Avengers Age of Ultron Review: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
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Avengers Age of Ultron
Director: Joss Whedon
9.5
Where to Watch Avengers Age of Ultron?
Yeah, I said what I said and you all can fight me on this. Avengers Age of Ultron is a good movie. Yes, it’s the weakest of the four Avengers movies but does that make it bad, no it does not. I believe that Avengers Age of Ultron is an underappreciated entry in the MCU that often gets overlooked and overheated.
To get my bias out of the way as I mentioned in my The Avengers review, I love the team-up movies. I personally think that team-up movies are the essence of the MCU. Everything that they spent the time setting up leads to the team-up movies. In Phase 1 the culmination was the first Avengers movie and in Phase 2 besides Guardians of the Galaxy, it was all leading up to this movie right here.
Look I’ll get my negatives out of the way because overall like I said I quite like this movie but I am fully capable of admitting it has some failings. Firstly, there is so much going on in this movie that it can feel like there is no breathing room. There is so much of this movie that is either paying off past post-credit scenes or setting up future movies. We have the twins who were teased in Captain America The Winter Soldier and also the clean-up of HYDRA from the fallout of the events of Winter Soldier.
You have the concept of infinity stones set up in more detail, connecting their appearances in previous films and the post-credit hints again at Thanos. You see how Tony and Cap’s different viewpoints cause conflict, which sets up Civil War, and you get more Wakanda set up. So this is a lot of stuff and while I find it all very interesting, especially on subsequent viewings I will admit it can feel very fast-paced.
The other criticism I will agree with is that Ultron is not as good a villain as Loki. While I do think that Loki was a more compelling villain, I do still enjoy James Spader’s performance as Ultron. He can be threatening almost more so than Loki but he can still have funny moments. Ultron poses a legitimate threat to the Avengers and I can see why he is one of their reoccurring villains. One final critique is I wish they didn’t kill Pietro as I think there was potential with the character.
Now back to what I like about the movie. The first thing I want to mention is how this is the only film where the Avengers are assembled for the entire run of the film. They aren’t coming together, or split apart, or coming back together like the other Avengers movies. They are a team through the whole thing. I love that! We get to see the Avengers just going on missions.
Like the opening HYDRA attack where the Avengers are clearly more capable and it doesn’t take much to beat HYDRA. It’s cool to see them on none-world-ending missions where the threats they are facing do not even come close to their power level. Also, we get to see them hang out outside of the missions. Even people who don’t like this movie like the party scene. It’s fun to see these characters bond and hang out like normal people, it helps us relate to them.
They just feel like a team in this movie and even on the best teams there is conflict and disagreement so it makes sense but they can still pull it together for the big picture. The chemistry between the actors is great no matter the scene. One of my favourite scenes is the argument in Avengers Tower. Tony expresses his fear that the team isn’t enough to stop all threats that they won’t win next time. Steve counters that by saying to believe in the team and that they can win together.
I like that this movie gives some much-needed focus to Hawkeye as he was under mind control most of the first film so now we get to see him in a new light as a family man which is awesome. I also like how this movie carries on Tony’s trauma from The Avengers which leads him to creating Ultron.
Two other scenes that I love a lot are the final fight in the church. We get to see the Avengers working together like Cap said and everyone gets a badass moment during the fight. The other is the talk between Clint and Wanda because I like how he motivates her by joking about how crazy it all is. I also like how it becomes a sort of father-figure relationship for Wanda.
Two of our new Avengers in this film are the twins Wanda and Pietro. Besides being fast and weird I like how these two characters are introduced in the film. Wanda, who will get an even bigger role later on really has powers that will be later confirmed to be magic but right now all we know is that it was born of the mind stone. I like that we see her use this power to manipulate people and also that it does have limitations. She doesn’t know what her visions show people and doesn’t know where it will take them. She just knows that through them she can control people.
Pietro has much simpler powers as they are a version of super speed. However, emotionally he is hurt and angry, and that anger is what pushes him through the experiments. I like how it isn’t until they are fighting beside them that the twins realize who the Avengers truly are and that they are not so bad. Luckily, for Wanda, she becomes an Avenger and gets to protect people like she wanted.
Our last new Avenger was Vision and I must say that I love the way that Paul Bettany plays the character. He is definitely reserved but he has wisdom to him and one of my other favourite scenes is when he has his talk with Ultron. He is also uber-powerful and when it is on full display you know he is a force to be reckoned with.
So overall, is it as good as the first Avengers movie, no it is not. However, Avengers Age of Ultron still has all the elements that make a team-up movie special and give our characters more chances to interact. I think it does a great job setting up future films while still having some good laughs and some great team-up action moments. Definitely give this one another chance if you haven’t in a while!