Tag Archives: Thor

4 Marvel Movie Buildups With No Payoff

In movies there are always scenes that have you on the edge of your seat, waiting and anticipating the events that follow. It starts with a build up, whether dialogue or music-based, hype or angering a powerful character, or simply the main ending/fight of the movie. However, movies don’t always follow through as they should, sometimes not letting people live up to the hype, or ending a would-be epic fight in seconds at best. Here’s a list of four movies, Marvel movies in particular, that fail to deliver a proper payoff.

Magneto Factory Scene (X-Men: Apocalypse)

The scene has a beautiful and tragic build up: Magneto, who is living undercover in some obscure country with his own family that he loves, saves one of his co-workers lives by using his powers. He tries to be inconspicuous, but is found out. Later, law enforcement confronts him with non-metal weapons and his family ends up dead.

To further the build up, this is Magneto, the guy who lifted an entire stadium and trapped The President of the Unites States with intent to kill him, the guy who spent much of his life killing Nazis in creative ways, the guy who singlehandedly controlled the Cuban Missile Crisis, and now he’s pissed.

So in true Magneto form, he enters the factory, locks the doors and…Apocalypse interferes and kills everyone in one short second. Boo, way to rob us of an epic scene with Magneto being the awesome villain he is. Shame.

Loki vs. Hulk (Avengers)

Not quite as well-built up as Magneto’s scene, but this fight still has some good scenes leading up to it. For one, in the original Thor movie, Loki and Thor have a somewhat good fight with Loki using illusions to hold his own. In Avengers, Thor and Hulk seem evenly matched. Also in Avengers, Loki and Thor are even MORE evenly matched and Loki’s even able to stab his brother.

So Loki vs. Hulk should be some kind of a fight, clearly. Even better, Loki has his staff and is clearly angry, ranting about being a god, with a temperament we’ve never seen bef–

Oh. Never mind, it’s a comedy scene. Oh well. It’s iconic, but the buildup was definitely misused.

The Destroyer’s Debut (Thor)

The Destroyer is not only hyped up throughout the film, but also given scenes of pure dominance where it vaporizes Frost Giants. It’s talked up as the ultimate weapon, Odin’s best, and the executioner of all things (hence it’s name).

When the Destroyer gets an actual fight, when Loki sends it after Thor…it doesn’t live up to its name. At best, it destroys a few cars and fails to kill any of Thor’s friends (Warrior Three and Sif). This impact is lessened further when Thor finally gets his powers back and…ends the Destroyer in less than 2 minutes flat.

So much for the hype.


Whiplash’s Final Stand (Iron Man 2)

In Iron Man 2, Whiplash (Ivan Vanko) is built up as this Tony Stark-level genius who can replicate what Iron Man does, but in a more evil way. He showcases SOME of that earlier, by nearly killing Tony at some random public event (a race) and by designing some killbots/drones for Justin Hammer.

At the end of the movie, his drones go crazy and start trying to kill people, causing Iron Man and War Machine to lead them away to a deserted park so the REAL fight can begin. Then it ends in a quick laser show that kills everything. Well at least Whiplash–nope. He dies to a simple team blast in like 2 minutes as well.

What a waste.

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