie played at least some part in its huge opening. And this time around, it didn't have that boost so it couldn't break the $200 million mark. Regardless, it's still huge and Marvel is still on top of the world.

Continued:       1       2