By Brett Blake No preamble, no stalling - AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON is a remarkably entertaining blockbuster, one packed with memorable moments, exchanges, gags, and setpieces. It might not fully exceed the standard set by its predecessor, 2012’s THE AVENGERS, but it does - at the barest minimum - meet that standard with flair and aplomb. Beginning with the Avengers team in the middle of an action-packed raid (much like the opening of an Indiana Jones or James Bond film), we are quickly re-introduced to Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and we see them operating as the most well-oiled of well-oiled machines. In the aftermath, various circumstances give birth to Ultron (James Spader), a hyper-intelligent A.I. robot whose rapid self-awareness causes him to deem humanity itself a threat to the planet, necessitating their destruction. Added to the mix are a pair of superpowered twins, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen, respectively), whose allegiances prove prone to shifting, and the ethereal, otherworldly android known as The Vision (played by Paul Bettany, and whose origin and role in the story I dare not even hint at). On top of that, familiar faces such as Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), James Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle), Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Agent Carter (Hayley Atwell), and Heimdall (Idris Elba) all show up for varying lengths of time. As you might surmise from that rather extensive character roster, there are a lot of moving parts in this story, and it’s a testament to writer/director Joss Whedon that the movie is coherent and tells a gigantic story without allowing it to fly off the rails (for the most part, anyway; we’ll come back to this point below). Whedon’s commitment to character pays off in huge fashion in AGE OF ULTRON; each character gets their fantastic moment (moments, in fact) to shine, and the interaction between them is superbly handled. The banter, the arguments, the tension… it’s all here, and the actors get to really bounce off each other in exciting ways this time out. Downey, Evans, and Hemsworth are as charismatic and compelling as they’ve ever been in their roles, and there’s an ease and playfulness they bring to the characters now that is truly endearing. Ruffalo gets some terrific material that allows him to show off Banner’s brilliant scientific mind, as well as his concerns about losing his tenuous control over his Hulk alter-ego. Johansson receives some nicely understated moments of emotion and vulnerability which flesh out Black Widow in the most complete way so far. Taylor-Johnson and Olsen do some very fine work as a pair of angry outsiders trying to make peace both with their powers and with which side of the “good/evil” demarcation line they might fall, and Bettany makes for a fascinating embodiment of Vision (one of the weirder comics characters) with a performance filled with unique physicality. Then, of course, there’s the titular man of the hour, Ultron, and James Spader makes a meal out of the material Whedon gives him. One might expect a robot character to be a bland automaton, but Spader’s Ultron has snarky personality to spare, as well as a kind of bitchy, catty presentation which makes him a delightfully quirky and funny villain. But honestly, the true scene-stealer this time out is Renner’s Hawkeye. His character got the short end of the stick last time out (by virtue of the fact that he was mostly a mind-controlled zombie under the command of the villainous Loki until that movie’s third act), but Whedon has made it up to him here, providing him a fully-formed and complex character worthy of Renner’s talents. Some of the movie’s funniest moments (arguably the funniest moment) are provided by Hawkeye, and a heretofore un-alluded-to backstory turn him into the heart and soul (if you will) of the team. The action is flat-out extraordinary, operating on a scale which is huge, with action beats unfolding in the most grand way possible. The big finale alone is an extraordinary sequence, a joyously gigantic and thrilling setpiece that has now established the new bar for superheroics on film. It’s outlandish and comic-booky in the best way possible, and it represents a truly deft juggling act on the part of Whedon. The praise thus far might sound effusive, so I’ll attempt to temper that with the one primary flaw (if you can call it that) the movie has. On a structural level, Whedon’s screenplay for the film is hugely ambitious in its intentions, and this is both an attribute and a fault. On the plus side, there’s a vast sense of scope to the story, and it feels like a proper escalation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe up to this point; it’s globe-trotting in every sense of the phrase, and as described above, the staging of the third act is as massive as you could imagine or hope for. At the same time, however, the script feels needlessly overstuffed, both with characters and with sequences seemingly designed only to set-up future films in the MCU. Thor, for example, has a completely extraneous subplot which basically sends him off on his own side journey for an almost-literal preview of coming attractions, and which serves no function to the narrative of this specific film (it feels like material that would have easily been deleted from the final cut… if the result wouldn’t have meant essentially editing out 20% of Thor’s screentime), while characters like War Machine, Agent Carter, Heimdall, and Falcon appear for what are - pretty much - cameos. Sure, it’s fun to see them (and it’s another way the movie emulates its comic book origins, where characters frequently pop up for cameos in each other’s stories), but the time we spend with them could have been better spent on the core group, or on further building up the new characters of Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Vision. In the grand scheme of things, though, those are fairly minor issues. The movie is too entertaining and too rocket-paced to dwell on them. Joss Whedon once called himself “the Tom Hagen of the Marvel Universe,” a reference to the Corleone crime family lawyer/consiglieri played by Robert Duvall in THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER PART II. And just like Duvall’s Hagen, Whedon is not making it to PART III of this particular saga (directors Joe and Anthony Russo will be at the helm of the next AVENGERS films). As such, we have to look at AGE OF ULTRON as his final statement, his closing argument for his time in the MCU. On that basis, how does the film stand? Simply, if this is his last entry in the world of Marvel, it’s an incredibly high note on which to go out. With its humor (for all the talk of this somehow being a “darker” tale, it really isn’t), action, and character work, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON is an embarrassment of riches, and it’s as exhilarating an experience as any of the Marvel movies have been so far.
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