Movie review: Avengers: Age of Ultron- Explosions, One-liners and a Lack of Substance

Directed by: Joss Whedon
Produced by: Kevin Feige
Written by: Joss Whedon
Studio: Disney
Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johannson, Samuel. L Jackson
UK Release Date: April 13th 2015
US Release Date: 1st May 2015


The first five minutes or so of this movie felt like a computer game with Captain America stuck on bike mode, dashing through the forest whilst fighting off WW2 villains in a Bavarian forest setting. There was something a bit off with it though. The special effects weren’t very impressive at all, and it looked a bit cheap and unconvincing.

Too many characters, all speaking in one-liners

I decided to give the movie the benefit of the doubt and expected it to suddenly grind to a halt, with a reveal that the bad special effects were actually a dream sequence, or some other contrived movie making false beginning. After the silly special effects were over the movie would then begin proper, right?

No.

That didn’t happen.

What did happen was a continuation of the bad computer generated special effects and childish superhero characters engaging in endless quips, puns and one-liners designed to get comic book fans to say ‘cool’ or ‘awesome.’ It wasn’t a good, entertaining, or even remotely pleasurable viewing experience for me. I really enjoyed the first Avengers movie, and Captain America: Winter Soldier was even better, but Avengers: Age of Ultron lacked a strong central plot idea, and was a dud from the very beginning.

The whole movie felt very flat to me. It came across as a lifeless unit-shifter of a product, using the good will generated by previous movies, and not putting the effort in to be a good movie on it’s own merit. It was a chore of a movie to sit through, with explosions and one-liners scattered across a barren wasteland of a plot and with the sinking sense that they’ve run out of ideas on this one.

Silly battle scene that came across like a computer game

The emotional heart of the movie involved Hulk and Black Widow having a tepid, passion-free romance, and Hawkeye boring cinemagoers with his dull wife and even duller kids. That Hulk/Widow romance was beauty and the beast, but with not enough time spent on it to make you care, and the attention paid to Hawkeye and his family just made you think that he was going to be killed off in the finale of the movie. I won’t spoil what happens to him (you won’t really care anyway), but all it did for me was to drag out the movie, adding an added element of dull quietude to the mess of explosions and one-liners.

The overall dullness, lack of central themes and stilted, too cool for school dialogue meant that I couldn’t relate to anything that was going on in the movie. It was fake, silly and childish, and I couldn’t care less about ANY of the characters. The dialogue was in love with it’s own forced cleverness. It was too self-aware, too self referential, too comic book geek culture obsessed. It annoyed me immensely, and came across like a middle aged comic book fan putting words into the mouths of his favourite comic book characters, not real people having a chat.

The villain of the movie, a computer generated twit called Ultron, was camp, confused, occasionally silly and not particularly threatening. He lacked depth or motive, wanting to kill off the entire human race because humanity sucks, or something like that. Don’t worry though. The Avengers were there to foil his evil plans, cue explosions, cute dialogue and boring bits featuring Hawkeye chatting to his wife. That’s the movie, and that’s all you are getting if you buy a ticket to go and see it.

Crud villain 

The entire Marvel movie franchise has been put in severe jeopardy by this awful, plodding bore of a movie, and I left the cinema feeling disappointed, frustrated, fed up and embarrassed that I’d spent my time and money on something so lacking in ideas and substance.

It left me with the same empty feeling you get after a trip to a fast-food chain ‘restaurant.’ You turn up, order the least unhealthy thing on the menu, have a deeply unsatisfying meal and leave feeling like you shouldn’t have bothered going there in the first place. That’s how I felt after watching Avengers: Age of Ultron. There was something deeply unsatisfying and plastic about the entire experience, and it left me with no desire to return and experience anything on the ‘Marvel’ menu ever again.

Avengers: Age of Ultron has already taken up way too much of my time, so I will finish the review here and end my suffering. No more thinking about this dud of a movie, off it goes, never to be spoken of again. It’s plastic, tasteless and deserves nothing but the bin, so in the bin it goes.


Rating: 2/10 (A very bad movie that has damaged the entire Marvel movie franchise)