Directed by: Joss Whedon || Produced by: Kevin Feige
Screenplay by: Joss Whedon || Starring (hold your breath…): Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders, Anthony Mackie, Hayley Atwell, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgard, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson, Linda Cardellini, Thomas Kretschmann, Andy Serkis, Claudia Kim
Music by: Brian Tyler, Danny Elfman || Cinematography by: Ben Davis || Edited by: Jeffrey Ford, Lisa Lassek || Country: United States || Language: English
Running Time: 141 minutes
One of the most anticipated films in Marvel’s cinematic canon since…the original Avengers (2012) has quickly become one of the franchise’s most divisive projects yet. While it’s unlikely fan banter over this movie will rival the sheer civil war-esque split over Man of Steel (2013) and DC’s own burgeoning cinematic universe, the general consensus of Joss Whedon’s followup to his first Marvel home-run is that it pales in comparison the original Avengers and even some of the better MCU standalones like Iron Man (2008), The Winter Soldier (2014), and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). It’s a consensus with which I agree. The aforementioned are predictable disappointments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) style as a whole. Marvel has always favored franchise development, interconnection, and ubiquity over the quality of its individual projects.
The real problems I have with Age of Ultron (AoU) are its basic direction and pacing, things that were also superior in the original Avengers and the MCU’s aforementioned three best standalones. We all understand that Whedon had a near-impossible task writing an Avengers sequel that was even more expansive than the original and bridged to further MCU films (trust us, Marvel fans, we get it). Again, that’s my complaint with Kevin Feige’s mission to push the franchise over the movies themselves, but let’s let that qualm go for a bit. However, when you have so many main characters (4-6 depending on how you count), plus a major villain, plus two substantial minor villains, plus a multitude of secondary supporting characters, plus various cameos from MCU sidekicks, plus a non-insignificant number of extended cameos for characters of future importance to the Marvel canon and/or foreign audience-pandering… when you add all that up, the pacing either needs to be incredibly efficient or somebody’s gotta go, or both. This is where the film falters for me, more so than the lackluster mini-arcs of the four main superheros and the cartoony action.
Ultron (James Spader) isn’t so much a mad scientist’s experiment gone wrong as he is super-sneaky computer virus that Stark (Downey Jr.) and Banner (Ruffalo) accidentally download on their torrents.
If you value this movie’s narrative coherency over a juggernaut corporation’s media-takeover, these complaints are valid, and kneejerk fanboy/girl justifications fall flat. There is no reason for characters played by Don Cheadle, Cobie Smulders, Andy Serkis, Claudia Kim, Anthony Mackie, Hayley Atwell, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgard, and Thomas Kretschmann to be in this movie. Hell, I’ve seen every film in the MCU and I didn’t give two shits about seeing any of them. All these characters are doing here are setting up future films we haven’t seen yet and will have to pay more money to understand their impact. They add nothing of weight that pays off in this film.
To that end, much of the story feels like it’s just treading water despite having a plethora of characters who don’t go anywhere or do anything. AoU opens with a blast of action right away and champions the cartoony, tension-free, silly CGI-spectacle the franchise is best known for. This extended sequence has no stakes and features our heroes dispatching enemies so easily and effortlessly that there’s no reason at all for me to care. Numerous non-action scenes like the Avengers/Stark Tower party and the Hawkeye “safehouse” drag on forever for no reason other than to fire off repetitive Whedon-jokes that become increasingly tiresome the more they’re driven into the ground. The first Avengers felt tightly scripted and relied on strict cause-and-effect logic. This movie meanders from one setpiece to the next to allow the maximum number of lame jokes and cameos possible.
Now, I would be negligent not to discuss the things I liked. The performances by all the principal Avengers are good, and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye is surprisingly the best. He has the best lines and his character is given some necessary depth and fun reversals. Finally, while the final battle pales in comparison to the New York-finale of the 2012 film, it’s satisfying overall and features the best camerawork of the movie. The gigantic onslaught has good sense of scale and coherent geography. I like how our heroes take some time to save the civilians rather than focus solely on endless explosions and destruction. It’s more sensible than Man of Steel’s finale and much of Pacific Rim’s (2013) rampage.
Where I get stuck in terms of confused enjoyment of AoU and much of the greater Marvel spectacle as a whole is that these films rarely tell tightly knit, effective stories with clear arcs, nor do they provide much in the way of creative, interesting action. They generally boast good performances, consistent comedy, and strong visuals, but at the end of the day can be reduced to a colorful mishmash of “stuff” that explodes on screen with no rhyme or reason, featuring the same recycled MacGuffin and a plethora of minor characters no one in their right mind would ever care about. To that end, the MCU’s financial success does not occur in a vacuum. It affects (often negatively) the rest of the global film market and all other films that aren’t superhero-oriented. So, claiming that all this superhero hype and complaining is overblown because there are only a handful of superhero films released in cinemas per year doesn’t fly with me. There’s only one new Transformers (2007-2017) every few years, people, but trust me, that series’ overwhelming financial success is sending shockwaves throughout the rest of the industry. Don’t tell me these movies don’t affect me if I don’t see them.
Top: Iron Man and his Hulkbuster armor take on a mind-controlled Hulk in one of the film’s better battles. Bottom: Ultron battles Captain America while Black Widow assists.
In the end, AoU, much like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), is a good compass for determining what type of cinephile or movie-fan you are. If you’re the type of person who requires logical cause-and-effect sequences for a story to unfold, who cares about sensible character development that can be explained and contained within a single film , you won’t enjoy this movie much. If you’re the kind of fan who relies on heavy duty CGI-spectacle and/or childhood nostalgia to fuel your appreciation of a bigger cinematic picture and overarching canonical universe, you will get a lot out of this movie. It’s almost a litmus test for determining where one’s artistic sensibilities lie.
Where I have more respect for something like Interstellar is that at least a film like that takes chances with its huge budget and mainstream director-appeal; it tries to do something relatively new or different, where as Age of Ultron, I feel, is just more of the same. It’s repetitive, it’s ho-hum, and I’ve seen it all before, including in the previous Avengers movie, but wrapped within a tighter script, better developed characters, and more coherent action.
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SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: Though I’m not sure they adhere to the laws of Newtonian physics or any physical universe I’ve ever heard of, the FX are colorful and epic. The MCU continues to rely on its overwhelmingly likable cast and character banter to carry its stories, and I suppose in that respect, it succeeds.
— However… if you thought the original Avengers was overcrowded, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This film’s cast is so cramped and overflowing for no good reason that almost nobody has time to shine. Virtually no character has a substantial arc within this singular story, and the story is so poorly paced that none of the major set-pieces hit like they could or should. Whedon’s snarky humor grows tiresome the fifth or sixth time we cover how Rogers doesn’t like bad language.
—> ON THE FENCE
? Fine, I’ll do it myself!
Express Elevator to Hell 
Presumably the whole thing boils down to a fist fight. It always amazes me how these films, for all their technical and interworld superadvanced technologies, end up settling disputes with two men fighting. Marvel films are like Gilette razor blades: the ‘ultimate’ shaving experience can’t get better, but Gilette keep coming up with something to superced the ultimate! Marvel will have to make the next Avengers film even bigger than this one with so many characters the scenes will pass like subliminal messages. (In fact, maybe that’s what they’re preparing us for…)
Hey, we might have accidentally stumbled across a conspiracy here.
Chris
Posted by The Opening Sentence | May 15, 2015, 4:26 am“I haven’t seen the new Avengers for largely these reasons — superheroes make for boring protagonists, and the moral dilemmas are totally empty to me. Will they choose right or, well there is no other choice.”
— That’s my former screenwriting professor on why he doesn’t like these movies for the most part. To me the major hurdle in overcoming the formulaic and predictable nature of these superhero films is edging away from their source material. This goes beyond changing Ultron’s origins or setting stories in a different time period. Studios (and fans) have to let go of these borderline puritanical, literal attachments to the original comics. So many aspects of the graphic novel storytelling are so dull and don’t translate well to film at all.
Posted by The Celtic Predator | May 15, 2015, 2:34 pm