Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a good movie. It's a hell of a lot of fun, with some great set-pieces, and zippy dialogue; but it has a few problems, too, which mean it fails to elevate itself to Avengers Assemble heights.

Some spoilers follow, but I'll try to keep things as safe as possible.


Since the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it seems that the Avengers have been spending their time on two things: branding, as most of their outfits now sport the team logo, and hunting down Hydra.

The opening sequence, a frenetic (if fragmented) assault on what appears to be the final Hydra stronghold, is a solid re-introduction to the team and their strengths, as the Avengers hunt down Loki's staff, which apparently went missing at some point in the SHIELD-shattering past.  The attack also serves as an introduction to two of the new characters: Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, AKA Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch - in this continuity, a pair of orphans who volunteered for Hydra experimentation, resulting in superpowers - Pietro is really fast, while Wanda has a vaguely-defined set of mental abilities, principally telekinesis and manipulation.

Characterisation is not Age of Ultron's strong suit, though, and aside from a brief bit of backstory explaining why the twins start off on the Hydra side of the equation, they're not really given a lot of development. And when they do, inevitably, switch sides, it's just accepted right off the bat, without anything in the way of tension or mistrust.

The only guy who really gets much in the way of on-screen character-building is Hawkeye, which feels as much like Joss Whedon apologising to Jeremy Renner for his lack of screen time in Avengers Assemble as it does an organic part of the plot.  There's also a jarring and out-of-nowhere pseudo-romance subplot between Black Widow and Bruce Banner, which feels all the weirder for A) them not actually having ever spent much time together (onscreen, at least), and B) there having been zero mention of Betty Ross since The Incredible Hulk, despite Jane Foster and Pepper Potts getting brought up at seemingly every opportunity.

Ultron himself (itself?) is a great villain, all gravelly voice and (weirdly, but effectively) references to scripture; unfortunately, he never really comes across as a direct threat. He's big, imposing, and has the presence, but I never quite felt sold on the idea of him being really scary. The idea of a villain as a networked series of robot bodies, where if one falls, another just takes its place, is never really explored - rather than seeming like they're all one entity, there's always just one Ultron, and a bunch of drones who occasionally talk in his voice.

The biggest issue for me, though, is the third new character - the Vision.

Oh, man, the Vision.

Narratively unjustified and poorly explained, the Vision comes almost out of nowhere two-thirds of the way through the movie, immediately declares himself as one of the Good Guys*, and looks extremely stupid. Why is a semi-organic being composed partly out of vibranium half cerise pink and half pond-scum green? Why does he have a gold cape? His entire presence feels more like loyalty to the source material than in service to making a great movie, and he doesn't really serve any purpose in the plot. He's not instrumental in Ultron's downfall, he doesn't solve any problem the heroes were facing - he's just there, because he's in the comic book.

If this sounds like I'm being down on the whole movie, I'm not - Ultron, as I said, is a good movie. It's got a great villain, some fantastic action beats, and snappy banter like only Whedon can write. The characters are balanced in terms of screen time - no small feat with a cast this big - and they even bring in some of the smaller heroes from previous movies to help here and there.

It's not as good as I wanted it to be, but as far as spending two and a bit hours goes, you could do a hell of a lot worse - even within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.