Cast: Everyone wants to be in the Avengers. The expected faces (Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner), new faces (Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, James Spader, Linda Cardellini, Andy Serkis), and even some familiar ones (Cobie Smulders, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Bettany, Hayley Atwell, Don Cheadle, Anthony Mackie). They are all putting up the performances you need in the movie. There's basically two camps regarding this: there's two many characters to service or this is a movie in which no character needs a lot of attention. I'm more the latter than the former.
Plot: The movie starts with the group already together on a mission where they get Loki's scepter from an Eastern European facility. Tony Stark (Downey) wants to use the technology of the scepter to program something he calls Voltron: a robotic defense system that would essentially replace the need for the Avengers. That goes wrong and an enemy is created. The enemy, Ultron, employs the help of two not-quite-mutant siblings*, Quicksilver (Johnson) and Scarlett Witch (Olsen). Battles ensue. Tempers flare. Jokes are cracked. The world is saved. To expect anything else would be foolish.
*They ARE siblings. For legal purposes, the ARE NOT mutants.
Elephant in the Room: I hear that this is 90% setup for future movies. That depends on how you look at it. This is clearly setting up a lot. The more I've read about the movie, the more I realize how much was setup for future movies. That's kind of what I love about the MCU. There's a lot going on at all times. There's not one single story, so you can be in the middle of Age of Ultron and see that X is leading into the Black Panther or Y is setting up the Infinity War (whatever that means). Certainly, the less you know about the comics, the less intrusive all these allusions to the future are. They just feel like things that are happening.
To Sum Things Up:
We are so spoiled right now. It's not entirely our fault. After all, we did get The Avengers in 2012, which was a minor miracle of cinema. Action-packed. Funny. Well developed characters. A clear villain. It set an almost impossible bar for Age of Ultron. The main difference between the movies is key. The Avengers was the end of something (Phase 1, specifically). Age of Ultron is the middle of something. It's hard to make a movie feel special when it's so clearly building toward bigger things. Personally, I think Age of Ultron, in a vacuum is as good as The Avengers. All the same stuff is there that made the first one great. The vague feeling of conclusion in The Avengers though is replaced with anticipation of what's next in Age of Ultron. If this turns out to be the Two Towers of the Avengers trilogy, then that's OK with me.
Related Reactions:
The Avengers
Iron Man 3
Thor: The Dark World
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Guardians of the Galaxy
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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