Just got back from Avengers: Age of Ultron. Before I start expouding on the film, a couple of disclaimers:
1. I am a fairly big Marvel geek, especially from the late 80s/early 90s. Some of my favorite characters are Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye.
2. Avengers is my favorite Super Hero movie ever, along with most of the world.
3. I haven't seen: Captain America: Winter Soldier, the second half of Thor, Thor: The Dark World, or any of Agents of SHIELD. But I did get some info from someone before seeing Age of Ultron in case there was anything I needed to know.
4. I mostly jokingly said that I was going to see The Force Unleased Trailer 2 in 3D tonight.
And just a clear warning, this will NOT be a review of "Go see Avengers: Age of Ultron". This will presuppose that you have already seen it and A. You hated it or B. You loved it and are looking for other people who loved it as well, because from the first rash of reviews, we are in the minority. But just to get pre-spoiler stuff out of the way, if you are a Marvel fan and are looking for an action packed adventure, get yourself to the theater now.
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So. If you haven't already guessed by now, I LOVED Age of Ultron. So much so, that I texted my friend after seeing it with "Twice as good as The Avengers". Yeah. I said it. Twice as good. Twice as much fun. Twice as touching. And twice as bad freaking (This word censored - Cap).
Why did I love it so much? Because action, plot and themes. Opening up in the middle of a battle in the woods, when I was thinking that would be something near the middle of the movie from the trailers. So wonderfully choreographed, so amazingly actioned, so flowing and amazing...and that scene. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. The image from the trailer of the Avengers in action, jumping into battle together...so well done, I wanted to start cheering right there.
What was the battle all about? I admit, if you're not paying attention and can't fill in the gaps really quickly, it may have been a bit tough to follow. But some bad guy was experimenting with the staff from the first Avengers movie and apparently mutat...er, enhanced some people into having powers. Got it. Good setup, and although the later explanation of why they hated Stark was a bit, well, I don't want to say silly. Coincidental, maybe? But as they alluded to later on, Stark didn't always deal with the nicest people. And it was a nice quick nod to Tony's own journey away from the death dealing merchant he had been, to the over zealous protector of the Earth that he continually strove for and ultimately would lead him to produce the most terrible weapon he could unleash upon the very world he is determined to save. Irony, tribute, and understandable motivation, all wrapped up into a very tight, very succinct plotline that delivers us into the meat and potatoes of the movie in quick manner.
I checked my clock. It was about 20 minutes. 20 minutes of great action and quick exposition. Doesn't get much less draggy than that! And into the eye of the storm we go...
Now, I'll admit. I didn't spend a lot of time delving into Age of Ultron (see my disclaimer #4 above), so some of the reveals and character stuff may have been out there. But since I was mostly spoiler free, I had a lot of great and fun surprised throughout. For example, I didn't know Vision had been teased more than just his face in the trailer, so I didn't know how big of a role he was going to play. And I didn't know War Machine would be in it in more than just a brief cameo. And I didn't know who Falcon was supposed to be because see disclaimer #3 above.
One of the things I've read is the choppiness of the movie, and the unexplained plotlines thrown in seeming forced. But let's take a step back for a minute and review these, in list format:
- Black Widow and Hulk hooking up
- Hawkeye having a family
- Too many characters introduced
Anything else? Because that's a pretty short list. But from a lot of the reviews out there, these things plus the pacing of the movie made it mediocre at best. So let's look at these things objectively.
Black Widow and Hulk. Again, didn't see Winter Soldier and there was apparently some chemistry between Cap and Widow. Fine, it didn't pan out, and that was easily set aside by Cap gracefully bowing out. But it was forced and didn't seem plausible? Here's the thing - time has passed since the Avengers. They've obviously interacted in their offscreen time. So I can buy that they have been slowly drawn to each other - what should Age of Ultron do? Spend 20 minutes of screentime showing their budding romance and attempts at opening up to each other? Wouldn't that just add more timing and clunkiness issues? So yeah - good on them. A trained assassin who doesn't open up to anyone, and a mad scientist who goes ape (cut out the language, didn't you see the first edit above? - Tony) when he lets his guard down at the wrong time. Awkward? Unbelievable? OF COURSE. They both have to be aloof, and closed off, and they aren't showing their tender, needy sides to each other or to anyone else. And the pairing does make sense, from what Widow said. She's been surrounded by killers, and now here's a guy who could kill them all and doesn't want to. She's done with the bad boys, and she herself is a monster. I give it a thumbs up.
Hawkeye having a family? That's hard to believe? It's too sudden and out of the blue? How exactly? First Avengers, he spent half the movie mind controlled (Did he really stop the Scarlet Witch from getting in his head? Or was the rest of the movie after that his own vision of what he feared? Maybe that's a post for another time...) and the second half they were busy fighting the Chitauri. So when was Clint supposed to reveal somehow "Hey, gotta get back to the wife and kids after this, so could we kind of wrap up this alien fighting thing?" No, he's a professional. And as a normal human amongst Supers, there isn't exactly a lot of time or reason to get into what he does in his off hours in the 1st Avengers movie. So yeah, I buy it. Being from the time I am for comics, I'd have rather seen Barbara Morse instead, but I'm ok with the introduction as well as the idea that he is a family man behind the scenes.
Too many characters? Let's see...Ultron, Quicksilver (oh yeah, another disclaimer: I haven't seen X-Men Days of Future Past, so I don't know why everyone is raving about that version of Quicksilver), and Scarlet Witch. Vision. And, um...who am I missing? 4 characters. And 2 of them are basically a single intro, being siblings. And, um, Ultron and Vision are kind of siblings. Or father/son ("No, Vision. I am your father."). So not sure how that's too much.
I guess one of the complaints is that the Avengers didn't spend a lot of time bonding and hanging out with each other "Like in the first movie". But that wasn't necessary. They bonded in the first movie, after beating the (Seriously, knock it off - Nat) out of each other. And that was great. But it's been done. They are friends, and team mates now. They fight together, and trust each other. And sit around trying to get Thor's hammer up. They are comfortable with each other, and it shows. That part of the team has been done - and if they just redid all that tension and whatnot, people would be screaming about that. What I really did like was how they were at each other's throats a bit, especially over Tony working on the Vision. Great, quick scene to show that even with the friendship, they still are a bunch of Alphas and aren't afraid to stand for what they believe in, even against each other. And it puts a nice bit of tension between Tony and Cap, which will play out more as they get into the tensions that are rising between people and Supers in the background. But there wasn't a lot of downtime group interaction because that's been done, and this, my true believers, is the action movie to show just how capable the team is in their moments of crisis.
Which leads to another complaint: It never really felt like they were in danger. Maybe the danger was too subtle, and offscreen - they really did just keep mentioning that Ultron is building an army, Ultron is stealing Vibranium, Ultron is doing blah blah blah. But they have to, because they really did get messed up by him. Normally I'm not a fan of dream sequences, mostly because they tend to be too slow, drawn out, and poorly handled - but the mind messing that Scarlet did on them was very well done. Quick, to the point, and jumpy enough to cause some really disconcerting moments as we sometimes weren't sure if the heroes had snapped out of it or if they were still enthralled by the Witch. Man, I really gotta write another post about that...
So were they in danger? Yes. Was it onscreen? Not as much, but that's another subtle point that shouldn't be minimized: They were getting their behinds kicked (Are you happy, Cap? I changed that one on my own) in The Avengers until Tony went up and destroyed the Droid Command Ship (sorry, wrong Disney franchise) and closed the hole. Now, they are fighting in extremely good form with each other, and standing against the army that Ultron has built. Of COURSE they are going to win. It feels that way, because IT'S A SUPER HERO MOVIE! And, like some others have pointed out already, it's Super Heroes that aren't willing to sacrifice the small (Relatively speaking) number of people on the city to save the masses. They make the tough moral choice - save everyone first, then stop the robot from winning. It's a heavy burden to shoulder, and an arrogant decision. But it's what sets them above - having the confidence in their own abilities and not sacrificing the few just because it would make it easier for them to accomplish their goals. So kudos for that, and when you're talking about Comic Books, that is what they used to be about. Yeah, there were some broody characters. But morals are the keystone of Heroes - and The Avengers as an insitution brings to mind those things that are exemplified in this movie.
It takes a personal loss for Ultron to gain the upper hand - in the moment that Quicksilver is (yeah, right, like he's going to stay dead when he has a super metabolism as well as a doctor on his team who designed a Goa'uld coffin to heal people) killed and Scarlet Witch loses her focus on the task at hand. And that's all it takes, which is another lesson. Because she had her doubts, and she didn't have a history of making those choices or staying the course in the face of loss and trauma. Hawkeye did, and he faces his job with the equanimity to be expected of a soldier in battle. But he had to rally the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver to become Avengers - and they did. But their training was incomplete. They are not Jedis yet (I KNOW. Sorry. I'll stop with the Star Wars references. Honest.).
So now to address one of the overall complaints - the pacing. People have said it's choppy, disjointed, doesn't flow. I say, what the (Heck. HECK. Is it so hard? - Bruce) movie are you watching? Amazing battle scenes interspersed with plot and characters. I thought it was extremely well paced. The battles gotta stop sometime. And seriously, if you're there for a summer action flick, this has got it in spades. Plenty of over the top action, plenty of great small fight scenes, and a rollicking show of force from all the heroes (including Vision's ability to phase through matter and reach inside the guts of a robot and rip them out - loved that brief shot). There were times, between the awesome fights and the huge fan service going on that I found myself stifling laughter and excitement and knowing I was failing and people around me had to hear me. And yeah, I admit it. I gave out an excited whoop at one point in a quiet aftermath scene. I couldn't contain it.
So for those that thought this was a cheap imitation of the first movie, and wasn't as stylistic as Winter Soldier - or as rompy as Guardians of the Galaxy - or as introspective as Iron Man 3 - it wasn't supposed to be. They've DONE those movies. And they've done them well. This is a consolidation of those themes and ideas that they've put together over the last years, and they did an amazing job of it. But just to show that not every movie is flawless, I'll give my 2 complaints:
1. Avengers....SERIOUSLY. Give us the ASSEMBLE! Biggest fan service fail. THAT was choppy, and unexpected. I hated that cut to black without Cap finishing his line. Why, Joss, why? WHY?
2. And speaking of WHY? WHY DIDN'T YOU GIVE US THE END OF CREDIT SHOT OF THANOS??? That would have been worth it. And you know what? IF people didn't stick around through the credits to see it, it wouldn't have mattered. You should have rewarded us, the faithful. That's one of the signatures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Why would you punish us? You should have redeemd the massive fail from Guardians of the Galaxy. Now we have two Marvel movies to complain about the end of credits scene.
And that's it. I've got more, but I've probably gone on for long enough right now. To the haters, or the lukewarm: You are insane. This was by far the best Super Hero movie ever made. It is in the very top echelon of Action movies. Maybe on future viewings, I won't be as excited and I'll start realizing that it was a piece of dreck. But I highly doubt that is going to happen. So I will end this post now, and go dream about Super Heroes. Until next time, Excelsior.
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