Avengers Age of Ultron Thoughts

For the first time in I can't remember how long I went out and saw a movie in theaters more than once. Avengers Age of Ultron is something that will become a classic. I loved pretty much every second of this movie. The acting, action, effects, and pretty much everything else were spot on.

As always Joss and crew pay attention to the minor details that make each of the characters human and full of life. Everyone has believable motivations and killer one liners. It is pure bliss as a fan of the comics who is willing to accept the translation required to move these stories with literal decades of history into the very different medium of film.

I will likely talk freely here and not be worried about spoilers so if you don't want spoilers don't read further... jerk.

One of my favorite parts of the movie is when the Hulkbuster armor comes out. It's dropped from orbit and is named Veronica (because this is the Hulk's girlfriend, since Bruce's is named Betty. Yes, they put an Archie joke in a Marvel movie). The Hulkbuster armor was everything we needed it to be, and it was such a wonderful action scene that kept the intensity up while developing the conflicts even more.

Spader was awesome as Ultron. He is the perfect Anti-Stark. His delivery of each and every line in the movie was perfect. I have zero complaints. Seriously. Perfect portrayal for this setting.

The tidbits setting up the upcoming storylines were wonderful. Each step towards the Infinity War and the Civil War made me a bit giddier with anticipation. Marvel has a good thing here and I don't think I ever expected to be excited by random characters I never cared about before having their own movies (my god, I am actually looking forward to an Ant-man movie. What. The. Hell?)

My only gripes with Age of Ultron are relatively minor, but they are things that bothered me. (Major spoilers coming, seriously.)

First off, the appearance of the Vision I wasn't really expecting. I guess I missed the trailers that had him added in and the appearance of the toys. That isn't the disappointing part. I was excited to see him show up. It was awesome. My only issue is that his appearance and existence just felt a little tacked on and flat. Paul Bettany did a great job and I am extremely happy with the portrayal in the setting, but he didn't feel well developed or explained. There was just something lacking from his appearance in the movie. It could be because of how crowded the movie had become at that point though.

I really like the portrayal of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. I love that they have been added to the series and were being done by two excellent actors who clearly had a ton of respect for the characters. I just found the death of Quicksilver at the end to be cheapened by him only having 7 lines in the movie. I wanted to be saddened by him getting Jossed, but I couldn't. There just wasn't enough time to get invested in his chracter. Someone needed to die in the movie, I get it. It totally needed to happen, but I just wasn't moved by it the way I probably should have been.

Captain America and Iron Man start arguing about their opposing views for the Civil War build-up in this. It's wonderful to see. I love it. I know that the Civil War movie is going to be great and I will be seeing that movie as soon as I can while being a mega fanboy during the build-up (I've already chosen a side, everyone who knows me should know that already). My only problem with this though comes from my personal politics starting to bleed into the entertainment I'm watching.

I really felt like the lines, acting, and directing going into the lines that Cap was supposed to be saying were a little too idealistic without much belief/oomph behind them. Captain America over and over again shows himself to be heavily libertarian leaning with his beliefs (we can argue about this later, just go with it). He is a believer in the founding principles of America and he believes in them wholeheartedly and without hesitation. In this movie though, the lines being written and read sound like what a politically Left-leaning Hollywood Progressive would think a libertarian or believer in the founding principles would say rather than what someone who truly believes in those principles would say and how they would say it.

I'm not saying it's awful drivel, it just feels off from what I would personally expect from those lines and characters.

My last gripe though is the big one. I'm pretty sure that in the last battle scene I saw Hawkeye smacking Ultron Sentries with his bow Legolas style. Who thought that was a good idea!?!

Other than those few things, it was seriously an awesome movie. I loved it and I can't wait to own it on every special edition blue-ray/dvd combo pack that they put out for it.

Tony Stark, Master Articifer

So some buddies of mine have been doing a series of blog posts about translating the Avengers into Pathfinder characters. Nothing super specific, just the high concept and general path they’d take with the build. It’s a fun little exercise and pretty entertaining to read their counter points. (You can read those here.)

This week they did Ironman. I read both of their descriptions and disagreed heavily with both of them. That tends to happen when I see someone playing around with the high concepts of one of my favorite characters though. The first one made him into a power/steam armor Fighter, while the second made him into an Alchemist. The Alchemist build is closer to what I would consider to be a more accurate build, but it is still very far off from what I would consider to be Tony Stark. The Steam Armor Fighter build I’d think would be more accurate for Warmachine or one of Tony’s enemies, but not Stark himself.

That is what both of these are missing. The Alchemist build gets some of it right, but falls short of what you’d expect from Tony Stark. His strengths are not in his combat abilities, they are in his ingenuity, creativity, and intelligence. Take away his suit and he’ll just build a better one. He learned science while following in his father’s footsteps creating some of the most advanced technology in the Marvel Universe, and I mean he personally helped design and create this stuff. There is a very clear path to take here and that is a crafting Wizard.

Now as I go through this build you need to understand how I’m going about this. I am not trying to build an actual playable version of him, just trying to design him as he should be in keeping with his character themes, concepts and abilities. I am going to assume that he his funding is unlimited and I might downplay some aspects that are common characteristics of Superheroes because they don’t follow character creation rules.

So first we are going to start with his race and class. Obviously he’s Human, with Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma as his highest stats. His physical stats aren’t all that important because his crafted items will make up for them later. Very clearly he will be a Wizard, that’s the closest thing to an actual scientists that this setting has in it. He deals with insane theories, formulae and then crafts powerful items with that knowledge. Alchemist would work if they could craft to the extent that a Wizard could. I don’t see alchemist as his kind of thing because the bombs just don’t fit as well as the idea of him crafting wands of Scorching Ray.

Source

He would have an Amulet as his bonded object because that’s close enough to an Arc Reactor implanted in your chest. (The life saving aspects of all of this Arc Reactor stuff will need some tweaking since D20 style games don’t handle terminal illness in PCs very well. Lots of DM permissions here.) His feats would primarily consist of Craft related feats and the ability to use armor with lowered spell failure rates.

So for a full 20 levels of progression, the Wizard has 15 Feats, plus 2 more for Flaws, which he definitely should have. His list of feats must include Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Wand, Craft Construct, Forge Ring, Craft Rod, Arcane Armor Training, and Arcane Armor Mastery. The last two need to have the character to have some type of armor proficiency and so rather than having him waste two feats allowing him to get access to those feats he will take one level of Magus with the War Warder Archetype or one level of Fighter.
I put Create Construct in there for a very good reason. In the Ultimate Magic book there is a modification for any crafted Golem called Construct Armor. It basically turns your construct into a suit of power armor that only counts as a Breastplate for purposes of wearing it, which means that a guy who constructs Golem armor who also has feats reducing his penalties for casting while wearing armor is going to be able to fully utilize it in combat.

These items are the core of the character build. Without these you can’t have the Iron Man armor. Now the creation of the Construct Armor is a problem because of the way D20 systems run their construct creation systems, basically he either needs to be a high level Bard, Cleric, or be able to cast Wish in order to complete these constructs himself. With unlimited funding, as Tony Stark should have, obtaining the requisite ability to cast a 6th level Cleric/Bard spell (Animate Objects) shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s just annoying.
Anyways. After you work out how he’s building the armor you can move on to the easier stuff, creating magic items that mimic the abilities of the Iron Man Armor. Everything is just a handful of Spellcraft rolls away from this point on. Lasers/Repulsor blasts, flight, “sensors”? Easy to create magic items that do all of that. The only thing that will limit him at this point is funding.

Once you get the armor, the rest of this happens naturally

All of his remaining feats can be used to fill out your particular flavor of Iron Man as long as those key points are filled. Any failings that the Stark has can be overcome with his magic items (aka technology). Little bits and pieces can be altered as needed, maybe give him a specialty school, add some discoveries, different types of armor, etc. Hell you could even forgo the Construct crafting all together and just craft up different suits of armor.

My only problems with this build fall under the “little details” section. As usual, D20 class based systems don’t account for things that comic book superheroes are just able to do. It’s hard to simulate Tony Stark’s Craft Skills, Knowledge, Professional Knowledge and Charisma with such a low skilled character class.

Not sure what else I could really delve into on this particular entry. Anyone else got some thoughts on it?