Ten Stars or Less

run time: 141 mins
rated: PG
considered: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
director: Joss Whedon
starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders, Anthony Mackie, Hayley Atwell, Stellan Skarsgard, Idris Elba, Andy Serkis, Stan Lee

movie summary: The Avengers are a busy group of superheros. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye have been around the world tracking down anyone associated with Hydra after the fall of SHIELD. Over in Sokovia, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker has set up his evil headquarters where he was using Loki’s scepter to create the super humans, Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his sister Wanda Maximoff (Elisabeth Olsen). After taking down the bad guys, Stark and Banner find von Strucker’s artificial intelligence program and bring it back to New York where they hope to create a defense program for Earth. Despite their best intentions to build a machine called “Ultron” to protect the globe, the machine turns itself on and blows up their victory party. Ultron wants to destroy the world and forces the Avengers into hiding while he tries his best to drive a wedge between them. Thor returns home, Black Widow has to fight back the emotions of her own mortality, Hulk struggles with the destruction he causes, Captain America is still trying to figure out his place in today’s world, and Iron Man refuses to accept blame for Ultron going bad. Hawkeye brings the gang to his home for peace and relaxation, while Ultron has been busy all over the world setting his master plan into motion to destroy the world. The gang get a visit from an unexpected friend before gearing up one more time to save us from Armageddon again. 

my thoughts: What can I say about this movie that hasn’t already been said across the millions upon millions of reviews? Avengers: Age of Ultron will be the most talked about and reviewed movie of 2015 until Star Wars comes out, which will then be the movie of the year. You may say that Furious 7 is that movie right now, but with no disrespect to Paul Walker, it’s only made billions of dollars because of his passing. The Dark Knight may be one of the greatest movies ever made, but had Heath Ledger not passed away, would that made over a billion dollars? I doubt it. The first Avengers movie almost broke every single box office record because it was epic. There was an enormous amount of pressure on the crew and writers to bring their A game back to the big screen with this “sequel”.

The theatre was sold out on Friday night, I’m sure if they sold standing room tickets, those would have been sold out too. My home theatre has 16 screens and Avengers was playing on six of them. Yesterday morning all the headlines reported that Age of Ultron didn’t meet the same dollar values as the first movie, but you know what? Who cares. We all know you, your family, your kids, your best friends, and everyone else is going to see this movie. I guarantee before the film runs its course, it will be in the top five highest grossing movies ever. You can complain that it will only get that high because of the price of seeing the movie in 3D in premium theatre is half an arm and leg but that’s the world we live in. According to Wikipedia the movie cost around $290 million make ($200 million was probably Tony Stark’s salary) which explains why it is $17 to see it. The best part of the ticket price is this movie was worth every single penny, plus the price of popcorn.

I purposefully did not watch or review Avengers leading up to this release because I did not want to spend 2:20 comparing the films each other. My plan is watch the first one either tonight after hockey or tomorrow on my day off and finally review it for you guys. Also I have spent all weekend working on my Superhero’s Hockey Team that needs to be updated from last year since Guardians of the Galaxy and Age of Ultron have since been released.

In terms of Age of Ultron the movie, well this is the best movie of the year so far. I seriously loved all these characters, the actors, and the banter they have between each other. The two best scenes of the whole movie, with the exception of fight sequences, revolved around Thor’s hammer. At the party everyone will take a turn at earning their chance to rule Asgard. Later in the movie, someone does pick up the hammer and the response from everyone is priceless. That’s the kind of fun these guys have together because every time something explodes or a disagreement happens, I found myself laughing out loud. There are so many egos on this team that it hard for them to all get along. Sure they all love and respect each other but all process their own strengths and think they can do a better job alone. Like many social circles there are leaders and followers, some want to be in the group and some really don’t. The Avengers is more than just a group of friends and co-workers, they are a group of humans that came together to protect citizens of the world, people they don’t know, against the evils of the universe. This fantasy land may be in a comic book but these battles happen across the streets of real cities and real people dead when these events go down. Speaking of battles, can I say how refreshing it was that an “end of the world” battle did not take place in the United States or New York City!! Seriously, only Godzilla and Transformers recently have had end of the world battles in other cities. New York may be the so-called centre of the universe, but let’s give the city a chance to rebuild after every movie attack. 

You may have read this far down and asked yourself why are you still reading this review when I’ve barely talked about the movie. Like I said up top, you’ve already seen it or you’re going to see it and don’t need my opinion on whether or not to go. Going into Age of Ultron you just need to know that this is another amazing CGI masterpiece with an evil robotic enemy, lots of explosions, lots of personal drama, that revolves around a city that is ripped right out of the earth’s bedrock. Some people hate the special effects because all these actors/actresses have to fight invisible enemies using green screen technology. But let’s be honest here, fighting invisible things is so much harder than performing a William Shakespeare play in front of a live audience. No movies or actors ever win awards in super hero movies, which is a shame, because they put so much effort into their characters and actions that no one considers it real work. I know I would struggle to pretend fight someone who isn’t there.

One of the best aspects of this movie is how they take an unbelievable story and tone it down by adding many personal layers to the characters. Black Widow and Captain America try their best to deal with emotions about their past and the negative life experiences they went through. Hulk is coming to realize how much of a threat he is and not sure he’ll ever be able to handle it. Amazingly Iron Man is getting tired of saving the world and would rather focus his energy towards saving the world through his technology. Thor misses home and would like to return there one day sooner rather than later. Hawkeye mean while is part of the team because it’s his job to serve and protect…his family. Two great additions to the Avengers scene is Quicksilver (Pietro) and Scarlet Witch (Wanda). Both Taylor-Johnson and Olsen bring more human emotions to the main story because both their parents are dead and they want revenge. I liked the direction all these characters went in terms of their storylines from other movies and where the future leads us in the Avengers timeline.

There are some people who won’t like this movie for various reasons, but hey you can’t please everyone. There are not that many perfect things in the world and movies will never be one of them. Ultron as a villain is pretty close to the perfect antagonist these guys are going to face. He’s everywhere at the same time and seems to have an unlimited supply of disposable robots. He will push the Avengers like they have never been pushed before and do everything in his power to destroy them to be victorious. The amazing thing is that despite what Loki did in the Avengers, and what Ultron does in the second film, things are only going to get worse from here on out, which means only more epic battles are going to come in 2018 and 2019 respectively. I know I personally can’t wait.

my final thoughts: If you haven’t gone to see Avengers: Age of Ultron yet that’s because you either hate the franchise or are waiting for the crowds to die down. What ever your reason may be, you should know to get the most out of this movie, you should experience it on the big screen. You can sit back and stuff your face with popcorn while larger than life characters blow each other up for over two solid hours. It is was a very entertaining joyride with some of our favourite super heroes. 

my star rating: 9 out 10

imdb: 8.2 out 10 
metascore: 66/100
rottentomatoes: 75% out 100%
roger ebert: 3 out 4
richard crouse: 2 out 4