There are few joys more singular and perverse than eating at the buffet alone. Buffet because there is an obscene amount of food in which to indulge, and alone because…well, you don’t want anyone to see all that. Everyone should enjoy the deep-fried middle finger to healthy eating that is a plate of five spring rolls and electroshock pink sweet and sour chicken, but it’s not good. This solo buffet trip has three guaranteed results. One: You’ll eat way, way too much. Two: The worm will turn around plate four or five (if you have any fortitude), and you’ll acknowledge you’re eating garbage. Three: Your system will shut you down for a full restore in the form of a nap. Why such a loving rendition of one of my favorite pastimes? Because it’s the only apt analogy to describe seeing Avengers: Age of Ultron.
War machines, food comas, pity rejoinders, and James Spader after the jump...
War machines, food comas, pity rejoinders, and James Spader after the jump...
Just how overstuffed is this spread of Hollywood summer fare? I distinctly recall sitting in the theater before show time and counting the number of humanoid figures on the Avengers promo image: 13. The marketeers of this picture wanted me to see this shorthand, single image version of their film, and recognize at least 13 bipedal creatures would be a part of the story. And it’s not only the cast, but the plot, the action pieces, the oh-so-pithy rejoinders, all of them are bloated to the point of bursting.
So it’s bad? No, not at all. It’s a damn fun, damn entertaining two hours of flash bang boom. These players now locked in the gilded cage that is their Marvel persona, they’re comfortable. They know their paces. Joss Whedon ratchets up the 3D spectacle and certainly instills his Whedon-dom—a polarizing trait at best—to unprecedented levels. The story has minimal drag even with what felt like a thousand subplots dangling off it. All that said, how much love is a cook capable of instilling in buffet food? Yes, I’m going to ride this gimmick as far as it’ll go, a conversation I’m certain every star tethered to the Marvel Industrial Complex has had with their agent.
And what a universe of stars it is! Of course we’ve got Robert Downey Jr who I’m certain is now wearing an arc reactor at all times he’s so committed to Iron Man. We’ve got Scarlett Johannson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, and Chris Hemsworth. Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson. Then of course there are our new faces, Linda Cardellini as long suffering wife as well as Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the Maximoff twins. And we’d be remiss if we forgot the all-important cameos of Don Cheadle, Cobie Smolders, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgard, and of course Stan “Look on my works ye mighty and despair” Lee. We’re not done yet. Hell no. We’ve still got James Spader. But for real, in the context of the film, James Spader is legit RDJ’s ego run amok who completely misunderstands the mission of being famous.
You see that up there? You feel good about that? And no shit, there’s still like 15 cast member speaking roles.
Perhaps the most perturbing element of this picture is the story itself. Sure, it tries to do way too much, but it’s the expected beats that really left me cold. These boilerplate plot points are so exhausted—half of them telegraphed with clumsy dialogue well in advance of their happening—we’ve breached predictable. Marvel movie turns are so stock-in-trade, Avengers delivers them with a shrugging indifference. Less plowing through plot points on the momentum of story, it’s more like, “oh, the part where we realize we have to work together to succeed, that’s here. This is that part.” It’s maddening. And a little…offensive? Story elements where some greater explanation is demanded —particularly the relationships between certain characters—it’s all chalked up to little more than propping up new franchise properties. And, no, I don’t know what happened with that whole, ‘Tony Stark’s war machines killed my family,’ thing either.
Sometimes you just need to do less, but it’s too late for Marvel to turn back. I believe this model is unsustainable, and if anyone at Marvel Studios (which, could they ever be a real movie studio and make a movie that’s not a Marvel property?) has any foresight, they see the bound to burst bubble shimmering above their head. The end of Avengers: Age of Ultron portends as much. The film's final moments are something of a torch passing, and the question Marvel leaves us with: will you take our also-rans to be your lawfully franchised summer heroes? As a man who has sidled up to more than one picked over buffet in his life, I have my doubts. I think I’m going to take a nap.
–Monte Monreal
So it’s bad? No, not at all. It’s a damn fun, damn entertaining two hours of flash bang boom. These players now locked in the gilded cage that is their Marvel persona, they’re comfortable. They know their paces. Joss Whedon ratchets up the 3D spectacle and certainly instills his Whedon-dom—a polarizing trait at best—to unprecedented levels. The story has minimal drag even with what felt like a thousand subplots dangling off it. All that said, how much love is a cook capable of instilling in buffet food? Yes, I’m going to ride this gimmick as far as it’ll go, a conversation I’m certain every star tethered to the Marvel Industrial Complex has had with their agent.
And what a universe of stars it is! Of course we’ve got Robert Downey Jr who I’m certain is now wearing an arc reactor at all times he’s so committed to Iron Man. We’ve got Scarlett Johannson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, and Chris Hemsworth. Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson. Then of course there are our new faces, Linda Cardellini as long suffering wife as well as Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the Maximoff twins. And we’d be remiss if we forgot the all-important cameos of Don Cheadle, Cobie Smolders, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgard, and of course Stan “Look on my works ye mighty and despair” Lee. We’re not done yet. Hell no. We’ve still got James Spader. But for real, in the context of the film, James Spader is legit RDJ’s ego run amok who completely misunderstands the mission of being famous.
You see that up there? You feel good about that? And no shit, there’s still like 15 cast member speaking roles.
Perhaps the most perturbing element of this picture is the story itself. Sure, it tries to do way too much, but it’s the expected beats that really left me cold. These boilerplate plot points are so exhausted—half of them telegraphed with clumsy dialogue well in advance of their happening—we’ve breached predictable. Marvel movie turns are so stock-in-trade, Avengers delivers them with a shrugging indifference. Less plowing through plot points on the momentum of story, it’s more like, “oh, the part where we realize we have to work together to succeed, that’s here. This is that part.” It’s maddening. And a little…offensive? Story elements where some greater explanation is demanded —particularly the relationships between certain characters—it’s all chalked up to little more than propping up new franchise properties. And, no, I don’t know what happened with that whole, ‘Tony Stark’s war machines killed my family,’ thing either.
Sometimes you just need to do less, but it’s too late for Marvel to turn back. I believe this model is unsustainable, and if anyone at Marvel Studios (which, could they ever be a real movie studio and make a movie that’s not a Marvel property?) has any foresight, they see the bound to burst bubble shimmering above their head. The end of Avengers: Age of Ultron portends as much. The film's final moments are something of a torch passing, and the question Marvel leaves us with: will you take our also-rans to be your lawfully franchised summer heroes? As a man who has sidled up to more than one picked over buffet in his life, I have my doubts. I think I’m going to take a nap.
–Monte Monreal
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