Written And Directed by Joss Whedon
Ultron: "How do you hope to stop me?"
Tony: "Like the old man said, Together."
After hitting the heights of The Avengers and before the chaos that would be those Justice League reshoots, Joss Whedon was kind of on his A-Game as a writer/director. He was in the big leagues as both and then this sequel came along and sort of became the beginning of the end for him, kind of.
Financially you wouldn't think so because this was another monster hit for both the MCU and for Whedon himself and while it's arguably the "weakest" of the Avengers in terms of movie, there's still plenty to recommend with it. Notably for it's villain choice, character introductions and the set up for other things.
Let's talk villains first. Ultron (James Spader), the dangerous AI that effectively had JARVIS (Paul Bettany) replaced with FRIDAY (Kerry Condon), though not intentionally. He wanted to pacify the Earth by eradicating humanity and thanks to both Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) not keeping a better check on him, he nearly did.
Ultron's design doesn't look too dissimilar from a Terminator to be perfectly honest but he's a great foil for the Avengers, both as a physical and an intellectual menace. He got the best of them multiple times and had it not been for the creation of Vision (Paul Bettany) he might have actually bested the lot of them.
Then there was the twins. Yup, Pietro Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his sister, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) certainly were a threat for the team, until halfway through they switched alliances. I think it was the promise of becoming Avengers. It was also the fact that they were two traumatised people who lost their parents in horrific circumstances at a young age and have been exploited by the bad guys ever since.
Of course joining the team didn't initially mean they were trusted but they certainly did their bit to stop Ultron's overall scheme, even if one of them died. Yeah, it's a shame we lost Pietro before really getting to know him but on the other hand, it did make sense to keep Wanda around and the MCU has largely benefitted from that creative decision.
As for the rest of the team, Captain America (Chris Evans) remained the wholesome guy who got teased for his stance on swearing, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) took delight in the fact that no one could wield his hammer and there was Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). He was genuinely surprised that there was a bubbling romance between Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hulk. Am I the only one who didn't mind that potential pairing? It's a shame that it ultimately went nowhere after this movie.
- The other villain of the piece being Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), who was obsessed with finding Vibranium.
- Other characters to appear in this movie included Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard), Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), Helen Cho (Claudia Kim) and Heimdell (Idris Elba).
- Stan Lee cameo as a military veteran during a party scene with the Avengers.
- The credit scenes included Thanos (Josh Brolin) determined to do it himself while War-Machine (Don Cheadle) joined the Avengers with Wanda and Vision.
- We were introduced to Clint's wife, Laura (Linda Cardellini) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) also factored in the movie.
- Chronology: Not long after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Took place in Sokovia, Seoul, Johannesburg to name a few places.
Avengers: Age Of Ultron might be the Avengers movie that some fans like the least but it's still a good movie. I actually enjoyed a lot of this, especially with the villain choice and the various character moments.
Rating: 8 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment