Director: Joss Whedon
Score:
So, What I’m Basically Saying Is Joss Whedon Is Michael Bay If He Had Grown Up
It must be nice to be Joss Whedon, and yet, I can’t imagine the pressure of being the anointed Savior of the Nerds. The original Avengers film back in 2012 helped break the mold of superhero films wide open by combining the entire Marvel universe into a frothy blended drink of humor, action, and an honest-to-God plotline. It also netted $207 million on the opening weekend, which was nice. So just imagine having to be the guy to follow yourself up after that kind of performance.
It was a tough act, but only made tougher by the way Joss went about constructing Age of Ultron alongside fellow writers... oh right, there aren’t any. There’s only two tacked on credits for the original comic stories, going to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, which really only goes to show just how much of a maniac Joss Whedon truly is.
He not only brought back the entire cast of the first film, he also had to make it run concurrently in the greater Marvel universe, and he adds more characters. This wealth of characters is really what separates AoU from Avengers. The first film was tightly choreographed, with every character getting equal billing, equal motivation, and equal screen time. AoU, meanwhile, just doesn’t have the sheer space that would require. We’re introduced to not only the new baddie, in the eponymous Ultron (James Spader, and goodness isn’t he just creepy...), but also to our two new “borrowed” allies, Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his sister, Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen)—thankfully without the questionable family ties the alternate universe comics saw fit to give them. Add in the appearances by War Machine, The Vision (Paul Bettany, finally out of the computer), Falcon, and a few others, and you end up with an active cast of eleven named characters in the final fight scenes alone, and a solid fifteen or more showing up throughout the runtime.
Thankfully, the previous and sundry films in the Marvel universe have done their jobs, so we know most of these characters (sudden, whiplash-inducing revelations about one of the Avengers notwithstanding), but you’d better have done your homework. This film has no patience for questions, and there will be no stopping once the train is in motion. Don’t remember who Quicksilver is? Tough cookies. Didn’t get to see Guardians of the Galaxy? Well, then you’ll probably be very lost as to what they’re fighting over at the end (also, you’re a horrible person. watch it). Joss Whedon will not pull the car over, so you’d better have gone before you leave. And even if you do know your backstories and catch the sly winks to other storylines, you still may have to fight to keep your brain from switching off into a numb stupor by the ending, which has so many characters running around it’s just madness to try to keep it all straight and pay attention to any one of them.
This is the greatest weakness of the film by far. Even at 141 minutes, Age of Ultron is bursting at the seams with plot details that don’t have time to get fleshed out. Ultron comes from... where, exactly? Why was he an error, and how did he succeed is being created at all? Why is Jarvis suddenly—you know what, this is gonna get spoilery, so I’ll just say that you’ll have to trust me that nothing gets explained. At all.
Added to that is the film’s almost absurd reliance on CGI (over 3000 scenes were computer rendered, blowing apart any other film to date), and the fact that the soundtrack is repetitive and pounds you with the theme riff like Mjolnir (it more resembles the 10-second music loop of an early-2000’s DVD menu than anything by this point), and there’s enough legitimate quibbles to keep a critic in business for a while.
All that being said, if you’re the kind of person who just appreciates a Marvel movie for the action and some actually really well-written quips (and judging by the $192 million opening weekend, you likely are), you’ll be anything but disappointed. Nobody but Joss can write this kind of stuff, where the action goes hand in hand with one-liners that come straight from the character’s psyches, and it just never gets old or comes off as forced. The superhero genre as a whole is often plagued by power creep: the heroes overcame the previous threat, so something must be greater, which means the heroes must grow, which means the next threat must be even greater, rinse and repeat. Joss seems to be a master of using all of these tropes organically, to break down the team by exposing its legitimate flaws and the members’ own personality quirks, and to build them up again into something whole. Far from the Pizza Roll-esque junk food appeal that Guardians of the Galaxy had, Age of Ultron is a film without a lot of depth, but with some great points to indicate a good storyteller at work. To someone like me who appreciates storytelling, it’s quite gratifying to see someone use such obvious cliches and stitch them into the background so well that you don’t even notice their presence.
So, the big question then: did I enjoy it? You bet your—(Language...) Sorry, Cap. Yes. Yes, I did. And I’m wagering you will, too.
Acting: 7
Story: 6
Visuals: 9
Sound: 6
Enjoyment: 9
Overall Score: 8/10
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