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Issue: Summer 2014-5
Avengers - Age of Ultron (2015) movie review
Mad Science
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A new age begins
The mission: Peace in our time
Tony Stark, still haunted by PTSD and now by a recent fight in Europe becomes obsessed with creating better peace through science. Despite Banner's arguments, Stark creates Ultron, an artificial intelligence that naturally decides the best peaceful solution is to delete humankind.
I'm here to help
Ah, mad science. This review has been greatly delayed because the film AVENGERS AGE OF ULTRON is so difficult to consider.
There is a wonderful post-party scene where the Avengers take turns trying to lift Thor's Hammer (and claim the right to rule Asgard). The obligatory romance is between Banner/Hulk and Natasha/Black Widow, but it is broken by spurts of loud fighting, so the effect and the storyline are lost.
Who lifts the hammer rules Asgard. Sound bite from Avengers - Age of Ultron (c) 2015 Marvel Studios / Walt Disney Picturs All Rights Reserved
While I appreciate a good hand-to-hand bout where the actors look like they might know how to throw a punch, and enjoy wire-stunts (a la The Matrix), endless running around shouting and ducking CG explosions left me sitting in the theatre revising my grocery shopping list in my head.
There comes a point where the story is just bits of sticky tape tacking the special effects scenes together. Kind of like p*rn, and it gets repetitive and tiresome very quickly.
Mark Ruffalo and Scarlet Johansson in Avengers Age of Ultron (c) 2015 Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Pictures
Cap: I really miss the days when the weirdest thing science created was me.
All the quips in the world can't save THE AGE OF ULTRON from being a mishmash of stuff thrown at the screen in the hopes of making money. Between the mumbling droning delivery of the exposition and the interruptions it is difficult to understand exactly what happened in the film.
I think three attempts is a concerted enough effort to work out WTF. A problem with the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that one can blink, miss a movie, and then not know what is going on. Even seeing all the film, there is so much backstory that the audience is expected to know.
After ten years I returned to THE AVENGERS and I now kind of know why there was an archer in the final battle. Black Widow, the hero of my youth, I didn't even realise was in THE AVENGERS. Her costume, so different, is very modern woman, but it lacks any reference to the original.
And so I can tell you that I assume AGE OF ULTRON is a Vision origin story, but the story got lost and I cannot bear to run the DVD one more time in search of wisps of characterisation. It would be mildly interesting to find a cut without any fight scenes to see if there is a coherent storyline there, but, this is B grade? C grade? D grade? movie fare trying to ride on famous faces and character names and the film-makers hoping that if they make enough noise and have an anthemic score no-one will notice that there's no there there.
This film is strictly for those who believe character interaction interferes with the exciting blowing-things-up scenes.
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Edited: 2022-11-12
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Due for Australian release 23 Apr, 2015 (2015-04-23) |
Just the facts:Title: Avengers - Age of Ultron (2015) The Players: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlet Johansson, Official website: http://marvelstudios.wix.com/the-avengers-2 IMDb entry For scheduled release dates, see the coming attractions section. For more information about this movie, check out the internet movie database. |
Published in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 
Filed: 01-Jan-2014
