Seven years ago Marvel decided to take on an incredible task and create their own cinematic universe. The idea was to create movies within the same canon in somewhat the same way that their comic books are made. Eleven movies in they have done a remarkable job. None of these movies will ever win a movie of the year Oscar or anything like that, but I just re-watched them all in the last two weeks and I can report that they are all good in their own way. In fact these movies aren’t meant to win Oscars. They are big blockbuster popcorn movies that you can just have fun watching and that is exactly how I take them. They are Saturday morning action cartoons for adults that were kids when there were still Saturday morning action cartoons. I have enjoyed every single one, some more than others, and I can say that Avengers: Age of Ultron, the eleventh movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is easily one of the best entries to date.
Avengers: Age of Ultron opens up with the Avengers crew back together fighting a battle with Hydra after the huge dismantling of S.H.I.E.L.D. It looks as though Hydra will be the villains for the movie, but it actually turns out that Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) in fear of letting his team down, gets together with Bruce Banner aka The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) to create a peace keeping AI program that hacks it’s way into the internet and enters a robotic body. It’s name is Ultron (James Spader) and it is hellbent on bringing peace to earth in the only way it sees possible, making all humans extinct. The Avengers have to learn how to co-exist and work as a team so that they can possibly stop the technological terrorist.
I’m not a big comic book reader at all although I have always loved comic book movies. Batman (1989) was one of my favorite movies as a kid and I watched it over and over. It was a good movie although it was pretty dark for kids. The Marvel movies are also kind of dark in themes, but they have managed to balance that with a lot of lighting, colors, decent humor, and clever dialogue. In this movie I was entertained throughout the entire film. It kept my attention and it was just fun to watch the characters bust each other’s balls especially during the battle scenes. It kind of reminded me of the dialogue in Lord of the Rings between Gimli and Legolas during the battle scenes where they were trying to one up each other by getting a bigger body count.
The best thing I liked about this movie other than the really good action is that it actually explores a few characters that haven’t gotten a whole lot of attention. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and Black Widow (Scarllett Johansson) all kind of get their own sub-plots and get some character development that was kind of missing in the first Avengers movie. I enjoyed that this movie paid so much attention to these three characters because it doesn’t look like any of them will be getting their own solo movie anytime soon. I also enjoyed the additional characters Pietro and Wanda Maximoff better known as Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). Their foreign accents were a bit spotty at times, but I thought both gave very good performances.
If there is one negative I’d have to say about the movie it would be the opening battle with Hydra. The content in the battle itself is fine, but on a technical level it seemed very bizarre. I watched the movie in 2D and I get the feeling that this was a 3D heavy action sequence which made some of it feel sped up which is the same problem I had with the first two Hobbit movies. It is a pretty big problem and makes the CGI come off as very cartoonish looking which takes me right out of the movie. The rest of the action scenes didn’t seem to have this problem although I really noticed it in this opening action set piece.
Overall I really enjoyed this Avengers: Age of Ultron from beginning to end. If you are an ’80s kid or a ’90s like me who enjoyed Saturday morning action cartoons like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) or X-Men (1992) I really don’t see how you couldn’t enjoy Avengers: Age of Ultron. The story was solid and their was a lot of fun humor in the dialogue that I’m sure was a direct influence from writer and director Joss Whedon. I’m a little worried that the next two Avenger movies won’t have that same humor with Whedon not returning although I think it is in good hands with Anthony and Joe Russo especially since they have directed episodes of Community which is one of my all time favorite TV shows.
Dave’s Rating- ★★★★½(4½) out of ★★★★★(5)
