Missed Opportunities

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Well everyone, another summer has come and another Marvel film is starting off the blockbuster season. Not really sure that I need to explain this to you fine people, unless you have been away from your TV or local movie theatre for the past 10 years or so. Last year Marvel supplied us with a second Captain America film (Captain America: Winter Solider) and the Star Wars-esque Guardians of the Galaxy. Starting off Marvel’s lineup for this year is the sequel to one of the best comic book movies ever (The Avengers), Avengers: Age of Ultron.

The Avengers are back and gelling quite nicely as a team. However, all of that comes into question on their latest mission. The team is on the hunt for Loki’s scepter and the road as led them to Sokovia, a small country in Eastern Europe. While trying to recover the scepter, the team encounters two genetically enhanced humans by the name of Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson Godzilla) and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen Godzilla). Pietro possessing super-speed and Wanda having telepathic and telekinetic abilities seem to give the Avengers some trouble. The effects of that trouble weigh heaviest on Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) when he is given a vision of the Avengers dead with only himself alive. So after the team recovers the scepter, Tony and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) decide to analyze the scepter only to find that it contains artificial intelligence locked inside the glowing orb. Still reeling from the vivid hallucination , Tony decides to use the new found artificial intelligence and build a robot, Ultron (James Spader The Blacklist), designed to protect Earth. What Tony doesn’t expect is Ultron believing that the only way to protect Earth is to eradicate all human life. The Avengers must now clean up Tony’s mistake and save the human race from Ultron.

Have any of you ever gone to a restaurant and ordered a steak from the menu and been so excited to devour said steak? Then after you ate the steak, you thought to yourself, “that was a good steak, but maybe it would have been better with just a pinch more flavor”? That is EXACTLY how I felt about Ultron. This film has all of the same elements that made Avengers awesome, but director Joss Whedon missed a huge opportunity when it came to this film.

 Like the first Avengers film, Ultron focuses a lot on the interpersonal relationships between the team. New love plotline is introduced, a secret family is uncovered, and of course Tony’s personality clashes with everyone in the team. This film starts off with the team bonded and working well together, but by the time that things go ‘wrong’, the team is the exact same as they were in the first film. The comradery between them all vanishes and is nowhere to be found once the film heads toward its protagonist. This brings me to the first missed opportunity by Whedon…his use of Ultron. In the comic books Ultron is a formidable foe and nasty villain for the Avengers. Here in the film, the audience is allowed see only but a taste of how devastating Ultron’s actions could be. It was as if the Whedon teased everyone one with a memorable cinematic villain and then swiped the rug out from under people. Due to this, my aspirations of Spader’s Ultron becoming the second coming of a Vader-like villain disappeared very quickly.

The second missed opportunity that Whedon had was with the introduction of Vision (Paul Bettany Transcendence). Vision is the artificial intelligence that Tony wanted, however Vision’s abilities are never really touched on. The audience is shown flashes of what Vision can really do, but again we are only teased with something grand. Don't get me wrong, Bettany is awesome as Vision, just wish we got to see what he was capable of. 

I know that I have ranted on about the bad things from this movie, so I will turn my attention to the good things. The action scenes and quick-witted dialogue are in full force here in this sequel. Whedon and his screenwriters find a way to not overdo it like a lot of action sequels do. Ultron provides just a little bit more explosions and action than the first one, but not so much that the plot is bogged down by senseless violence. The chemistry that these actors have gained through the last few movies has really come through on screen. This is why I was disappointed with the film spending so much time on their relationships. They are a team, the act like one, so why not focus the film’s energy on the menacing bad-guy? Another good thing about the film is the introduction of the twins. Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are amazing additions to the cast. Olsen, in particular, does a magnificent job meshing with the original cast and giving a slightly darker edge to Wanda than seen in the comics.

If you enjoyed the first Avengers or any of the other Marvel films, than Age of Ultron will be just as satisfying. The sequel is amazing, it just could have been so much better than the first film.

The Verdict: See In Theatres—7/10