Saturday, May 2, 2015

Movie Review: Avengers 2: Age of Ultron

The World's Mightiest Super Heroes have finally returned!
There's ALOT to digest with AoU, and it's served at a frenetic pace! Try and keep up...
Keep in mind Age of Ultron is the conclusion of phase 2 of the MCU, alot needs to happen in this movie to set up what will transpire in phase 3. If you know what movies are coming next year it will help you understand why certain events take place in Avengers 2, especially towards the end with Cap, Black Widow, Scarlett Witch and Falcon.
The cast obviously has incredible chemistry together and it shows on and off the silver screen, Avengers Family Feud had me laughing my ass off!
The camaraderie throughout the film is completely believable as is the differing opinion's on how each of the avengers feels is the best approach to protecting humanity.
I feel Tony Stark is the most proactive of the group which is what ultimately creates the latest threat to humanity....Ultron. More on him in a bit.

I enjoyed AoU but the exhilaration of seeing Iron Man, Cap, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow and Hawk Eye on the screen together wasn't as exciting this time around....not that the opening scene wasn't amazing but after the final battle in the first Avengers film this was like a scrimmage for the Avengers.
For the most part I've kept up with the MCU but I missed Thor 2 and I'm sure there are many causal movie goers who will have plenty more questions than I because they have missed a few Phase 2 movies, like how did Loki's scepter get back on Earth?
Unfortunately I felt AoU was retreading on familiar territory, bad guys turn the Avengers against themselves to achieve their dastardly or as Ultron puts it..."evil plans" *sigh*
So how evil are Ultrons' evil plans? I guess pretty dam evil, he pretty much wants to exterminate humanity....hmmm did Jarvis get a virus from Skynet via the infinity stone?
I prefer intelligent villians, but  for some reason Ultron (The super intelligent cybernetic life form) didn't really impress me, visually he looked like Ultron from the comic's but I've seen Marvel animated movies where Ultron was more threatening.
Ultron was quite articulate and polite even when he was threatening someone's life like when he met with Ulysses Klaue to collect the Vibranium for his "evil plan" dun dun duuuuhhhh...
I understood the whole God complex issue that Ultron was suffering from and how it relates to Tony Stark, it just felt hollow, the movie didn't give enough time to build on the relationship between Ultron and Tony Stark the way Thor and Loki's relationship was developed.
In my opinion this is the MCU's Achilles heel......their villains are never allowed to develop past "mid level boss characters (gamer reference) and when put up against such charismatic and like-able characters as the Guardians and the Avengers they don't stand a chance! The Mandarin, Whiplash, Green Goblin, Sandman, Venom, Ronan the Accuser, Ultron....all legendary villains, all defeated WAAAY to easily or not sufficiently developed.
So far there's only a handful of Marvel villains that I feel have elevated beyond mid boss level infamy, Doctor Octopus, The Winter Soldier, Magneto and Loki.

The hype for Avengers Age of Ultron was at biblical levels and honestly there wasn't much of a chance of it meeting our lofty expectations, the movie was fun and had some spectacular action scenes, and seeing the World's Mightiest Super Hero's team up is awesome but....ultimately I feel AoU sacrificed the enjoyment of this individual film for the overall MCU experience.
Joss Whedon had alot of puzzle pieces that needed to connected in AoU in order to lay the groundwork for phase 3 and he did so masterfully but that's my overall issue with the movie....it felt like multiple movies pieced together to form a super hero mosaic.

Check back later this year as I plan to update my annual Cinematic Superhero Showdown to see where Avengers Age of Ultron lands.

B+




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