Review: Avengers - Age of Ultron

As the sequel to the 2012 record-smashing film The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron features the return of its all-star cast as the titular heroes battle the threat of extinction at the hands of Ultron. While Marvel Studios and writer-director Joss Whedon were aiming for a The Godfather Part II epic, what they delivered instead was more comparable to X-Men: The Last Stand. Despite its heart and focus on character-driven drama, Age of Ultron is buried beneath its bloated running time and overstuffed cast.

James Spader stars as the titular villain Ultron. The film’s conflict hinges upon Ultron’s disillusionment with humanity and his subsequent desire to eradicate the human race in order to start the world anew. As one of the Avengers’ most dangerous foes in the comics, Ultron is known for his ruthlessness and his relentless mission to destroy Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Sadly, that doesn’t get translated all that well to the big screen. Part of what made the villain so effective in the comics was his apparent lack of emotion, but here he’s all emotion. Rather than give us a menacing comic book villain, Whedon pulled a Whedon and gave us a sassy take on the classic Avengers foe. Ultron’s humorous and playful dialogue makes the character seem like he stepped right out of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It cuts through the tension to the point where it’s impossible to even consider Ultron a credible threat. This is further emphasized by the goofy CGI work done on Ultron, particularly due to those moving lips.

Ultron is but a symptom of Marvel Studios’ obsession with comedy and humour within the superhero genre. There is a lot of destruction in Age of Ultron. Hell, the Hulk and Iron Man seemingly destroy an entire African city during their hero on hero battle mid-film. When Warner Brothers featured a similar level of destruction in Man of Steel, they were heavily criticized for it. Yet, here’s some hypocrisy here, not much has been said about the mayhem that the Avengers and their foes have been responsible for. What is especially distressing here is that the two studios approach this chaos in different ways. Man of Steel was sobering in its deadpan seriousness, whereas Age of Ultron sees our heroes flinging out one-liners like they’re going out of style while buildings are collapsing. This glib kind of attitude seems inappropriate and creates tonal discord within the film. It would be easy to blame Whedon for Buffy-izing Marvel’s characters, but it’s all too common a trend throughout the rest of their cinematic universe. After all, wasn’t Guardians of the Galaxy just stand-up set in space?

Clocking in at nearly two-and-a-half hours, Age of Ultron is a potentially torturous watch for anyone with short attention spans. Much like its predecessor, it is dialogue-heavy and features many scenes that focus on character development outside of battle. The best example of this occurs midway through the film where the Avengers retreat to Hawkeye’s secret farmhouse to recuperate after a devastating fight against Ultron. It’s a long sequence that introduces us to Hawkeye’s family life, features a tried-and-true battle of ideologies between Captain America and Iron Man, and sees Black Widow and Bruce Banner sharing an intimate moment together (but not that intimate!). It’s painfully slow and completely deflates all of the tension that had been building up until that point. It seems to be there to remind us what our heroes are fighting for, to give them some development and to inject some personality into the most useless Avenger of the bunch (Hawkeye). It was also there to provide some false foreshadowing of a death that never came. At the end of the day, the sequence was mostly boring and did nothing to endear me personally to Hawkeye.

The farm house section drew quite a bit of attention for its controversial scene in which Black Widow refers to herself as a “monster” after revealing to Bruce Banner that she’d been sterilized as part of her training as a spy. It was interpreted by many as an attack on womanhood, suggesting that Widow viewing herself as a monster was due to her being unable to have children. I’d argue that what she was referring to was the fact that she’d been conditioned and trained into becoming an emotionless killer. Ultimately, the dialogue could have been handled better and the sterilization bit could have been omitted. It’s a harrowing experience, but one which seems inappropriately nasty for one of the few female badasses in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The implication there does seem to be that in order to be badass you can’t be a mother, so both Whedon and Disney should have been a little more judicious so as not to upset a largely ignored fanbase for the films. It certainly doesn’t help that she spends a good chunk of time leading up to the climax stuck in a cell waiting for her (all male) teammates to rescue her. I mean come on, this woman is the world’s greatest spy, surely she can pick a lock. Nevertheless, Black Widow continues her streak of being the most interesting and captivating character of the bunch.  Of course, much of this has to do with the fact that she’s surrounded by a bunch of immature frat boys. She kicks lots of ass and anchors much of the story through her budding relationship with Bruce Banner.

As stated before, Age of Ultron seems to collapse under the weight of its large cast. If there was a lesson to be learned from Fox’s X-Men films, it’s that ensemble casts are tricky to handle and that each character introduced needs to be there for a reason. While all films typically need both lead and supporting roles, Age of Ultron struggles to find the right balance. None of the characters quite feel like they’re in the lead, though the central roles do seem to be those of Ultron, Iron Man, Bruce Banner and Black Widow. Everyone else is shuffled into supporting or cameo spots. This is unfortunate since it seems like Captain America and Thor get downgraded, while characters like Falcon and War Machine are given cameos if only because Disney is well aware of the fact that they’ve already been heavily criticized for having a disproportionate number of white heroes in their films. The good thing is that each character serves a purpose in the story, but the bad thing is that there’s just too much going on. As such, the narrative ends up being incredibly imbalanced and leaves the viewer feeling disconnected.

The casualty in this imbalance is the development of the twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff. Of all of the characters in the film, these are the two that Whedon seems to “get” best. Their dynamic is on point, their powers are visually stunning and even their goofy accents are kind of endearing. Elizabeth Olsen is captivating as the Scarlet Witch and her costume at the end is everything. Meanwhile Aaron Taylor-Johnson proves himself to be a much more compelling Quicksilver than Evan Peters. The problem is that the pair have limited screentime and development, since they’re forced to share the screen with a dozen other characters. They spend much of the film being Ultron’s lackeys, which does nothing to actually develop them and endear us to them. Above all of the characters in the film, these were the two that needed to be developed. Not simply because they’re great characters in the comics, but because (spoiler alert) Quicksilver sacrifices his life to protect Hawkeye. The impact of this death is lessened due to fact that he wasn’t all that important to the story. It wasn’t like Agent Coulsen’s death in the first film, where we’d grown to love him, instead it felt random and unnecessary. Yes, there are casualties in war, but it is completely unrealistic to have the speedster die due to being shot. Whether Quicksilver was killed to give the finger to Fox or to surprise the audience, it wasn’t earned. While Olsen gives it her all during her breakdown over her brother’s death, the audience needed to be right there with her. Truthfully, Whedon should have just gotten rid of Hawkeye. He’s dead weight and at least it would have prevented Jeremy Renner from saying more sexist crap about Black Widow during press junkets.

Ambitious is a great word to describe Age of Ultron. It’s clear that there was so much that Whedon wanted to do and say with the sequel to his beloved 2012 film. Unfortunately, it seems like he was completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the project and studio meddling certainly didn’t help to alleviate that either. If the summer of 2015 showed us anything, it’s that dinosaurs kicked the superhero genre’s ass. While Jurassic World has its fair share of flaws, it is never derailed by issues with tone or by having simply too many characters. With critical acclaim waning for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and potential audience fatigue setting in, all eyes will be on Captain America: Civil War to see if Marvel Studios has learned from its missteps with Age of Ultron.

Rating: C