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| See, and you guys laughed when I said get TWO cheese platters... |
There's no great secret to Joss
Whedon's success with high-octane superhero flicks, and no wonder why
many others have imitated – but never quite duplicated – his
idiosyncratic brand of pithy panache and ironic bravado. Whedon
understands that a superhero's job is to save lives, protect the
innocent, and defend the defenseless. All the cool masked cats do
it: Spider-Man, The Flash, Daredevil...even Batman, stripped of his
pathos and distilled down to the core of his being, is simply a man
who can't bear the thought of undeserving folk being hurt. Guardians
of the Galaxy's big finale
contained a centerpiece moment in which the Nova Corps banded
together to save a city filled with bystanders, though all the cosmos
was arrayed against them. In Age of Ultron,
Whedon's much ballyhooed 'genius' comes out again – as it did in
the first Avengers –
when he takes great pains to show superheros actually doing their
job. Whole sequences are devoted to the muscled gods and armored
head-crackers loading refugees onto boats, evacuating public areas,
throwing themselves in the line of fire, and going out of their way
to save someone incapable of saving themselves.
Boom.
Instant formula for humanizing heroes. And while Man of
Steel has been picked over worse
than the corpse of Brain Williams' career, I'll join the ranks of the
obvious and cite it, again, as a Example Prime for how dangerous and
stupid it is to forget that formula. I weep for the generation whose
chief reference for Superman is that joyless, monochromatic slog in
which the hero committed mass murder on live television and then
mopes when the military doesn't invite him to dinner. Some have even
suggested that the Avengers
scenes which offer such contrast were done in direct response to Man
of Steel's callous take, but I
doubt this. After all, Whedon's first rodeo with Cap n' Friends
included many similar scenes, and that film predated MoS
by a couple years. Point is, superheros – like directors making
superhero films – should have priorities. Whedon gets his right in
this one.
That
isn't to say Age of Ultron is
perfect. It ain't. But we should be mindful that while Whedon had
more to work with on the outset – more money, more heroes, more
talent, more hype – he had less narrative latitude and weightier
expectations fouling his breeze. He not only had to reassert the
merits of the original Earth's Mightiest without going stale, but
also had to introduce no fewer than three new team members (and give
each a fair lead-in) while providing a villain at least as compelling
as the odious/delicious Loki (the sorely missed Tom Hiddleston). He
largely succeeds, though it is a louder, messier party this time
around, with some threads feeling rushed and others fraying a bit
toward the end. James Spader's all-CGI Ultron is a good antagonist
and a fine choice for where the Avengers
arc now stands: riding high on past successes and enjoying a
comfortable bond, the team all but inevitably screws up and incites a
disaster of their own making, resulting in schisms and general
blowback. The bad guy doesn't come from space or another dimension
this time, but from Tony Stark's control-obsessed ego (aided
unwittingly by Dr. Banner, who has control issues of his own). This
holds with the theme found so often in Marvel's comic line of the
21st
century: the worst 'villains' are often the heroes who think they
know better than anyone how to protect the world. The monsters, as
Rod Serling well knew, were us all along. The bad guy, conversely,
thinks he's the good guy, offering a 'sensible' alternative to the
Avenger's black-and-white view even as he attempts to cleanse the
Earth of humanity's scourge.
Ultron was always a neat idea: a
schizophrenic robot, alternately suave and manic, but the smartest
guy in the room and nigh-indestructible to boot. Here he is no less
than a sort of genius Frankenstein's monster, horrifying the populace
with his machinations even as he tries to peddle his good intent,
never quite getting why people flee in terror at his approach. He
quickly unspools all of Stark's careful precautions and ponies up
ample chaos for the massive third act. In the end his masterstroke
turns out to be just another page from the destroy-the-planet
playbook, but would we really have it any other way? In a perfect
world that didn't have to worry about whether this flick hits $1
billion domestic, Age of Ultron
would be resolved with a roundtable discussion about the highest
attainable good for humanity and the arrogance of presumption. But
that don't put butts in chairs, I suppose, so we'll settle for an
orgy of bicep-flexing destruction and some science pseudo-babble to
make it all right again. I'm hip.
As
an addendum, I'll simply observe that my greatest frustration with
this film was not the film itself but the fact that the trailers
contained enough footage of enough key sequences that it was almost
possible to assemble the whole thing in your head beforehand. Yes,
this dead horse again,
and from a guy who pointedly avoided the last trailer and several TV
spots. I'm not a unique voice in that chorus, and I know the suits
won't listen, but folks like Whedon really ought to have final say on
what makes it into the trailers. Directors make the scenes that make
the film; they also ought to have the authority to decide the scenes
garner a peek and which should be held in reserve for maximum effect
(lookin' at you, Hulkbuster). The marketing morlocks blow the best
stuff trying to get audiences in their seats with no regard for how
savvy they've made the moviegoer, who can usually predict with
dependable accuracy when a tease scene is going to show up in the
finished product. The result? Frustration, boredom, diminished
magic. But maybe that was bound to happen anyway. I doubt Marvel
can maintain this upward trajectory forever – Downey Jr. seems to
be losing interest, and can somebody please give Jeremy Renner his
mop and bucket back? – but there's still a long ride ahead until
the (presumed) mega-climax of the Infinity War and (apparently) still
money to be made. The now-expected epilogue scenes that populate the
credits of every movie are taking greater and greater pains to keep
the audience's appetites whetted for the Big Showdown. The one in
Age of Ultron was no
exception. Now if we could just get them to stop making Fantastic
Four movies, the Republic might be saved.
