Joss Whedon returns with Disney/Marvel’s much-anticipated
“Avengers: Age of Ultron”; a bigger, longer, louder sequel to 2012’s successful
superhero team-up, “The Avengers.” In what was once seen as the impossible task
to bring together five separate movie franchises and support each protagonist
under one umbrella universe, this idea is quickly becoming the new normal. With
“Terminator,” “Star Wars” and Warner Brothers’ DC Comics properties setting up
multiple films and side stories, the term ‘cinematic universe’ has become the
new Hollywood buzz-phrase. Rather than waiting every two years for a single sequel
to rake in the dough, now studios can expand the universe of an intellectual
property and have many characters and plot ideas producing multiple movies at
once.
Of course this has been happening in the world of comic
books forever, but the cost to mass produce and sell a 20 page superhero
magazine is nothing compared to fortune it takes to pull off something as
massive as their cinematic counterparts. Strangely enough, though the risk is
higher and the economic stakes are raised to create these movies, their stories
sometimes reward less than those provided by pulp they were modeled after.
Iron Man (Robert Downy Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain
America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawk Eye (Jeremy
Renner) and The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) return to save the world yet
again, and this time the threat is of their own creation—an impossibly smart
robot intelligence named Ultron, voiced by James Spader. After breaking into a soviet compound looking
for…something or other, Tony Stark/Iron Man finds a robot technology that would
allow him to update his computer A.I. with the ability to make his Iron-Dones
smart enough and powerful enough to allow the team to retire. Quickly it grows
too smart and develops its own reasons to kill the heroes. Newcomers Quicksilver
(Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) join the evil robot
to avenge their parents and their childhood home, destroyed years ago by Stark’s
military weapons.
The set-up is simple enough, yet somehow the movie fractures
into many whirling plot points and set-pieces that never quite harmonize,
creating an out-of-breath, jumble of action-spectacle. Whedon is a smart writer
and his knack for dialogue and characterization is still intact, but his work
as a storyteller seems stifled by Marvel’s bottom-line to set up even more
potential properties within their ever-expanding multi-verse. Midway through
the film, the threat of Ulron, who’s marvelously introduced with a genuine
sense of menace, is diluted by competing plots regarding mystical prophecies about
magic gems and otherworldly cosmic dangers. By the end, the movie’s climax is
strained to decide which story element needs to pay off. Allegiances change, more
new characters are introduced, romances are fulfilled and further franchises are
hinted at, at which point Stark’s self-destructive hubris is the thing we’re
thinking the least about.
Joss Whedon’s work as a television show-runner (“Buffy: The
Vampire Slayer”, “Firefly”) has earned him a lot of goodwill over the years,
but with “Avengers: Age of Ultron” it seems like his talent for telling
extended, episodic stories is forcibly compressed into a confused and
frustrating mess of a narrative. Some of the action is well-staged and
entertaining—the fight between “Iron Man” and “The Hulk” is pretty neat—but
most of it, while expensively produced, is ineffectual and weightless.
The dialogue is quick and funny and these actors are now so comfortable in there
theme-park personalities that even the most mindless scenes float along well-
enough, but they’re supported by a plot that’s so over-stuffed with things to
do, placed to be, and sequels to sell that it tears itself apart before it can
naturally develop.
Grade: C-
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2015
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2015
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