Cap’s back in Avengers: Age Of Ultron,
More means less for Marvel’s mega-sequel…
AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
12
OUT NOW DVD, BD, 3D BD, DIGITAL HD
Why on Earth would I make another Avengers movie?” sighs a weary Joss Whedon on the audio commentary for his superteam super-sequel. “It was illadvised, I see that now…” He’s only half-joking – after all, we are talking about the sixth-highestgrossing film of all time. There again, Whedon had made no secret of the toll Age Of Ultron took on him (to quote one interview, “the hardest work I’ve ever done”).
Following up 2012’s barnstorming MCU cornerstone with a sprawling sequel full of self-doubt, bad dreams, stalled relationships and half-finished stories, AOU desperately wants to be this generation’s Empire Strikes Back. Opening with a battle in a snowy forest that throws our heroes, matinee-serial style, right back into the action, it almost looks like it might pull it off. Two hours and 20 minutes later, we’re left with a multi-million-dollar middle chapter that’s very much a mixed bag: still gloriously entertaining, still sharp-edged and still riding on a series of giddy highpoints – but too messy, too patchy and too over-crowded to really click.
After eight years of Marvel movies skirting the same formula (bad guy steals a shiny thing, good guys steal it back), Whedon does a great job of trying something different.
After the opening ruckus, everything suddenly slows down – giving plenty of time to chill with the old gang (the shield, the hammer… you know their names) and introduce the new guys. Elizabeth Olsen’s fragile, conflicted Scarlet Witch is crying out for her own standalone film, as is James Spader’s Shakespearean Terminator, Ultron, making a good case for the best big bad of the super-genre so far.
Frantically swapping feet between the accelerator and the brake, the rest of the running time judders between eye-popping action and pages and pages of exposition. The Hulkbuster fist-fight, the Seoul street chase and the bonkers, Zulu- esque finale all easily eclipsed anything else at the cinema this summer, but the filler in-between (including a flatlining farmhouse intermission where everyone has to pretend that Hawkeye has a character) feels even more like deadweight on the small screen.
The disc’s slim behind the scenes doc Inside Out skims the surface of the set-pieces, and no one really wants to watch a six-minute feature all about the “cosmic macguffins” ( The Infinite Six) – but the real pick of the extras is Whedon’s revealing commentary track. The director’s clearly torn between love for what he made and resentment for what he could have; it’s an honest, insightful chat-track that delves deep into the decision-making process on both sides of the Disney boardroom.
Calling the shooting style “deliberately casual” and comparing it to Much Ado About Nothing (as well as admitting that he felt like “reaction shot Joe” after the second-unit director took care of most of the special effects), Whedon paints a picture of himself hanging out with his favourite
A-listers for a few months, getting all the good character material and leaving the big set-pieces to someone else. That’s not true, of course, but it goes some way to explaining why the film sometimes feels like it’s one that’s slipping from its creator’s grip.
His biggest sighs are saved for the deleted scenes. A longer version of the poignant Natasha/ Bruce bathroom chat, some decent backstory building for Witch and her twin sib Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and a full Thor side-quest make the plot holes look even bigger when you revisit the film without them. “This is my goodbye to the world of Marvel,” says Whedon as the credits roll, “The third movie is someone else’s problem.”
Clearly, Age Of Ultron was a hard film to make. And though it brings the curtain down on Phase Two in undeniably epic style, it nonetheless makes mistakes Whedon heroically managed to avoid first time around. With too many characters vying for attention, too many stories to tell and too many boxes that needed ticking, AOU feels frustratingly like five or six great Marvel movies rolled into one good one. Paul Bradshaw
Extras > > > Commentary (BD) Featurettes Deleted scenes (BD) > Gag reel (BD)
‘Sharp-edged, but too messy, patchy and over-crowded to click’