Avengers Age of Ultron: A Nice Try

Age of Ultron is supposed to be the biggest comic book movie of the year. The superhero film that will raise the bar for all superhero films to follow. It's supposed to be the peak of what the genre can be. Yet, here we are with a ton of negative reviews filling the internet being contested by people written off as Marvel Fanboys. It's in a strange spot. But, how much of it's true. Was Avengers the greatest superhero film? Was it a film made out of necessity to simply set up the next batch of Marvel Movies? Is Josh Whedon a misogynist and racist? Is this the last Avengers movie? The movie is surrounded by more questions than an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire with The Question as a guest. But, let's get to the bottom of some of them. SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED TWICE.

The film starts with the team raiding a Hydra base for Loki's scepter (Loki isn't in the movie). Along the way they're attacked by Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. They retrieve the scepter and discover that there's an artificial intelligence program in the scepter. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner put it into their Ultron protection program. Because, Ant-Man isn't around to destroy the team this time. Then they go have a victory party. War Machine and Falcon are invited, then Captain America asks Falcon why he isn't looking for The Winter Soldier and he leaves. Rhodey tries to help Tony lift Thor's hammer. Doesn't help.

Ultron attacks the team after killing JARVIS, Tony's A.I. program. They defeat him and he takes off to Africa to get vibranium from Ulysses Klaue. They name drop Wakanda and Stark and Rogers get shook. Ultron takes Klaue's arm and The Avengers attack. They get taken out by Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Hulk freaks out and Tony calls in the Hulkbuster armor to fight him in an African city that isn't Wakanda.

While they regroup at Hawkeye's home alongside his wife and children Nick Fury shows up to drop some old black man logic and they regroup. He leaves. The team captures a body that's part human and part robot that Ultron had been working on. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch fall victim to Captain America giving them a talk about the powers of good. He makes them Avengers. Tony and Bruce decided they haven't created enough rogue A.I. programs so they scoop together the scraps of JARVIS and put him in the body. It freaks out and Thor shows up to jam an infinity gem into it's head. The Vision is born and everything is good.

The team takes off for the final battle with Ultron on an island he's lifted into the sky. He plans to drop it and destroy the earth with the impact. The team is losing and all of a sudden Nick Fury shows up with a few SHIELD helicarriers and War Machine. Falcon doesn't appear. The fight rages and The Avengers win. Fast forward, Tony quits to go live with Pepper Pots on a farm, Hawkeye goes home to his family. Hulk, not Bruce Banner, has flown a plane to Fiji. Thor is going home. Nick Fury hasn't restarted SHIELD but he's built The Avengers a base. A new team of Avengers made up of Captain America, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, The Vision, Falcon and War Machine.

Everyone knows Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are incestuous. At best it's heavily hinted in the comics, at worst it's out in the open for everyone. Here, they go with the heavily hinted. Early in the film it's just a normal sibling relationship. Then Quicksilver starts stroking her face and waist, and bottom. They just went with the heavy hints here. Also, they have a room on the ship with equipment just for them despite only being part of The Team for the last half hour at most.

That's a big problem for me. War Machine and Falcon were both there for the initial contact with Ultron. Yet, Falcon wasn't mentioned again until the last scene and War Machine appeared for 30 seconds in the final battle, to chase down robots running away and help civilians. I thought it was strange that they had two established heroes appear for less than 10 minutes in the film, and make two of the villains a bigger parts of the team. Then someone pointed out there's petitions to get Josh Whedon away from Agents of SHIELD because of racist undertones.

Then I started researching, and he also has problems with women. I started thinking about the portrayal of the women in the film. Scarlet Witch is usually the brains of her duo with Quick Silver. Here, she seemed to suffer from some mental deficiencies at times. Black Widow is a Russian Super Soldier but spends most of the time love sick over Hulk. Dr. Cho is a world renowned scientist, but only has breakthroughs when someone like Banner or Ultron points out her mistakes. At first I thought these were strange choices, but thanks to Twitter it seems deliberate and nobody on the staff was willing to call out Whedon.

The film didn't even have a strong plot. It was mostly "Ultron is here, let's not be there until we want to fight him." It was a great action movie but the plot fell short like most others with most of the dialogue being throwaway conversation that meant nothing. After Guardians of The Galaxy, it's kind of hard to go back to this always serious tone that the films take.

In fact, I'd go as far as saying it was just to set up more movies. Thor spends the whole time complaining that they're trying to keep him from going home before finally leaving with a friendly goodbye. RDJ wants a break from the Ironman films and they made sure to write in that he wants to start a farm with Pepper. Hulk flies off to Fiji because they know there is no way to make a good Hulk movie but you don't want him in the next film. Fury is now in charge of the Avengers because you need to keep him around but you killed SHIELD in The Winter Soldier. Thor of all people perfectly explains the infinity gem because you need it for the next film. The visions the team had under Scarlet Witch's influence also hinted at other movies. Especially Thor's with Heimdall telling him that he'll destroy Asgard.

Don't get me wrong, the action was great but this wasn't a great film. It was made out of greed, not even necessity. In the comics, Ant-Man is the one to create Ultron, not Stark and Banner. We could have waited until after an Ant-Man movie to set this up, but they just had to jam another film in with loosely written plot because of money. They backtrack on things like Nick Fury and Maria Hill going separate ways and retiring. It was a nice try, but this film was just for the love of money.

You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet
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