Directed by:
Joss WhedonScreenplay:
Joss WhedonCinematography:
Ben DavisCast:
Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, James Spader (more)VOD (4)
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When Tony Stark tries to jumpstart a dormant peacekeeping program, things go awry and it is up to The Avengers to stop the villainous Ultron from enacting his terrible plans. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (16)
The sequel to the first film, stripped of the element of surprise and enriched with a more capable villain. The action is less bloated, fits into the plot better, and expands the universe with new characters. Anyway, the predictability is even more tiring than the rest of the Marvel movies. Unless there's a major shift in Civil War, there's no point in looking at it any other way than in standby mode.
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Avengers: Age of Ultron surprisingly exceeded my expectations from the not-so-convincing first movie. Kingsman and Furious 7 were not surpassed, but it gets the third place. The fancy heroes are back with cool visuals, great gags and dynamically engaging action that left me breathless at times. Ultron as a villain is fine but nothing groundbreaking, Quicksilver is awesome, Scarlet Witch is annoying, Vison is fair, nothing needs to be said about the rest. Thor with his hammer and Hulk with his aggression amused me the most. Good entertainment that is cinema worthy. 95%.
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I am an old and conservative man who is no longer fast enough for the pace of Michael Bay's hypnagogue sessions, and I am increasingly enjoying wooden characters who constantly need to feed their egos. I can laugh at all that and forget about the absolutely tragic love cooing of a rookie and Russian, which I would without hesitation call one of the biggest directing failures in the history of Marvel. Again, the Avengers are not getting anywhere and are working with the same (and not completely fresh) model of action, and I do not see any exorbitant escalation in them. I enjoyed it, for example, because for the first time in the history of Marvel films, I was afraid for the life of one of the characters, and also because it is the first solo for Hawkeye, who knocked me on my ass from the back lines. I got what I came for. A slow, lightly leather and conservative costume event, which is starting to be particularly intimate in its grandeur, because it is basically a party of friends who long for rest.
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The same thing over and over again. Unfortunately, there is a lack of coherence and it lacks the dynamism of the first film. Among all the comic-book clichés, the only things that remain are the well-developed characters and the sharp emphasis on the supporting, not so powerful, yet very interesting figures (Hawkeye, Black Widow). The could have spared the nonsense with the Hulk, as well as the cheap action just for the sake of it, but those smooth digital sequences are cool, right? (even though they look lilke Zack Snyder’s stuff.) Joss Whedon doesn’t deliver anything revolutionary, he just pockets a lot of money because he does what works the most: a little bit of everything, so no one gets offended and everyone gets their fill. I wonder how many dozens of comics with the same plot narrative and framework Hollywood will have to make before audiences realise that it's all the same? Then a creator like Nolan will have to come in and rewrite history again.
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“I’ve had a long day. Eugene O'Neill long.” Unsurprisingly, Whedon is wagering on the tried and true. Also, the second Avengers is a sharp ensemble action movie that entertains more with clever dialogue than with massive, stylistically intoxicating action sequences, which this time are at least a tiny bit clearer thanks to the long “relay” shots (whereas the first film culminated with this technique as an illustration of the team’s cohesion, it serves as a visual leitmotif in the second one). ___ The interaction between the characters is no longer only about the necessity of finding their way to each other, maintaining their individuality and learning to cooperate. They begin to get to know both each other and their own dark sides better, which leads us to see them also as people (or rather characters with human problems) and not just as superhuman and essentially courageous saviours of civilisation (not for nothing do the heroes address each other mostly by their civilian names). Despite that, the film doesn’t cross the line into mutual teasing at the relationship level and it lacks serious conflict that would pose a threat to the team’s unity. Whedon remains too obliging toward his heroes and their somewhat pubescent thought processes, and despite being slightly more serious, Age of Ultron is still far from the bleakness and seriousness of Guardians of the Galaxy or at least The Dark Knight. From the beginning, the tone of the film makes it clear that it’s not going to get heavy, no adult problems will be resolved (“corny” is the best description of the relationship between Natasha and Bruce, as well as Clint’s family life), no serious crisis will occur and the allusions to American foreign policy will remain at a general level (Ultron as the result of the advancing mechanisation of warfare, violence perpetrated in the interest of protecting democratic values, the tension between the transparent and the concealed war on terror, with the former approach represented by the idealistic Captain America and the latter by Stark). ___ Unlike the elitist first film, the primary interest in the human element is not limited to the superheroes – the final action sequence is based on trying to save as many civilians as possible. The absorption in their own tragic story, the mutual flirtation and the amusing measuring of egos against one another are thus balanced by concern for ordinary human lives, though that concern serves mainly to underscore the mythological dimension of the narrative. It would not have been necessary to depict the heroes in the form of classical statuary in the closing credits in order for us to realise that they have the same role in the modern (fictional) world as the Greek gods did in antiquity. ___ The second Avengers is a more masterful, albeit somewhat mechanical, manifestation of what made the first Avengers movie surprising – the combination of a loud blockbuster with an informal and imaginative conversational relationship flick. If it represents the final development phase of Marvel adaptations, that won’t make me angry. In relation to genre conventions, however, the subversive Iron Man 3 and the narratively sophisticated Captain America: The Winter Soldier showed us that it can be done more imaginatively. ___ In the end, Age of Ultron is the most audacious in terms of the demands that it places on viewers who want to flawlessly find their way around in the story and among the large number of characters throughout the film’s entire 140-minute runtime. It begins without any in media res exposition and it doesn’t linger on explaining who is who and what they are after during the next two hours. The many hints, signs and allusions assume that you are as familiar with the fictional encyclopaedia as the characters are. Though I have mostly kept up to speed so far, I cannot imagine how I will manage to sort through the tremendous amount of facts ten movies and a hundred series episodes later. 80%
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