Review: Age of Ultron

No preamble, hit the ground running, just like Age of Ultron.

We begin in fake Eastern European 27a, Sokovia, where the Avengers are blasting through a HYRDA base. Iron Man, Captain American, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye are just plowing through HYRDA goons as they try to get to the main facility. This particular HYDRA base is special, it has Baron Wolfgang von Strucker whom has been using Loki’s scepter to experiment on humans. Of the unspecified amount of people experimented on, only two survived, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff aka Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. The action is intense, and there’s a surprising amount of humor. Iron Man flies into the main base, “We should talk,” gives them all disabling wounds, “Good talk,” one of the HYDRA Goons, “No it wasn’t.” The twins join the fight, Pietro's speed proving to be troublesome for the Avengers, while Wanda's vaguely described magics also raise some havoc.

If you squint, you can see The Vision.

They capture Strucker and the scepter, but the twins escape. And before leaving, Wanda gets in close and plants a little fear in Stark’s brain. He is given a vision of all the Avengers dead while he watches another Chitari invasion. Back at the Avengers base at Stark Tower, Hawkeye is stitched up with ‘The Cradle’ a high tech synthetic tissue mending thing, while Tony and Bruce discover a number of things locked within Loki’s scepter. The most important of which is an artificial intelligence that makes the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world, Jarvis, seem simple.  Best analogy? Jarvis is a chess board, and the AI in the scepter is one of those three dimensional chess boards. Weird. Tony gets the bright idea to combine the AI with his “Ultron” global defense program, Bruce is initially against it but is quickly swayed. They use up their three day time limit, and leave to enjoy the Avengers victory party. Unbeknownst to them, the final Ultron simulation renders. Ultron quickly uploads all of the Avengers data, and then assaults Jarvis, destroying him. Ultron sets Tony’s machines to work, assembling Iron Man drones.

We get a nice scene of the Avengers at the party, mingling with some of Cap’s old war buddies, some top minds like the Cradle’s maker Dr. Helen Cho, and some of the not Avenging superheroes like Falcon and War Machine. We get the standard Stan Lee cameo, this time as a vet that get's his metaphorical teeth kicked in thanks to a swig of magic booze from Thor. There is also a pretty funny argument between Thor and Tony over who's super smart girlfriend is better. At the end of the party, the core team plus Falcon and War Machine try to lift Thor’s hammer. Cap is the only one to make it wobble a little. Good on ya, Captain America. The party is interrupted, however, by Ultron in his first, mangled body. He gives an evil speech about how none of the Avengers are worthy, and how they are part of the problem with the world before he sends in the other Iron Man drones to cause havoc. The team destroy most of them, but one gets away with Loki’s scepter. Ultron travels back to Strucker’s base and builds a new body. With this new look, he goes into town and recruits the Maximoff twins, who want to kill Tony Stark because his weapons killed their folks.

The Avengers, despite being forced to use only physical files, realize the Ultron is going to be going after Ulysses Klaue. Klaue had just recently stolen some Vibranium from Wakanda. No, sadly there is no Black Panther in this movie. The team arrives just behind Ultron and start duking it out. Iron Man and Ultron battle in the sky while the rest of the team fight the twins. The Avengers hold their own, until Scarlet Witch starts weaving her mental magic. She makes them see haunting visions. Black Window see visions of her training as a Russian Spy. Captain America sees a grizzly welcome home party, complete with Peggy Carter, before being left alone in the dance hall. Thor is transported to a bizarre hell, and sees flashes of strange stones. We don’t see what she puts into the Hulk’s head, but it’s enough to make him go on a rampage in Johannesburg. Iron Man destroys the Ultron before him, Ultron’s main consciousness escapes, and goes to stop the Hulk. He calls down “Veronica” from his Stark Satellite. Veronica turns out to be a mobile, anti-Hulk arsenal, complete with holding cells for the Hulk and several Hulk-Buster parts. Iron-Man in his Hulk Buster Armor and Hulk duke it out, with Iron Man coming out on top. After destroying fifteen cars and an entire skyscraper. So yeah, bad guy gets away and Tony is forced to buy a building. All around, C – day.

The Hulkbuster Armor. A thing of beauty.

The Avengers lay low for a bit, at Hawkeye’s safe house in the sticks. Which, as it turns out, is his actual house. Where his pregnant wife and two kids live. Well, that was out of left field. Thor departs to try and learn what he saw, Steve and Tony bond/argue, Clint considers retirement, and Bruce and Natasha consider…running away together? Okay, I’m all for romances, but they went from flirting to running off together in under 24 hours. This is the Avengers, not Disney! Oh wait… same thing now. Damn. Whatever, it’s because of that that Ultron gets to keep singing “There are no strings on me,” which is so creepy and awesome. Gotta take the good with the bad. Fury shows up and convinces the team to not give up. Thor and his good buddy Dr. Selvig travel to a special pool to relive Thor’s vision.

Ultron breaks into Dr. Helen Cho’s lab in Seoul, South Korea and uses Loki’s scepter on her. His evil plan is to make a new body, using Vibranium and the synthetic tissue of the Cradle to make a perfect body. He also brakes Loki’s scepter, revealing the Infinity Stone within and sticks it into his new body’s forehead. Scarlet Witch touches the Cradle while Ultron begins uploading himself, and sees his plan. She sees the genocide he’s plotting, and she and Pietro bail. A huge brawl leaves the Avengers with Ultron’s body, Captain America with the Twins, but Ultron with Black Widow.

Tony convinces Bruce to go with insane plan number 4 for the week, complete the new machine. He wants to upload Jarvis, whom had escaped into the Internet when Ultron attacked him, into it. It takes a little more convincing, but they agree. They’re nearly finished when Cap and the twins arrive. Another brawl brakes out, as the Docs try to finish the upload and Cap and the wins try to stop them. It ends when Thor flies in and fills the body with lightning. The Vision awakens, and after some explaining and arguing, the team agrees to stop Ultron. It’s a race to stop the mad machine’s insane but awesome evil plan. Not going to ruin it, but it’s… intense.

"I've got no strings to hold me down" he sings gleefully
as he peppers civilians with a minigun.

So the good, there’s a lot. The teams pretty awesome, we see some good combos between Cap and Thor, some great speeches from Ultron, Vision, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Captain America, and amazing action sequences. The humor is damn good too, the HYDRA joke I mentioned in the beginning is one of the first and they only go up from there. The effects are spectacular. I especially love the look of Ultron, seven feet tall, powerfully built and with an amazingly animated face. The Twins and the Vision were tragically under hyped, all three were great. I especially love the fact that after, oh, six movies, this is the first time we see Paul Bettany on screen as the Vision. I especially like the allusion to it, when the first thing that the Vision does after being “born” is fly to the first reflective surface to look at his face. Very well done. Every part is pretty awesomely cast, I especially like James Spader as Ultron. It’s a little different from the original. This Ultron shows quite a few emotions, sure their typically rage, anger, and/or confusion, but there are a few more too. He plots, he broods a little, and even pouts a few times. Which was weird, not going to lie. While I still am partial to the original open mouth design, giving him more of a human face does make it easier to read the characters face. Which is kind of important, especially since this Ultron isn’t as wooden as normal.

The bad are worth mentioning. I felt that the sudden relationship between Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff is… odd. It kind of fits, both kind of broken individuals that might fit together. The things is, it’s kind of just dropped on us. I recall nothing of the sort being mentioned in Avengers, or in Captain America 2 or Iron Man 3. It just felt a little forced, is all. Also, part of the problem with a legion of Ultrons is that sometimes the fight scenes get a little…muddled. All that silver and blue and red just starts to blur together. And while I like a good chunk of Ultron’s adaption, some of the humor is a little much. One too many jokes from or around the homicidal machine. I think it was seeing him getting punched mid speech by the Hulk was where it got me. It was just a little too much like Loki and the Puny God moment. Just saying

Overall I’m giving this one an A -. There’s a lot to like, and only a few stumbles here and there. It’s a good continuation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’m hoping Ant-Man and the rest of the new films are up to par. Next time, Avengers number one, the Essential Story.

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