Avengers: Age of Ultron

Directed by Joss Whedon. Written by Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby. Starring Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banners/The Hulk), Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff).

Bottom line: Avengers: Age of Ultron is full of fancy graphics and witty banter but it doesn’t quite match its predecessor.

2.5/4

Avengers: Age of Ultron opens into a winter battle. It’s a comic battle if I’ve ever seen one and it brings us up to speed on what’s been going on in the Marvel world since the last Avengers installment. The superhero team is fighting a Hydra army (the running force of antagonists in the franchise) who now control the powerful, magical, staff wielded by Loki in The Avengers.

Other than knowing that the staff is a powerful weapon, it’s a mystery and thus, a danger. Stark hatches a plan to give the world a veritable suit of armor by way of automized Iron Man suits in a program called Ultron. What could go wrong? Well, Ultron starts up and declares what every sentient robot does when it’s commanded to stop threats; it tries to stop Mankind. The Avengers must assemble and stop the new villain.

The acting is just what you’d expect. It seems like each of the actors is more comfortable in their characters than the previous movie. James Spader gives a great performance as the voice of Ultron.

In each of the film’s fight scenes there’s at least one shot that encompasses each of the heroes. If you add some photo-effects I’d say it was straight out of a comic book. In the opening scene, the camera glides through the winter Slovakian forest pausing at each Avenger as they perform some movement that characterizes them: Thor uses it hammer, Captain America throws his shield, Iron Man zaps his laser-hands. It’s kind of fun and it’s kind of meta; the movie knows it’s a comic book movie and it knows you know. The meta-moments are one of the things that made the first Avengers fun. Now, the only catch, and The Avengers: Age of Ultron falls into this trap from time to time, is that if it does these types of meta-moments too often then they lose their affect.

The Marvel superhero movies in this franchise have really pleasant banter between the characters and this is no different; there is solid chemistry among the cast and the dialog highlights this. I was going to say there was an exception to this, in the case of Black Widow and Bruce Banner, but I’ll talk about that in a bit.

I’d also like to note that I saw Age of Ultron a couple days after Mad Max: Fury Road and I experienced the downside of having a general 5-star rating system. Mad Max was in the 2-2.5 range but I pushed it to a 2.5 for various reasons. Age of Ultron is between a 2.5-3 but I don’t think it was quite a 3. Between the two, I had more fun with The Avengers: Age of Ultron and I would recommend it first but you wouldn’t know that if you just looked at the star rating. I suppose, though, that in the scheme of movies, the two fall into the same general place of “pleasant enough for a matinee but you aren’t missing much without it.”

Avengers: Age of Ultron has lots of action, fancy special effects, and clever banter. If you are a fan of the franchise and aren’t sick to death of comic book super hero movies yet, this can be a fun matinee. I wasn’t really that inspired by it. Maybe it was because I’ve seen a bunch of movies about robots coming alive and lashing out against humanity. Now, mind yourself of spoilers in this next part?

In the time between The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, the team has developed a new system to work with Bruce Banner’s Hulk-form. Bruce Banner will hulk out only when it is necessary and when the action is over, Black Widow will come and help him calm down (by caressing his hands). When he transforms back into Banner, he listens to some classical music using Beats By Dre headphones. With such intimacy, romance is bound to blossom, right? It begins with some cute flirtation between Banner and Black Widow but then almost immediately she switches to full on seduction. I thought it was awkward but, then again, maybe that’s one way of building out her backstory. She was, after all, an assassin trained from childhood; it’s possible that the closest thing she knows to affection is seduction. In that light, I can understand it.

If you’ve seen this movie, I’d also like to briefly comment on that scene between Banner and Scar-Jo in the Hawkeye secret farmhouse of solitude. Banner says, “I can’t ever give this to you. It physically wouldn’t work.” To which ScarJo explains that she was sterilized when she was being trained as an assassin. She asks, “Do you think you’re the only monster on the team?” So a woman who can’t have children is a monster? A friend of mine noted that, perhaps, she was implicating the audience with that statement. That is, the audience would think she is a monster and that’s supposed to make us uncomfortable. I don’t quite buy it though; I think she was saying that she was a monster.

Have you seen Avengers: Age of Ultron? Please leave a comment if you agree or disagree or if you have any questions or concerns. Thanks for reading!