In a weekend with a lot of entertainment distractions, including
a boring "fight of the century," thoroughbred horses
running around a Kentucky track, and possibly the first NFL Draft where Jets fans weren't
booing or weeping afterward,
Avengers: Age of Ultron scored the second-biggest domestic opening ever, taking in $191.3 million. It was a forgone conclusion this film would pull in money, but just how much was an open question. And if you were looking for the first signs the superhero trend among filmgoers is dissipating, this doesn't seem to be the "bomb" that's going to unravel the entire concept.
We're currently in an age of serialization with movies. Most of the big film properties over the past decade have been multi-installment franchises (e.g., The Hunger Games, Fast & Furious, Star Wars, Fifty Shades of Grey, Harry Potter, etc.). And the result is that television has become the medium for risks and experimentation, with big movie actors agreeing to do things like True Detective and House of Cards, while film has become the domain for action movies based largely on young adult literature and comic books. No other franchise exemplifies that change, or been as successful, as the Marvel Studios films.
Unlike the first Avengers film, reviews are not as glowing among critics this time around. Writer-director Joss Whedon's talent for constructing dialogue between the characters is still there, and the best parts of the movie are when the characters interact, joke and feel like real people trying to deal with stuff that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Things go boom and people fly around the screen in fun ways. But Age of Ultron suffers from some of the shifts from the source material, while throwing too many characters and too much unnecessary plot into the mix.
Continue below the fold for more.
“Guy’s multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit.” —Nick Fury on Ultron
A little more than two weeks ago, Warner Bros. and director Zack Snyder released the
trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. While there are interesting ideas the movie seems to play lip service to at the very least (How would people really react to Superman? With worship or hate?), there is almost no color, joy or most importantly fun exhibited anywhere in the footage. It's all drowned in a dark moody tone that takes Christopher Nolan's
Dark Knight look, mixes it with Zack Snyder's sensibilities, and predicates the whole thing on a sort of teenage boy mentality of thinking how awesome it would be to watch characters beat the shit out of each other in CGI cityscapes. And aspects of that tone may work for Batman and some other characters, but when you spread it across an entire franchise (i.e., just look at the latest
images for Warner Bros.'
Suicide Squad), the result is superhero movies without superheroes. Compare that to the tone and excitement generated by the
latest Star Wars trailer or with the Marvel movies. Disney and Marvel have infused their films with a joy that's not afraid to laugh at things, and not afraid to embrace the goofier elements of the comics people love.
While Age of Ultron definitely is fun and willing to be meta and joke around, it's also bloated and clunky in the way it tells its story.
Age of Ultron's greatest strength is its banter. The entire reason the Avengers movies are supposed to be a special event where these characters interact, work together, and from time to time fight each other. Whedon portrays Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Bruce Banner/The Hulk ((Mark Ruffalo), Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) as a dysfunctional family. And it's a family that can do great things together, but also has significant flaws. That's where the film is at its most interesting and fun. The movie's opening sequence has the characters cracking Whedon's quips in a way that's indicative of what each hero brings to the table. In this respect, each of them represent different issues and tones, being in different places emotionally with different influences on their outlook about things. Where the internal conflict of the original Avengers questioned whether these characters could work together as a team, Age of Ultron is about self-doubt and feeling like you're not doing enough, or you're more trouble than help, or questioning why exactly you're doing it at all.
Where Age of Ultron suffers is with selling the seriousness of the villain and all of the additional characters that need servicing.
“Fortunately, I am mighty.” —Thor
After Tony Stark pushes Bruce Banner to use data gleaned from Loki's scepter to create a new artificial intelligence network, the result is Ultron (James Spader). Stark seems weary of the constant fights, and envisions Ultron as "a suit of armor around the world" to save it when the next threat comes. However, it seems like Tony has never seen
Terminator or
The Matrix, and Ultron goes off the deep end as soon as he becomes functional, reasoning that he can save the world by eliminating humanity. Spader is not bad in the role, and he torments Downey's Tony Stark like a obstinate child rebelling against daddy. Ultron is aided by Wanda and Pietro Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the non-mutant versions of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver), who hold a grudge against Tony Stark, since it was a Stark Industries weapon that killed their parents.
However, the threat of Ultron never really gets sold well and goes along the same ground of "computer out of control" that's been done before. It's not like Ultron is taking over cities or marching machines across the land. He spends most of his time hiding underground. And by the time the thousandth Ultron robot is smashed (easily), you're almost numb to it. The movie uses the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver more as plot devices to move the action forward and visualize the fears of the Avengers than fully realized characters with an arc. And that's largely because there's no room for it. In addition to the introduction of the "twins," the movie has to deal with Tony Stark playing God, the Avengers doubting themselves, a romance between Black Widow and Bruce Banner, revelations about one of the team's private life, more setup for the Infinity Gems and the overarching Infinity War storyline, and the introduction of the Vision (Paul Bettany). Beyond all of that, the movie tries to stuff all of it together while ostensibly having the same basic story formula and beats as the first Avengers film.
I came away from the film with a mostly positive reaction. But Age of Ultron doesn't feel as significant as some of the other Marvel films. And that might be its biggest sin. With Captain America: The Winter Soldier or the original Avengers, there's a perception that the events are shifting things within that world. The destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the revelation of what HYDRA has been doing are played as changes that will have lasting impacts to the franchise. Even the ending of Avengers had the world reacting to the destruction done to New York City in believable ways. Some cheer for the Avengers, while others see them as the cause of it. None of the events in this film take on the same weight. Three locations (Seoul, an unnamed African city, and Marvel's fictional eastern-European country, Sokovia) are basically scenery for destruction, with little in the way of how what happens in each place affects the rest of the world. There is definitely character development based on these events, but the audience never gets the feeling of repercussions or responsibility for any of it.
Overall, I couldn't help but feel this would have been a much better film if it hadn't tried to do so much.
“He’s fast and she’s weird.” —Maria Hill, describing Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch
Beyond this point, I'm going to get a little
spoilery. So, if you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want to be
spoiled, reading beyond this sentence is probably not a good idea.
- Weird Relationship To Iron Man 3: This movie is the first time we see Tony Stark since the events of Iron Man 3, and Age of Ultron comes very close to almost ignoring everything that happened in that film. Tony is back in the Iron Man suit without much explanation or commentary, even though he destroyed all of them at the end of Iron Man 3, and Rhodey (Don Cheadle) is War Machine again, with all of the red, white and blue paint of the Iron Patriot redesign washed off. By the end of Age of Ultron, Tony basically repeats his arc from IM3, this time stepping away from the Avengers. All of this can largely be explained by the contract negotiations between Marvel and Robert Downey Jr., and whether his time being Tony Stark was nearing its end. Before his most recent deal to appear in more films, Iron Man 3 was designed to serve as a closing off of the character's story if an agreement couldn't be reached.
- Burned Out?: This is in all likelihood the last Avengers film to be directed and written by Joss Whedon. Both Avengers: Infinity War movies will be helmed by Anthony and Joseph Russo who directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In interviews, Whedon has expressed happiness to move on and try different things.
“Not that we got into offers or anything, because I was very clear for a long time that I wasn’t going to do it,” he said. “[But] walking away from Infinity War was walking away from, you know … that would have been a lifestyle game changer, like the kind when you win The Game of Life.” And despite any discord Whedon may have felt about working within the Marvel machine, he ultimately had no hard feelings. “Working at Marvel is the best experience I’ll ever have with a studio,” he said. “And honestly, all of this is a ridiculous dream. But at the end of the day, you know, it is a Marvel film. There are other arrows in my quiver — I hope.” He paused. “Unless this is my swan song. In which case, it’s a big fucking swan.”
- The Shift From Pym To Stark: In his original comic book form, Ultron is a creation of Hank Pym (a.k.a. Ant-Man). Whedon believed Ultron needed a more central tie to the characters in this movie, and changed the origin to Ultron being a creation of Tony Stark. Where comic book Ultron is a very robotic iteration of Pym's dour personality, this version of Ultron is a dark reflection of Tony, with Spader making Ultron an arrogant, sarcastic asshole. However, one thing missing from this film that was in the comic book is the idea of responsibility. For Hank Pym, he has deep shame about creating Ultron. It's also something that troubles him, knowing that a part of him is capable of being like Ultron. Age of Ultron doesn't really show Tony as feeling guilty about Ultron. In fact, he doesn't really "learn his lesson," and a significant moment of the plot is him repeating the same thought processes that brought Ultron into existence with the creation of the Vision.
- Archie Comics: The Hulkbuster Iron Man armor is code-named "Veronica" by Stark Industries. It's a reference to Betty and Veronica, with the Betty being Bruce Banner love interest Betty Ross, who is capable of calming Hulk down, and has notably never been mentioned or brought up in Banner's will they or won't they foreplay with Black Widow.
“Well, I was born yesterday.” —Vision, who had literally been created the day before
- Ultron's Fate This version of the Vision is much enhanced from his comic book version. He's made from Vibranium, worthy enough to lift Thor's Mjolnir, and possesses the Mind Gem. That latter bit is important, since Ultron's end is not exactly shown on screen and left a bit ambiguous. My guess is that if they want to bring Ultron (and Spader) back, they'll say Vision saved him in the Mind Gem.
- Loki Was Almost In The Movie: Tom Hiddleston filmed scenes for the movie, but they were left on the cutting room floor. Age of Ultron will get an extended cut and an alternate ending when it's released on Blu-ray, with Whedon's original cut of the movie being about 20 minutes longer. Those 20 minutes probably involve the subplot with Thor investigating his vision of the Infinity Stones and future, apocalyptic events occurring in Asgard. It's also likely the place Loki would have appeared in the film.
“We did shoot something, but it didn’t play,” [Whedon] said. “The movie has so much. It’s so filled. We didn’t want it to feel overstuffed. I really wanted to have Loki in it, but I understood the decision that there were now too many voices in the chorus.”
“At some point the embarrassment of riches is actually embarrassing,” he added with a laugh.
- Ultron = NSA?: Like similar opinions about Captain America: The Winter Soldier, some have seen a subtext of criticizing the NSA in Age of Ultron's story, with the idea of creating a system to protect us that turns into a monster that's hard to get rid of.
Whedon has done something similar to what he did in “The Avengers”—namely, to make a film that’s in tune with the political zeitgeist as he perceives it. There, it was a post-9/11 revenge fantasy set against a backdrop of unpopular foreign wars. Here, in “Age of Ultron,” it’s the reaction against the long trail of post-9/11 governmental machinations and grand N.S.A.-like projects.
- F.R.I.D.A.Y.: Voiced by Kerry Condon, Tony's replacement for Jarvis is a reference to His Girl Friday and an A.I. character that actually exists in the comics. However, in her comic book form, F.R.I.D.A.Y. has similarities to Ultron. Also of note, among the other options Tony chooses from when he picks her was one labeled Jocasta.
- Hawkeye's Significant Other: Laura Barton (Linda Cardellini) is taken from Marvel's Ultimate Universe, where she's the wife of Hawkeye. In the main Marvel 616 continuity, Hawkeye's main love interest and sometimes wife is Mockingbird, which is Adrianne Palicki's character in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
- Do It Yourself: The mid-credits scene shows Thanos putting on the Infinity Gauntlet and saying "I'll do it myself," implying he's going to retrieve the Infinity Stones personally. A brief glimpse of the Infinity Gauntlet appears in the first Thor film, as being part of Odin's vault. However, Marvel has let it be known that the scene is not meant to imply Thanos was stealing it from Asgard.
- Not Fast Enough: There was a costume designed in case Whedon and Marvel changed their minds and wanted Quicksilver to survive the movie. However, that didn't happen and, if they keep close to her comic book depiction, Quicksilver's death is probably going to be at the root of Scarlet Witch's mental instability.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson: It’s [the] Marvel universe. It was very much our intention to kind of go the way we did. There was a costume designed for whether… if I didn’t [die]. Which was fucking really cool. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’
I’m not sure if I really can really go down that realm, but you know, yeah, it was definitely an alternative, that I think they had to play with. But, it was very much set from the very beginning, and Joss had in mind to tell the story that he told… and I was very game for that, as well, because I think it really gives [the movie] sort of an emotional twist to it. A surprise."
- The End-Credits Monument: The credits depict a replacement for the Grand Central Station statue of Hercules, Minerva and Mercury by French sculptor Jules-Felix Coutan. It's destroyed during the Chitauri invasion in the first film, when one of the "space whales" flies into it. The end-credits spins around a replacement, with the Avengers now taking the place of the Roman gods.