Review of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) by Foxgrove — 30 Apr 2015

‘Now this is going to make a good story’ states Don Cheadle optimistically towards the end of this epic Marvel adventure, when in fact it has proved to be anything but. The first film wasn’t actually too bad, but Marvel have reached their nadir here with this preposterously over long (Eugene O’Neill long is right!) bum numbing drivel.

It suffers from an excess of toos. Aside from being too long, there’s too much noise, too much exposition and too much nonsensical talk. In fact, too much of everything bar entertainment. It is essentially brain dead gibberish.

Ok, so the special effects are as predictably good as they should be for a film of this budget but everything else falls way short. The actors’ characterisations add nothing by way of compensation. Indeed, two members of the ‘B’ rated cast distinguish themselves by not cutting it even alongside this low standard of performance.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson seems to whisper his way through the film as if not convinced he should be there, and Samuel L Jackson is just laughable in his eye patch. He has never been able to live up to his iconic early performance in ‘Pulp Fiction’ and most of his appearances these days are in thankless supporting parts like this.

As in previous Marvel outings the attempts at humour fail miserably. However, unintentional laughter is evoked here by attempting, but failing, at pathos in a handful of scenes. The budding romance between Johansson and Ruffalo is lame and one only wishes that they would take their own advice to each other and ‘Disappear’.

At the film’s close as I raced for the exit I was only too well aware that everyone else was transfixed, eagerly anticipating the possible nuggets that were going to be thrown up during or after the credits.

I knew that I need not stay as I was never going to encounter these characters again in my lifetime. Amazingly the critics have been surprisingly kind to this elephant sized mess. To re-energize my brain I went home and tuned into an episode of the TV series ‘Wolf Hall’, an entertainment of real pedigree that offered me more in five minutes than this did in 141.