Avengers Age Of Ultron - Review Thread

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been going strong for eight years now, and in that time, we’ve gotten eleven movies from the behemoth studio, and that’s just from them. Take into account other properties from other studios, and we truly live in the Golden Age of Comic Book Films. With so many on the market, though, fatigue is bound to set in sooner or later, and it’s a fact I have to consider when talking about the latest flaming-hot release, Avengers: Age of Ultron, writer/director Joss Whedon’s follow-up to his Hulk smash of a superhero movie, 2012’s The Avengers. Now, before most of you get up in arms, am I saying that I don’t like this movie? No, not at all. It’s good; I had a fun time. What I am saying, though, is that for me personally, I’m sort of becoming numb to this whole Marvel formula in general, and for whatever reason, that feeling has been most prevalent in these two Avengers films, in spite of how much I’ve legitimately enjoyed them. So, let’s dive right in, shall we?

The movie starts out, appropriately, with a bang as we see The Avengers back in action and attacking a Hydra base, where the nefarious organization is performing questionable experiments, most notably on a pair of Russian twins: Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). The source of those experiments turns out to be none other than Loki’s Scepter, which Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) sees potential in for use in an A.I. peacekeeping initiative codenamed Ultron. From there, Stark and Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) create such an artificial intelligence (perfectly voiced by the awesome James Spader), but as all A.I.’s inevitably do, Ultron decides that the human race is no good, and the only way to improve it is to first destroy it. On his side, Ultron has not only Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, both of whom harbor deep-seeded intentions of revenge against Tony, but also an entire army of robots that all share Ultron’s dangerous consciousness. Of course, this is a threat large enough to require The Avengers, the likes of whom include Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), to re-assemble as they race to stop the monster created by one of their own.

If anything, the sheer scale of this movie is impressive all on its own. Joss Whedon has really succeeded in creating a film that feels even bigger than the last, and that was no small feat, so that’s certainly worthy of recognition. In addition, I was pleased to find that he’s fixed some of the problems I had with the first Avengers. To get the question on everybody’s mind out of the way, though: is Age of Ultron better than the first film? I’d say it’s about as good as that one overall. It needs to be said, though, that I actually don’t consider The Avengers to be one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen; for me, that movie has a handful of issues that weigh it down from reaching such lofty heights. Now, I’ve thought a good while about why that is, and now after having seen Age of Ultron, I think I finally have a very good way of summing up that reason: these two Avengers movies ultimately feel more like Marvel movies through the eyes of Joss Whedon, when I think they should be Joss Whedon movies that happen to take place in the Marvel Universe. Again, I do think Joss Whedon has pulled off two genuinely entertaining movies here, but it seems like he and the movies themselves are being a bit too shackled down by the fact that they have to fit into “Marvel’s master plan”, when I want to see Whedon be able to let loose a little more.

Okay, so what works this time out? First of all, this movie sports top-of-the-line action sequences, and there’s a certain energy to them that’s there right when the film opens and is maintained well throughout. Like the first movie, there are also a good number of moments in said action scenes that make you want to fist-punch the air in excited approval. The opening sequence alone is pretty great, and the best thing about it is perhaps a tracking shot Whedon employs that’s very similar to the one used in the climax of the first movie. From there, there’s even more great action, from the one-on-one Hulk vs. Iron Man rumble we’ve seen glimpses of in the trailer, but is simply awesome in all its glory, to the balls-to-the-wall climax. I’d even venture to say that, overall, the action scenes here are better than the first film’s.

Now, I won’t waste too much time on the performances from all our returning heroes; after all this time, each of these actors have had more than enough time to come into their own with them, and they all keep that up here, as well as the sense of camaraderie between the team, with Robert Downey Jr. stealing the show as he always does. Newcomers Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen are fine, but between the two, Olsen is a lot more interesting. One of the things Joss Whedon does this time that I really appreciated, though, is that he shines some of the spotlight on a few of the characters who felt shortchanged in the first, namely Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, who receives some very nice — and welcome — character development. However, the cast member this time who we really NEED to talk about is James Spader as the titular villain. I’ve long been a fan of Spader, ever since Boston Legal aired on ABC, and between this and the currently-running NBC show The Blacklist, I am so very happy to see him back at work on the screen. As far as I’m concerned, James Spader is one of those actors who could simply read from the phonebook and still be interesting to watch. Marvel hasn’t had the best track record with their on-screen villains, and quite honestly, Ultron isn’t really the incredibly menacing threat that the trailers make him out to be (God, this movie’s first trailer was so great), but even then, next to Loki, he’s really up there. Spader brings this sarcastic quality to Ultron that’s so oddly perfect for the character, and it just goes to show that Joss Whedon had the right instincts in casting for the character. Then you’ve got that trademark Whedon humor that shines through, despite the decidedly more serious tone overall. Also, Age of Ultron has a much better sense of pacing than the first movie.

There is one more “but”, however, and that’s that the film kind of has a been-there, done-that feel to it. The climax especially, while very cool and all that jazz, seems almost like a recycled version of the one from the first film, what with the ever-popular trend now of a city being used as a battlefield. But this also extends to certain plot beats, which feel very similar to ones from the predecessor, too. There’s not a whole lot of originality on display in Age of Ultron, and I know most of the audience won’t care about that, but while I do wish this movie could’ve been a little better, I still won’t knock it too much because this is still a good, rockin’-sockin’ time at the movies. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we want from this, anyway?

***/****

Pre-Review: The movie's a mess. It feels like it had its first act cut out and does a truely piss-poor job of establishing Ultron as a villain early on. This is not a problem that a film with ten other movies and three TV series leading up to it should have. What the movie does have going for it is witty dialogue from time to time and some good action scenes, but the witty dialouge wasn't as good as it was in Guardians of the Galaxy and while the action scenes were all good in isolation they get kind of numbing after a while and aren't really offering you anything you don't get in other superhero movies.  Captain America The Winter Soldier was definitely a better action movie.  It is a movie with a solid handful of fun moments that kind of keep you going with it as it movies along, and as such the movie almost gets away with being a totally over-stuffed mess. Almost.

Did anyone else like how Thor and Stark were polar opposites about ultron but by movies end Thor and Stark have a sense that something bigger is on the horizon and that Caps idea we can defeat anything may not work without being ready for anything. Im not saying Stark was right in making Ultron but I certainly feel he put too much on himself when he failed. Which partly was do to Scarlet Witch self doubt which Stark has not shook. We saw in this movie Stark does care for people and is afraid to be alone.

I'd definitely put Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Iron Man 3 above Age of Ultron. Maybe the first Avengers as well. Oh, and the first Thor.

You guys are being way to harsh... Oh well.

9/10

Or maybe you're being way too generous. This is the 11th film of the franchise and it doesn't do anything different. Marvel shouldn't be allowed to just coast by on making the same film over and over again, particularly when the writing is as sloppy as it is here.

Really? Cause I got a Thanos stinger, not Hulk.

Did they make mutliples?

Marvel has been very successful in creating a movie franchise universe for its comic book heroes, and ever expanding that universe across almost a dozen films. But in their second Avengers movie the whole franchise seems to have evolved to a whole new step. The Marvel movie universe has now managed to completely immerse itself into the same world as the comics from which they came.

What do I mean by that? What I mean is that Age of Ultron really feels like one of those crazy cross-over comic events with tons of characters showing up all over the place, each contributing to a central story where its taken for granted that we know who these characters are and where they come from. Some people will hate this most likely, but I thought it was impressive.

We get right into the action as we see the Avengers hunting down the last stronghold of Hydra. This isn't a great action scene as the CGI is very apparent, but dont worry; much better action scenes are to follow, like the Iron Man vs. Hulk fight. The main story however sees Tony Stark create an evil AI called Ultron in an attempt to develop an automated security system for the world. And of course Ultron is out for destruction.

The biggest problem of the movie is that they don't do a great job of establishing the origin of Ultron. Its rather rushed and feels awkward. But after that the story runs pretty smoothly (which the exception of some sort of dream cave Thor goes into?? Wha??) and Ultron is a pretty cool villain, and quite daunting since he can transport himself to any other robot if he's defeated.

What I really liked was just the smorgasbord of characters thrown into this thing. (I mean, Vision?? I did not expect a character like him to show up.) I know that doesn't seem like it should be a good thing, but personally I love huge casts of characters all interlocking, and as I said before it is necessary for that evolution of the franchise to truly feel like a Marvel comic come to life. Yeah, its a little clunky in places, but there are a lot of balls to juggle here and I liked how most of them stayed balanced in the air pretty well. I loved the craziness of this movie.
8/10

He's talking about the hulk character, he's talking about The Incredible Hulk the 2008 movie with Edward Norton, which had its stinger before the credits instead of after.

It was SUPPOSED to be an end credits scene, but when Iron Man was a bigger hit than they anticipated, they put it before the credits so Robert Downey Jr could be in the actual movie.

*Editors note: This review contains no spoilers for Avengers: Age of Ultron. It does however contain spoilers for earlier Marvel films The Avengers, Iron Man 3, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

The original Iron Man was a big hit and while I always knew the film would surely spawn successors, I never would have imagined Marvel studios to gain total dominance over the blockbuster season. Multiple Marvel properties come out every year which always perform well at the box-office and are generally liked by audiences. The most popular and successful film of the lot (though not the best) is almost certainly The Avengers, the film that brought together the team of superheroes for the first time and capped off Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the wake of The Avengers, Phase Two has trucked along smoothly, more or less. Captain America: The Winter Soldier pushed the limits of how good these films can be, Thor: The Dark World pushed the limits of how bad, and then Iron Man 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy sat comfortably in the middle. With this Phase winding to a close, writer/director Joss Whedon has returned to close out Phase Two while ushering in what is yet to come with the highly anticipated Avengers: Age of Ultron.

The film opens in the heat of the action; the titular Avengers are engaged in combat in the fictional Eastern European country of Sokovia. The team is trying to take a secret military base run by evil organization HYDRA, and regain the sceptor used by Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in The Avengers. Upon finding the sceptor, Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) realizes he can use it to power a new A.I. program called Ultron, which can act as a safeguard for the Earth that will supersede The Avengers themselves. With the help of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), the two secretly begin developing the A.I. However upon awaking, Ultron (voiced by James Spader) sees humanity as needing to be saved from themselves. This, the robotic creation, aided by superpowered siblings Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen), launches a violent campaign against The Avengers and the world guaranteed to bring destruction and chaos. Naturally, The Avengers can’t allow this to happen.

The general rule of thumb with blockbuster sequels is to go bigger, and it’s a rule Age of Ultron commits to. The action set-pieces are uniformly larger, new characters are introduced, the old characters are given more backstory, jokes are more frequent, and the scope is larger. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this type of approach, but it does lead to some problems here. Namely that there is so much content jammed into this film that it becomes really messy. The story here really is all over the place, the pacing is awkward, and most of the central ideas underdeveloped. This is especially hurts the film’s villain, Ultron. The character’s motivation is never properly fleshed out and he ends up becoming a generic evil robot who believes humanity can only be saved by being destroyed. This is a trope used in science-fiction from The Terminator (Skynet) to Mass Effect 3 (The Reapers) and this film doesn’t bring anything new to the proceedings. Ulton just makes generic speeches about the need to evolve, but he doesn’t actually have an ethos. Additionally, the character is a lot more comedic than the trailers have suggested. I found it clever at first that Ultron reflect the jokey personality of his creator, Tony Stark, but after all it just removes any sense of menace he might have had. It’s unfortunate too because James Spader’s voice work is really effective, but ultimately the film undermines the performance.

One of the most impressive things Whedon was able to do in the first film was balance the many different characters and personalities, but he bites off more than he can turn too here. First and foremost is the addition of new characters. In addition to new villain Ultron, the film also features the aforementioned twins Pietro and Wanda, otherwise known as Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch to comic book fans. The thing is, I get the feeling these two were chosen more for their powers than their characters. I say this because while their abilities are weaved into the plot and action scenes well, their actual backgrounds and motivations feel a lot more forced. The film also introduces another Avenger in the third act (most probably know who I’m referring to, but just in case I’ll remain spoiler-free). The character itself seems cool, but they come into the film so late, so briefly, and to share the screen with so many others that little impact is made. And then there’s the fact that many of the returning characters are given their own moments, particularly the characters who haven’t had as much solo films. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Bruce Banner, and especially Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) are given a lot more attention this time around. I like seeing this stuff, but it’s written into the film in a way which largely halts the plot and kills the pacing. Maybe if these characters had their own films we wouldn’t need for all of it to be dumped into the middle of this film. The dense plotting also leads to certain subplots being fairly confused. There is a subplot involving Thor (Chris Hemsworth) in particular which felt very odd and poorly explained.

One of the trade-offs to Marvel’s shared universe is that many of the films don’t really work as self-contained entities as each film serves to merely set up the next film. This wasn’t really a problem with the first Avengers as it had been what every film had been building to up until that point. I would have assumed this to be true for Age of Ultron as well, but not so. Much of the runtime is spent setting up future installments, particularly the growing antagonism between Iron Man and Captain America (Chris Evans) (which will likely re-emerge in Captain America: Civil War) and the knowledge of Thanos and the Infinity Stones, which will naturally play a large part in the next Avengers film, and may crossover into the next Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s important to think of the big picture, but not to the extent that the actual film suffers, which is what happens here. There’s just far too much going on, to the point that I’m not actually sure what the point of this singular film is. There seems to be some theme pertaining to whether or not the Avengers do more harm than good, but that never really translates, and the growing sense that the team must come to an end also feels off. Additionally, for all the work Whedon has done to hype Phase Three, this doesn’t actually fit too well with what has come before. The film opens with the Avengers on a mission as if this is par for the course for them, but after the first film the team went their separate ways and haven’t been back together since, and this is at least two years after. It feels like there’s something missing there. What’s more, Iron Man 3 ends with the implication that Stark has destroyed all of his suits and retired from crime fighting, but here he’s in typical Iron Man fashion. True, there is a sense that he would like to stop, but it’s still contradictory. There’s also the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D was destroyed and disbanded at the end of The Winter Soldier (one of the most interesting moments in the lore thus far) but the resources on display hardly make it seem as if nothing was lost at all. What was the point of all that if Marvel was just going to reaffirm the status quo at the nearest opportunity? Granted, some of this might have been explained in the TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, but that’s frankly not good enough.

For all my complaining, the film is perfectly watchable. There is a lot of large-scale action here, lots of witty quips, and the cast remains fun and charming. However even many of these praises come with a caveat. The action, while mostly entertaining, is more or less par for the course when it comes to superhero films. Damn near every action scene is a variation of what was seen in the first Avengers and it never really matches that film’s level. Part of this pertains to the pacing. While the first film was able to space the action in such a way that each scene fell into place well, the spectacle in Age of Ultron becomes numbing quickly. Additionally, Phase Two films like Iron Man 3 and especially The Winter Soldier had far more creative bouts and set-pieces than the standard big brawls depicted here. As far as I’m concerned the best action scene in Age of Ultron is a brief one were an outmatched Captain America fights Ultron on his own. Additionally, while much of Whedon’s witty dialogue works, it isn’t as funny as the wit showed in Guardians of the Galaxy or even the first Avengers. Whedon’s reliance on witty dialogue also begins to serve as a detriment to the film, particularly during the climax where the plethora of humour constantly undercut any sense of tension.

Age of Ultron is by no means a terrible film, nor is it the weakest entry of the MCU. The film is so busy that it’s never boring, the special effects remain very strong, and there are moments of goodness sprinkled throughout. But the film is also heavily flawed, and the Marvel formula is becoming increasingly tiresome. It’s also worth noting that while Phase Two has remained largely the same, Marvel has taken some chances. Iron Man 3 was a more stripped down adventure with a ballsy twist, Captain America: The Winter Soldier committed to a thematic action thriller that genuinely changed the Marvel universe, and Guardians of the Galaxy’s setting and heavy comedy helped differentiate it. Granted, all of these films still relied on the typical Marvel elements to get by (though The Winter Soldier did far less), but there was at least an effort to be different, and that brings some respect. The only Phase Two film which didn’t take any chances was Thor: The Dark World, a film so forgettable and dull precisely because of the lack of risk. Age of Ultron may be much better than that film, but it isn’t much more creative at its core.

C