Avengers: Age of Ultron
Directed by: Joss Whedon
Written by: Joss Whedon - Based on the comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayley Atwell, Idris Elba, Claudia Kim, Thomas Kretschmann
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Thriller - 141 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 30 Apr 2015
Written by: Joss Whedon - Based on the comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayley Atwell, Idris Elba, Claudia Kim, Thomas Kretschmann
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Thriller - 141 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 30 Apr 2015
Avengers: Age of Ultron reminds me of a Rocky Balboa movie, especially the sequels. At first, an oblivious Rocky full of hubris gets humbled and everything falls apart. He must regroup, get back to his roots, and train harder to finally succeed over the gargantuan foe; a villain usually so formidable the audience doesn’t know how our underdog will get past him. The new Avengers certainly has what appears to be an omnipotent and cunning adversary, yet the weak point is it’s neither a shadowy syndicate trying to take over the world and it’s not even aliens which writer/director Joss Whedon threw at us in the first Avengers (2012). The bad guy this time around is of their own making which makes all of the ensuing death and destruction seem almost unnecessary and completely avoidable. Rocky Balboa only accidentally created his nemesis once and that wasn’t until the God-awful Rocky V (1990). Avengers: Age of Ultron is not Rocky V; its action scenes remain impressive, there are new characters to introduce, and the jokes still land with a punch. However, Age of Ultron is lesser than its predecessor because of a forced villain which feels more arbitrary than logical follow-on.
Even though the bad guy is an accident of unintended consequences, he is fun to watch. Ultron (James Spader, 2012’s Lincoln) is an artificial intelligence unwittingly spawned as the brain child between Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., 2014’s The Judge) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo, 2014’s Foxcatcher). Rather than protecting Earth from another alien invasion, Ultron decides he must kill the Avengers instead. He makes his own robotic body he keeps improving with advanced metals and even has designs on creating human tissue. Ultron's desire to kill the Avengers should not be too hard because they are already at each other's throats. What the team needs are some trust exercises.
Even though the bad guy is an accident of unintended consequences, he is fun to watch. Ultron (James Spader, 2012’s Lincoln) is an artificial intelligence unwittingly spawned as the brain child between Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., 2014’s The Judge) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo, 2014’s Foxcatcher). Rather than protecting Earth from another alien invasion, Ultron decides he must kill the Avengers instead. He makes his own robotic body he keeps improving with advanced metals and even has designs on creating human tissue. Ultron's desire to kill the Avengers should not be too hard because they are already at each other's throats. What the team needs are some trust exercises.
The Avengers are foremost a dysfunctional team with personalities built to clash and egos doing their best to outperform one another. Perhaps that is why they function so well as a defense against villains far and wide. Tony Stark is the financier behind the operation but he has taken a step back and let Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier) assume the status of team leader as Captain America. Tony realizes Steve is a better organizer and battle commander while Tony serves the group more effectively as money man, tech lead, and smart ass. It remains a slight chore to remind yourself that Iron Man, The Hulk, and Captain America are all on par with actual Gods such as Thor (Chris Hemsworth, 2013’s Thor: The Dark World), but this is the Marvel Universe, play the game.
Aside from amusing snarky dialogue from Joss Whedon which goes all the way back to his Firefly days, the new Avengers introduces new characters to the already crowded field. Twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 2014’s Godzilla, and Elizabeth Olsen), who go by the superhero names Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, show up as enhanced humans, sort of like Captain America, but are on par with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson, 2014’s Lucy) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner, 2014’s Kill the Messenger), the more minor Avengers due to their limited capabilities in battle. You may remember Quicksilver from last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past because his character exists in both universes, even though they are completely separate. It’s easy to see the winner, the X-Men Quicksilver is much better on screen than the Avengers’ Quicksilver. There is also a new ‘thing’ called Vision which I am not going to talk about because that enters spoiler territory.
The cast being packed with over a dozen characters who could all lead their own films is a familiar problem Mr. Whedon encounters. This time, he bumps up the screen time for Black Widow and Hawkeye, two characters very much sidelined in the first film, and gives them each a side plot story to give them that all important third dimension. Black Widow forms a bond with Bruce Banner and they flirt during Avenger downtimes and look like sad-eyed puppy dogs when Bruce keeps reminding Natasha that she should not want to get involved with The Hulk. Hawkeye’s secret emerges out of nowhere and is neither amazing nor distracting. It’s a cagey move by Whedon to make the audience care more about a character considered a throwaway since all he does is perch out of the way shooting an endless supply of explosive arrows.
As always, Iron Man and Captain America get most of the screen time and gee-whiz action scenes which leaves Thor as the odd man out. When not in his own films, it feels like the brains behind the Avengers do not know what to do with him. Halfway through, Thor takes off and takes a dip in some enchanted whirlpool which has nothing to do with anything and during the climactic battle, Ultron plucks him out of nowhere to fight one-on-one only because there was nothing else for Thor to do. This is not a specific knock on Whedon’s screenplay, but when there are so many alpha characters, there is almost nothing you can do to prevent one of them falling to beta status.
The Avengers and their accompanying solo films have been the biggest franchise for the past seven or so years, bigger than the Star Trek reboot and larger than Guardians of the Galaxy. It will be interesting to see what happens when the Star Wars films start appearing. Always alert for signs of wear and tear in what is the ninth film in the franchise after three Irons Mans, two Thors, and two Captain Americas (and not counting the Hulks), our heroes still feel fresh but the story this time around is not epic. It’s not necessarily formulaic, but accidentally creating your enemy comes off as borderline goofy. Everything is what you expect: the IMAX, the ear-splitting explosions, and the ‘how did they do that’ special effects. Age of Ultron should please just about everybody, but it probably will not impress all that many.
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