In puppetry; the most
important suspension isn't the strings – it's the suspension of
disbelief. As an object, a puppet can be very impressive; artfully
imagined, intelligently designed. It can be intricate and expensive,
but without the right hand to guide it; it's nothing more. A good
puppeteer is someone who brings the inanimate to life for an
audience. Their power is in taking all of that physical craft and
complexity, and reducing it into something that looks effortless.
When you're watching good puppetry – you forget about the strings.
The same is true of
film making. A film can be as intricate and expensive as you like;
but in the right hands, you don't really notice. Joss Whedon's
original Avengers was such a film – a 220 million dollar
blockbuster that wasn't just another superhero movie; it's the
definitive superhero movie of the decade. Why? Because it took a
sprawling, ambitious, multi-franchise cross-over event and made it
look like the most natural thing in the world. Whatever your doubts
or reservations were going in, most agree that 2012's biggest money
maker was also one of it's best films.
Since then, we've
watched as Marvel and their owner Disney have embarked on the second
phase of their master plan. Having brought the more obscure Marvel Comics franchises into the spotlight, the company followed up with darker
solo sequels for Iron Man, Captain America and Thor that further
progressed the characters and formed their own important parts of an
interwoven whole - then they made Guardians of the Galaxy a thing
because at this stage, they can do anything they god damn please.
Consistent quality
across all these pictures has won the studio a reputation, and that
reputation has afforded them the space to take risks. Guardians was
only the first – later this year they'll try Ant-Man – and soon
we'll be seeing Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Doctor Strange. But
running through these gambles is an ever present core; The Avengers –
the central tent pole holding the whole strategy together.
Considering the original was just so good; it's fair to say we all
assumed that every sequel going forward would match our high
expectations.
Avengers: Age of
Ultron, the first of TWELVE new Marvel films on the horizon before
the end of the decade; was supposed to be a sure thing - so it's
downright disturbing how disappointing it's turned out to be. Now, let's be clear; Age of Ultron is not “bad”. Of the 11 Marvel movies so far, it's actually above average; it's just not the performance we saw this
same puppeteer pull off before. The puppet is the same – all of the
principle cast return and so do the core crew; but somehow, they run
into every single obstacle they so gracefully avoided last time out.
Too many characters, uneven pacing, unexplained references to wider
continuity, cameos just for the sake of cameos and NO CAMEOS just for
the sake of saving some money...
This all might not have been so
glaringly obvious were the film not a direct follow up to one that
negated every single one of these potential pitfalls. Whedon's first
screenplay was an exercise in balance, focus and restraint – and
this is anything but. The problems start
right away, with an opening action sequence that cuts into the story
in medias res. The team is back together again – the whys and hows
are glossed over entirely (including a major why that looms over one
supposedly retired member of the core team, an subject that's never
brought up or explained, even in passing) – and they're out dealing
with an issue that if you've not seen last year's Captain America 2
will make no sense whatsoever. One inevitable victory and a short
party interlude later and BAM – we're introduced to Ultron, a rogue
A.I. intent on wiping out humanity – an enemy who gets into plenty
of fist fights, but remains woefully underdeveloped. A CGI creation
who's well performed by James Spader; he's merely the first victim of
a screenplay intent on saying too little about too much. Scene to
scene, Whedon's sharp trademark dialogue is as entertaining as ever,
but characters rarely get time to say more than quips, let
alone have scenes that build up tension, texture or anything that
resembles an arc.
It what feels like a
purposeful attempt to redress the imbalance of the first film, the
weight of the really important screen-time actually goes to Jeremy
Renner's Hawkeye, a move that forgets why the character was so
inessential in the first place and that does nothing to prove
otherwise. Despite his key role in the origin of Ultron, Robert
Downey Jr.'s Iron Man is surprisingly peripheral, as are Chris Evans'
Captain America and Chris Hemsworth's Thor. Scarlett Johansson and
Mark Ruffalo are given the best dramatic material to work with
between Black Widow and The Hulk, but their sub-plot can't help but
feel disconnected from the events going on around it. This is still a
great ensemble, as adept at action as they are at comedy, but they're
lacking the smart interplay and overriding purpose that elevated
their original team up.
Rounding out the main
cast are Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen as Quicksilver and
The Scarlet Witch, two more underdeveloped parts, performed well,
that could have easily been written out all together. Quicksilver's
speed makes for some exciting chase sequences, but as with almost all
the action, each one of these is too indulgent, and despite the sheer
number of characters to work with, they all end up being oddly
repetitive. The lack of drama in the dialogue leads to a lack of
drama here as well, with ill-defined stakes and motivations, not to
mention some muddy geography and scatter-shot editing that never ties
things together on either a visceral or emotional level. Given that
these scenes are what take up the bulk of the film, and that they
appear as often as songs in a bloody musical, you'd expect them to
manage at least one.
This all makes
Avengers: Age of Ultron an awkward experience – a slightly
embarrassing encore to one of the genre's most memorable
performances. The puppet's the same, the puppeteer's the same, and
for fans that will be enough – but I walked away, for the first
time, doubting the future of the Marvel cinematic universe. There's a
reason I can't stop thinking about the writing and the casting and
the editing of this film. There's a reason I've spent so long here
talking about the business and the production and PUPPETS. The bigger
and more complex these Marvel movies become, the more I fear they're
going to end up like this one: impressive, sure; but tangled in the
strings.
Rating: 3 Stars
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