Review – Avengers: Age of Ultron

The first Avengers film, to borrow a line from Loki, was “burdened with glorious purpose.” It was the culmination of what has come to be known as “Phase One” of Marvel’s current cinematic universe, which began with 2008’s Iron Man. After all of the Easter Eggs and post-credit teasers, all of the heroes finally assembled to take down a global threat.

Avengers: Age of Ultron, while highly enjoyable in its own right, struggles to recapture that sense of purpose. Now that we are used to seeing these people team up on-screen (and now that the bar has been set so high by the first movie), it is difficult to recapture the magic of the 2012 film.

Strangely, writer/director Joss Whedon chose to open this film with the Avengers already assembled and in the middle of a raiding mission to recover Loki’s scepter. In addition to being a jarring way to begin the film, it robs it of any “getting the band back together” fun that could have been had. Instead, it makes it feel like the team working together is old news.

Things pick up steam when they recover the scepter and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) convinces Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) to secretly study it with him in order to harness its power into his Ultron program, which builds on the army of Iron Man robots he built in Iron Man 3. Stark wants to create a robot sentinel named Ultron that will essentially replace the Avengers as a peacekeeping force on Earth and guard against any extraterrestrial invaders.

Of course, as anyone who has ever seen a science fiction movie before already knows, tampering with forces you don’t understand and trying to build a robot army to protect people never really ends well. Ultron (James Spader) does come to life and tries to complete the mission tasked to him by Stark, but he comes to believe that the best way to protect the Earth is to kill the Avengers (and, eventually, the rest of humanity).

There is another force the Avengers must compete with – Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) Maximoff. The two were experimented on in a lab to make them superhuman – making them Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, respectively. The two blame Tony Stark for the destruction in their hometown, which was caused by Stark weapons, and look to get revenge on the Avengers.

James Spader is an amazing addition to the franchise. Tom Hiddleston set a really high bar for villainy as Loki in the first film, but Spader’s Ultron feels equally as threatening and memorable.

Taylor-Johnson and Olsen are a mixed bag. For one thing, their Eastern European accents are a bit dodgy. In addition, Bryan Singer expertly used a young Quicksilver (Evan Peters) in an amazing slow motion scene in X-Men: Days of Future Past, which was going to be almost impossible for Whedon to top, but Whedon doesn’t even really try, to be honest. Instead, Quicksilver feels much more like a second fiddle to his more imposing and memorable sister Wanda. Olsen, despite the accent, does a great job with the role.

All of the Avengers are unsurprisingly delightful, as well. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Hemsworth (who plays Thor) are as charming as ever. There’s a love story between Black Widow (Scarlett Johansen) and Bruce Banner that really humanizes and endears both characters to you. And Whedon does his best to make Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) interesting and likable by essentially having him acknowledge how bizarre his presence is in this group of superheroes. Whedon also gives him a rather unexpected life outside of the group, which further helped to rehab the damage done to the character in the first Avengers film.

All of the character benefit from Whedon’s trademark witty dialogue. There’s a pretty funny running gag about Captain America’s aversion to swearing. And Spader, in particular, really sinks his teeth into the quirky dialogue Ultron is given, adding so much to the character with just his voice acting.

The film also does a nice job driving a wedge in the group, which is no doubt foreshadowing the coming conflict between Captain America and Iron Man in Civil War. (The two clash in this film over Stark creating Ultron without filling in the rest of the group.) The film also begins to foreshadow the coming Infinity Gauntlet storyline with Thanos (James Brolin), which is exciting, but also begins to show just how overly-complicated this universe is starting to become.

Outside of the first battle, which felt a bit muddled and hollow, the action scenes really deliver in Age of Ultron. Anyone who has seen the previews has seen Iron Man in a full Hulkbuster suit preparing to go toe-to-toe with the Incredible Hulk. That battle was my favorite of the movie. Though I did really enjoy the climactic one, as well.

Age of Ultron isn’t a perfect film. And it never quite lives up to the bar set by the first Avengers movie. But it still kicks into gear when it needs to and ends up hitting all of the right notes. As Joss Whedon’s final contribution to the Marvel cinematic universe, the writer/director leaves the franchise on a high.

Written by Joel Murphy. If you enjoy his reviews, he also writes a weekly pop culture column called Murphy’s Law, which you can find here. You can contact Joel at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.