It’s been a heck of a time for the Marvel live action universe. After two Phases of films with generally increasing quality, as well as nearly two seasons of Agents of SHIELD, it’s time to take a look at the newest installment – The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Later on, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) ask Thor (Chris Helmsworth) for permission to study the stone in the scepter alongside super-computer JARVIS (Paul Bettany), and find its properties can help them with the Ultron peacekeeping program that Tony has wanted to build ever since the New York invasion. They give up eventually and head to an Avengers party, leaving JARVIS to continue experiments alone….
At the party, Captain America (Chris Evans) and the guests commiserate about the soldier’s life, while Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) tries to enlighten Dr. Banner on how good life can actually be. Eventually, most of the guests leave and the heroes relax with their close friends and an amusing game of one-upsmanship when a sinister voice fills the room… coming from one of Tony’s automated Iron Man units…. and the trouble REALLY begins.
After the events of the previous Avengers film served as a means to take characters already established in other movies and unite them as a team, I was honestly curious what direction writer / director Joss Whedon would take this group in. There are new battles to be fought and Whedon does a largely good job following up on storylines from other Marvel movies. The screenplay also gives us good insights to the heroes, particularly Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) who’s more relatable this time and genuinely fun to watch.
Not that the other heroes aren’t equally fun, but we’ve been given very little insight on Agent Barton until now so this was a nice change. We’ve also gotten another piece of the Black Widow puzzle that’s been spread throughout the Winter Soldier and Agent Carter works. Meanwhile, Tony’s still a jerk, Steve Rogers is righteous, Thor’s forceful and Dr. Banner’s… unsettled. The events of this movie bring to light these people don’t all think exactly the same way, as the crisis hits their psyche a great deal.
Meanwhile, on the villain side, Ultron displays a snarky malevolence at all times that feel a bit strange coming from an evil robot. If you’ve seen actor James Spader in The Blacklist, just pretty much imagine that personality in a mechanical body and you get Ultron. As both a tactician and combatant, he’s one of the better villains the Marvel live action universe has had in this respect, right along with Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. (Vincent D’onofrio’s Kingpin is my favorite, but that’s another review.) Wanda and Pietro are both up and comers so we get little insight into their motivations outside of a single conversation. Hopefully this will be explored in a future film. They do have non-American accents which help with their screen presence a bit.
The problem with this movie however is pacing. Juggling all these characters while building the Infinity Gauntlet storyline that been pervasive in previous Marvel films seems to be a bit of a challenge for Whedon here. Age of Ultron is quite an ambitious undertaking in that regard, and so at times the movie’s a bit uneven and big spectacle moments that should’ve had a bigger impact don’t pan out entirely well at times as they did in the first Avengers movie. Also, some characters aren’t used to their full potential as I would’ve liked given their importance in the comics.
However, there’s a ton of action and clues to various other Marvel lore throughout the film so I do consider this a trade off. The action sequences are fast and hard-hitting and fill the screen nicely, so it truly does feel like an Avengers comic come to life. Ultron’s scheme is larger than life and presents a complex problem for our heroes to solve with no easy quick fix, so there’s compelling drama here. Also as an aside, if you’ve seen the trailers, you’ve likely known Tony debuts a new specialized Iron Man armor here. His name for it is one of the most amusing jokes in the movie.
Taken as a whole, I enjoyed this second movie as much as I did the first Avengers film, improvements and issues aside. There’s some great stuff here that will be great lead-ins to Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok and others building toward the 2-part Infinity War movies. Some story elements come full circle and the Avengers evolve to look more awesome than ever for the challenges ahead. If this is indeed Joss Whedon’s swan song to the Marvel world under producer Kevin Feige, it’s a good point to hand off to other talents looking to build this world. As a long time comic and film fan, I’m happy to recommend The Avengers: Age of Ultron to anyone who’s wanted to see these iconic characters realized on the big screen again, or just want to have a fun time at the movies.
Grade: A-
