Before Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Infinity War, & now Endgame, Avengers: Age of Ulton (AOU) was the most pumped I had been for a movie. It was three years since the first Avengers movie came out, so I had some major blue balls. Sure we had some great flicks like Guardians of The Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, but this was THEE Avengers coming together again! This movie actually restarted my love for comic books too, because it was free comic day so they gave out a free New Avengers comic at a theater in Madison, WI I was at. Since then, I’ve been reading & buying comics regularly again!
I left the theater thinking “wow that movie kicked ass,” because I was overstimulated from seeing another Avengers movie. After a couple more viewings I still liked it (and I still like it to this day), but it was similar to Thor: The Dark World because I realized it wasn’t as good as I once thought.
AOU has issues at its core but I’ll always defend it as a good, fun movie.
Anyhow, I’m running out of time before Endgame comes out, so here are my positives and negatives for AOU.
Positives
- Everything about creating Vision is fantastic (minus Thor’s quest to that weird pool). The way he was created between Ultron, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, JARVIS, Helen Cho (and even Thor electrocuting him) was exciting. When Vision is created, he gives me some of my favorite moments in the film like his conversation with Ultron at the end and when he picks up Thor’s hammer. Vision might be the best thing to come out of this film.
- My second favorite scene in the entire film is Vision & Ultron having the conversation at the end of the film. It’s a great symbolization of good and evil and how they’re actually similar but can come to different conclusions. What makes it even better is that director Joss Whedon has said that the good VS evil struggle is one based on his own mind and thoughts. Which I think adds an artistic beauty to it.
- My FAVORITE scene is Hawkeye’s speech to Scarlet Witch during the battle of Sokovia.
- “The city is flying, we’re fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense… Doesn’t matter what you did, or what you were. If you go out there, you fight, and you fight to kill. Stay in here, you’re good. I’ll send your brother to come find you. But if you step out that door, you are an Avenger.” Funny and inspiring!
- I, unlike a decent portion of people, actually liked Hawkeye’s family reveal. I thought it was a decent twist that added some depth to Hawkeye… it might be lazy depth but it’s depth!
- We get Hulk VS the Hulkbuster (or VERONICA in the movie). Holy shit this scene was a nerd’s dream come to life. They beat the hell out of one another and it’s wonderful. Iron Man destroys a building trying to knock Hulk out and it’s fantastic.
- I’m going to throw Ultron under the positives, because he was good enough as a villain. There were some problems I had with Ultron, (I’ll discuss under the negatives) but overall I liked him enough. Plus his plan to drop a country on Earth is over-the-top but pretty damn cool.
- There wasn’t a lot of great character development in this movie, but one character’s arc I did enjoy was Black Widow. We get a look into her dark, twisted path that made her the deadly assassin she is today. She opens up about being sterilized in the Red Room, and we get to see another layer of Natasha Romanoff that we hadn’t seen before.
- Lastly, the fight on Sokovia is a lot of fun. Plenty of moments from the battle like Thor bashing Cap’s shield through a bunch of Ultron bots, all the Avengers grouping up to defend the thing (Idk what it’s called) in the church and when Thor, Vision & Iron Man lay the beat down on Ultron.
Negatives
- Structurally, the movie is jumbled. The mood is never consistent. The way I describe it is the movie tries to be a serious drama, but they needed filler and more content so they crammed a bunch of forced jokes into the film. There are so many jokes that don’t land and take away meaning from important moments. Don’t get me wrong there are comedic moments where I laughed during the movie, but for every good joke it seems there was a so-so joke.
- The overuse of comedy comes out big time in Ultron. I like Ultron but he has those moments where he acts like an idiot that takes away from his badassery. For instance: “Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war. Invaders create Avengers. People create… smaller people? Er… children! I lost the word there.” Ultron says this talking to Scarlet Witch and the quote starts out with a meaningful, intellectual point and it ends with a stupid-ass joke. Why?! It didn’t need to be there!
- When Scarlet Witch manipulates the minds of Thor, Cap & Black Widow… it’s pretty congested. I like Black Widow’s past surfacing, but the movie tried way too hard to incorporate arcs for each character. Thor gets sent to a magical pool to figure out he had vision about the infinity stones (it doesn’t make sense to me) and the movie shows Cap struggling to have a normal life without war… which was already shown in Winter Soldier. We didn’t need to see Thor & Cap’s issues when they have separate movies.
- Black Widow and Bruce Banner’s relationship doesn’t resonate with me. Mostly because I wanted Black Widow & Cap. to hook up after Winter Soldier, so I won’t penalize the AOU too much for it.
Overall Grade: B-
AOU’s grade is going to wedge it between Captain America: TFA & Thor. Objectively, Thor is probably a better film than AOU, but I gave the edge to Ultron because I think it’s got more entertainment value. AOU isn’t structured very well and tries to balance a billion different storylines and doesn’t always land, but the good, for me, outweighs the bad. We get some moments, great action sequences and even in a discombobulated mess, we get some good character moments with Hawkeye, Vision and Black Widow. By far the worst Avengers movie but still a good flick!
MCU Ranking
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- The Avengers
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier
- Iron Man
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- Avengers: Age of Ultron (Perfectly balanced as all things should be…)
- Thor
- Iron Man 3
- Iron Man 2
- The Incredible Hulk
- Thor: The Dark World
NEXT UP: Ant-Man
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