By Matt Murphy, staff writer
Marvel released its next installment of the Avengers franchise on Friday, May 1. Avengers: Age of Ultron grossed $191.3 million domestically on opening weekend, making Age of Ultron the second highest grossing Marvel movie in the United States ever just behind the first Avengers film and above Iron Man 3.
This time around we have the Avengers consisting of Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), aka the Hulk.
In this Avengers film, it’s not a god or an alien army that’s threatening the world, it’s a robot named UItron (James Spader)created by Tony Stark himself, along with two twins, Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olson). This is not your basic “I want to rule the world story.” In Ultron’s eyes, he is doing what he was built to do: make peace, which in his mind s to destroy the Avengers and then enslave the human race to then make total peace.
When you have an all-star cast like this movie does and then have Joss Whedon in the director’s chair, you don’t expect this movie to miss its mark, but it does, to a point. The comedic timing in the movie is done well but not without its slip ups. The special effects are well above par in look and feel, like they place you right in the middle of the action itself. The only problem is the villain itself.
While watching the movie I found myself saying to myself that this does not seem like an Aveng- ers caliber problem. It felt as if Iron Man and Hulk could have teamed up in the right way, and the issue wouldn’t have been as big as it seemed.
A lot of the movie was thinking too far ahead and just leads us to the next movies to come; which is something we all want, but it felt that Marvel forgot to live in the now. The film moved at a steady pace and everything was good, just not superhuman good.
The excitement to this movie has been building up for over two years now, yet when you leave the theater you find yourself saying to yourself: Is that it? Are we done?
Obviously we know that next year will hold the spot of Captain America 3: Civil War, which will include both Iron Man and Spiderman.
So is it possible that everyone, even the Marvel executives, got so caught up and excited on what’s to come that they overlooked what we are watching now? I fully believe that that was a possibility.
Overall, Avengers: Age of Ultron was fun, light hearted, funny, and still managed to give you the joy you get when you are young and open your first comic book. It did its job, 4/5 stars.