Friday, May 1, 2015

Avengers: Age of Ultron

When I told my friend everything that I had to do yesterday, she paused, gave me this long confused look, and told me that it sounded like it was going to be a total nerd day. And while what she said was partly true, sadly I’ve been getting this kind of reaction from women far too often lately. But in between having our $10 fruity drinks that were being made by these beautifully tattooed mixologists, I informed her that I had to teach kids math all day, watch and write about the NFL Draft, and then rush on over to the theater to see the new Age of Ultron movie. I actually thought that sounded like an awesome day but maybe that’s the reason why I’m still single.

Anyway, when I have the opportunity to see Scarlett Johansson’s boobs in 3D on a 100 foot screen you can certainly bet that I will be there on opening night! And from the very first scene you could tell what this movie was going to be all about; tons of computer generated action with a somewhat convoluted storyline. I honestly thought the first scene was a video game training sequence until the evil Strucker and his genetically enhanced twins show up.

This is where we are introduced to Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his sister Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olson). Quicksilver is just like the one you saw in X-Men as they chose to film his scenes in a similar fashion by slowing down the world around him while he runs from target to target; which I have to admit is still pretty entertaining. My friend pointed out to me that the one Olsen who is not a twin in real life plays one in a superhero movie; maybe she’s living out a life-long fantasy. And after hearing her with a Russian accent, I’d have to say that I too have a few fantasies that I’d like to live out with her but I won’t bore you or freak you out with those here.

But once this opening sequence is done, the Avengers do finally come away with Loki’s scepter. So they are in control of a very powerful weapon that can once again bring evil to Earth. But what the rest of the team doesn’t know is that Scarlet Witch used her powers to mess with the mind of Tony Stark and he now has plans to use the scepter to create the world’s first AI machine to protect us from attack. The problem is, the AI otherwise known as Ultron, doesn’t come out as planned and he goes on a mission to destroy the Avengers as well as the world.

It’s a fairly decent story and for the most part Joss Whedon (writer and director) does a good job of getting each character their due time on screen. The problem is, that there are just far too many characters on screen to begin with. What made Captain America 2 the best Marvel movie was the fact that it was a simple story (by comparison). They just focused on Cap and his fight with the Winter Soldier, this way they could put more emphasis and time on creating amazing action sequences between characters you actually cared about and were invested in.

This movie tries to balance way too many storylines and has far too many scenes that involve the Avengers fighting nameless and faceless robots; which would be cool if they were Terminator robots but they aren’t. They’re more like a weak version of Storm Troopers who only show up to get tossed off the screen in less than two seconds.

There is one really cool action scene that involves a fight between Ironman and the Hulk where they basically destroy an entire city. It goes on and on for like 15 minutes but it’s by far the freshest part of the movie; I just wish they didn’t cast the annoying Mark Ruffalo as David Banner. He’s old, he’s lame, and he makes you want to punch him in the face; especially when they introduce the unnecessary love subplot between him and Natasha. This movie runs almost 2 ½ hours long, that’s a good 20 minutes that could have easily been cut out.

James Spader playing Ultron was tight as he added a sarcastic and funny element to the main villain but by the time his counterpart Vision showed up, things got a little weird because it felt like Vision was more sexually confused than anything else. Maybe it was tight leather he was wearing.

Overall I’d have to say that I enjoyed Ultron, mainly due to the fact that every 10 minutes or so a robot would come flying across the screen (and yes I do realize that I complained about this earlier) but I do have to say that it left me wishing they had done more with it. You will say goodbye to some Avengers in this movie while saying hello to a few others, let’s just hope they eventually replace Don Cheadle (who I love in absolutely everything else btw) by the time the next one comes around.
I rate this movie as kind of FRESH!

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