Sinking under the weight of expectations

Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo and either Toby Maguire or Andrew Garfield in a scene from Marvel's "Avengers: Age of Ultron."

A sizable rush of excitement fell over me the moment after “Iron Man’s” end credits in which Samuel L. Jackson dropped that line about the Avengers project. It came from the ambition of the upcoming project, the potential that comes from building such a magnificent universe akin to the one first conjured in print. All signs pointed to awesome times ahead.

Jump ahead seven years and the Disney/Marvel conglomerate have released 11 films of OK to very good quality (No. 12, “Ant-Man” is on the way this summer), two live-action TV series, a few animated series and special episodes, and a whole bunch of merchandise devoted to the renowned superhero group. Tying everything together was an ambitious plan to link elements of each individual franchise into one overarching entity, which, in effect, has spawned a massively complicated mythology rarely seen outside of comics.

Ambition is wonderful, but it can become a millstone too. “Avengers: Age of Ultron” — an entertaining albeit disappointing entry into the series — suffers from that burden and portends a rather disturbing future for the film franchise outside of the universe shown on screen.

In “Ultron,” the superhero team consisting of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) begin by raiding a fortress in an eastern European country to retrieve Loki’s staff from Hydra operatives. They are able to nab the staff despite some resistance from mutant twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen), but the power of what the staff can do is too much for Downey Jr. and Ruffalo, who use it to build a powerful robot that can prevent alien attacks like the one depicted in the first film.

Messing with robots in fiction is more often than not a terrible idea, which proves to be the case this time around when the titular entity Ultron (voiced by James Spader) gains sentience and tries to eradicate the team with the twins’ help. It's up to the Avengers to stop the misbehaving robot's plans without falling apart as a group.

What a viewer gets out of “Ultron” depends really on what he or she wants going into it. If the person is down for some serviceable action sequences, moments of witty banter and to see Hulk smash a few things, he or she will be more than satisfied with the fiduciary investment. “Ultron” is the prototypical blockbuster, an action-packed thrill ride that takes audiences on an international adventure and serves as a perfectly fine aesthetic experience. 

Sort of like this, but without the hand raising.

But there's not much beyond the action loveliness aside from listening to Spader's Ultron bounce between terrifying and droll and the bits of humor courtesy writer/director Joss Whedon. Everything else just feels a little flat and empty.

Whedon, the person behind much of television's most beloved failed series over the last 15 years, pulled off a minor feat of brilliance with the first “Avengers” film when he smoothed out Marvel's lumpy universe and even added layers to a few characters (Captain America and Hawkeye) amid the entertaining exploits. He couldn’t repeat couldn't repeat the magic in “Ultron,” as the film is plagued by fatigue from watching these characters every year for almost a decade and a sloppy script that provides little balance for the characters. If anyone does well in this it’s Downey Jr.’s Stark, who is the center of the action and gets the lion’s share of dialogue, screentime and even character development. Poor Thor is sent off on his own for a spell to do something, while Hawkeye has a scene to reiterate that, yes, he is a valuable teammate. 

He's the Avengers' MVP, according to Joss Whedon.

Also missing from this movie is at least one of Whedon's patented cold-blooded moments in which a character of some renown gets axed without mercy, which revels the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s underlying problem; the franchise won't put any major player into honest danger. It's an issue exacerbated by Marvel's decision to announce every single movie it will release through 2019; anyone who follows the Marvel Cinematic Universe knows who will or will not remain until at least the next film.

Instead of removing characters, the people behind the MCU just keep adding more and more Avengers to the team to mimic the monstrous being shown in the comic books. It makes sense on the page, but on celluloid the result is a rather fat film with too many people to keep track of, thus too many superheroes to really care about. They've backdoored it a bit with the individual entries, but adding more to the main films means less and less incentive to care for the heroes.

I'm afraid these final run of films (phase three is the official title for every film post “Ant-Man”) that will theoretically wrap up the Avengers. There was so much promise when things first started and even last year with the second Captain America film and the “Guardians of the Galaxy”; if “Ultron” is the harbinger for what shall be, audiences will get a bloated mess of a franchise that will entertain less and less as the years go by.

Review: Three and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 141 minutes (Two hours and 21 minutes)

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: The millions of people who have already doled out millions of dollars to watch the Marvel universe come to life. Also, children.

Take the whole family?: It's a bit violent and a little bloody for kiddos under 7, but anyone older won't have an issue with it.

Theater or Netflix?: Might as well hit up the theater if you're going to watch it. The film is big enough action wise to justify it.

Why doesn't Black Widow have her own film yet?:  Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige cited two reasons in interviews about the topic: The studio wants to promote new characters like Dr. Strange and Black Panther and the Black Widow character works best bouncing off the other Avengers. Neither is a very good reason, especially the second; Black Widow's background alone makes for a great film as long as the mistreated Scarlett Johansson is on board.

Watch this as well?: At this point, it's almost required to watch everything with the Marvel stamp on it, meaning all Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Guardians of the Galaxy. S.H.I.E.L.D., and (especially) Hawkeye properties available. Check out “Howard the Duck” as well to see how far Marvel movies have come in the last three decades. (Howard was the first Marvel character to get his own feature film and you’ll wonder why anyone wanted to try again after that.)

                                                                 Here's a taste for you.