“Avengers: Age of Ultron” improves on the first film in the Avengers series in nearly every way. However, with bigger fights, better jokes and more breath-taking scenes the scope of the film also makes the flaws more noticeable than before.
The film opens strong. While much of 2012’s “The Avengers” was dedicated to making a team from the start it’s clear that The Avengers are a team – a pretty good one. Opening with a raid of a castle in an eastern European forest to collect a magical artifact, it’s clear that the team can work together with The Hulk taking out turrets to protect the less super characters, like Hawkeye and Black Widow, while Iron Man scanned the enemies technology for weak points. Even Captain America managed to direct the team to protect civilians from battle and from swear words.
After the opening, the story shifts to Iron Man creating Ultron in an attempt to protect the world with a fleet of robots powered by artificial intelligence. But, things don’t work out and Ultron comes to the realization that the best way to protect the world may be to kill all the people on it. He breaks free from Avengers tower and creates a swarm of robots to help him take the Avengers and eliminate the threat humanity has to the world.
The action in the film is beautiful. For example, Iron Man attempting to contain a rampaging Hulk in an African city is filled with plenty of powerful hits that tear the city apart and it’s good to see how much The Avengers have dedicated themselves to protect people through Iron Man’s attempts to prevent as much death and destruction as possible.
The film does suffer on characterization though. While the solo Marvel films, and recent team-up “Guardians of the Galaxy” manage to fit bits of character in-between rounds of fisticuffs, such as Captain America visiting his love interest from the 1940s in a rest home or Star-Lord’s obsession with Walkman, there’s very little of that in this movie.
You are more often than not just told what motivates the characters, like Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, or members of the original team who get their life flesh out through exposition rather than actions like Hawkeye. There are, however, some great moments when their fears almost manage to tear the team apart and the interactions between Black Widow and Bruce Banner are good – showing both budding love and an animal handler’s relations with a beast.
The humor is mostly on-point though. From quips to recurring jokes throughout the film the mood is never allowed to become too somber, and that’s one of the problems. No matter how high the stakes are or how close people are to being killed the stream of jokes rarely pauses. The constant humor manages to create less tension in the film than I would have liked.
In fights, it never appears as if any of the Avengers are in danger even though the destruction of the world is only a few minutes away.
“Avengers: Age of Ultron” is a good movie that’s just shy of great. The action, humor and special effects carry the film – and carry it well – that what it lacks in characterization and tension is easily ignored. The film sits toward the top of the Marvel Cinematic Universe pile, but it could have been king.
3 1/2 Captain America shields out of 5
