Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Rating- 12a
Running Time- 2 hours 21 minutes
Directed by- Joss Whedon
Written by- Joss Whedon
It’s time again for everyone’s favourite team of superheroes
to fight against an evil being who is focused on destroying all of mankind due
to their slightly off kilter morals and shaky reasoning. No, it’s not the X-Men. No, it’s not the Guardians of the Galaxy either… it’s the
Avengers. Remember them? Well, you
should because you’ve been constantly reminded of them ever since they successfully
defeated a non-human lifeform who threatened the fate of all of humanity three
years ago… and now, they’re ready to do it all over again.
Of course by now we expect nothing less than for the heroes
we have seen on screen many times before to face a challenge they have faced many
times before to save all of us regular humans, who we seem to be seeing less and
less of in cinemas because, as we all know, we as vulnerable, emotionally
complex humans are boring. We demand god-like beings, failed science
experiments and crazy mutants… I mean crazy ‘genetically enhanced humans’… to
be flying around and shooting lasers from any available orifice or we want our money back! Luckily, that’s exactly what we get.
The film focuses on Iron
Man’s (Robert Downey Jr.) vision to create a robotic creature (Ultron, James Spader) that can essentially
save the world whenever something comes to threaten it so that the Avengers don’t have to. He and Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) a.k.a. The Hulk attempt to create this robot
but appear to fail only for it malfunction and animate itself as a figure of
evil. Ultron initially appears to
believe that the Avengers themselves
are the biggest threat to the safety of Earth so aims to eliminate them but he
eventually comes to the conclusion that all of mankind needs to be wiped out as
they are the problem in his eyes. So, it is up to the Avengers to defeat Ultron before
he succeeds with his plot of global annihilation.
All in all, Avengers:
Age of Ultron is an enjoyable film. Its action scenes are just as
entertaining as those in its predecessor but seem to have more purpose rather
than just a fight for the sake of fighting. It also cuts out the hour long
setup of characters we already know that the first one had and puts us straight
into the action, which is a good thing in my book. But overall it sticks to the
same formula that has been successful for Marvel
since Iron Man (2008) and, while
they are still making money, they have no reason to divert from this formula.
So, as we have come to expect by now, there are many flaws
apparent in the film that we allow ourselves to ignore because as long as the
film is enjoyable it doesn’t really matter that some of the dialogue is poor or
that some of the characters seems to come to conclusions that make little
sense. But, there is one thing that even the most diehard fan of the films is
still irked by and that is the villains. Marvel
have a track record or producing villain after villain that has a one
dimensional reason for wanting to destroy the world and who we never truly
believe will pose a threat to our hero or heroes. In Ultron though at last there is a villain whose reasoning is almost
justified and we can actually see where he is coming from but he wants to kill
us all so we know he’s bad and has to die. He is still not a great example of a
villain but by Marvel’s standards he
may as well be Hans Gruber. The fact
that he speaks with jokes and sarcasm also make him more entertaining than
anything we’ve seen from the Marvel Cinematic
Universe in terms of bad guys before.
And, while I’ve already mentioned that we overlook most of
the films flaws, it’s hard to accept the romance that sparks (I say sparks but
the way it is written into the plot we would believe that this is something
that has been coming for a while) between Black
Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and The Hulk.
It comes very much out of left field and seems very forced. It would have
almost been better for them just to turn up and say “we’re a couple now” as at
least then we would know it is something that has happened between films and we
are not left questioning whether or not it is a relationship that had begun to
develop before the film or whether it really is just that sudden.
The introduction of the Maximoff
twins (Quicksilver, Aaron
Taylor-Johnson and Scarlet Witch, Elizabeth
Olsen) was not a disaster but it wasn’t that successful either. They do
initially fall into the category of one dimensional villains that I previously
mentioned and their back story of their parents being killed is hard to take seriously
with the fluctuating accents that we are told it through. It was always going
to be hard for Quicksilver in particular
with the same character being used to such great success last year in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and
with that in mind Taylor-Johnson does a pretty good job. Scarlet Witch is mostly just dull until around the last act of the
film despite her being the key instigator for most of the Avengers’ problems in the film’s early stages.
Probably the best aspect of the film though was Hawkeye who, after his disappointing showing
in the first Avengers, completely
stole the show in this one. He was funny, heroic and relatable. In essence, he
was everything a good protagonist is meant to be. It makes me want to see a
superhero film where the hero isn’t an all-powerful being with a vulnerability
that is shoehorned in but where we follow a naturally flawed human that we can relate
to while all this amazing, supernatural stuff that is a staple of the superhero
genre goes on around him.
Overall, it’s exactly what you expect from a Marvel film and while I believe it
slightly betters its predecessor due to its lack of over exposition and the
presence of a half-decent villain, there is not much between the two. An entertaining
watch that satisfies as you experience it but don’t think about it too much
afterwards as the flaws will begin to become obvious and its entertainment
value will start to diminish rapidly.
 |
| Final Rating. Three Stars. |
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