Let's Go Out To The Movies: "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (PG-13 - Marvel/Disney - 2 hrs, 30 mins)

Short Version- It's good, not as good/iconic as the first one, but it's still a total blast to watch. Take the kids, they'll love it. Only one mid-credits scene, so you can go home early.-Long Version...

Alo Party Peoples.

Directed and Written by
Joss Whedon

If The Avengers was the original Star Wars, and Winter Soldier was The Empire Strikes Back, then Age of Ultron is Return of the Jedi. The first rewrote the book on modern action cinema, the second went bigger, bolder, and completely rejiggered the status quo with massive revelations, and the third is still a satisfying action film but doesn't quite reach the highs of either of its predecessors.

Make no mistake, Age of Ultron will likely be one of the summer's finest offerings of spectacle. It's funny, it's gorgeous, it's entertaining, but there's no "Puny god." or "I'm always angry." or this scene to make it something truly amazing and push it into pop-culture immortality like it's predecessor. With such a large expansive universe juggling multiple platforms, one of these movies just being good was probably an inevitability for Marvel, but they've set such a high standard for themselves that it feels like more of a letdown than it is.

Age of Ultron picks up in the wake of Winter Soldier with the Avengers picking off the last remnants of Hydra and capturing a base containing Loki's scepter, which has been used by a mad scientist to turn a couple of war orphans with a grudge against Tony Stark into the super-humans Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. When Stark and Banner discover that the Scepter basically works like a computer, they decide to use it as the basis of an artificial intelligence program meant to run a global network of Iron Legionaries meant to tackle threats too big for superheroes. This "suit of armor around the world" quickly becomes an iron maiden when the AI immediately becomes a deranged lunatic that decides that making the world safe means killing the Avengers, and the rest of humanity not long after. Except for the war orphans since Scarlet Witch's telepathy proves useful in seeding discord among the Avengers.

Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner,
Scarlet Johannson, and Chris Hemsworth as the Avengers

This is the kind of big, ridiculous storytelling that could only originate in characters originally meant to entertain children, and while certain other superhero films treat that legacy like a burden, Age of Ultron embraces it wholeheartedly without any sense of irony or self-depreciating humor. This makes it, more so than any other Marvel Studios production, feel like a live-action cartoon in the best possible way. The action scenes are a ton of fun, the dialouge is consistently funny and quotable, delivered by actors that are by now immensely comfortable embodying these characters, and no matter which one is your favorite, you will love what they do with them, especially a much expanded role for Hawkeye that somehow turns him into an interesting character.

James Spader as Ultron

If there's one place where it comes up short, besides lavish editing for time that turns a second act spirit quest by Thor clearly meant to set up his third solo-outing into a weird digression that goes nowhere, it's Ultron himself. Don't get me wrong, he looks gorgeous, and James Spader is clearly having a blast playing him as having a serious god complex and a fragile ego, but he's a surprisingly shallow villain. Sure, this isn't and was never going to be an Ex_Machina level exploration of AI, but there's no real reason for him to immediately go crazy and decide that genocide is the only route to peace. There's not even a scene of Tony Stark being a prick to him that pushes him over the edge or something, it just comes out of nowhere.

But that's mostly nitpicking in what's almost certainly going to be a real highlight for summer 2015. When I say that Age of Ultron is only good, that's in comparision to the other Marvel Cinematic Universe films, and their standards are set so high that just 'good' is closer to amazing. Age of Ultron may not as good as it's predecessor, but it's still a fantastic action film. I had a wonderful time with it, and I'm sure that many of you will as well.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B