Movie Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron
Directed by Joss Whedon
In Theatres

This one is for Pat. (Forever and a day ago, a bunch of us went to see X2 and Pat was like an over-sugared ten-year-old because it was the first time a comic book movie referenced the greater comic book universe. We had never seen a moment like the Hank McCoy television interview scene in a movie before. That was exciting stuff. Anyway, this one is for Pat. Miss you, good sir.)

After some casual research, it looks like it might have been Stan Lee who explained that comic book fans look for the illusion of change, not actual change. Which, if it true, must make watching a comic book movie angry-crazy time for them. Origin stories are changed, motivations are shifted, characterizations are modified. Some of this is due to the dramatic story telling needs of the medium of movies. A two plus hour running time with a hockey team sized cast could easily turn into four hour plus film with the cast of a 1950s Biblical epic. What can be done on the pages of comics cannot be done on a screen. It's just the nature of the two different art forms. I can't imagine sitting through Avengers: Age of Ultron if we had to wade through the introduction of Hank Pym and why he created Ultron and the love triangle between Hank Pym and a robot and someone called the Wasp and the creation of The Vision who behaves like Wonder Man and a bunch of other stuff I just read on Wikipedia. That is a deep and dangerous rabbit hole. There is almost fifty years of Ultron being defeated and destroyed by the Avengers and then being brought back by some villain or another. Stan Lee's observation on the nature of comic book fans is beginning to look completely on the mark from where I'm sitting.

Other times, character changes are not dictated by the needs of telling a concise story over two and half hours rather than forty eight years. Sometimes it's a rights issues. A case of figuring out which multinational entertainment conglomerate owns the rights to which storyline or character or even a fictional bar or newspaper. Both Avengers: Age of Ultron and X-Men: Days of Future Past contain the character of Quicksilver. Two movie franchises share a character that in the comic book world are the exact same character but in the film worlds are kind of the same but not really and are now different characters with two different back stories, played by two different actors. But are somehow the same character according to the lawyers for the multinational entertainment conglomerates involved. Even if neither is called Quicksilver in either movie and their stories are separated by fifty years. Such is the nature of story telling in this brave new world we find ourselves in.

And the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become the highest grossing film franchise this weekend, with the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Pretty good for a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy just a few years ago. Now, can we collectively stop treating Marvel like the underdog? 'cause that would be great. Billions of dollars in revenue does not an underdog make. If someone dislikes a Marvel property there is no need to go all mob mentality on them and insult their parentage and threaten them harm. There will be a truly awful moment in this franchise that will make even the true believers question the focus of their idolatry. The day will come when the fanboys and fangirls will have had enough of the pandering and will strike back at the multinational entertainment conglomerates and the dump trucks full of money will stop delivering to Disney and Fox and Paramount and the age of the comic book movie will come to an end.

But that day probably isn't today.

Yes, Avengers: Age of Ultron is bloated, its pacing questionable at times, some of the action scenes not quite as thrilling as the first time around. What some people have been writing for the past week is true, sure. But - and there always is a but - but damn if Avengers: Age of Ultron isn't a giant bag of fun, a roller coaster of a ride with humour and heartbreak and even human touches that were missing from the first Avengers movie.

Sure it's bloated. Like I pointed out above, the cast is the size of a hockey team. That's the above the title cast. I'm not going to count the cameos and mid-credit tag or even everyone who has a line in this thing. The sheer number of superheroes characters and story lines and plots motivations that Joss Whedon had to juggle to make this film not only entertaining and coherent as a whole but also fit in as a part of a greater multi-film story arc is more than impressive. Joss Whedon, once the patron saint of lovers of little watched television shows, has turned into a filmmaking juggernaut. And to think, the first Avengers film was only his second time directing a feature.

And I expect the pacing in a Whedon film to feel a bit off. That's the way Joss Whedon makes a movie, it comes from his natural compulsion to mess with expectations. There is a structure to all blockbusters and it can be found in a script writing guide called Save the Cat that was written in 2005 by Blake Snyder. It's all clockwork, the time when the themes are stated, when the act breaks occur, the false victory, the all-is-lost moment, the dark-night-of-the-soul moment. etc. And this isn't something that was created by Blake Snyder, even the Wizard of Oz follows this structure. You can set your watch to any blockbuster, any film intended for a mass audience - it's just what audiences expect. Even if we aren't aware of the structure, when the timing is off we can feel it. Except one blockbuster - The Avengers. All the notes are there, Whedon just places them a little off, each one comes a few minutes early or late. That's why the first act of The Avengers seems to drag - the act break occurs about 4 minutes late. And with Avengers: Age of Ultron, Whedon has done it again. He plays with the formula and our expectations. His characters will even comment on the beats.

The novelty of The Avengers, of seeing all of these characters in one movie for the first time, is gone. But what replaces it is a lived-in world, where the relationships between the characters has been fleshed out by what has happened between the two movies. Whedon has said in interviews that he looked to The Godfather series as a model for the two Avengers films. The Godfather 2 is a very different film than the first one, things have happened offscreen, lives have been lived, alliances have been made, some torn apart. The Godfather 2, the Michael part of the story, feels very much like a lived-in world, with dust on the furniture and comfortable silences. And while Avengers: Age of Ultron is no Godfather 2, Whedon's movie has that same kind of lived-in feel. The relationships between our heroes have evolved, their relationship with the world at large has progressed. During the moments between Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner and Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark or Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff you can feel the history there, you know things have happened between the films but they don't need to be commented on. I thought I would only say this about Captain America: Winter Soldier, but the character moments in Avengers: Age of Ultron feel very real, very organic. It is so weird to talk about comic book movies having real moments, but that is this brave new world we find ourselves in. The first Iron Man movie set the bar very high, very high indeed.

The performances in Avengers: Age of Ultron are all solid, not a weak link to be found. Jeremy Renner gets to flesh out Hawkeye and Mark Ruffalo completely sells the shame and guilt of being the Hulk. Scarlett Johansson continues to give Black Widow multiple layers and vulnerabilities. Everyone brings their 'A' game to the show. But the whole movie is quite nearly stolen by James Spader. His performance as an artificial intelligence gone bad is full of humour and insanity. He really brings the murderbot to life. In most hands, the role of Ultron could have been hammy and his motivations muddy. But Spader brings his natural gravitas to the role, his calmness and his humour, his essential Spaderness if you will.

I could go on here and sum up the main plot and subplots, but there is too much fun to be had with me killing any surprises. All I'll tell you is this: there is an evil artificial intelligence and it needs to be stopped. Stuff blows up real good, there are some heartbreaking moments and there is a metric tonne of humour. Is Avengers: Age of Ultron worth your time and money? Yes. Yes, it is. There was a time when you could not trust a comic book movie to be any good, a time when sequels rarely lived up to the original. But that time isn't today. And such is this brave new world we find ourselves living in.