The Avengers: Age of Ultron review

There are very few movies that I come out of not having an exact opinion on the first time. Sure I'll watch a movie a second time and pick up something I didn't before and it will probably change my opinion, but at the same time, I usually have an idea of what I thought of the movie right away.

With Avengers: Age of Ultron, I wasn't totally sure what my initial reaction was. In a way I did. Honest to god, I sat through this movie the first time I saw it on the Thursday before it came out thinking throughout the film this little clip from my boy Aziz Ansari.

Him saying that was just on a loop in my mind over and over and over again.

This movie was so hyped up. There were so many trailers, and more trailers, and trailers after that. I knew so much about this film well before it came out and yet I still walked out of it blown away.

So yeah, the too long didn't read of this was that Avengers: Age of Ultron was incredibly entertaining. I enjoyed it like any other Marvel movie that has come out. Marvel knows how to give me an entertaining film.

But is it worth looking into it more and deciding whether or not Age of Ultron is a really great film. Because after watching all the Marvel films one after another, watching the original Avengers, you have to wonder if these films are good or are they just better than what we've seen in the past. For the past few months, it has all been about perspective. I have decided that Phase one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is actually not that great. The reason we love these movies is because they brought about a renaissance of superhero films and they're just down right better than Daredevil and other superhero films that came out before.

Then Phase 2 came along and showed that Marvel can evolve and make good movies because the shock of a connected comic book life universe was/is starting to wear off on us. We got great movies like Captain America: Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy.

And then we have the second team up film of its kind. Avengers: Age of Ultron. The initial shock of seeing all the Avengers together is gone, we need to focus on the story. We need to continue this so that five year plan they announced actually happens because fans actually care about the story now.

So does Avengers: Age of Ultron stand alone as a great film, while creating a final statement for Phase 2 and introducing Phase 3. Its a big order to fill. And that's why it has taken me almost a month to actually see this movie again and give you a proper review

Let's take a look.

Just for some background, I've done everything leading up to this film (with the exception of Iron Man 3, you'd think I would have done this by now.) Here's those reviews for some review.

Phase 1
Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk
Iron Man 2
Thor
Captain America
The Avengers

Phase 2
Thor: The Dark World
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Guardians of the Galaxy

So here's the plot of Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Since the events of Winter Soldier, the Avengers have been searching the world for remnants of Hydra and rooting them out as they are evil and that's what the Avengers do.

The Avengers are a team now. They work better than they ever have before and they've learned to work as a team.

They are searching for Baron Von Strucker (played by Henry Goodman) because he has taken possession of Loki's staff, the main weapon used in the first Avengers. they find him near a small Eastern European town called Sokovia. As we saw in the end of Winter Soldier, Strucker has been experimenting on humans and has his secret weapons in the Maximoff twins, Pietro and Wanda (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen).

The Avengers are successful at retrieving the staff but the Twins get away.

With the technology acquired from the raid, Tony Stark (played again by Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner (played again by Mark Ruffalo) begin researching an ancient program with Loki's staff that could bring them to the next level of artificial intelligent.

In Stark's mind, he is creating the perfect defense for the world as he is still haunted by the idea of forces from out of our world invading like they did when they attacked New York and that is only exacerbated by Wanda Maximoff manipulating his mind in Sokovia.

Just as he thinks he has failed, Stark accidentally creates Ultron (voiced by James Spader). Ultron is the ultimate artificial intelligence and he immediately absorbs his mission, the situation around the world, and everything the Avengers have done and comes to the conclusion that the world would be better if the Avengers were destroyed.

Let's start right off the bat by talking about Ultron... sort of. There's going to be a review of this film for the first half and then an analysis of the film. Hell this might even be a two parter. We'll see.

What I'll say right off the bat is that I absolutely love Ultron. For half a second I thought that Wilson Fisk from the Daredevil TV show was going to hold the crown for the best Marvel villain. While he's still up there and might be tied for the number one spot, Ultron is definitely in the running to be the number one villain Marvel has to offer. I'll explain more in the analysis, but James Spader's performance brings a villainous and yet hilarious flair to Ultron. What I love about it is that Ultron is James Spader. If you've read my reviews on The Blacklist, you'll know that I adore Spader in that role and he brings that same charm and humor, and yet that same threatening voice to the character that I'm almost certain that Ultron is just Raymond Reddington in robot form.

But anyways, Ultron's plan is to utilize the Maximoff twins in his quest to create a perfect evolution of artificial intelligence and humanity and use it to bring about the destruction of the human race and of course its going to take all the Avengers to stop him.

I'm first going to talk about this film as a movie alone. This will allow people who are only interested in knowing what I thought about the movie to get what they need and be on their merry way, and the second half will be what I think of the intricacies of the film, how it stands as a film on its own, whether or not its good, and how it connects to a larger universe that Marvel has created.

So as far as a movie goes, Avengers: Age of Ultron is huge! The scale of this movie is huge. It has a lot of characters, a lot of stories to keep straight, and a lot of things going on to make the final product. The disadvantage it has to the first movie is that this movie actually had to be good. I swear you could have had The Avengers fighting the entire time in the first movie and it still would have been the huge splash that it was because we had never seen something like that before. Because of that, the story was simple, Loki is attacking Earth, the Avengers must stop him.

And the plot for Age of Ultron sounds simple, but its not. A lot happens outside of Ultron just being the baddy and the Avengers going to stop him.

First you've got Tony's dilemma. He feels the need to protect the Earth because he's seen what's beyond the atmosphere. He knows the dangers and its the stuff that keeps him up at night. The one huge purpose of Iron Man 3 that I will get into when I do that review finally, is that Tony's psyche is the biggest obstacle. Marvel's doing a great job at creating a devoted and mission set Tony Stark who has resolve and will be an obstacle in Civil War. But he has what I can only call an obsession in this Ultron program and the results of it. He always thinks he's right, even when everyone is telling him he's wrong.

Then you've got Hawkeye (played again by Jeremy Renner)

Any naysayers of Hawkeye prior to this film (myself included) were very quiet after this film.

Because Hawkeye is one of the best characters in the film. He's apart of the team, he's not there for a five second cameo like he was in Thor, he's not possessed for half the film like he was in The Avengers. He's an incredibly vital member of the team.

You also figure out a lot about Hawkeye in this film and he becomes the person kind of holding the group together in a way. That used to be the job of Nick Fury and in a weird way, Hawkeye kind of took on that role. And the best part is, he's just a guy. He's not a god, he's not a genius, he's not even an assassin to the level that Black Widow is. There's just something very simple about Hawkeye and that is shown in this film and it distinguishes him from the rest of the team. He's got his own storyline and I'll call it job in the film that directly effects the team (I'm being vague because I've decided this is the spoiler-free review)

And then you've got Black Widow (played again by Scarlett Johansson)  and The Hulk

 Now I heard a while before this movie that Hulk and Widow were going to have a thing and I wasn't totally sure how I felt about that. It just seemed random and I was just like Meh...

And that's how I felt half way through the first time I saw it. But there is a scene where it all makes sense and really makes the movie better because of it.

Surprisingly enough, I really liked the two of them and I thought that with their background and the way it is explained in the movie, it actually makes a lot of sense and the two work really well together. Its something that I hope that they delve into more in the later films because if this is the only time its brought up, it might turn out like the way the romance in The Hobbit films turned out, except this time I really liked it and want it to turn out better, as opposed to the dwarf elf romance that was shoehorned into those films. Everybody thought it was going to be resolved more in the last film... but it wasn't. I just hope they resolve this romance in later films which I'm almost certain they will.

Then you've got Vision/ Vision and Ultron/ Ultron himself.

This will be something that I delve more into in the second part as it does delve into spoilers. But here's my thoughts on Vision and his relationship with Ultron.

I'm iffy on Vision, but I love the dynamic between him and Ultron. I'll explain more in Part 2.

But let's go back to Ultron for a second.

Now why do I say that Ultron is in the running to be the best villain Marvel has given us, its in his motives. I've talked about in a lot of my reviews how the best villains are the ones who believe that they are the good guys. I talked about in my Cinderella review that the best villains are the ones you sympathize with, understand their actions, but still really love to hate them. 

Ultron is one of those villains. And that is difficult especially since he is machine. How do you understand the cognition of a machine who wants to destroy everyone? Maybe its James Spader but they do it in "spades". 

And then you add the Maximoff twins. 

Horrible Eastern European accents aside, I really liked these two. They could have easily been

manipulated henchmen. They could have easily been evil for one half and easily swayed to the good side in the other half (sorry if that's a spoiler).

But like Ultron, you sympathize with these two and you understand their struggle, why they do what they do, and their motivation the entire time.

Now, I will say that I enjoyed Elizabeth Olsen's performance a little bit more than Aaron Taylor-Johnson's and lets be honest, we all know for a fact which Quicksilver is better and its not this one. Its definitely Quicksilver from Days of Future Past. The thing is, that's okay in this situation, because the Quicksilver from that film would seem out of place in this film and the Quicksilver from this film would just be... well boring in that film. But I think both fit well with each film.

So there are a lot of moving pieces in this movie and its a big one. I'm actually not surprised they pushed this movie to three hours because it felt like it at times. And I would have been okay with that.

Joss Whedon actually recently came out and kind of started bashing Marvel. The man is now, for the most part, done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he's not directing Infinity Wars, and I can only imagine the hoops that he has jumped for Marvel. I imagine that they've given him a lot of control but with all the control, I'm sure he's still had his moments where he hasn't gotten his way.

Looking at some of the stuff I want to mention about Mr. Whedon and his work with this film, it almost seems like he deserves his own post. I'll have to look at what I've already written about writer and director spats with Marvel and I might actually do a separate post on why Whedon coming out and kind of talking some trash against Marvel might mean something bigger.

However, what I was going to say is that one of the things that I have heard from the production of this film was that Whedon had a cut of this film that was four hours long. It included Loki, it included a lot more scenes and development of characters and the thing is, I'm sure it would have been great. I would have been first in line to watch the four hour cut of Avengers Age of Ultron and I really hope they come out with that.

However, I do understand why that wasn't allowed and I'm actually kind of surprised if that actually was a grievance of Whedon's against Marvel. Usually, I try and see both sides, I don't always side with the creative artist nor do I always side with the studio, but if this is accurate and Whedon has some beef with Marvel because they cut his four hour long movie, that's something wrong with Whedon.

He knows that people don't go to four hour long movies and they don't make as much money. Its why movies are not usually four hours long unless you're Ghandi. That's the job of the director and the storytellers to get the movie to a manageable two and a half, maybe three hours, and still tell a comprehensive story.

Because of this, it does feel like a lot is crammed into this movie and it kind of feels that there are some things missing. That sounds contradictory but I feel like some of the essential things were taken out and some of the unnecessary things were crammed in.

All that said, I think if I do do a post on Marvel and Joss Whedon, I will most likely fall on Whedon's side. But the four hour long thing is funny to me.

I'm going to wrap this up because there are a lot of intricacies and analysis I want to do on the film that delve into spoilers. So I'm going to try and wrap this up.

Avengers: Age of Ulton had a lot to do in its movie. It had to create a viable threat against the Avengers in Ultron. I think they did that very well.

On top of that though, they had to give decent screen time and "development" to all the characters from Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, all the way down to Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, and even some lesser characters like War Machine (played by Don Cheadle). On top of that they had to introduce new characters like the Maximoff Twins and Vision. Introduce new relationships like the one between Banner and Widow. And on top of all of that, they needed to create a new threat and foreshadow the events coming up in the slate to come like Civil War, Infinity War and others.

I think this movie had a lot more to live up to than its predecessor did. And for the most part, I really think it was successful. Its not an absolutely perfect movie but I think it comes pretty darn close. It took on the task of just having this be another Avengers team up movie, this movie tried to be more than just a big fight. It had heart, it had character development, and it had drama to it.

The pacing may be a little off, the action maybe takes the place of parts that perhaps needed more development or explanation, but I think for the most part it was a cohesive story and was just too damn entertaining. Its a brave movie and I'm hoping that future movies that are this big that come out of Marvel, or any studio (pay attention DC) knows what to do and what to avoid when taking on a huge project like this.

Overall, I loved Avengers Age of Ultron and it has been my favorite movie of 2015. Now to be fair, I actually haven't seen too many new movies of 2015, but I wanted to give you my thoughts on this film and hopefully I'll be getting some other great new films on this blog pretty darn soon.

But what did you think of The Avenger: Age of Ultron? As a film? I'm going to be doing a second part talking spoilers and a little bit more of an analysis as opposed to my thoughts. But what did you think? Comment and Discuss below! Also follow me on Twitter @cmhaugen24 to get updates on movie news and reviews. You can also shoot me a message giving me thoughts on my reviews and send me requests.

I'll leave you with this. Well the guys at How it should have ended had the same idea I did and put their video in two parts. Here's part number one. Enjoy!