So, going to start today by declaring a conflict of interests vis-a-vis Avengers: Age of Ultron: I'm a film blogger, yes, but I'm also a bona fide Marvel fangirl. Not the sort of fangirl who dresses up or goes to cons, maybe, but certainly the type who spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about the characters and examining their motivations, looking for any nuances of line delivery or facial expression to support my pet theories. Like most fangirls, of course, I'm also colossally entitled, so Heaven help the Avengers movie that doesn't manage to telepathically anticipate and cater to my every whim. Given that the franchise is broadly targeted towards male adolescents in body and/or mind, it's a fairly safe bet to say that this particular film was never, ever going to make me happy.
Mr. B says I haven't quit griping about it since I first saw it in April. Personally, I think he needs to get a sense of perspective.
Seriously, though, is Age of Ultron any good?
The truth is it's not half as bad as the Inner Fangirl thinks, despite how much she might stamp her feet or whine about character motivations. We'll deal with the obvious first - it's far too long and a little too loud, and I think around 20 minutes of fight footage could be dispensed of without it being any great loss to anything other than the effects team's wages. The same could arguably be said of the majority of big-budget action movies for the past half-decade or so, but that's small consolation when you're squinting sleepily at yet another hyperkinetic battle between the CGI goodies and baddies. After a while, it all starts looking a little like a video game and becomes depressingly uninvolving, which is a major problem in a franchise that trades on wit and personality.
Then there's a couple of very specific gripes, both of which concern Joss Whedon and his attitude to female characters. A subplot involving Black Widow's history seemed to strongly imply that a woman could never be truly fulfilled without children but would never excel in her field with them - this was something that really bothered me on my first viewing, but didn't seem quite so pronounced in my living room last night. More disturbing, however, is Wanda Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch. Unfortunately, Whedon has a long history of writing superpowered females who look like beautiful girls in their late teens but who have been so badly damaged they behave like disturbed six-year-olds. It was creepy with Fred from Angel; arguably more so with River Tam from Firefly and then in Dollhouse he used it as the basis for an entire series. Here, with a broader audience to appeal to, we're given a Wanda who is at least capable of coherent speech, but she still has the same startled-deer eyes and the same tendency to hide behind the trousers of the nearest convenient male attachment figure. One word: ick.
None of which is to say there isn't a lot to like, however. Well, okay, there isn't that much to like, but there isn't that much to dislike either. There are, however, a few definite high spots, one of which is watching Chris Hemsworth blossom as Thor. I've got to admit, I'd more or less given up on him being anything other than embarrassingly stilted in the role. All of a sudden, though, he seems to have found his comedic timing (and make no mistake, Thor is a comedy character), exuding a genuinely appealing combination of charm and modesty that results in some serious scene-stealing. This is the Thor I'd been waiting for, and frankly, it's about bloody time.
Hanging over everything, however, is the nagging sense that what we're watching is less a fully-formed film in its own right and more a shifting of the game pieces to pave the way for later movies as outlined in Marvel's ten year plan. If you're aware of upcoming titles this becomes hard to ignore, as you watch lines being drawn and concepts being introduced. I'm torn on this; at times it feels exhilarating to be participating in such a huge cultural experience, but at times it feels as though the studio are less interested in creating decent, watchable movies than they are in milking the punters for as long a time as possible. I find myself wondering when we'll reach Peak Marvel, and I can't help thinking it won't be more than a couple of years until audiences have had enough and comic book movies are back to being a joke again.
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