When I was a kid I was comics obsessed, all of them, Marvel, DC , Archie Comics, Harvey: if it was animated and animated I was all in. And, certainly when it came to Marvel, over years and years, these superheroes we visited with monthly, became friends of a type: we understood them.
When the movies and special effects finally caught up with the superheroes, say the first two Spiderman movies at the turn of the century through to the first Iron Man in 2008, there was a lot of story and a sense of Marvel for sure, the excelsius of it all. But the first Avengers was the tipping point,I wrote about it back then: “it is a dumb, badly acted, badly crafted, boring special effects piece of trash. In the post-Spiderman marvel movies world this is better than “Wolverine” and that’s about it. They spend an hour getting everybody, an hour bickering and half an hour blowing up Manhattan.”
“Avengers: Age of Ultron” is better but still there is just too much, it is hard to care about any of this. The first hour, is a big snooze as they attack Baron Wolfgang von Strucker’s lair and get back Loki’s spectre only to discover to Ironman’s (do I have to? Robert Downey Jr) delight, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE NOT NAMED JOSS WHELDON, Yes, Brad, it’s something we ourselves have been working on for quite some time…
Blah blah blah Iron Man arrogant, Hulk can’t control himself and neither can Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson, no long the most attractive woman on the planet) and the rest of the crew, followed home by Ultron (A.I. aka James Spader), and let the fight begin for the planet itself. It all ends up with a city hovering in space, a death, a kiss and a disappearance before we get introduced to the next lot of Avengers.
The first hour is lousy, till they get to Hawkeye’s (Jeremy Renner) hideout where his wife claims Hawkeye is the only Avenger without a superpower (apparently she hasn’t met Tony Stark), is a boring whirl, the rest of the movie is better but I can’t stand the witticism. Everybody sounds like they didn’t make the cut in “Pulp Fiction”.
Finally, it isn’t exactly suspenseful since we know not much is gonna happen to the stars because, well, they’re the stars. Oh and the special effects are awesome but the days of being wowed by S/F is way done with.
Better than “The Avengers”, but if that’s the best you can say, why bother?
Grade: C+