Movie Review: Avengers – Age of Ultron

How do you get to Avengers 2? Practise, practise, practise.

Or rather: practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise.

It took ten films – not all of them good; some very much so - for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to build up to Avengers – Age of Ultron, which sees Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow and the Hulk battle a mad, James Spader-voiced robot named Ultron.

(Hawkeye is also there.)

It’s the most perilous threat faced by the planet Earth since the last flick, and only, probably, until the next.

But you don’t go to Marvel movies to answer the question of whether good will ultimately prevail over evil. You go to see Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark shtick, Chris Evans’ adorably charming Cap, Chris Hemsworth’s increasing looseness in the role of Thor, Scarlett Johansson’s gradually amplified Barbara-Stanwyck-as-a-superhero and another glimpse of Mark Ruffalo’s sad green giant.

(Also, Jeremy Renner?)

Writer-director Joss Whedon brings something precious to his Avengers pictures, and it’s not a deftness with composing action sequences, because his blowing up of metal-coated villains and skyscraper scaffolding is indistinguishable from the rest in this baker’s decalogy.

What he knows is how to put our stars in unique, delightful combinations that will create the most sparks. You’d be surprised how much slack you’ll cut a film that features superheroes gently ribbing one another for 142 minutes.

Picking up where Captain America: The Winter Soldier left off, Earth’s mightiest heroes reassemble to seek out the corrupt remnants of the fallen S.H.I.E.L.D. organisation, finally recovering Loki’s trouble-causing, mind-controlling sceptre. (If you’re already lost, fair warning: the next paragraph will be totally baffling.)

While the gang lets their hair down at a celebratory shindig – and yes, Thor is one step ahead of them – Tony and pre-Hulk, Bruce Banner, experiment with the sceptre, using its Infinity Stone to create an artificially intelligent robot. The hope is that the robot – dubbed Ultron – will be smart and responsive enough to prevent future alien attacks without needing instruction, unlike Stark’s own tin-man army.

However, as anyone who has read Frankenstein or seen Honey I Shrunk the Kids can probably guess, the experiment goes awry, and Ultron emerges not as a peacekeeper but as a kind of demented Tony Stark-aping golem with a God complex. Eventually aided by supertwins Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Ultron sets out to create an extinction-level event and reboot the Earth anew. That’s one way to achieve peace in our time.

Spader’s weird energy as the voice of Ultron is what breathes the most life into Avengers 2, which comes at the tail-end of a somewhat underwhelming run of Marvel sequels. Olsen is a welcome addition too, and the easily-mocked Renner may as well be considered a newcomer here, because the guy actually has dialogue now.

Everything else about it is predictably competent. Entertaining, even. But it’s certainly not movie-shaped. It’s serial-shaped. Maybe that’s fine for the eleventh entry of a series with at least another ten parts to go. (Avengers 3, aka Infinity War, has been spliced into two instalments, set for release in 2018 and 2019 respectively.)

Yet, I just can’t bring myself to unabashedly love what is essentially an episode; especially not one that asked me to invest twenty hours prior, and, once again, closes with a mid-credits button that effectively says, “Well, the next Avengers is the one you really want to see.”

Still, there is sparkling dialogue, big, satisfying explosions, and an affecting finale. There is even a devotion by our leads to protect civilians from public carnage. (That’s good.) There is also a 9/11-mimicking high-rise collapse caused by Iron Man and the Hulk, except no one seems to care all that much because it takes place in an African nation. (That’s bad.)

The hype would have you believe Whedon’s long-awaited sequel is an event like no other; the ultimate blockbuster. Fun though it is, turns out Avengers – Age of Ultron is merely human after all.

4/5

In cinemas April 23. Rated M for action violence.