Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson
Director: Joss Whedon
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead...though, really, you haven't seen this yet and you're still planning on seeing it?) The film picks up relatively quickly after the last Avengers' film, with little need to introduce characters we have already spent billions of dollars to see in a host of different movies. Iron Man (Downey), Thor (Hemsworth), Captain America (Evans), the Black Widow (Johansson), the Hulk (Ruffalo), and oh, what the hell, even Hawkeye (Renner) are battling it out over yet another one of the Infinity Stones that we've all been leading up to for the final films in the set. We see the Infinity Stone retrieved by the team in the form of a scepter, and run into several new baddies, most notably Quicksilver (Taylor-Johnson) and the Scarlet Witch (Olson). Once at this new compound, Iron Man wants to use the Infinity Stone to create world peace, but in the process creates an evil villain in the form of Ultron (Spader), whose idea of world peace is essentially destroying all life on earth so that machines and creatures of metal/data can rule the world. His idea is to tear the Avengers apart in leading up to his armageddon, in hopes of beating them through this strategy, though as this is a superhero movie, after some soul-searching, the team eventually gets a final showdown with all of the Avengers taking on Ultron, a minor Avenger getting offed in the process, and the team seemingly breaking up...with them inevitably being called together at a later date once back-end residuals have been negotiated.
The film, like most action adventures, follows a pretty traditional format, and like the original picture it's at its most interesting when the film is fun, not heavy-handed. The movies don't have the motif of DC when it comes to creating something harsh to cling onto, a tortured soul with the passion of a hero. As a result, it's best when it's trying to be a little bit lighter. I loved the entire sequence where everyone tries to lift Thor's hammer (and Captain America actually comes close), or whenever Captain America is called out for his aversion to profanity, or basically anything involving Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders is human perfection in this role). Whenever it's clear they're having a good time I'm having a good time by proxy. These are the Avengers, the World's Mightiest Heroes, and most people just can't come close to touching them, and both sides know it, so why not at least play with that in the process? The second half of the film loses most of this amusement, and as a result is the lesser half of the film.
The movie is very hit-and-miss with both returning characters and introducing new ones. Part of the problem here is that there are way too many characters-we can argue til we're blue-in-the-face about whom to cut, but with a dozen major actors playing significant roles in the film, and all of them with agents on speed-dial, it feels like we have too much posturing or moments where we need to see a specific character to set up a future film or a future angle of the Marvel universe. Thor, for example, is woefully underused and off on his own adventure that we don't even see for the bulk of the film, clearly setting up Thor: Ragnarok but nothing much more in this film and he could have been lifted with ease. The film has much more time for Hawkeye and the Black Widow, but the former gets into an annoyingly bad story (seriously-if there's a cliche for "I'm about to die" that they tried to throw in hopes of getting the audience to anticipate Hawkeye's death when clearly it was going to be the underwritten Quicksilver, I don't know what it could have been) and the latter gets downgraded in terms of a hero. Did we really need that ridiculously uncomfortable sequence about her not being able to have children? This is what makes her a "monster?" This is her major failing as a human being-not having children? The fact that this becomes such a key part for arguably the most significant female superhero in filmic history is a really massive misstep by Joss Whedon, who generally does very well with his female characters but makes the Black Widow a woman who can kick butt, but for some reason her entire story needs to deal with her lacking of a romantic relationship and a baby, and unlike the others, not her ambitions. It was a HUGE step back from the places we took the character in the far superior film Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
The movie also has troubles with the villain. Ultron initially seems like a really complicated character-one who seems to be doing evil accidentally as a byproduct of doing good (much like Robert Redford's character in Winter Soldier), but then descends into a simple "I'm a bad guy" veneer that becomes tiresome and boring. His henchmen should be more complicated than they are, but the Scarlet Witch is insanely naive and Quicksilver just stands there and looks pretty. Neither of them stands out, and Quicksilver is so unimportant to the plot that his death is mostly a "oh, I figured they'd do more with that" than a "wow, I can't believe it!" About the only character that is new to the film that really resonated in a big way was Paul Bettany's Vision, who actually asks some big questions and seems pulled straight out of the comic books and not some bleached down version of what Marvel has created in print.
So I will admit at the end that I just didn't like this movie. It has too many pleasurable elements not to state that it's still fun in the moment (Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, and Cobie Smulders remaining my favorite performances in the series), but overall it's less than the predecessor, which still pales in comparison to what the Captain America movies are doing. I feel like I'm contributing to the problem with almost certainly seeing the next movie, but I might wait for reviews for it at least. This is a movie that everyone's seen that I'm just giving a shoulder shrug.
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