It can be near universally agreed upon that the first
Avengers film was an astounding success. The plans for Phase One of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe went off perfectly and culminated in one of the greatest
superhero flicks of all time. That said, the hype for Age of Ultron could not
have been higher. While I feel as though Phase 2 as a whole had a more
disjointed plot with the buildup not necessarily being as clear as Phase 1,
getting to see all of the Avengers back together again is certainly something I
would look forward to. So did the sequel meet the hype of the first? Let’s
review Avengers: Age of Ultron.
The
Negative
Now I’ve been told that I have been picky about CGI in film
in the past so I decided to check on the opinions of a few of my friends and
they agreed with me. The CGI in this film was downright awful. Now it wasn’t
every scene but it was rather obviously where their time and effort had been
placed. The opening in particular is awful to look at. The scene looks like a
poorly edited green screen mash up than a team action sequence. The interaction
between the real world and the CGI was equally awful. There were many scenes
between the Hulk and Black Widow where the two touch hands but it is glaringly
obvious that she is holding her hand up to nothing. I do wonder if the film was
pushed forward in order to meet the release date and they just couldn’t fix up
the scenes to the perfection they could have been.
I think this film could have done much better had it been
5 hours long. I think the film was trying to handle way too much plot that it
just couldn’t handle in a 2 and a half hour run time. The story just felt like
it was rushing through every moment in order to reach the proper plot points it
had to in order to be done. Now I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing
as I was thoroughly enjoying the entire story I just feel that a little
breathing room to give every character their moment to shine would have been
nice. This was something handled very well in the first film, but not so much
here.
The
Positive
I think the film’s greatest success is its depiction of
Ultron. Ultron is just a mere child and his personality as well as his actions
reflects that. Ultron ultimately reflect his creator in that he mostly acts
like the bratty child of Tony Stark. This depiction really threw me off
though it was an absolute pleasure to watch. One of the great things the film
provided was the contrast between Ultron and Vision. Both of them realize that
humanity is doomed but whereas Ultron sees that destroying them now would save
them all, Vision views it as a privilege to stand by humanity until the very
end. The two represent the extremes of Tony Stark’s own personality and the
struggles he is dealing with moving forward with the Avengers. Ultron
represents death whereas Vision represents life. Moving forward from this film
I look forward to seeing how they handle Stark’s character progression.
I am a big Hawkeye fan and if you were like me then you
wondered why there has been such a drought of Hawkeye in any of these films. He
certainly is there but he is also certainly the least developed member of the
team. This film goes out of its way to correct that by having massive Hawkeye development
moments. He bizarrely brings a sort of real world view to this realm of
superheroes and it’s a rather fantastic performance. Hawkeye got just the right
amount of character development he needed that he was sorely lacking in all of
the other films.
I honestly loved the plot of this film especially the
character development given to the massive amount of cast members. As I stated
early I just wish the film could have been longer to allow these character
moments to breathe a little more. As an example, I felt like Thor really acted
like Thor from the comics for the very first time in this film. He is a king
from a supernatural realm, he would obviously act accordingly to the visions granted
to him by Scarlet Witch and go seek council about what he saw. This plot thread
gets very little screen time but was one of my all time favorite moments in the
film. I just wish there was more time to expand out these moments a little
more.
In
Conclusion
I think after I saw the movie and walked out of the
theater I honestly hated it. I told you I am fairly nitpicky about my CGI in
films, but after sitting on it a few days I really got the chance to mull over
what I really liked about the film and came to realize that I actually had a
really great time with this film. I don’t think it’s better than the first
Avengers film, but I doubt many things could outshine the planning put behind
that. I highly recommend seeing this film especially since my only real
complaint is that I wish it had been longer. 3.9 out of 5.
