Avengers: Age of Ultron
Grade: B
Director: Joss Whedon (Much Ado About Nothing)
Screenplay: Whedon, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby comic book
Cast: Robert Downey Jr. (The Judge), Chris Evans (Captain America)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 141 min.
by John DeSando
"Eugene O'Neill long," says Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) about an active Avengers' day.
The bad news is that Avengers: Age of Ultron is not only long (141 min.) but also overstuffed like thanksgiving turkey that keeps giving until you can’t take it anymore. Yet, the film is filling, that is, filled with explosive set pieces and characters aplenty. If any summer hero movie could have been split in two or three, this one could.
The good news is that it is fun, as always. Writer-director Joss Whedon has peppered the dialogue with smarts, like the above quote (I just sat through an O’Neill play, so I get it) and when Stark describes their challenge: “This is going to be like finding a needle in the world's biggest haystack... fortunately, I brought a magnet!”
It’s not that quips have been absent from other Marvel hero flicks, it’s just that this iteration is filled with them. Unfortunately they are sometimes lost among the loud ubiquitous explosions.
I understand the need to appeal to young males and therefore to load the sci-fi thriller with testosterone, but this much is a loss for the more humanistic elements such as the intriguing love affair between the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). Consider also the fascinating youngsters, twins Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who have powers capable of subduing the Avengers. So much story waiting in so many characters yet so much fighting.
Having just enjoyed Ex Machina, about artificial intelligence, I was pleased that beyond the special effects in Avengers lies a treatise on the dangers of man playing God, a lesson we have not learned from Frankenstein to 2001 to this film. Yet, something is there to be enjoyed when we can be cautioned about our pride through art.
So enjoy the first blockbuster of the summer. There is goodness in the mayhem: We learn to adjust to civility as we evolve, we hope, into higher beings: “The world adjusts, evolves to live with changes.” Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson)
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
