Avengers: Age of Ultron Trailer Released, Comics Lover Swears He Will Watch No More

As anyone who has been on the internet since Wednesday night probably knows, the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer has been released online. As a person who has professed his enthusiasm for comic books time and time again let me say to all of you, right now-

-my mind and body are ready.

Let me follow that up by asserting that I plan on doing ever single thing within my power to not look at another trailer before I watch the full-length film next May. I repeat, I will not be watching any new trailers that are released. 

Not only that, but I also won’t be seeking out articles discussing the film, or reading interviews with the cast members, or obsessively perusing its Wikipedia page, all of which I did in late 2011 and early 2012 in preparation for the first movie. I won’t do it because I’m now older and wiser and I’ve learned my lesson.

Some of you long-time readers will remember a post I wrote two years ago titled “The Avengers and New Footage Fatigue“, which listed the various snippets of information I cobbled together due to my insatiable appetite for anything related to the movie. After keeping my ear to the digital ground long enough to watch an uncut 43 seconds clip I cut myself off cold turkey. That blog post ended with the words “… I hope that when I finally see it in theatres I’ll be able to enjoy every second of those 155 minutes like I’m watching them for the first time.”

May 5th, 2012 finally came and there I was-

Haha, nah, I still loved it. But after the the sheer rush wore off I was left with this feeling. Not that I didn’t enjoy it or that it was a bad movie by any means, but that I could have enjoyed it more.

The two most recent movies I saw in theatres were Gone Girl and This Is Where I Leave You, and having only seen a single trailer for both you know what I expected?

Aaah! I mean, “Ah.” I mean, I didn’t expect to view Rosamund Pike the way I do now. She’s definitely still an actress I am attracted to, but her performance stunned me, and was aided in doing so by my not even knowing it was based on a novel. That’s how little I knew about the film going in.

I haven’t lost any respect for Stephen King, because for all I know he’s speaking the gospel truth. I won’t be reading any more of Straub’s work to find out though.

I do the same thing with books, either picking them up out of boxes marked “FREE” that have been left out on the sidewalk or grabbing them for a few dollars at a sale. That can have pretty unsatisfactory results, like when I read Lost Boy, Lost Girl, what I’m going to assume is straight-up the worst thing to receive a Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. It can also lead to me reading and absolutely loving Muriella Pent by Russell Smith, which I fully plan to review the next time I reread it [and I will]. Entering into something blind always pays off if you enjoy it, and can never truly disappoint you because of your complete lack of expectations.

I don’t want to go into all of the ways that the internet has affected the culture we live in, but it practically goes without saying that we don’t view information the same way we used to. It’s not just that Google can help us find out if bread mold is toxic, and consequently whether or not a sandwich is in our near future [something I have absolutely no experience with], it’s that the search engine can also lead us to Jennifer Lawrence’s sexted pictures [our thoughts here and here] if that’s what we really want to see. I mean, there’s a site called Leaked Early which pretty much exists solely to speculate on track lists for upcoming albums [and then shares downloads for them prior to their actual release dates]. To bring this all back to Avengers: Age of Ultron the trailer itself was actually leaked itself, which pushed Marvel’s hand to release their official version [though they took it in stride]-

As it currently stands, the two minute and sixteen second trailer has more than enough to gush and conjecture over. io9 put together a very thorough shot-by-shot breakdown of the trailer [no huge spoilers, though they do hypothesize on the identity of Andy Serkis’ character], and it marks the last article I read about it. I’m glad I watched the trailer. I’m content knowing that Quicksilver running doesn’t look terrible and Black Widow looks like a bad-ass and there’s a little shirtless Thor thrown in there for all of the non-heterosexual-males among us. I’m satisfied with this being my last real look at any of this prior to May 2015.

In a world where there’s this constant unending search for the next little tidbit of information I’m happy to not be strung along. I guess you could say there are no str-

Okay, alright, it’s your line. Eesh.