Review of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) by Matm — 08 May 2015

Avengers: Age of Ultron is not a good movie, and no, I am not going to follow that up with “It is a GREAT movie.” My favorite characters had the least to contribute to the plot other than providing the muscle to beat up all of the lowly thugs.

Given how the movie ends, it felt like it was all an experiment to see how well a third movie in the franchise could be if all of the stars decide not to return. I suppose it stands to reason that Iron Man has had three standalone movies to cover that character, and that Hawkeye was completely underutilized in the first movie in the franchise, but I would have appreciated it if they could have found a better balance of screen time for this too huge cast.

It really felt like a producer told the writer that they had all of these high priced actors signed on to appear in the thing, so he had better come up with a scene featuring every single one of them, no matter how little it pertained to the plot or was entertaining, “we have exposition to explain, get that former TV actress in there”.

I am a longtime fan of the director’ (Joss Whedon), previous work. I suppose he did a good job strictly as a director, as all of the actors put in fine performances, but the dialog and plot were all just very flimsy.

Maybe, there was a great move shot, and it was just edited together poorly. Here I go apologizing for Joss, again. I need to stop doing that. I don’t know, but either way, the experience was just not fun.

The camera was always zoomed in so close to the actors that I could never keep up with where anyone was within a scene. I theorize that this was because the sets were either very underwhelming or all virtual, so the camera stayed in tight to prevent the audience from noticing.

Don’t think that I failed to find any redeeming values in the movie. The gags built around Thor’s hammer were funny, and there was one stand out fight in the first half with the Hulk that had its moments, but you could watch these scenes on YouTube and skip the other two hours.

Let’s face it. If you have already seen every other modern Marvel movie, nothing is going to stop you from seeing this one. Just make sure to set your expectations accordingly beforehand. I still have hope that the Avengers franchise can be fun in future installments, but, in my opinion, they did not pull it off with this one.