Avengers Assemble: Avengers: Age of Ultron

“The city is flying and we're fighting an army of robots. And I have a bow and arrow. Nothing makes sense.”

Filmology Rating: 3 out of 4

Avengers: Age of Ultron was written and directed by, the now unemployed, Joss Whedon.
Tony creates an evil robot voiced by Robert California from "The Office" and people fight robots.
It's best to describe this film as unfocused. In retrospect, when looking back at this film and hearing commentary from Joss Whedon, you can tell just how stressed out he was with this film. His life was in pieces when making this because he just came off the huge success of the first Avengers and Marvel was incredibly controlling of what Joss Whedon had to put in the script.

The main issue with this film is that it was so focused on setting up future films, that it didn't take time to really focus on the story being told. All the things this film sets up is as follows: Tony envisions the Infinity War and sees everyone he knows dead, introduction of Andy Serkis for "Black Panther", mention of Wakanda, Thor envisions Ragnorak, Infinity Stones, Thanos, Hulk getting in the jet to set up Ragnorak, Vision, Hawkeye's family, a romantic relationship between Banner and Black Widow so that Banner has a character dilemma on whether he should leave the Avengers or not, and lastly Captain Marvel (I will get to that). The first "Avengers" film was about the team coming together and this film is about them breaking back apart, leading to "Civil War." Everyone is arguing over whether or not creating Ultron is a good idea, then there is further argument over whether creating Vision is a good idea. That's great. But Thor has to go into the swimming pool to envision Ragnorak, the Infinity Stones, it's just very scatter shot.

The best part of the film is when they are all at Hawkeye's house and they're all wearing flannel. Just seeing them act like normal people and interact is great. It's also such a relief because this film is almost two and a half hours and most of that is due to very excessive action scenes.

I'm fine with excessive action, but a sense of geography is very crucial in a large-scale action sequence. And too many of them makes the audience nauseous. The Hulk Buster scene was actually something Marvel forced Whedon to write in and it does have a purpose, but it serves only to set up Ragnorak and not anything that happens in the film. That scene creates the dilemma over whether Banner should go into hiding or not because he is a destructive monster. The action scene also goes on for far too long.

The writing is notably much sloppier. The film feels to lose pace whenever exposition needs to be delivered. And comedy does not hold up, opposed to many other Marvel films.

Ultron also has a wonderful speech about the Avengers being afraid of change and that what they have is not peace, but quiet. That's great, until Ultron says that he just wants everyone on Earth to die so that robots can rule the Earth. Now he's just evil generic robot. He is also voiced by the wonderful Robert California. That's not the actor's name, but it should be.

In the final shot of the movie is what is left of the Avengers team and Joss Whedon originally had plans to show Captain Marvel in that group. Kevin Feige then said, "Are you kidding?" And she never made it in.
This film has great aspects to it and serves a larger narrative, but the film itself suffers because of that. A film of this size is incredibly difficult to manage and the fact that it's as good as it is, is a huge achievement. However, due to Whedon's struggles, the Russos were hired for the next team up film.

Rating: See It

-Nolan