Theatrical Reviews: Avengers: Age of Ultron

I am usually a reasonable reviewer.  I tend to judge films based on their merit and not on my poorly acquired preconceptions.  Yet; all reasonability aside, I hate Avengers: Age of Ultron.  It’s nothing personal, I hate every super-hero movie now; overexposure has made me terribly biased. 

And you know what the worst part is?  There has been scarcely a bad super-hero movie released in theaters over the past 5 years.  It’s gotten to the point that when I do see a legitimately bad Super-Hero flick, I get excited because I can actually give logical reasoning to my hatred, and bash the film uninhibited.

So be warned: I tried as hard as I could to be objective, but I think it’s fair to say that I wanted Avengers: Age of Ultron to be bad when I walked into the theater today.  So if you’re a screaming Marvel fan-boy, you might want to read somebody else’s review.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a very average super-hero flick; and it’s very below-par for Marvel Studios.  It’s just passable; an entertaining diversion.  Will most people be satisfied with it?  I suppose.  But after the quirky-entertaining Guardians of the Galaxy and the legitimately great Captain America 2; Avengers 2 feels like a failed follow up.

And it’s not just worse than recent Marvel films, its worse then its immediate predecessor, the first Avengers flick.  It isn’t as funny, as entertaining or as emotionally punchy.  Lately it’s seemed like each subsequent Marvel Studios flick has topped the last, but Age of Ultron is a definite step backwards.

By itself, Age of Ultron is a totally passable hero-picture.  It’s got a suitably evil villain, a pseudo-likable cast of heroes, and plenty of high-tension action sequences.  Really the movies biggest problem is that the plot is too thin.

The screenwriters tried to push a lot of elements into this script.  There are three new heroes, a new villain, a subplot for all seven or eight of the original characters, and four or five action sequences.  Also:  the movies plot sets up future Marvel releases, has an obligatory Stan Lee cameo and still finds time to interject plenty of Joss Whedon’s humor into the dialogue.

While all of those things might seem like good things to have in a movie, when you try and put all of them in equally, your movie feels overstuffed and unfocused.  The movie keeps a good pace, and has a fun sense of humor so you’re never bored, but you’re never particularly invested either.  One of the dozen or so main characters dies in the end, and it’ll leave you pretty much totally unaffected.  The movie is all mass with no weight.

If you really want to keep following this whole “Marvel Cinematic Universe” thing that’s going on, then Avengers 2 is clearly a must see;  but if all you want is a diverting action-flick with super-heroes, there are definitely better ones out there.  You’d probably get just as much pleasure out of watching the first Avengers a second time then you would from watching Avengers: Age of Ultron;  They’re practically the same movie.