Denisa and I headed out to the theater Friday to see the latest Marvel installment. I’ve been a fan of Marvel over the years when it comes to their films. Yes, they’ve had a few relative duds (I’m looking at you, first Thor movie), but on the whole, their movies are action packed, funny, eye-popping bundles of joy. Joss Whedon has done some of my favorite television shows ever, and he directed the wonderful first Avengers movie, so my expectations were quite high.
This time, they were met. Not exceeded, but that would be hard in this case. At this point, I really don’t think there’s a need to review the movie for non-Marvel fans. If you haven’t liked the other Avengers-series movies, this one really isn’t going to change your mind. To me, it would be like reviewing a new comic book for non-fans. If you like comics, then the review might matter. If you don’t, then why are you reading a review about comics?
Anyway.
I’ve read some critiques of the movie, complaining that Marvel is essentially spreading too little butter across too much bread. That as they add more and more characters to their cinematic universe, it makes movies like Age of Ultron nothing more than a quick check in with all the different characters. That there’s no chance for individual characters to really shine or do anything significant.
I find this critique baseless.
An Avengers movie isn’t about having in-depth looks at the characters. That’s exactly why movies like Thor 2 or Iron Man 3 exist. An Avengers movie is all about the team work. All about all these different characters coming together to do something epic that they wouldn’t be able to do on their own. And in this respect, Age of Ultron really does a fantastic job. I loved how the Avengers as a team was almost a character in and of itself. The group has an arc that the entire movie is centered around, and I thought it was really well executed.
Other highlights of the film are definitely the action sequences and the special effects. You go to one of these to be sort of blown back in your seat, and the movie succeeds in doing that. The trademark Marvel humor is also well represented. Ultron was a cool character, and excellent voiced by James Spader.
Is the acting outstanding? Meh. It’s pretty solid, but my expectations from a superhero movie aren’t high in the acting department. All of the characters are good and consistent with who they should be, but by this point, I’ve began to notice a sort of Captain Jack Sparrow effect coming through. Iron Man is awesome in the first movie. Robert Downey Jr. did a great job. Same for the second. By this time, when we’ve had 5 different times to see Iron Man . . . what else can you really do with the character? This isn’t a slam on the movie or the acting. It’s just an observation, and it’s a good reason to have these movies continually update themselves.
It’s great that they’re adding in new characters to the team even as older characters move aside. That’s vital for this experiment to be able to continue to succeed.
In the end, it was a lot of fun. Very glad I saw it in the theaters, and I’m still a card carrying Marvel fan. What about you? What did you think?