Avengers: Age of Ultron

(Movie Reviews)

Why I Saw this Movie

...or, I suppose, the more relevant question is probably: "Why am I only seeing this movie now?"

I never made it to the theaters for this one.  2 years ago, when it came out, I was new in my city, and didn't have friends to go to the cinema with.
And if you don't see these big epics on the big screen, you've kind of missed your chance.  I mean, what's the point of watching all these action scenes on the small screen?
This is more true now than it was in my childhood.  The simple fight choreography of an Indiana Jones movie was perfectly watchable on the small screen.  But nowadays CGI packs so many moving elements into an action sequence, it's almost impossible to appreciate on the small screen.

...That, plus the fact that this movie didn't get great reviews also kept me from running out and grabbing a copy.

But, since all these Marvel movies fight together, I knew I had to see it sooner or later.
Watching Civil War, it was apparent that I had missed out on several plot points from Age of Ultron.  Also, I wanted to see where Thor and the Hulk had ended up before the new Thor movie hits theaters.

So, when this movie was on TV the other day, I thought I would check it out.

The Review
In my review of the first Avengers movie, I wrote:

Like a lot of people, before this movie came out I was pessimistic about how well it would manage to successfully juggle all the balls that it needed to keep in the air.  And, like a lot of people, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the movie pulled it off.

The first Avengers movie was juggling several characters and franchise continuity, but it still managed to actually be an entertaining movie on its own terms.

I suppose, in retrospect, it was too much to expect that lightening would strike twice.  Because, oh boy oh boy, does The Age of Ultron ever NOT pull this off.

There are two many characters and plot points, and as a result, nothing gets developed the way it should.

The movie slogs from plot point to plot point, but gives the audience very little reason to care about anything.

Ultron himself is barely introduced, and then goes evil almost immediately for no really good reason.

The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver also barely get developed.  

And Vision! What is going on with Vision? Another character that gets created out of nowhere, has no time to get developed at all, and is just thrown right into the action sequences.

And then the movie tries to milk pathos out of Quicksilver's death, when we've barely been introduced to this character.

The pity is that the movie didn't need to introduce so many new characters.  We didn't need Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch and Vision.  We would have been happy just to spend more time seeing Iron-man, Thor, and Captain America interacting.  (The movie does give us some good moments with the old characters, but not nearly enough).

The action scenes are decent.  (Marvel has always excelled at its action).  But this movie suffers by being the second outing of the Avengers.  We already saw the Avengers fight an invading horde of faceless badguys in the first movie.  It was kind of cool to see more fighting in the second movie, but it also got old much quicker.  (And for my money, I thought the movie dragged on too long).

On the plus side:

* Admittedly that fight between Iron-Man and the Hulk was really cool.

Rating :

5 out of 10 stars.  That's me being slightly generous to this movie, but the fact that most of the cast is established characters does give this movie some leeway.  The fact that Marvel already spent several movies building up the characters of Ironman, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America means they can get away with doing less in the subsequent movies.  Most of the audience is just happy to see these heroes together again.  And I count myself among that number.  So the movie gets a 5 based on that.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Links:
Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Captain America, Captain America 2, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, The Avengers,  Guardians of the Galaxy. Guardians of the Galaxy 2,  Civil War. Ant Man, and Spider-Man Homecoming.

Video Review
Video Review here and embedded below:



Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky "The Crisis of Immigration"