Brooding 'Avengers' sequel bigger - but not better - than the original
Judging by writer/director Joss Whedon's fan-tastic new "Avengers" sequel, the age of Ultron rests somewhere between 13 and 15, predominantly male.
This blithely brooding, belligerently busy and benignly befuddling sequel brings back the six Marvel-ous superheroes from Whedon's kick-butt 2012 adventure for a much darker and bigger, but hardly better, epic continuation of the Avengers evolution into a cohesive fighting unit, now up against an insidious A.I. entity threatening to destroy the universe.
"Age of Ultron" opens with a dizzying assault on the eyeballs and eardrums as the Avengers mop up what's left of the evil organization HYDRA in a massive forest. Impressive for its intricate design and carefully choreographed mayhem, the sequence sets the superficially engaging, but soul-challenged tone for the remainder of the movie.
In this sequence, Clint Barton, alias Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), takes a near-fatal hit for the team. Meanwhile, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, alias twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen), show up initially as adversaries to the Avengers, who are victorious in their HYDRA offensive.
Kicking back at a victory party, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) challenges his fellow Avengers to lift his mighty hammer, an obvious metaphor for his own Norse ego. Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) join Thor in a series of testosterone contests, most of them to welcome comic effect.
On the dating front, Natasha/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) appear to be a hot item. After the big fight, she calms the Green Beast back to Bruce form by gently caressing his hands and arms, probably the only time that such attentions from Scarlett Johansson actually calmed any man down.
But relative calm is only an illusion. Eventually, artificial intelligence experiments by Nazi baddie Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann) lead to the creation of an uber-villainous Transformers wannabe named Ultron, played by James Spader in one of the greatest voice-over performances ever executed.
That Ultron's vocal delivery packs in more fun and personality than the other characters tells us that "Ultron" misfires on more than one metaphorical gas-injected cylinder.
Smart, witty and heartless, Ultron makes a terrific super villain in a not-so-smart, semi-witty, heartless movie in which the personalities of the superheroes become overpowered by blinding tracking shots, strobe-light edits, "Matrix"-like slow-motion action segments, and a menagerie of ill-defined characters whose purposes remain murky.
It doesn't help that the plot to "Ultron" appears to be a rewarmed premise from an old "Star Trek" TV episode involving an A.I. machine that decides the universe would be better off purged of weak and pesky humanoids. At least that episode offered a diabolically clever ending requiring quick thinking by the humans.
"Ultron" ends with a screechy, all-out, visual-effects-crammed free-for-all, setting up Danny Elfman's triumphantly pulse-pounding score to rescue a banal finale that fails to replicate the breathless joy of accomplishment washing over the superheroes (and us) at the close of Whedon's 2012 adventure.
For a while, it appeared that "Ultron" might actually step out of its comfort zone by killing off a major character, following the lead of HBO's groundbreaking "Game of Thrones." Hawkeye appears to be ripe for demise. He's the family man with the most to lose and the most humanly sympathetic of the Avengers.
Doesn't happen. But Hawkeye does possess a magically never-ending supply of explosive super arrows.
In the movie's most thoughtless scene, Hawkeye points out that the Avengers are up against a super intelligent entity, battling armies of robots, "and I have a bow and arrow!" he says. "Nothing makes sense!"
Pointing out the ridiculousness of a superhero world doesn't make it more credible. By drawing attention to the absurdity, "Ultron" encourages us to un-suspend our disbelief, unlike the original "Avengers" that drew us into the heart of the fantastic - and we never questioned it.
Maybe we'll go back to not questioning it when "Avengers: Infinity War" Parts 1 and 2 come out in 2018 and 2019.
“Avengers: The Age of Ultron”
★ ★ ½
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, James Spader, Jeremy Renner
Directed by: Joss Whedon
Other: A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for violence, suggestive comments. 141 minutes