Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johansson (Marvel/Walt Disney Studios)
A superhero is overwhelmed with emotion that feeds their superpowers in a climactic scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron. And I’m not talking about The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo).
Marvel fanboys are inherently invested in these characters, but moviegoers whose Friday night is a choice between this and Far from the Madding Crowd may need something more than explosions to lure them in. The Marvel universe has its own variety of human feeling that it expresses in a manner that probably would not occur to Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba Everdene. It involves explosions.
I’ve only seen a handful of the Marvel movies and none of the related TV, though my brother tells me that this week’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” cleverly sets up the movie. The political maneuverings and complicated relationships among this tangled web of characters largely escapes moviegoers like me who are missing pieces of this complicated puzzle, and that lack of backstory makes it hard for me to get invested in the film’s first hour. People that dedicated probably already saw Age of Ultron last night. Is there anything to lure someone who doesn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle?
Maybe! Despite all of the special effects and superpowers, despite the constant stream of action, director Joss Whedon keeps things moving and even pauses for a brief moment of relative calm now and then. He keeps things breezy, but this isn’t quite as tongue-in-cheek as the first Avengers movie. There’s no post-credits scene (there is a mid-credits stinger), and if there’s a shawarma reference here I missed it. What’s left is a densely packed onslaught of action and occasional character development that careens around the screen for almost two and a half hours and is entertaining for about half of that time.
Ruffalo’s Hulk remains my favorite of the characters because of his central conflict: that of a rational scientist whose superpower manifests itself only when he becomes an irrational raving beast. His may be the biggest emotions, but they aren’t the only ones in the Marvel universe.
The villainy heaped upon the Avengers comes not just in the form of brute force but psych ops. Loki was the manipulative cad in Whedon’s 2012 film, and even though Tom Hiddleston doesn’t reprise his role here, he still toys with them in absentia, setting up the Avengers to retrieve his scepter only to let it bite them in the superpants. But new villainess (or is she?) Wanda Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch (Elisabeth Olson), casts a spell over the players, sending Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) to hallucinate that all the Avengers died and it was his fault.
Stark is his usual wise-cracking self, but his superpowers pose a dilemma, as even his friends know that sometimes he doesn’t know the difference between saving the world and destroying it. With great power comes great responsibility, and these adolescent fantasies of saving a world in crisis play with ordinary humans’ feelings of hopelessness to make their world a better place and even to control their own puny emotions.
The 2012 film had an unexpected cameo from Polish art house director Jerzy Skolimowski, but Landmark patrons who accidentally wander into this screening will have to settle for Stellan Skarsgård, still reeling from Nymphomaniac. But Elizabeth Olsen continues her transition from the art house to the multiplex with Scarlet Witch. She appeared in the post-credits scene in Captain America:The Winter Soldier and is a crucial player here.
Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Marvel/Walt Disney Studios)If the political subtext of these characters’ complicated relationships with the world and each other doesn’t lure you into their avenging web, their emotional struggles might. Superhero movies show us our better selves, capable of being really fast or really weird (as one character describes the twins Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch) but these superhumans are also superflawed, their highs capable of superhuman feats but their lows capable of superhuman destruction.
It has been said that one should read Don Quixote at different stages of life: the child will read it as an adventure; the adult will read it as a lesson in how to live. Avengers: Age of Ultron offers obvious explosions and thrills, but you may learn something before it’s all done and it makes a billion dollars.
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Written and directed by Joss Whedon
With Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action, violence and destruction, and for some suggestive comments.
Running time 141 minutes
Opens today everywhere.
