Friday, February 27, 2015

Avengers: Age of Ultron -- Nick Fury, Thor, and Black Widow character posters

Marvel must be as impatient as their fanboys, because we already have three new posters for the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron to discuss. 

First up is Nick Fury:


Samuel L. Jackson's lack of presence just oozes out of the frame here. I remember how excited I was at the idea of Sam Jackson playing Nick Fury back when the first Iron Man came out, but in most of these movies he feels like he's phoning everything in. Unless it turns out that those Furys were really LMDs, Jackson needs to step up his game. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was an improvement, but this poster makes it look like things are going back to the way they were before. At least he has an excuse for not reacting to the robots in this poster, seeing as how they're about to literally blindside him. (Are blind jokes okay? You know what, I don't care, these posters are asking for it)


None of the posters so far have had great lighting, but this new Thor one is particularly strange. Those shadows on his arm don't feel right. It's like not even diffused light gets under the part of his armor extending past his shoulder, but at the same time, the shadow isn't very dark. It gives me the same feeling I get when I try to see that dress as blue and black. What really bugs me about things like this is that somebody got paid to make it look like that.

At least the people on these posters have looked like actual people so far, but then that just serves to make the backgrounds look that much more fake. This poster reminds me of the obvious green screen shots in the throne room toward the end of Thor: The Dark World.


The fact that this Black Widow poster is easily the best of these so far is sad. It's better than the others because the camera is pulled back a bit, allowing us to actually see what we're looking at, and because her upright posture paralleling the building behind her gives the image at least some sense of composition (accidental, I'm sure). Apart from that and the distracting strangeness of the lone robot standing on the rooftop on the left, it's still a pretty forgettable image.

Okay, let's get to the fun part.

The Matching Game

First, let's look at the robots:


What a mess. I can't be sure about some of those smaller ones on the Black Widow poster, so there might be even more that match. And this is not even comparing them to the earlier posters. Maybe I'll compare all of them once they're all released.

We're not done with the matching game just yet though:

It's hard to tell, but the these buildings from the Thor and Black Widow posters are the same one.


Taking things even farther, the same building appears on the Nick Fury poster--twice!


Sorry for drawing on your face, Samuel L. Jackson. Please don't kill me.

That building on the right edge is also in the same spot on the Black Widow poster. I'm assuming it's part of the same original image as the tall building.

At first, I thought building in the middle with the crumbling corner was also on the Hulk poster, but it appears to have been a case of mistaken identity:


However, this burning police car from the Thor poster--


--does make a cameo appearance in the Black Widow poster, albeit with different flames:


This other car from the Black Widow poster--


--turns up on the Nick Fury poster.


I'm surprised I haven't been able to match any of the flames or smoke/dust clouds yet, but we probably still have several posters to go.

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