"Everyone creates the thing they dread."
Thus speaks Ultron in the Avengers sequel and it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to think of this as writer/director Joss Whedon's personal aside to the gallery. Has he created a bloated, turgid, mess of a movie? Is it a Frankenstein's monster that has turned on its creator?
Well, whilst there's plenty of evidence to suggest this might be the case, I for one enjoyed it a whole lot more than the first one. I thought it was a rollicking two and a half hours of entertainment and could happily have sat through another half hour of it. If the Avengers movies were a band this would be "the difficult second album". To be honest it's just a joyous relief to just get through it and find out that it's not shit.
After the first one, Joss Whedon was saying in interviews that he was going to scale things down for the sequel, make it more of a character study piece. There was obviously no way Marvel was going to let that happen. In addition to delivering a crowd pleasing movie, Whedon has to set up various strands for the Marvel universe, tie up loose ends from other films in the universe, introduce new characters, develop secondary characters, be true to the main characters, find a thread through an already complex narrative and deliver spectacular and original set pieces and keep it cohesive. That's one hell of a mountain to climb! Personally, I think he nailed it.
The first Avengers film had a frantic but unimpressive opening, a wonderful middle section full of character and wit and surprises and a tedious seen it all before CGI ending.
What you have in 'Ultron' is a frantic, impressive opening, a wonderful middle section full of character and wit and surprises and a full on spectacular comic book ending.
So structurally, it's not very different at all, but it helps that the plot is much stronger. The first one, as I remember it. was mostly about Loki and his pokey stick and things falling out of the sky to attack the Earth. It was bollocks. This one at least has echoes of 9/11, The War On Terror and an exploration of Hollywood's recent go-to big theme: the threat of artificial intelligence. It's not as grown up and intriguing as last year's 'Winter Soldier' but it is a lot better than just running around and fighting over one of those Marvel glowing gems of power that they love so much.
We don't waste any time getting to the action and start with The Avengers demolishing a Hydra stronghold in some made up East European country (Sokovia). It's a gritty beginning, with the team coming across more like a military task force than a superhero outfit. There's dizzying action, plenty of trademark Whedon quips and it's a good rousing start to the show.
We don't hear about Hydra again. It looks as if Marvel has dropped this particular ball and left it for the Agents of S.H.I.T.E. tv series to deal with, which is probably a wise move, but also feels a little odd after being so well set up in 'Winter Soldier'.
What we do have is Ultron: a cynical, snide, artificial intelligence encased in a robotic humanoid shell. Developed in secret (The Ultron Project) as a protector of the Earth, Ultron immediately goes all Colonel Kurtz on us and becomes a homicidal force unto himself. It's Skynet all over again.
The always excellent James Spader manages to deliver the perfect voice for Ultron and gives us a villain worthy of filling the void vacated by Tom Hiddleston's excellent turn as Loki.
I've heard criticism that the film throws too many new characters at us but I don't think that's fair. There's only three new major characters to get to grips with. Two of them start off as villains but are so obviously destined to become team members that there's not really much mystery to them. Their powers are pretty easy to grasp too. One can move at phenomenal speed and the other is basically Carrie, in one of her pissed off moods. I took a while to warm to both characters (and actors) but came around to them in the end.
The other major character to introduce is the Vision, who is one of the more intriguing characters in the Marvel universe and a personal favourite of mine. He doesn't get much screen time but makes a real impression with the scenes he is in. Paul Bettany is a great choice for the role and I look forward to seeing what they do with this character in future instalments.
I guess it's the elongated middle part of the film that is going to let people down the most. It's heavy on character, heavy on dialogue and fleshes out back stories, motivations and fears for all the principle characters. Actually, I really liked this bit a lot, but it doesn't all work by any means. Whedon can't quite seem to get a handle on The Black Widow (a surprise considering that his reputation rests largely on writing strong female characters for tv) and uses her instead for some not wholly convincing soap operatics with Bruce Banner and gives her some really clunky lines ("I'm always picking up after you boys.") There's a moment where she reveals a bit of her backstory that completely jars with the tone of the film and is never really alluded to again. Very strange. But the little nuggets we get about Black Widow and Hawkeye do sort of fill in the gaps from them not having their own movies and makes you believe that actually - if those movies did exist - they would be really interesting to watch. It makes you realise that they are not superfluous members by any means.
It's a shame that Marvel couldn't coax Gwyneth Paltrow and Natalie Portman into the mix to reprise their roles as love interest for Iron Man and Thor respectively. Their absence, though explained, is a big elephant in the room. Thor, becomes a problem too and seems to leave the movie way too often and reappear at will for reasons barely explained. Whilst there is a sense that a greater narrative is going on elsewhere which will only be explained in subsequent movies, it leaves you scratching your head a little bit in the here and now. All the main actors are comfortable in their roles and it is still a joy to watch them interact with each other.
In truth, I'm not the biggest fan of Whedon's writing. I think it's all too often a series of one liners and quips rather than proper dialogue but I think he really does write in different voices this time around. I can even excuse Ultron being a sarcastic, witty, arrogant bastard because he is essentially the dark side of Tony Stark. It makes sense for him to talk like that.
The end of the film, whether by accident or design, plays out as a sort of riposte to Zack Snyder's truly awful 'Man Of Steel' by having the Avengers making it their priority to get civilians out of harms way before the final epic showdown. It's good to see that they've done a risk assessment first and acted accordingly.
The final battle when it comes is both a triumph and a let down. It's a let down because it is ultimately just another weary CGI battle with our heroes making a last stand against wave after wave of bloodless, inconsequential, robot men. It's a triumph because it acknowledges how ridiculous it all is - "The city is flying! We're fighting an army of robots! And I have a bow and arrow! None of this makes sense!"....and because they make it FUN to watch
Overall it's probably the most comic book-y of superhero movies since Sam Raimi's 'Spider-Man 2' and I loved it for that reason. It's ambitious and silly. It's dark and frivolous. It's mindless and intelligent. It's juvenile and grown-up. It has everything we go to these sort of movies for. It's a blast!
And I haven't even mentioned The Hulk vs Iron Man. This actually happened.
The film itself ends as a battle of wills between two A.I. creations. It's easy to imagine a similar conflict behind the scenes over Joss Whedon's ideas and Marvel's overall vision for the universe. The two don't seem to quite match up and there's some tension as a result of that. You do get a sense that the film has lost something in the edit. Whedon's preferred cut was three hours long and there are already rumours of an extended blu-ray release with an alternate ending. This sounds like interference and compromise somewhere along the way. Whedon in particular seems exhausted by the project and may be bailing out at this point. It's a shame because these films need his quirks to make them work.
Even so, despite its flaws, this is an ambitious, almost unwieldy project that mostly succeeds. It comes close to being great. It should be applauded for that. Joss Whedon and Marvel have tried to push the boundaries of what the superhero movie can be. Marvel's ambitions seem to be pushed further with every film, they're always changing their approach and are always moving forwards. They want to make money and they want to make art. They mostly get to have their cake and eat it.
Go get yourself a big slice of Avengers cake and gorge on it.
Thus speaks Ultron in the Avengers sequel and it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to think of this as writer/director Joss Whedon's personal aside to the gallery. Has he created a bloated, turgid, mess of a movie? Is it a Frankenstein's monster that has turned on its creator?
Well, whilst there's plenty of evidence to suggest this might be the case, I for one enjoyed it a whole lot more than the first one. I thought it was a rollicking two and a half hours of entertainment and could happily have sat through another half hour of it. If the Avengers movies were a band this would be "the difficult second album". To be honest it's just a joyous relief to just get through it and find out that it's not shit.
After the first one, Joss Whedon was saying in interviews that he was going to scale things down for the sequel, make it more of a character study piece. There was obviously no way Marvel was going to let that happen. In addition to delivering a crowd pleasing movie, Whedon has to set up various strands for the Marvel universe, tie up loose ends from other films in the universe, introduce new characters, develop secondary characters, be true to the main characters, find a thread through an already complex narrative and deliver spectacular and original set pieces and keep it cohesive. That's one hell of a mountain to climb! Personally, I think he nailed it.
The first Avengers film had a frantic but unimpressive opening, a wonderful middle section full of character and wit and surprises and a tedious seen it all before CGI ending.
What you have in 'Ultron' is a frantic, impressive opening, a wonderful middle section full of character and wit and surprises and a full on spectacular comic book ending.
So structurally, it's not very different at all, but it helps that the plot is much stronger. The first one, as I remember it. was mostly about Loki and his pokey stick and things falling out of the sky to attack the Earth. It was bollocks. This one at least has echoes of 9/11, The War On Terror and an exploration of Hollywood's recent go-to big theme: the threat of artificial intelligence. It's not as grown up and intriguing as last year's 'Winter Soldier' but it is a lot better than just running around and fighting over one of those Marvel glowing gems of power that they love so much.
We don't waste any time getting to the action and start with The Avengers demolishing a Hydra stronghold in some made up East European country (Sokovia). It's a gritty beginning, with the team coming across more like a military task force than a superhero outfit. There's dizzying action, plenty of trademark Whedon quips and it's a good rousing start to the show.
We don't hear about Hydra again. It looks as if Marvel has dropped this particular ball and left it for the Agents of S.H.I.T.E. tv series to deal with, which is probably a wise move, but also feels a little odd after being so well set up in 'Winter Soldier'.
What we do have is Ultron: a cynical, snide, artificial intelligence encased in a robotic humanoid shell. Developed in secret (The Ultron Project) as a protector of the Earth, Ultron immediately goes all Colonel Kurtz on us and becomes a homicidal force unto himself. It's Skynet all over again.
The always excellent James Spader manages to deliver the perfect voice for Ultron and gives us a villain worthy of filling the void vacated by Tom Hiddleston's excellent turn as Loki.
I've heard criticism that the film throws too many new characters at us but I don't think that's fair. There's only three new major characters to get to grips with. Two of them start off as villains but are so obviously destined to become team members that there's not really much mystery to them. Their powers are pretty easy to grasp too. One can move at phenomenal speed and the other is basically Carrie, in one of her pissed off moods. I took a while to warm to both characters (and actors) but came around to them in the end.
The other major character to introduce is the Vision, who is one of the more intriguing characters in the Marvel universe and a personal favourite of mine. He doesn't get much screen time but makes a real impression with the scenes he is in. Paul Bettany is a great choice for the role and I look forward to seeing what they do with this character in future instalments.
I guess it's the elongated middle part of the film that is going to let people down the most. It's heavy on character, heavy on dialogue and fleshes out back stories, motivations and fears for all the principle characters. Actually, I really liked this bit a lot, but it doesn't all work by any means. Whedon can't quite seem to get a handle on The Black Widow (a surprise considering that his reputation rests largely on writing strong female characters for tv) and uses her instead for some not wholly convincing soap operatics with Bruce Banner and gives her some really clunky lines ("I'm always picking up after you boys.") There's a moment where she reveals a bit of her backstory that completely jars with the tone of the film and is never really alluded to again. Very strange. But the little nuggets we get about Black Widow and Hawkeye do sort of fill in the gaps from them not having their own movies and makes you believe that actually - if those movies did exist - they would be really interesting to watch. It makes you realise that they are not superfluous members by any means.
It's a shame that Marvel couldn't coax Gwyneth Paltrow and Natalie Portman into the mix to reprise their roles as love interest for Iron Man and Thor respectively. Their absence, though explained, is a big elephant in the room. Thor, becomes a problem too and seems to leave the movie way too often and reappear at will for reasons barely explained. Whilst there is a sense that a greater narrative is going on elsewhere which will only be explained in subsequent movies, it leaves you scratching your head a little bit in the here and now. All the main actors are comfortable in their roles and it is still a joy to watch them interact with each other.
In truth, I'm not the biggest fan of Whedon's writing. I think it's all too often a series of one liners and quips rather than proper dialogue but I think he really does write in different voices this time around. I can even excuse Ultron being a sarcastic, witty, arrogant bastard because he is essentially the dark side of Tony Stark. It makes sense for him to talk like that.
The end of the film, whether by accident or design, plays out as a sort of riposte to Zack Snyder's truly awful 'Man Of Steel' by having the Avengers making it their priority to get civilians out of harms way before the final epic showdown. It's good to see that they've done a risk assessment first and acted accordingly.
The final battle when it comes is both a triumph and a let down. It's a let down because it is ultimately just another weary CGI battle with our heroes making a last stand against wave after wave of bloodless, inconsequential, robot men. It's a triumph because it acknowledges how ridiculous it all is - "The city is flying! We're fighting an army of robots! And I have a bow and arrow! None of this makes sense!"....and because they make it FUN to watch
Overall it's probably the most comic book-y of superhero movies since Sam Raimi's 'Spider-Man 2' and I loved it for that reason. It's ambitious and silly. It's dark and frivolous. It's mindless and intelligent. It's juvenile and grown-up. It has everything we go to these sort of movies for. It's a blast!
And I haven't even mentioned The Hulk vs Iron Man. This actually happened.
The film itself ends as a battle of wills between two A.I. creations. It's easy to imagine a similar conflict behind the scenes over Joss Whedon's ideas and Marvel's overall vision for the universe. The two don't seem to quite match up and there's some tension as a result of that. You do get a sense that the film has lost something in the edit. Whedon's preferred cut was three hours long and there are already rumours of an extended blu-ray release with an alternate ending. This sounds like interference and compromise somewhere along the way. Whedon in particular seems exhausted by the project and may be bailing out at this point. It's a shame because these films need his quirks to make them work.
Even so, despite its flaws, this is an ambitious, almost unwieldy project that mostly succeeds. It comes close to being great. It should be applauded for that. Joss Whedon and Marvel have tried to push the boundaries of what the superhero movie can be. Marvel's ambitions seem to be pushed further with every film, they're always changing their approach and are always moving forwards. They want to make money and they want to make art. They mostly get to have their cake and eat it.
Go get yourself a big slice of Avengers cake and gorge on it.
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