Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Written and Directed by Joss Whedon

It’s interesting that this is the exact midway point of my 21-film rewatch of this series. It’s here that the weight of the entire Marvel universe starts to be felt, creaking the hinges of this massive construction, threatening to collapse the entire thing under its own weight. Age of Ultron holds together, but only just. The enormity of the universe, the number of characters or plot threads, and the difficulty of balancing it all really take their toll on this entry. Even moreso than the first Avengers film, this movie had a gargantuan task in reuniting all of the heroes again. It had to be a sequel to one movie, but also a partial sequel to about six others, as well as a prequel to Phase 3 of Marvel’s big project. There was, frankly, no way it was ever going to be able to do all of that well. It’s simply too tall an order. The story kicks off with the hunt for the lost scepter that Loki used in the last Avengers title. Once it’s returned however, Iron Man sees an opportunity to use it to create a perfect security AI to protect the world. Unfortunately, what he creates is instead a half-mad monster bent on creating an extinction event, the Ultron (James Spader) of the title. Ultron wins the loyalty of a couple of enhanced humans who feel like the Avengers have wronged them. Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is very very fast, and his sister Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) is very very psychic. The heroes have to scramble to save the entire world from the product of Tony Stark’s hubris.

Joss Whedon was on record both before and during production, over and over, saying that he wanted this movie to be smaller, more intimate, more focused on death and loss. With that being the case, I have no idea how this is the movie we got. He said he wanted it to be his Godfather II or Empire Strikes Back. This movie is so over the top in absolutely every way that I simply don’t see how that could have been the case. It seems that maybe the production got away from him. We move from saving New York to an extinction level event. We move from six characters to nine involved in the finale. The darkness and melancholy that he was going for seems entirely absent from the film. The only character death that we actually get is for a barely-developed, new addition to the cast. It hits with no real sense of impact. It’s a common fan theory that Hawkeye was originally supposed to be the one who died in this movie, and it’s easy to see why those theories persist. It looks very much like they’re setting him up for it, only to pull a switcheroo at the literal last moment. There are any number of conspiracy theories as to why they might have done this. My favorite is the idea that it was a direct slight to Fox, who were simultaneously making their own movie with the another Quicksilver. I have no idea if any of these theories are true, but it’s obvious that the move didn’t work in the movie’s favor. Even if Whedon was entirely deliberately going for trope subversion, it doesn’t work. The audience still has to have a connection to the character to care when he dies, and Quicksilver barely had enough lines to be considered a character at all. Hawkeye’s death, while sad, would’ve given the movie the emotional punch it needed, especially after the additional characterization he gets throughout.

The movie isn’t without merit, to be clear. The first fight scene is really fun, and feels like a direct connection to the fun fight scene that closed out the last Avengers. It’s got some fun comic book visuals, and a real sense of each hero doing something different and cool. The party scene is also a fan favorite for a reason. The way that Marvel became pop culture was by making fans love their characters, and giving them some downtime just to hang out and shoot the breeze is one of the best moves this movie makes. In addition, the Scarlet Witch’s abilities to alter the minds of her foes allows us some great insight into the characters and what makes them tick. We get some really cool, nightmare-like hallucinations out of it, and all of them are excellent. Stark’s narcissism and guilt, Cap’s missed opportunities, Widow’s brutal conditioning. It’s all cool. When the movie is focused on character interaction, it still really works like gangbusters. Whedon is great at dialogue, and really seems to get what makes these characters tick. The new romance between Banner and Black Widow seems authentic and natural, Hawkeye’s motivational speech to Scarlet Witch is an all-timer, Cap and Tony’s friendship/rivalry plays out well over the course of the whole movie, and even James Spader’s bizarro, sarcasm-laced take on Ultron is interesting. It’s just…all the other stuff in here.

And there’s so much of it. Every fight seems to go on for multiple beats too long. I like the idea of the truck chase. Let’s pit the really normal Avengers against the robo-god and see how they fare. But good lord, it just goes on and on and on and nothing happens. It’s like watching a ten-minute-long holding action, and you’re bored within the first two or so. The Hulkbuster armor is really cool, but the fight just never ends until it does–with a total anticlimax! It’s just that same problem over and over. The mooks in the final fight are ludicrously inconsistently destructible. Sometimes they can take repeated beatings with superweapons, sometimes Cap can just backhand them to death. They’re completely uninteresting as foes, as well. They have no personality or real sense of menace to them. The few producer’s notes that have been made public indicate that the studio didn’t like the scenes I just praised above, and pushed for more of that big studio bombast. They criticized the cool visions, the downtime at Hawkeye’s home: you know, the quiet moments. The movie just grew and grew until it was a bloated shell of what it might have been. They cut an entire major scene for Thor (where we were going to see him learn about the Infinity Stones), and it’s very obvious where the cuts were made. There had to be more room for another fifteen minute fight scene, so who cares if the middle of the film feels jumpy and disjointed? The whole things just smacks of missed potential. I really do believe the building blocks were there to make this one of the best MCU movies, but the weight of the whole film universe draped over its shoulders, coupled with studio expectations, crumpled it.

Overall:

Stray Thoughts:

• I have a huge and serious problem with Black Widow implying that being unable to bear a child makes her a monster. Every time I have seen this movie it has stood out to me as a particularly tone deaf and terrible thing to say. It is shockingly bad in an otherwise pretty solid script. I am considering writing an entire editorial about it.
• The running “language” gag with Captain America is adorable and I love it.
• There are just too many housecleaning tasks this movie has to do: trying to explain the missing significant others for two of the heroes is particularly bad.
• Starting this movie with Tony in the suit after the ending of Iron Man 3 was a terrible idea. It completely reverses all of the previous character development, and makes his desire for Ultron make even less sense.
• Cap immediately knowing how to best use the two new team members to save the day is great.
• This movie has way too much technobabble surrounding Ultron that obfuscates what really matters–character motivation and action.
• Ultron is way too easy to defeat for the ending to feel earned. Evidently the Vision can just turn off the Internet. It’s one of his superpowers.
• It’s still good that they show heroes saving civilians. That still matters.
• Repeating your best shot from the previous movie is cheap, and feels it. I think the idea was for it to be a cool callback, but it just feels like resting on your laurels.
• Post-Credits scene: Thanos is still waiting in the wings. I don’t think I had forgotten, but for anyone who had I guess this is an OK scene.
• Stan Lee cameo: One of my favorites of the whole shebang. Lee as a WW2 veteran is a great idea (since he actually was), and the scene plays out wonderfully. Maybe the best one of these.