When the latest Marvel movie wrapped, I realized a terrible thing for a fanboy like me: I had just watched 2 ½ hours of stuff that did relatively nothing for me. It was all just a big blur intermittently interrupted by half interesting moments.
It was boring.
You can’t accuse director Joss Whedon of “second verse, same as the first” with “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” He and his team definitely go for something different with this sequel to one of the greatest blockbusters ever made. As things turn out, perhaps it would’ve been okay to retain more of the good humor, camp and non-cluttered trills that made the original Avengers such a gas.
“Ultron” is flat. Nothing of any real consequence happens here other than a bunch of scenes teasing future Marvel movies and some action sequences that lack clarity. With the exception of an interesting smackdown between Iron Man and the Hulk, the action sequences feel repetitive.
The Ultron of the movie’s title is a series of robots inhabited by an A.I. program initiated by Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.). Stark, thinking he can create a security force that can save the world and attain peace, gets a little ahead of himself, forgoes the approval of his fellow Avengers with the exception of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and starts the program, only to discover that A.I. can sometimes mean Absolute-Insanity. The program goes AWOL and produces the anti-human Ultron.
Voiced by James Spader, Ultron is a one-note villain that lacks the personality of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and other recent comic book villains.
He’s not a formidable bad guy, probably in part because he’s just a CGI creation voiced by an actor. All of the great Marvel and D.C. villains are usually a little more on the human side. Ultron comes off as a third rate Transformers Decepticon. Yes, Spader has a menacing voice, but he’s no James Earl Jones.
On the other hand, the Vision, a sort of good guy offshoot of the same program that produces Ultron , is a far more interesting character. Derived from Jarvis, the program that propelled the Iron Man suits and played by Paul Bettany, the Vision is a welcomed member to the roster. Bettany’s likeness is actually used in The Vision, and he looks cool.
Also new to the roster would be Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Scarlet Witch does the mind control thing, which Whedon chooses to illustrate with a visual that looks like mist surrounding her victim’s head. This reminded me of Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy and her red mist mind-controlling pheromones in Joel Schumacher’s “Batman & Robin.” When it comes to comic book movies, it is never a good thing when anything reminds you of “Batman & Robin.”
Quicksilver is a potentially fun character, but Johnson’s incarnation isn’t half as interesting as Evan Peters playing the part in last year’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” Nothing the Quicksilver character does in this films rivals the visual greatness of the Magneto rescue scene in “X-Men.”
The film plays around with the notion of Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the Hulk having and affair. We get a couple of scenes with Black Widow managing to get the Hulk to calm down, and a little bit of Ruffalo and Johansson sort of flirting, but the subplot doesn’t really go anywhere. While the original Avengers was a terrific showcase for the Hulk, the latest mostly loses the big green guy in the shuffle. Also, they give Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) a wife in a failed effort to raise his character above least interesting Avenger.
If you are an Avengers fan, I guess you have to see Age of Ultron simply because it sets up a series of other films and you might find yourself lost when watching future movies like “Captain America: Civil War, “ “Thor: Ragnarok” or “Black Widow: She Will Never Have her Own Movie … What Gives?”
As for Whedon, perhaps he was the wrong man for the gig. The sequel searches for a darker tonal shift, a sort of “Empire Strikes Back” for the Avengers. The result is one of the year’s more crushing cinematic letdowns.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2015.
I agree almost 100%. Saw it today at noon ( only 20 people there). And was pretty much bored to death. So many scenes with absolutely NOTHING going on. Quicksilver character totally boring, such a shame he died ( NOT!!!). Nothing like the 1st movie with the exception of Hulk & Iron Man destroying NYC AGAIN, after , presumeably, being rebuilt after being destroyed in the 1st movie. They had all these battles in Korea & some country in Europe…WHO CARES??? We wanna see Chicago, LA, SF, Miami, etc being attacked. Almost fell asleep. Hulk seen flying away in plane at end..what happened to him?? Stayed til end of credits for hopefully an Easter egg teaser…sorry Charlie…nothing. Just the same ol’ dude at the end of virtually every Marvel movie ( Avengers 1, Thor , Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc) who smiles & says, to the effect,..”.EARTH IS DOOMED”.At least 3D & special FX were good. One thumb up. “B” at best.
On another note..(I know they’re comics).does anyone ever question how all these Marvel movies exist ( Avengers, Fantastic 4, Spiderman, Xmen, etc) and yet neither group knows the other?? I mean they tied all the Avengers characters story arcs together & separately.
Marty, you are so incredibly ignorant of the MCU that I’m almost positive that you’re trolling. The main review is complete nonsense, putting negative spins on everything for no good reason.
I agree entirely. Ultron is parallel to Starscreen in terms of how annoying a villain can be, but the character becomes even more awry by taking on the mantle of Pinocchio, whom, to be fair, was used as an attempt to create a darker themed conflict throughout the film for which the Avengers could “assemble”. And while the idea of the contrast proposed by taking something as lighthearted as Pinocchio and using it to fuel the antics of a crazed super-villain is not by any means unacceptable, it’s portrayal in the film certainly was. The movie tries to make Ultron a “Joker” type villain, where there’s a sense of sweetness to a character that eventually sours upon the revelation of his or her true self. Yet, instead of drawing us in and unexpectedly catching us off guard with some form of evil twist, the films portrayal of Ultron ultimately comes across as a really stale joke. We knew from the beginning that Ultron was going to be a bad guy, but what we didn’t know was just how bad of a guy he was going to be. We’d eventually, of course, come to find out, but the outcome only made things worse. Fans wanted to see an iconic villain get some real hard-earned gritty action time on the big screen, but what they got was the cinematic equivalent of Skeletor sending his henchmen to fight He-Man and his allies in an never-ending cycle of good versus evil, with the exception being that Ultron was killed off so that good (spoiler alert) could prevail once and for all.
Overall, the movie lacks the serious setting that makes comic books and superheros so memorable. The film is more of a lighthearted fencing match between two English gentlemen than a brutal Wolverine-like fight to the death. And while both seem to be opposing extremes, there was no conceived notion to create anything between the two, hereby labeling this fraction of the blockbusting franchise as nothing more than useless and boring filler.
Starscreen who the hell is that? It’s STARSCREAM dumb ass, ffs if you’re going to bag something at least know exactly what the hell it is you’re trying to compare it to?
Let’s just say I excused myself to use the restroom in the middle of the movie. End of review.