I’m going to do my best at a spoiler free review for you guys. The movie has a lot going on and I want you to be able to experience it fresh, without too much in your head beforehand. That said, this is a review, so I’m going to give you as much as I can, and hopefully I won’t cross the line.
It’s been a weird month. I moved. I lost a parent. I found a French Bakery that makes empanadas…. It’s been strange. So, I figured I’d take a little vacation from the world and take my girlfriend out to see Avengers Age of Ultron. I’ll tell you right now, I liked it a lot. It wasn’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a damned good movie.
Joss Whedon has capped his foray in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a film that was so Whedony that you could almost feel some callbacks to certain events in Buffy and Firefly. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying he’s rehashing, it just felt like pure 100% distilled Whedon on the screen.
At a run time of nearly three hours, I advise that you pee at least twice before the movie starts, and don’t get anything bigger than the smallest size beverage. While there are some quieter moments in the film, There aren’t really any throwaway moments that you can feel too good about missing.
As I said before, the movie did have shortcomings. Let’s talk about them now.
1. The opening scene – The movie starts with a big action sequence (make sure you watch this week’s Agents of SHIELD, as it’s essentially a direct continuation of it). Unfortunately, the CGI is so Jarringly bad that it feels more like a late 1990’s video game cut scene at times. To inappropriately borrow a phrase from Dan Savage – It gets better.
2. Quicksilver – I actually liked the character and really enjoyed how he fit into the story. However, it’s like Aaron Taylor-Johnson learned his accent by watching Robert De Niro’s take on Boris Badakov in Rocky and Bullwinkle.
3. Ultron – I almost feel bad calling this a negative, because James Spader did an awesome job creating an engaging, vibrant, and surprisingly humorous bad guy. That said, it just doesn’t feel like Ultron to me. In a lot of ways, he just felt too human. This goes beyond the acting and all the way down to how they rendered his mouth to move like a human’s. I think I can also say the same for Bettany’s Vision.
OK, now that the negatives are out of the way, let’s talk about what I liked… Pretty much everything else. This was simultaneously the darkest and funniest Marvel film so far. Some people are complaining about scenes that could be considered filler. I actually liked them. If I had to sit through 3 hours of straight action, I’d have gotten a migraine. The quieter scenes do a lot for the story as well as help lay the groundwork for Captain America: Civil War and Phase 3.
Looking around the theater, there were plenty of laughs, cheers, gasps, and even a few tears. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a well paced, fun, exciting movie that stands strong on it’s own, but also has me at the edge of my seat for what’s to come.
YBMW SCORE – 4/5