The Avengers: Age of Ultron review: A quintessential superhero movie that ends with a bang

From the way The Avengers: Age of Ultron begins, you’d be forgiven for thinking someone at the cinema has made a mistake and started playing the movie from the halfway point. It’s a battle scene full of frenzied action. There’s Thor, swinging his hammer. Hawkeye is shooting out those arrows. Iron Man is up in the air. Bruce Banner has burst out of his clothing to become Hulk. (Yes, Sigmund Freud would indeed get the tingles at the possibilities of phallic imagery that nestle in the testosterone coursing through The Avengers.) Captain America has a bike and he isn’t afraid to use it. Black Widow is slicing her way through enemy lines with her fluid grace. All around them, soldiers are dying and tanks are blowing up. The camera moves swiftly, as though it’s a single shot, looking in on each of the Avengers by turn. It’s almost as if director Joss Whedon figured that when all people want is action, then he might as well give them action from the get-go, instead of wasting time on a buildup. The opening scene of Age of Ultron gives the audience everything they want to see in Avengers movie — Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) chatting with Jarvis (Paul Bettany’s voice) and pulling Captain America’s (Chris Evans) leg; Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) moving through the enemy with precision; Thor (Chris Hemsworth) being Thor; Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) going nuts; And Mark Ruffalo’s bare, hairy chest (hallelujah!). [caption id=“attachment_2208694” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Image from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IBNLiveBuzz[/caption] The pace doesn’t slow down from that frenetic opening. One set piece is followed by another, and for the first hour of the film, it’s almost as though dialogues are unnecessary. Fortunately, in the middle of all the fighting and snarling, there’s also a story being pieced together. It’s not the most compelling, but whatever flaws there are in the script, Whedon hopes that the visual effects and stunts will make up for them. To a large extent, it works because even on a bad day — and judging from the writing, Age of Ultron had quite a few bad days — Whedon knows how to make going to the movies fun. So much so that more than two hours and 20 minutes veritably whoosh past you without ever letting on how long a film this is. The Avengers storm a Hydra compound and discover weapons and robotic soldiers, as well as a pair of twins who are “enhanced”. The brother is Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor Johnson), distinctive for his ability to whoosh faster than the speed of light. The sister is Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who has weird, telekinetic powers and hair that are vaguely reminiscent of Jean Grey. Both of them want to kill the Avengers, which is a bit of a bother because not one of the Avengers can put up a fight to either one of them. But the twins are not the Avengers’ biggest worry. That would be Ultron (voiced by James Spader), an operating system and artificial intelligence that’s angsty and evil. Age of Ultron is packed with explosive fights, but where Whedon does turn the tables on the superhero formula is in details like making an almost clinical encounter between two operating systems one of the most crucial moments in the film. The contest is between Spader’s villainous drawl and Paul Bettany’s polite Jarvis, and it is chilling. All you see on screen are glassy, blue cubes and shiny, golden cubes. As the two voices spar, one colour takes over the other and fills the screen. There’s not a living thing visible, there’s no blood or pained whimpering, but your heart breaks. Ostensibly, Age of Ultron is the quintessential superhero movie: it begins with a bang, moves on to crashes and ends with a resounding boom. As usual, the planet is in danger of extermination and as a precursor to that final evil hurrah, the villain causes some destruction in New York. Fake countries are concocted and they suffer terrible devastation, as per course. No one is naive enough to walk into Age of Ultron wondering how it will end. We all know Earth will be fine. What we want to know is if Whedon can make the tired superhero formula as much fun as he did with the first Avengers movie. Or we don’t care about Whedon and just want to see how cool the stunts and visual effects are. Whatever the audience, Whedon’s answer is to turn the formula on its head by obeying its commands. Let there be action, commands Whedon. And so there is, from the very first second, all the way till the last. Conversation is kept at a minimum, though when there are dialogues, they’re usually either amusing or insightful. Age of Ultron doesn’t have as much of the banter that The Avengers did, but Whedon has peppered it with funny lines so that it still feels like a Joss Whedon film. Unfortunately, the talking sections of the film are also some of the most awkward. It’s evident that Whedon struggled to keep all the threads of the different characters and stories — from Captain America to Guardians of the Galaxy — in play. Marvel’s idea of integrating the universe might be fun for us viewers, but it’s a whole new set of vibranium adamantium chains for writers. The visual effects in Age of Ultron are lavish and breathtaking. You could probably fund a few thousand indie films with its graphics’ budget, but they’re exquisite and live up to IMAX scrutiny. The CGI is rendered so beautifully that the most ridiculous things — like a bit of a landlocked country breaking out and rising up like a floating island — look credible and spectacular. No wonder the list of names of just the visual effects team of Age of Ultron runs on to 20-odd pages. Whedon has admitted in interviews that he feels “tapped out”, especially after the experience of making Age of Ultron, and he won’t be making any more Avengers films. Clearly, the director channelled that exhaustion into characters like Tony Stark, Bruce Banner and Hawkeye, who find themselves weary of battling the bad guys. Bruce and Black Widow/ Natasha Romanov talk longingly about walking away from all the madness and disappearing. There’s a fragile romance that develops between Bruce and Natasha, which shows how tender Whedon can be as a filmmaker. The shot of Natasha’s hand cupped in Hulk’s enormous greenness is a wonderful update to the image of Ann Darrow clutched in King Kong’s fist. At one point, however, the two of them have to choose between their dreams of leaving and their sense of belonging to the Avengers. The choices they make might surprise you. In an unexpectedly poignant way, Age of Ultron is a very personal film. It’s Whedon waving farewell and along with him, a few people who have seemed irreplaceable seem to bow out and make way for a new set of heroes. Marvel does something few would expect them to when they’ve got a beloved set of characters: they retire them. It’s not all sad — Paul Bettany has a bigger part to play in this film, though whoever painted his handsome face in those ghastly colours deserves to have their ears boxed. Chris Evans is still blond, beautiful and going nowhere. The villains get better at outwitting the good guys. Black Widow is still as lethal as ever. Thor talks about the importance of upswing when handling his hammer. For once, Andy Serkis gets to act in person, with people. For all its bittersweetness, there’s a lot of fun to be had in Age of Ultron.