Warning: This contains spoilers. So it would be a fantastic idea to go watch the movie before you read this. Angry people who don’t read disclaimers will be studiously ignored. Also, swearing.
As a point, I would like to thank and acknowledge the douche-canoe that spoiled the movie about six comments into the Facebook post on one of the Marvel pages the Thursday before the movie premiered. You, sir, are an asshole.
I did not go see this movie in 3D, because wearing 3D glasses over my glasses is a massive pain in the arse. So no commentary will be made regarding possibly awesome effects that my inevitable headache would have missed.
I went to the first showing Friday morning, and I offer up a thanks to the movie gods that of all the maybe twenty or so of us in the theatre, no one brought their obnoxious whiny children to disturb the movie. I also made a promise to my brother that I would not be as terribly annoying as I was when we went to go see Guardians of the Galaxy, wherein I was that obnoxious movie go-er with no filter and stream-of-consciousness verbal live commentary (there were maybe five whole people in the theatre who got to hear my automatic freak out over Howard the Duck, I am not sorry).
So, anyway, I liked what I saw, even if I was spoiled for most of the plot points. There were some great jokes (“Language!) and some excellent character moments. Some characters got more attention in this film than in previous, which made me exceptionally happy, and I love playing the spot the easter egg and product placement game.
There were some moments that brought the movie up short, however.
So, lets talk about the “Villain”
Ultron, himself. Mr. James Spader voicing a pretty amusing android, who unintentionally and to his chagrin acts a lot (read A LOT) like Tony Stark. And he sings Pinocchio songs, hello Disney reference. Now, he wears his Red Cloak, a la his introduction and reveal in the comics, when he meets the Maximoff Twins, I did think that was cool, as was the fact it was the Fifth Iron Legion Drone that was ultimately the first Ultron incarnation at the Avengers Tower. (References, people, references.) Um, I found him more humorous than really dangerous, to an extent, barring his world destruction bit at the end with the floating city, and I’m still not one hundred percent sure why exactly he needed vibranium for his city destructo-bomb, but- whatever. It did look cool. And the bit about his creation of his ultimate indestructible android form was very very cool.
So, more to the point, I felt, was the character interactions between the Avengers themselves.
We’ve got Tony, who is basically funding the Avengers now that SHIELD is essentially undercover. He’s got his own set of issues, having “died” in the first Avengers movie (and getting scared back to life by the Hulk, of all people), and we saw him dealing with PTSD in Iron Man 3, all leading up to him wanting to take to the back burner with the whole superhero business. His reasoning for creating a peace-keeping robot (and he obviously has never experienced any sort of media regarding peace-keeping AI- because it’s ALWAYS a terrible idea) is to step away from the hero-ing.
Tony is also the first to experience the mind-whammy courtesy of the Scarlet Witch, and his nightmare vision drives his actions. Seeing yourself as the only survivor of the team is a big deal, and demontrates a lot of his reasoning. But it’s his attitude and his lack of regard for his teammates that is getting in the way of his teamwork. He doesn’t want to put his ideas to a team vote, and basically ends up bullying Banner into following his lead not once but twice in this movie, and leads to him butting heads with Cap.
Speaking of, Cap is apparently handing off the search for Bucky to Falcon while he leads the Avengers (if the scene during Tony’s party is any indication). That was a new development. But, it does make sense. Steve still has to deal with retro ideals, leading to the running joke about swearing (Everybody gets in on that one, Steve is pretty good-humored about the whole thing). His biggest role in this film seems to be yelling at Tony about his actions, beating up robots, and defining where exactly ‘home’ is for him in this new world he’s woken up to. He’s taking a more secondary role in this film, though the movie does pick up with team busting up a HYDRA operation post Winter Soldier.
Another character taking a more secondary role this go around was Thor. His main purpose was for the team to see if they were worthy of picking up his hammer, to apparently have a vision of the future(possibly one that will be a driving point of his third feature film), and be a battery power pack in a key moment in the film. Honestly, Thor didn’t do all that much. Smash robots. Meh.
So that brings us to- I’ll go with Natasha first. She’s had some more development regarding her role in Winter Soldier, her past was leaked at the end of that movie, and we got to see how her relationship with Cap has developed. Now we are seeing her return to being one of the only females in the team. Apparently her main role is to calm down the Hulk. That bit was mildly okay, since she got to kick ass. But glowy bits on her costume does not lend to sneakiness at all, and she got kidnapped halfway through the movie and had to be rescued. I wanted to see more of manipulative Natasha gleaning information from her marks, not damsel Natasha locked in a cage (she did actually send notice of her location while locked in said cage- speaking of, how did Ultron not realize she was doing this? I guess it was too low-tech for him to notice…) Otherwise, she was basically the awkward love interest-
With the Hulk. Spoilery-bits here. So Natasha was absolutely terrified of the Hulk in the first movie, and for good reason. Hulk is dangerous. But now she’s the one calming him down? Umm, okay. He has shown signs of calming down when around his love interests. Banner, though, is incredibly awkward around her. There is a bit of flirting, and he is totally lost, which is cute. But then there is that self-deprecating awareness that he cant have a normal relationship-but apparently- neither can she. In her Wanda-induced vision, we get to see a glimpse of her training as a Russian assassin (if you watched Agent Carter you get to see another glimpse of that particular bit of training and brainwashing), and she reveals to Banner that as part of her training she was sterilized. Sad human bits to tug on heart strings, boo. Ultimately Natasha shows she is willing to run off into hiding with him if that is what he wants, but he’s still having an identity crisis over his giant green rage monster. The mid-movie battle between Hulk and Hulkbuster Iron Man was awesome, but the level of damage they caused the city and the potential for Banner to be locked away in a cage as a result does a number on his character. And even though he rescues Natasha, she has to manipulate him to Hulk out for the big battle, which probably leads to a ton of continuing trust issues.
Now, Hulk is a great driving force for the Avengers movies, because his role is undercut by Banner. They’ve used a mid-movie Hulk battle twice now, and I’m not sure if it would be a good idea to do it again. I like the dichotomy between Banner and his alter ego, but there’s only so many ways to depict gross amounts of chaotic destruction before it gets old. And while the Avengers Hulk battles served to implement Loki’s manipulation of events, and then as humor as he kicked Loki’s ass, there was only destruction and more destruction in this movie, followed up with emo man pain. And Hulk didn’t talk AT ALL, this time! No funny one liners, ugh.
So, I guess that leads to one of my favorite things about this movie: Hawkeye. He actually got to be more than a brainwashed pseudo-villain! What they basically did was give him a chance to be an actual character. And he had secrets! Like a family that only Natasha knew about. That was only revealed after Avengers home base was shredded by Ultron. And since Fury was sparsely used in this film. Clint got to play the mentor role with the others (and especially to the Maximoff twins). He’s also the only one who did not get mindwarped by Wanda, which was brilliantly self-aware. There were a few excellent moments with Barton, where he got to comment on his role as the guy with the bow and arrow (though the guy with the bow and arrow kicks ass, people), and as the guy who has something important to go home to at the end of the day. No one else on the team has a family. It’s an interesting development for his character, and though it’s saccharinely sweet, I was okay with it.
Speaking of Fury and also Agent Hill, they were used minimally. With the breakup of SHIELD due to HYDRA, the peace-keeping super-spy network has been dealing with their own drama, of which Fury has been suspiciously absent. Hill has been on Stark/Avengers payroll, and if you’ve kept up with Agents of SHIELD, you know has been in contact with Coulson (and Tuesdays episode linked to the movie by having Coulson’s team break into a HYDRA base to look for the location of Strucker and Loki’s staff - oh how I love continuity). And Fury’s role is to lecture Tony and show up in the nick of time to assist the Avengers in Utron’s ultimate showdown. We also have War Machine show up to assist, but no Falcon- I guess he was back off on the search for Bucky…
In addition we got the Maximoff Twins, who were hinted at in the credit teaser of Winter Soldier. Now, they did not say that the Twins were Inhumans- like Skye and some of the other Kree-DNA based superhumans on SHIELD, but they are enhanced humans of some kind. And they have a vendetta against Tony Stark because their family was killed during an air raid in which Stark weapons were used. They also apparently volunteered to go under HYDRA experimentation so they could get their revenge. They seem to just follow along with Ultron because he wants to destroy the Avengers, but when Wanda gets a vision of the Destruction of the world, they end up switching sides and joining up with the Avengers. There was not much focus on Pietro in this film, other than a pretty heroic moment, but quite a bit of attention was placed on Wanda. She got to hand out nightmare visions, was on the receiving end of a Hawkeye pep talk, and did it all in a decent outfit, even if she wore a dress. And I had a “oh hell yes!” moment at her costume reveal. No stupid unitards and pink tights and thigh high boots, thank you, Marvel, for that.
So I guess it’s time to talk about the SPOILER ALERT final addition to the Avengers Team. The Frankenstein moment that creates android JARVIS superhero - Vision. This was an exciting moment, because amidst the yelling at Tony and arguing over the decision to create this android, Thor finally returns to the team and electro-hammers the android to life. And then - awesome moment ensues. And the Infinity Stone/Mind Gem reveal as the power source in Loki’s staff- again with continuity. Of course, the Mind Gem is currently attached to Vision’s dome, so where that will take us later is up in the air. Thor also gets to exposit on the infinity stones in general, and if you missed that bit in Guardians of the Galaxy, the Tesseract is another Gem we’ve seen. Vision is kinda cool, but y’know- spoilers.
Anyway, as I said, I did like the movie. I was entertained, and squeeful at various bits. Unfortunately, Ultron will never stand up to the chaos that is Loki, and his threat was not overly dangerous in the long run. I think that the tension in this movie was more reliant on the Avengers themselves as they set up the next bits of movies Marvel is turning out. In a lot of ways this was the world-building, seed-sowing epic. Lots of seed sowing. Some that were a bit clunky, like Thor’s whole vision quest bit, and awkward romance between Natasha and Bruce. Some things were more fluid, the trip to Africa to attempt to stop Ultron from acquiring the vibranium, introducing both Wakanda as a country and a probable Black Panther villain as an example, and oh, the Infinity Stones in general.
Overall, I’d give Age of Ultron a 3.75 to a 4 as a rating, for continuity, action, humor, and visual awesomeness, and minus points for disjointed moments and unnecessary romance(why exactly writers continue to think that romance has to be included I will never understand). I will excuse some of the flaws for the sheer scale of superhero roles, and the knowledge that due to the amount of people, some characters inevitably have to take a backseat while others drive the story. I also feel that there could have been an improvement to the storytelling if there had been a change in pacing, or possibly if they’d just made a three-hour movie. But overall, I was pleased with the two-plus hours of movie watching, and will definitely watch it again.
