This is it... Finally! A Villain that can finally go down in comic book cinema history as one of the great ones! A Villain that will finally show that MARVEL knows how to create credible threats!............... Or so I thought.
The Plot
The Avengers are back! Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) are now a fully functioning team operating on their own terms in taking down the remnants of HYDRA! But when Iron Man, Tony Stark, discovers a method of creating an artificial intelligence that can police and protect the world, he enacts on his desire to create a "suit of armor around the planet." But that program calculates that the only way to save the world, is to cause humanity's extinction. That program is Ultron (James Spader)! Aiding him in his vendetta against the Avengers are enhanced twins, Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who have a bone to pick with Tony Stark, but unaware of Ultron's true intentions. Can the Avengers stop this robotic threat?
Review
I'm just going to flat out say this. The movie is....good. Maybe even okay. But it is not the excellent game changing film that it was expected to be. There are a lot of things this movie does good, but there are a lot of things that the movie.... doesn't do wrong but horribly executes with bad editing. The pacing is completely all over the place and doesn't have the build up the previous film had. However in this film's defense, the opening of this film is a thousand times more exciting than the previous one.
Okay, I shouldn't compare it to the first one. But the problem is, because of how the Marvel Cinematic Universe functions, you not only have to think about the first one but also the third and fourth Avengers movies coming in the future. The film suffers from cramming in too many story lines from previous films as well as setting up what is going to happen next. This hurts the main plot of the Avengers going up against Ultron, because there are so many things in the mix that wasn't really necessary to the plot. And while those seeds are necessary going forward, I didn't feel like they were warranted to the story, which should have been about developing this ultimate threat: Ultron.
James Spader can do no wrong as far as voice work goes. This Ultron's personality is a far cry from his comics counterpart, mainly because he does have a personality in this film. I loved that director Joss Whedon tried to do something different with the robot villain archetype by not having him be robotic, but rather more human. He is portrayed as a dark mirror to Tony Stark, but lacks the menace that was displayed in the trailers. His actions are, but his personality just doesn't fully match up. He is still one of the best villains ever put on screen in the MCU. But he is nowhere near as good as Tom Hiddleston's Loki in The Avengers.
But speaking of Tony Stark, let's talk about The Avengers! You know them by name, and you know who play them. They're all great. Hemsworth amps up the comedy as the outlandish alien god, Thor. Evans does great as Captain America. And while Ruffalo does a good job playing Dr. Banner and the Hulk, it feels like his character devolved instead of evolved. Last time we saw the Hulk, he was in full control of his anger, but in here, he still has a problem with his anger and devolves back to the character he was in the Ed Norton Incredible Hulk movie. His character has a small progression with Johansson's Black Widow, whom we finally learn her backstory, but the romance aspect between them wasn't handled too well. The only two characters who really feel like they've grown are Downey Jr.'s Stark and Renner's Hawkeye.
Stark is still reliving the trauma of what he experienced in The Avengers and the fallout from Iron Man 3. It is his paranoia about not wanting to experience such trauma ever again that causes him to create Ultron, which works brilliantly well for him. But the real standout of the team is Hawkeye, because in here we not only get to see him as the sarcastic character he is known to be, but also get a sense of who he is and why he wants to be an Avenger. He is pretty much the most developed character among the original core team, but there are new kids on the block. And one of them steals the show.
Paul Bettany is probably best known as voicing JARVIS in the Iron Man films, but in here he appears in full physical form as Vision, a fan favorite who is directly linked to Ultron. He is arguably one of the best parts of the movie, despite being quickly developed, it felt appropriate and well handled. Which is more than Ultron's enhanced human henchmen, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Johnson and Olsen do what they can with what they're given in bringing the iconic twins to life. There is the stigma of Evan Peters playing a far superior and effectively used Quicksilver in X-Men Days of Future Past that completely downgrades Johnson's portrayal of Quicksilver. Still, Johnson does fine, but it definitely is not a highlight. Neither is Olsen, who does a good job playing creepy, but comes off really campy with her fake Russian...Sokovian accent.
Final Thoughts
All in all though, despite lacking a sense of development for all the players on the board, as well as rushing way too many plot lines in a mad dash to the finish line, the film still works fine. It is an entertaining piece of cinema that will probably go down as one of Joss Whedon's weakest film outputs, unless something else he directs comes along to take that title. But even though it is not the strongest film in the Marvel catalogue, it still delivers the promise of spectacular entertainment with Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I don't know if I'm willing to watch this movie again in theaters, but I'll definitely be buying the Blu-Ray. And hopefully, just hopefully, Whedon's original 3 hour Director's Cut makes its way on Blu-Ray to clear up all the mess wrought upon this film. Still good though.
SCORE: 7.5/10 - This was not easy to do...and it really shows in the final product
No comments:
Post a Comment