Avengers: Age of Ultron

Here We Go Again

Every time I watch one of these comic book movies I get overwhelmed with this sense of whether I should be watching something so ostentatious as a hundred million dollar movie dedicated to bringing comic book characters to life. I like action movies but there’s something very decadent about a civilisation that expends so much capital on its fantasies. Then again, you could argue the pyramids built by pharaohs were equally fanciful and decadent as the contemporary Hollywood dream factory. We’re drowning in this kind of product.

As usual here’s the spoiler alert just in case I let something out of the bag and you complain afterwards.

What’s Good About It

The best aspects of this film is the way it follows on from the previous film seamlessly. There is no jarring reorientation, no twist in the plot or revision of character that requires jettisoning information gained from the first film.  Captain America remains consistent with the Cappy we know from the Captain America movies as well as the first Avengers movie.  The same goes for Thor and Black Widow, while we learn a good deal more about Hawkeye.  Even Tony Stark with his increasing PTSD remains the same Tony Stark we love and hold dear.

The tone of the film is remarkably like the previous film, which owes a great deal to the guiding hand of Joss Whedon, who has clearly exercised a great deal of auteur-ish control over the last two films. I say “-ish” because he inherited the characters an authorship does not reside with him completely, but given the constraints, he has put together a remarkably consistent vision that reflects a deep reading of this comic book material.

It’s colourful, light in tone and very good-natured, fun entertainment. It’s the movie equivalent of getting a second puppy for Christmas.

What’s Bad About It

I must be getting cranky because the recent spate of movies where the good guys slay large quantities of bad guys is beginning to grate on me. I get it that it’s an action movie so it’s more exciting when there’s more action on screen; and this leads to lots of blows against lots of foes, but at some point you simply wonder why the bad guys can’t muster better tactics given their numbers. The good guys start looking like bullies, and I’m not sure that’s the desired effect.

It goes to the core of the comic book hero thing – I know it’s one kind of pleasure seeing bad guys being beaten, but if the match is not remotely even, then you’re sort of rooting for the bully. I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s intended. Ultron doesn’t really have a chance, and no matter how the script couches it, it doesn’t really get all that tense. It’s bad drama when a bunch of really super-duper good guys gang up on a mal-formed AI robot. It’s actually not a fair fight, even if the AI looks for a little while like it’s a scary Frankemstein monster. 

It’s like the Beatles – where everybody has a favourite Beatle – everybody has a favourite Avenger; however unlike with the Beatles, everybody in the audience gets their need serviced sequentially. While all this is going on, the story essentially stops and drops tension.

And so we sit while we wait for the scene to go through the bit where Thor smashes a bunch of baddies and Hulk smashes a bunch of baddies and Captain America smashes a bunch of baddies and Iron Man does his gizmo thing and then dispatches some baddies with missiles, and Black Widow stabs a bunch of baddies and Hawkeye shoots some arrows and slays some baddies and… You want me to just get on with this right? 

That’s what I’m talking about.

What’s Interesting About It

The more interesting aspect of this instalment comes from how the villain comes into being – it does so because Scarlet Witch screws with Tony Stark’s mind and this makes him confront his deepest fear, and this manifests itself with the urgent need to create an ultimate AI to protect Earth but it all goes wrong and instead we get Ultron.

Ultron, unlike other villains who are metaphorical shadow projections, is in fact Tony Stark’s shadow set loose upon the world. All of which goes to show that Scarlet Witch’s ability to truly fuck with your mind might be a lot more powerful than being the God of Thunder or the Incredible Hulk. James Spader gives voice to Ultron and turns in his current-stock-in-trade ‘Black List’ creepy guy performance. In doing so he introduces a strange vulnerability to this figure that betrays the colossal threat he is meant to represent.

It’s even weirder that had not Stark unleashed the Frankenstein in Ultron, there would not be a plot to this film at all. Joss Whedon might have given in to his deeper impulse towards melodrama, which was the hallmark of the TV series ’Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, but in this film, it’s making the problem worse. This film is about the externalised character fault of Tony Stark, without actually getting to couch it with Tony Stark. Instead, everybody sort of glosses over the central character problem and busies themselves smashing robot drones in action sequences.  It’s not the best drama to follow a good setup.

Self-Loathing As The Enemy

Ultron being the manifestation of Tony Stark’s shadow is strangely filled with Self-loathing and a genocidally destructive impulse. It’s really hard to see Ultron as character, and more as a runaway subsidiary mental aspect of Tony Stark, wreaking havoc on a largely unsuspecting world – although after 3 iron man movies AND the first Avengers, why the world might not suspect Tony Stark of these destructive qualities is a quandary.

Basically, the plot can be boiled down to Tony Stark’s self-loathing has gone on a rampage and his friends have to stick it back in the genie bottle. It is in some ways very Joss Whedon in it s whimsy, but it’s a little too literal for my tastes.

Besides which Tony Stark is so smug, he could do with the self-loathing. It’s not for nothing Dr Banner thinks an AI defence machine a crappy idea when Tony Stark brings it up. That character understands self-loathing really well.

The Hulk & Black Widow Romance

Really? You gotta be kidding me. And the bit where Cappy offers romantic advice to Dr. Banner? I just don't’ think so, somehow.

All these fully-grown adult characters tussling with their own sexual lives with the clumsiness of teenagers, feels really odd. It’s probably a sign I’m getting too old for this genre. I want to stay emotionally retarded and enjoy the whole ride, but somehow life just isn’t letting me.

Captain America Tragedy In Motion

One of the most depressing things hanging over any of the characters is that Captain America is going to die. We know this from the comic books, and Marvel being bloody-minded as well as bloodthirsty, is that they will kill off Steve Rogers, and he’ll be replaced. More than anybody else on screen, you’re struck with a morbid sort of “what does this matter? He’s going to die anyway” feeling.

Worse still, Chris Evans keeps making noises about wanting out of the Marvel deal. This adds to the sense of inevitability that Steve Rogers is going to die, and everything he is doing now on screen is going to be somehow rendered trivial by that death. I don’t know how Marvel can undo that problem, because it’s going to go right into the next movie and the next movie and the next until Captain America finally dies. 

It’s depressing viewing.

Eastern Europe Gets A Bad Rap

Hollywood was possibly traumatised by the fall of the Berlin Wall and suddenly it had to deal with writing about the post-communist world in Eastern Europe. Maybe the trauma comes form the Bosnian conflict followed by the Kosovo conflict; neither of which endeared us to the Serbs – who after all can lay claim to starting World War I. It might have been in some other movie where somebody exclaims, “you come from these nowhere places and press your claims!”

And so, in setting part of the action in fictional Eastern European country, they’ve tried not to offend anybody by insulting the whole region. It’s as if every cliché about the random stereotyping of East Europeans is compressed into the generic East European accents of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. In an attempt to be diverse, the film sort of blackfaces East Europe into a bunch of tropes, and the result is a bit like Borat’s Kazakhstan village where he proudly hails some random woman, “this is my sister, number 4 prostitute in whole village!”.

Because Dracula comes from East Europe and Frankenstein from central Europe, and Black Widow comes from Russia, we get the interest from Joss Whedon’s part. But because New York and South Africa and Seoul get a modicum of realism as locales, the invention of a totally fictional country where all the East European stereotypes are true, stands out as rather yucky comic book mimesis.  It probably works better in comic books. On the screen, it comes across as terrible. And I’m not particularly sympathetic to Eastern European sensitivities as such.

The Retirements And New Guys

Tony Stark has been heavily PTSD since Iron Man 2. Iron Man 3 showed him as pretty close to the edge while Avengers lumped him with some heavy fresh trauma. I’m not surprised the character is retiring from the Avengers team. What was more surprising is Clint Barton whose Hawkeye has a complete private life with wife and 2.5 kids (wife is pregnant). 

Given the everyman sort of status Hawkeye has in the group, it becomes abundantly clear that he too just can’t continue doing the hairy action sequences when he has a family where he must return. All of which suggests all this action stuff is something you have to grow out of. Thor's gone without really explaining a lot, so I guess that's 4 who won't be there from the first bunch.

Stepping into their place are Falcon and War Machine, while also adding the Scarlet Witch and the Vision. There’s talk of bringing in Spiderman to boot. It’s a crowded future, which means the problem of having to cater to all the characters' action needs is going to make things even more long-winded than this film. 

On a side note, I think it’s great that Marvel has got back the Spiderman character rights they had to sell way back when. It’s a real shame that in the process Andrew Garfield is getting shunted out of the picture. At least he wanted to be ‘in’. The rumour is that it's going to be a young Spiderman next.
I guess I'll keep watching these because it's sort of an event each time they come out. It's like they've pushed the marketing model out to the limits and they've found a new horizon of cashflow. We're all stuck in the vortex. How can we not watch the next installation?