Movie Review: The Age of Ultron

Avengers: the Age of Ultron is quite possibly the most confused, incomprehensible, and headache-inducing thing Joss Whedon has ever affixed his name to.  I can say this with some certainty as I believe I have seen everything he has done since the debut of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I haven’t seen anything he wrote for the TV series Roseanne, but I have to believe it made more sense than Ultron, which is a mess.

Of course since the film’s release it has come out that Marvel executives tampered with the final product, forcing Whedon to include a scene making no sense at all in order to keep in scenes Whedon thought were important.  Way to go, Marvel; I’m sure pissing off the writer/director of you biggest grossing hit of all time in order to save a shot of Thor with his shirt off was a necessary sacrifice to protect the brand.

I’m trying to think of who is served well by Ultron, but aside from Jeremy Renner, I am drawing a blank.  The Oscar nominee finally gets some quality scenes and a backstory after being a non-entity for most of the original Avengers.  He has a wife and two and a half kids (one of the way), which is weird because I thought he had something going on with Natasha Romanov in The Avengers. 

But then I thought she had chemistry with Captain America in The Winter Soldier, and that she was passing on the Cap to stick with Hawkeye.  Maybe Scarlett Johnasen just has chemistry with everybody (could she please have chemistry with ME?).  Well, everybody except Mark Ruffalo, who the film tries to set up as her love interest in Ultron.  I think Black Widow can do better than a guy who goes green and destroys cities when he hits his thumb with a hammer.

I would recount the plot of The Age of Ultron, but it would sound like babbling.  The Avengers recover Loki’s scepter and the Infinity Stone in it, and because Tony Stark is a genius it takes him under thirty minutes to use it to create a malevolent artificial intelligence that calls itself Ultron.  What happens after that is a bunch of stock action sequences using CGI.

The cast could use some of Joss Whedon’s trademark thinning out at this point.  In addition to the characters from The Avengers (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye), in this film both War Machine (Don Cheadle) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) make appearances (although Falcon is oddly absent in the big battle at the end).  Plus there are the new kids on the block, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, plus Tony Stark’s computer Jarvis.  Despite all the carnage, only one of these eleven characters bites the dust after the last battle, and it isn’t the one you’d suspect.

Of course there are examples of Joss Whedon’s patented verbiage; I suspect he couldn’t write a grocery list without a couple of choice bon mots.  But none of the characters have the chance to shine, we are familiar with all of their fighting styles by now (Black Widow flips and kicks, Thor hits things with his hammer, and Hulk smash), and there isn’t a lot of difference between a seemingly endless number of Chitauri attacking New York City and a seemingly endless number of Stark-bots attacking someplace called Sokovia.  Even Joss Whedon’s imagination seems to be empty.

Whedon has said he is done with the Marvel universe, which is as it should be.  He’s made his (well earned) money and can now focus on personal projects (like that Air Bud reboot he joked about after The Avengers’ record breaking opening weekend).  Besides, if one judges by The Age of Ultron, Whedon’s contribution to the Marvel universe is spent.  When the suits start giving notes to an auteur like Joss Whedon, it is time for him to make another adaptation from Shakespeare; at least THAT guy won’t give him any notes.