Age of Ultron, Part 1

So...Age of Ultron. If you've heard anything about Age of Ultron, I'd like to tell you it's true. I'll get into spoilers after the cut, but it was a fun time and I'm looking forward to Civil War and Infinity War.

In case you didn't know, Age of Ultron, also known as Avengers 2, is a sequel to 2012's Avengers directed and written by Joss Whedon and based on characters created by--at the very least--Jack Kirby, Stan Lee.

Spectacle

Age of Ultron is epic and feels epic. It establishes the build from the start and the tension is kept tight, even when they introduce the New Thing Which Will Definitely Be Plot-Critical in an Hour or So. A handful of plot threads are cut short, keeping you from being certain about what's happening next. At the same time, they're so surgically cauterized that you don't feel as though your time has been wasted.

It's a fun ride. While the second part of a trilogy is traditionally the darkest one with the most downbeats, AoU is a celebration of The Avengers at the peak of their form. They fought off the Chitauri last time and you know that Thanos is going to be kind of a big deal in the future...

This isn't a spoiler, right? Thanos is coming.

...so this is more like the last of the good times before things go bad. Age of Ultron never forgets that the world is at stake, but nor does it let that get in the way of the sheer joy of being The Avengers, from James Spader almost channeling Gul Dukat as the smarmy, insane Ultron, to The Avengers themselves energetically circling their villain like a wolf pack bringing down a mammoth.

The setpieces feel more like setpieces in this one, but everything is still bright and vibrant. Hits land, stories arc, and there's few moments where someone's story stalls. I'd fuckin' kill to have one classic Star Trek movie created with this level of detail and energy for each player.

Also, in case I have to say it...

Cleverness

...but I wouldn't want that movie to be as dumb as this one. In my first Avengers review I mentioned heaving a heavy sigh every time Fury spoke. Well, I think everyone has that sigh-inducing dialog now. The banter is fantastic, but every time someone tries to utter a profound meditation on the theme of this movie, it's hollow garbage. “Everyone creates what they're afraid of”? What?

That's also what happens if you don't stop wars before they start, Captain Greatest Generation.

Only Ultron gets away with it because he's an idiot with extreme anti-social personality disorder who wants to destroy the human race. I'm fine with having a villain who has a mental disorder. I don't even mind that Avengers movies are two for two in that respect. It's common for writers to say, “Well, he's crazy” and use that as an excuse to quit working with a villain's perspective or motivation. “He's crazy,” so he can suddenly do whatever he has to do to let the hero win when the odds were otherwise impossible. Ultron bucks that in that he demonstrates a lot of human needs and his character shifts are a constant whittling away of all the pretenses that stand between him and his ultimate, nihilistic goal. He's still motivated by his own reason and--frankly--childlike emotions.

It's comforting because by the end of this movie I don't know what goals anyone else has. Apparently Cap has given up on having a life and runs Avengers full-time? Stark is going to...? Thor is doing space detective stuff? Hill works for Avengers again/still (she did before?? Not enough question marks)? Fury is middle management at Avengers, Inc.? That every character who's headlining a franchise goes their own way is cool, in that we finally get a Sidekicks movie.

It also contains the three geography tropes I hate the most: whole countries that are the size of a city, something TV Tropes has handily named Ruritania, and the thing where Africa is a country.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe goes to such lengths to ground itself that it is mind-boggling when it falls back on these transparent, lazy tropes that remove it from the real world (in some cases, literally, Segovia).

They couldn't even pick the name of an African country out of a hat! It could even be the landlocked South African Republic. Just--

There are 52 countries in Africa. There are one billion people. It's 20% of this planet's land mass. 12% of it's population! If you bundled The United States, South Korea, and the--apparently city-sized--nation of Segovia you could shove them all up Africa's ass with enough room left over for a China, India, Japan, and a whole Western Europe. But no. It's “Africa.” This is legitimately Transformers levels of insulting. Between that and the boob thing (I'll get to it), I almost tossed my notebook at the screen and left despite this being an otherwise enjoyable movie.

Age of Ultron isn't that clever and I think the best thing I can say to that is that it's not trying to be clever. It's not crowing about the "Ultron gets his meteor" reveal. It's very satisfying, but there's no build to it; Ultron simply had time to come up with a primary plan of global annihilation when he accepted his nuclear hacking attempt wouldn't work. 

It's not a twist, it's a surprise. That's not a criticism. Like so much of the rest of the movie, it's devoid of pretense in interest of just giving you the good stuff.

Concluded Friday.