SAN ANDREAS

San Andreas

Grade: C+

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Giamatti, Ioan Gruffudd, and Archie Panjabi; with Hugo Johnstone-Burt as Ben, Art Parkinson as Ollie, and Will Yun Lee as Dr. Kim

Premise: A series of sudden massive earthquakes levels the California coast, leading to widespread devastation and putting three estranged members of a local family in mortal danger.

Rated PG-13 for constant intense, scary scenes of peril and destruction, language, disturbing images, intense emotional content, and some blood

Believe it or not, it is a complete coincidence that I bought a DVD of Deep Impact right before I saw the new thriller San Andreas, and had it with me throughout the duration of the film. One could suppose this is not a coincidence because San Andreas is strictly Disaster Movie 101, a by-the-numbers flick about widespread peril that harkens back to the late-90s, early ‘00s era of disaster movies, one of which was the comet-approaching-Earth drama Deep Impact. I didn’t see the 2009 flick 2012—directed by noted disaster auteur Roland Emmerich—which is probably the most recent example of Disaster Movie 101, but anyone my age can easily recall numerous titles that were all about the mayhem wreaked on the world (but mostly on Los Angeles and New York City) by natural disasters—Volcano, Twister, Dante’s Peak, Deep Impact, Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow. A few other titles come to mind, as well, that took a different sort of angle but were still focused largely on destruction and people in peril in the midst of that destruction (Independence Day, Night of the Twisters, Poseidon, Titanic, etc…).

Disaster Movie 101 is simple. Massive destruction is wreaked by some hastily-explained, thought-to-be-impossible phenomenon, leveling cities, turning oceans into tidal waves, creating explosions, and basically making things pretty tough for three or more parties of characters the audience needs to care about. At least one of the parties usually contains a scientist who can explain the phenomenon and keep the audience informed at how things, no matter how imaginably awful they seem, are going to get worse. The other parties are sometimes related, sometimes not, but generally consist of hapless citizens mixed with resourceful everyday heroes, and they’re always trying A) to find someone else in their family/group who’s been separated and/or B) trying, against all odds, to get to safety.

Plot

After saving a distracted-while-driving teen from certain death, Los Angeles Fire Department rescue pilot Ray Logan (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) suffers a major double whammy: his college-bound daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario), has other plans and little time for him before she heads off to school, and his soon-to-be-ex, Emma (Carla Gugino), is about to full-on move-in with her super-rich new flame, Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd, aka Mr. Fantastic from the original Fantastic Four). So Ray is left to mope while Daniel takes his daughter to one of his posh luxury office buildings in downtown San Francisco, while Emma goes to downtown Los Angeles after handing Ray some divorce papers. In San Francisco, Blake meets an awkward-cute Brit named Ben (Hugo Johnstone-Burt), who’s prepping for an interview for a position at Daniel’s hoity-toity architecture company. In tow with Daniel is his cute, scrappy younger brother, Ollie (Art Parkinson, aka Rickon Stark from Game of Thrones).

Meanwhile…

At Cal Tech, a pair of scientists who study earthquakes (Paul Giamatti and Will Yun Lee) sense that a series of erratic tremors in the earth’s crust means their old theory—super-duper powerful earthquakes that come around once every hundred years or so—is true, and it means one is about to hit. Well, one does hit in Nevada, obliterating the Hoover Dam and nearly costing them both their lives. But their studies tell them more—and more powerful—quakes are on the way along the San Andreas fault line, which means some of Cali’s biggest and most populous cities are in danger. Soon, it’s up to their university science division, and a local reporter (Archie Panjabi), to get word out that some ungodly destruction is coming.

And then…

Some ungodly destruction comes in the form of massive earthquakes that turn downtown LA and San Fran into flaming, collapsing, apocalyptic horror zones. Blake is separated from Daniel, and, with a hand from Ben and Ollie, barely escapes the collapse of Daniel’s office. Ray, in flight in a helicopter, rushes to get on the scene to save his soon-to-be-ex (who he still loves) and his daughter, racing against time as he sees the ground below him literally move in ripples as the tectonic plates shift and ram against one another.

What Works?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the CGI in San Andreas is probably better than that in most of the movies I mentioned before, so these unimaginable scenes of destruction are at least given some legitimacy. And as I mentioned, it feels like a long time since I’ve seen a big, straight-forward Disaster Movie (2014’s Pompeii was close, but was decidedly a B-level flick), and there’s a different kind of thrill to it then to, say, Marvel Comics adaptations or Transformers movies. Where, in those movies, great pains are taken to either A) pretend there was no human cost to all the destruction and mayhem wreaked in their set-pieces (i.e. The Avengers), or B) ignore the human cost by showing nothing worse than a few scrapes and bruises (i.e. Transformers)—Disaster Movies aren’t afraid to add to the spectacle/realism or what they’re depicting by bumping some people off. I’m not saying it’s a good or cool or refreshing thing, it’s just more realistic. Boy, do people die in San Andreas—you do not want to be an extra in a movie like this, especially if you’re in the same scene as a main character who’s supposed to survive the unimaginable. Me and one of the friends with whom I saw the movie were on the edge of our seats during the early earthquake scenes, and we probably uttered a couple dozen repetitions of the phrase “oh s***!” Some imagination definitely goes into crafting these scenes—people get crushed by falling objects, fall through collapsing floors, topple out windows, get blown up or blasted away by explosions and/or the explosions’ shock waves, or get leveled by giant onrushing walls of water. I don’t know that I should say I was entertained by these scenes, but they certainly had a major wow factor, of the kind I hadn’t felt at the movies in a while.

They’re all in cookie-cutter parts, with cliché lines, cliché plot contrivances, and you sometimes unfortunately remember that they’re all screaming/crying/reacting to things that aren’t really happening (CGI! Green screens! Remember?), but the cast of San Andreas is serviceable. This is probably the most stretched Dwayne Johnson has yet been on the big screen—he acquits himself well, believable as a big, strong guy (well, duh!) who can repel down ropes, lift people, and move heavy objects in a pinch, but he also has a few quieter, more emotional moments. Seriously, at least once, I felt the big guy tugging on my heart-strings while he quietly ruminated on an old family tragedy with tears in his eyes. Gugino and Daddario at least get to play characters more resourceful than most women in a disaster movie with a big, strong, male hero. And, of course, Giamatti is convincing as the nebbish but super-smart scientist.

What Doesn’t Work?

Weeelllll, a lot. This movie is pretty formulaic, with its cookie-cutter characters and abounding conveniences for the characters. While I suppose you can believe Dwayne Johnson’s character could utilize a helicopter, a plane, and a boat to get from LA to San Francisco (my dad, a former-helicopter-and-current-fixed-wing-pilot with a thing for boats, could, too), the unending means Ray uses to move toward his imperiled daughter almost become kind of laughable. What means of transportation are they going to use next? I was, personally, thinking motorcycle, bicycle, train, jet ski, space shuttle… (at one point, some of the characters do pass a row of fallen motorcycles and bikes, but, incredibly, they don’t take advantage). The script is really obvious, too, checking off the boxes in the Disaster Movie screenplay one-by-one: character with family in jeopardy, character with a skeleton in the closet, character whose marriage is in trouble, The Big Revealing Character Moment, The Other Guy (Daniel) who turns out to be a sniveling coward in crisis, the precocious, resourceful kid, the cute young-adult love interests, the in-case-I-don’t-make-it-back kiss, the crying, inexplicably abandoned child a character with limited time has to save, risking his life (saving the kiddo but costing him his life, natch), Ugly Cry Face in a moment of high tension, random cuts back to our main “villain”, just so we remember he’s in the movie so he can die an epic and gratuitous CGI death, the series of obstacles that feels like a video game level, PG-13’s one allotted F-word, used gratuitously to diss an unlikeable character, the closing line “We will rebuild”, uttered against a devastated landscape? They’re all here.

Yeah, it’s like that. Blake’s first meeting with Ben could’ve been a time-filler, but as soon as his cute little brother showed up, you knew they were gonna be main characters (though it is a slight deviation from formula that it was his brother and that he wasn’t a doting, hard-working single dad). And I couldn’t help but notice that Carla Gugino’s character, who was in an epic building collapse, nearly got set on fire, was engulfed in a dust cloud, was in a helicopter crush and a plane crash and then another building almost-collapse, seemed to get cleaner and prettier as the movie went on, when the reverse is probably more plausible. Just sayin’.

Content

You won’t see any decapitations or spilling guts or anything, but the onscreen body count is pretty high, as mentioned. Moreover, San Andreas is quick to get to the action, so the vast majority of the movie’s almost-two-hour running-time is suspenseful, imperiled stuff. There are a handful of cuss-words in addition the big F-bomb, a couple bloody wounds, a few shock moments, and at least one scene of real drama that may illicit some tears. This is a Disaster Movie, folks. It’s a little more dramatic than Marvel Comics.

Bottom Line (I promise)

I’m not saying San Andreas is a bad movie. The first half is actually pretty riveting, and there are plenty of little details within the destruction that will make your jaw drop (you do not, EVER, want to be an extra in the same shot as a main character fleeing destruction; you will die, always). Riveting and intense, it took me right back to the disaster movie heyday, as I mentioned, back before I thought too much about movies. I enjoyed it, for my part. However, I couldn’t quite ignore the very by-the-numbers plot and characters and the endless plot contrivances. I also couldn’t help but wonder if younger folks raised on Transformers and Marvel Comics movies that contain a lot of action, but rarely any deaths, would see and be impressed by this movie (these were my summer blockbusters, kids!). Dwayne Johnson’s pretty good, and the CGI is pretty good—this is nothing exceptionally groundbreaking, but it’ll hold your interest.

San Andreas (2015)

Directed by Brad Peyton

Written for the Screen by Carlton Cuse

Rated PG-13

Length: 114 minutes

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

Mad Max: Fury Road

Grade: B+

Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, and Hugh-Keays Byrne as Immortan Joe; with Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee and Courtney Eaton as Immortan Joe’s Wives

Premise: In post-apocalyptic Australia, a widowed drifter tries to help a group of imprisoned women escape the clutches of a tyrannical cult leader.

Rated R for strong bloody violence and constant scenes of peril and destruction, brief nudity, and disturbing images

Once upon a time, a B-level Australian action movie called Mad Max (1979) and its 1981 sequel, The Road Warrior (1981), brought to the world’s attention one Mel Gibson. Gibson, of course, went on to become one of the most popular movie stars of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and a revolutionary/controversial director in the ‘00s. Though he left the Mad Max franchise after its 1985 installment, Beyond Thunderdome, there were always hopes of a fourth go-round from writer/director George Miller. While Gibson is no longer attached to the project (probably a good thing, given the socio-political baggage the star comes with), Mad Max: Fury Road has officially burst onto a Summer 2015 scene loaded with big-budget sequels and Marvel Comics adaptations to give us a dash of something a little, um, different.

I saw the first two movies long ago, and, while I wouldn’t say it’s necessary to have any previous knowledge of the series, I will say you need to be prepared for something Different. We’ve grown rather accustomed to post-apocalyptic landscapes in recent years, whether in teen/young adult fare (The Hunger Games, Divergent) or big-budget star vehicles (World War Z, Oblivion, After Earth), but Mad Max: Fury Road is something else altogether. Like its predecessors, Fury Road imagines a world that is very dark, very wicked, very zany, and very Australian. Its main villainous race looks like a mix of zombies and inhabitants of Indiana Jones’ Temple of Doom, its swashbuckling heroines have missing extremities, its tough-guy heroes barely talk, much of what dialogue anyone has is unintelligible, all its people worship oil and wheels, and one of the main villain’s sidekicks sports some prominent nipple rings. That isn’t all. I won’t spoil all the details, but, needless to say, Fury Road is truly different (not altogether a bad thing), but it is also very much A) a spectacle, and B) a pretty much literal thrill ride. If nothing else, I can guarantee you that if you see Mad Max: Fury Road, you will see things onscreen that you won’t see again this summer, and maybe ever again.

Plot

After a series of devastating ‘Oil Wars’, the landscape of Australia has been decimated, resulting in a barren wasteland in which oil and vehicles are king. In one nasty corner of the desert, a group of famished people (who aren’t above eating each other from time to time) are occasionally gifted food and water by a sickly, deformed tyrant, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Joe rules a cult of hairless, tattooed, branded warriors called the War Boys, who rule the land by capturing and killing or enslaving anyone they find, and stockpiling oil, food, and water. One day, an ex-cop still rattled by the loss of his wife and young daughter falls into their hands. His name is Max (Tom Hardy).

Imprisoned, painfully tattooed and branded, and forced to serve as a blood donor, Max ends up an unwitting passenger on a search-and-destroy mission when one of the War Boys’ prominent clan members, one-armed Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), goes rogue. It turns out she’s attempting to smuggle Immortan Joe’s’ five young wives/hostages to safety in the green, peaceful homeland of her childhood. This doesn’t sit well with Joe and his worshipful minions, who launch a fleet of tricked-out cars and trucks to hunt the Imperator down and return the young women she’s taken, one of whom is pregnant with an heir to Immortan’s power. However, all parties are waylaid by a giant storm, after which Max manages to join Imperator’s party on a big eighteen-wheeler. But there’s a stowaway, a young, glory-hound of a War Boy named Nux (Nicholas Hoult). And in hot pursuit are Immortan Joe, his War Boy fleet/army, and his allies’ forces from nearby settlements. Badly outnumbered and dealing with limited fuel, power and ammo, the Imperator and Max try to get the women to the paradise the Imperator knows is her homeland.

What Works?

There is only one reason to see Mad Max: Fury Road—the action sequences. Even in a summer with The Avengers, upcoming Marvel projects like Ant Man and Fantastic Four and even Jurassic World, I feel confident saying you won’t see more action in a movie…probably this whole year. Fury Road is 120 minutes long, and I would guess about 90 of them chronicle high-speed, pell-mell, balls-to-the-wall action sequences (here is a movie that deserves to be called The Fast and the Furious). And what sequences they are. I can only imagine that special effects and green screens were used, but these high-speed scenes seem awfully real, and they’re magnificent. Action-hungry teens and young adults who are willing to embrace the absurd will have a ball with all the chases and all the vehicles in the chases. Old sports cars put on monster truck wheels? Check. Cars running on tank treads? Check. A huge truck set up with a whole wall of speakers to which a man is attached while perennially playing a huge steel guitar, even while the truck is speeding down the road? Check. Cars with flamethrowers and machine guns? Check.  

Indeed, this one of those rare movies where all the pieces are set up and the final action sequence really, truly delivers—I can’t imagine even a video-game-obsessed fanboy dreaming up a better-choreographed, more exciting whopper of a final chase than the one this movie delivers, which features two different parties of people pursuing each other and fighting—on about five different speeding vehicles—with guns, knives, spears, fists and grenades, while a fleet of backup vehicles zooms after them (with That Guy just wailing away on his guitar in the background). And that isn’t even the chase scene that takes place during the huge storm in the first act, in which the cars’ combatants must contend with lightning bolts, walls of windblown sand, and powerful gusts prone to flipping these vehicles into the air in showers of flaming parts and flailing bodies. There is also a brilliantly-staged fight scene that almost feels like a slapstick comedy setpiece, in which an at-odds Max and Imperator fight—with Max also fending off the dainty women she’s with, who occasionally try to assist her—all while he’s handcuffed to a semi-conscious Nux. Not all of this movie’s action needs to be going fast-lane fast to be entertaining.

It’s sometimes hard to remember (and hard to believe) that British actor Tom Hardy got his breakthrough as the talky motormouth in Inception, who just about stole the movie from charismatic actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Since then, he’s specialized in playing strong, silent types in movies like Warrior, Lawless, The Drop and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (sure, Bane in The Dark Knight Rises was a little chatty— “when Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to die!”—but he was defined by his physical bulk). Indeed, I had a bet going with a friend who estimated Hardy would say fewer than 100 words in the entirety of the movie, and, while neither of us counted, I think he won (so I owe him $5). Still, Hardy remains a formidable presence who is believable in the action scenes and has enough machismo that he draws the eye whether silent or otherwise. But with him so quiet and sullen, it’s Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult who really rule the show. Theron is buzz-cut, tanned and one-armed here, but she’s the heart of the movie, keeping the characters together and, it seems, alive, by sheer force of will. And Hoult, looking even freakier than he did as a slowly-thawing zombie in Warm Bodies, manages to bring life and personality to his stowaway who ends up having a huge part to play.

What Doesn’t Work?

There’s no denying Mad Max: Fury Road is weird—probably more than it needs to be—and some of it is jarringly so (I don’t think we needed to know that the War Boys drink mostly milk that is continuously pumped from the breasts of women in the colony). It’s also slightly infuriating at times that there is so little dialogue, and that a great portion of what dialogue there is cannot be understood amidst all the noise, action, and accents. And not to mention the characters’ names are things like Imperator, The People Eator, The Dag, Angharad, Rictus Erectus, Valkyrie, Toast, Cheedo, and Slit (with names like that—maybe this movie is intended for video-game-playing teens). It’s also true that, possibly because so much happens during the course of the movie, it seems closer to 2.5 hours than two.

Content

With its weirder touches (did I mention one of Immortan Joe’s sons is a disfigured midget? What about the guy who likes to fondle his own nipple rings?), and minimal dialogue, this movie isn’t for everyone. However, it is quite involving, and anyone who can embrace or overlook the inherent weirdness of some of the early chapters is in for a quite a ride (literally). While there isn’t much in the way of profanity (mainly because there’s not much in the way of dialogue), this movie is very intense, with the good guys in almost constant peril and people dying some yikes-inducing deaths. There are also a few hints of nudity.

Bottom Line

In the last month, I’ve seen Furious 7 and Avengers: Age of Ultron, and neither contained as much sheer action as Mad Max: Fury Road. Despite its minimal dialogue and dusty color palette, this movie is a true Spectacle, the very definition of a Thrill Ride. Give me an hour-and-a-half of groups of vehicles speeding across desert roads shooting and lobbing grenades and fireballs at each other—sometimes in the midst of a freaky electric storm—and a couple engaging, effective characters, and you’ve got this movie. It’s weird—its post-apocalyptic world makes The Hunger Games’ Panem look like the world of a mainstream TV sitcom—but there is some stuff in here, action-wise, you won’t see anywhere else. Tom Hardy’s good in his usual strong, silent guy role, Charlize Theron carries the movie with a heroic turn, and the stunning, realistic-looking, brilliantly-choreographed action will keep you watching. If nothing else, I can guarantee you that if you see Mad Max: Fury Road, you will see things onscreen that you won’t see again this summer, and maybe ever again.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris

Rated R

Length: 120 minutes

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Grade: A-

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Chris Hemsworth, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Paul Bettany, with James Spader as the voice of Ultron,

Featuring Appearances By: Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, Cobie Smulders, Anthony Mackie, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgaard and Hayley Atwell,

And With Claudia Kim as Dr. Helen Cho, Thomas Kretschmann as Strucker, Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue, and Linda Cardellini as Laura Barton

Premise: A peacekeeping artificial intelligence program backfires, creating the destructive mutant robot Ultron, who declares war on the Avengers and all of humanity, immediately setting his sights on exterminating the world’s population.

Rated PG-13 for constant intense action violence and destruction, language, a few scary moments, some blood, and mild innuendos

I wasn’t a huge fan of the first Avengers movie. Oh, I saw in theaters, bought it on DVD once it came out, and it’s now one of my go-to movies whenever I want to watch something entertaining that doesn’t require a whole lot of thinking, but it never blew me away as it did many of my peers. Is it because I didn’t grow up reading comics and thinking about superheroes? Is it because I’m a little cynical because I know a lot about movies, and wish there was more originality and imagination in Hollywood? Is it because Avengers—tying together four separate superhero franchises—just screamed “cash-grab”? Or was it because, while I admired the main cast and the cool characters they were playing, I didn’t think they were matched up with a worthy villain (love Tom Hiddleston as Loki, but he wasn’t intimidating, and hardly seemed a match for any of the Avengers, let alone all of them)?

Happily, I had the exact opposite reaction to that 2012 blockbuster’s first (official) sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron, which was written and directed by the helmer of the first movie, Joss Whedon. Like its predecessor, Age of Ultron is a Huge movie, but, unlike its predecessor, it wowed me from the start. Maybe it’s because it’s a little darker and grittier. Maybe it’s because it was a sequel—allowed to expand creatively in terms of character, plot and vision now that its more cookie-cutter predecessor locked in the fans. Maybe it’s because it’s more fun to watch a movie about people arguing, bantering, interacting and going on adventures when they all have extraordinary abilities than it is to watch a movie about regular people arguing, bantering, interacting and going on adventures. Maybe it’s because it feels like a reunion of friends—after all, it features at least 14 actors who have previously played their Age of Ultron parts on the big screen, and most of them have done it more than once. Maybe it’s because the special effects are noticeably better this time around (fan-boys may argue, but I never thought the Loki-led alien race, the Guitarri—who attacked NYC in the first film’s climactic battle scene—were very convincing). Or maybe it’s because, this time, our heroes are matched up against a villain who’s genuinely scary, who makes your skin crawl, who seems like he could take on all our title characters at once…and maybe win.

Or, you know, maybe it’s because this is a sequel three years in the waiting, that has had three sort-of predecessors since 2012 (‘13’s Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, and ‘14’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier). Each of those three in-between flicks had its merits—in particular, I loved Winter Soldier—but each felt at least a little bit lacking because it featured only one or two of the Avengers, rather then all of them. It’s hard to go back once you’ve had a taste...

Avengers: Age of Ultron probably isn’t the best summer blockbuster you’ll ever see, maybe not even the best superhero movie, and it isn’t really groundbreaking, per se, but it’s way better than the last big-budget extravaganza I saw in theaters (the bloated and lame-brained Furious 7), and the next three months’ releases will have a hard time even remotely approaching its level of sheer spectacle and WOW factor.

Plot

**At least passing knowledge of who the characters are and what they can do is necessary, unless you have an absolutely unquestioning ability to suspend your disbelief. At the very least, I would recommend seeing the previous 2012 Avengers (and probably 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, too), before seeing this.**

At the beginning of the movie, The Avengers—who, initially, number six individuals who have either superpowers or elite skills—raid a compound run by the old Nazi espionage agency, Hydra. Their target is Loki’s scepter, a weapon used by the scheming villain in the previous movie to, among other things, blow things up, hypnotize people into doing his bidding, and create a portal to another dimension. They recover the scepter, but encounter a few bumps along the way, including a run-in with the fabled Twins, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff—aka Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen)—Russian orphans who have been scientifically engineered to (in his case) run and move at faster-then-a-speeding-bullet speeds, and (in her case) use telekinesis, hypnosis, and force fields.

Despite their success in retrieving the scepter, The Avengers have consented that they can’t be policing the world stopping crimes forever, and, in fact, like most great heroes, they might endanger innocent people even more by creating villains who want to rise up to stop them. To achieve this end—the Avengers’ retirement—the team’s two brainiest members, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who suits up in action as Iron Man, and Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who, when particularly irked, transforms into the big, green, scary-strong Hulk, have been working on a series of robot sentries who can police the world in their place. Stark, in particular, is intrigued by the power Loki’s scepter holds, and seeks to somehow implant its powers into the machines, making them more lifelike so they can think and act and stop crimes and enemies on their own. However, this little scheme is very much at odds with the desires of the de facto leader of the Avengers, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), the famed Captain America, whose old-fashioned notions of honor and duty, and good and evil, lead him to conclude that it’s best to simply stop the current threat and head back to war if another challenge arises, not to meddle about in more unpredictable forces. However, Stark’s humanoid computer program, Jarvis (voice of Paul Bettany), can be used to monitor the developing intelligence and shut it down if need be. This safeguard in place, Stark, Banner and Rogers are able to relax a little, even having an enjoyable pow-wow with fellow Avengers Thor (Chris Hemsworth)--the hammer-wielding demi-god--and highly-trained assassins Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye, played by Jeremy Renner) and Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson), plus several of their other friends and allies.

However, the new program—which Stark has called Ultron—glitches almost immediately, far too smart for Stark, Jarvis, or its own good. In seemingly no time, Ultron is a terrifying, hulking robot (magnificently voiced by a drawling James Spader), whose connection to computers gives him access to all kinds of knowledge and abilities. Disgusted by the idea that he was created, Ultron seeks a way to wipe out the human race, something he doesn’t disclose to two of his first allies, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (the Twins, it should be noted, suffered great personal loss as a result of some of Stark’s heavy weaponry, so they’re happy to suit up with Ultron against the Avengers). With Ultron growing stronger and smarter by the minute, and using all of Stark’s backup droids to create more just like himself, and with the Witch messing with people’s minds and Quicksilver darting about too quickly to see, things look bleak as the Avengers struggle against outside forces even more difficult than their own battling egos. 

What Doesn’t Work?

Like its predecessor, Age of Ultron is just shy of two-and-a-half hours long. This length may be rather necessary in order to give each member of this large main cast a personality and something to do, and to give the plot a few twists and turns before a big climax, but the movie does feel a little long, and, at times, a little talky. Also, although the action here is far more fierce and sinister-feeling than that in the first Avengers flick, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that even the coolest action sequences are the tiniest bit redundant, that all these characters are going to make it no matter how bad things get, because A) they’re all super-strong, super-quick, equipped with muscles and armor, etc.., and B) they have more movies to make in the future, so they can’t die off now. I suppose that comes with the territory, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a little more sense of real danger, and a little more drama.

But these are nitpicks.

What Works?

It’s no secret—the keys to this movie are its cast and their director. Obviously, Joss Whedon wrote and directed the first film, but it’s hard to fathom what a task it must be to not just make a movie that has roughly 10 major characters—who all have to have at least one moment—but to put them in a movie that is coherent and enjoyable, at least as good as their last outing, and, perhaps most importantly, pleasing to those audience members who know these characters well. This movie is smart, funny, and, even, unexpectedly moving. It takes a few big twists, works in close to half a dozen sidekicks/supporting players from the characters’ respective individual films, and ups itself in terms of sheer action several times over.

Whedon is a smart, accomplished man, but it must be said, his task is certainly made a great deal easier by his cast. Few movies can boast such a group of actors, and I’m not just talking about the Avengers themselves. Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Idris Elba, Hayley Atwell and Stella Skarsgaard make up the supporting cast in this movie, in roles that range from cameos to small supporting parts; that group could easily be the eye-catching all-star cast of any other movie. Of course, the leads—with the exception of newcomers Taylor-Johnson and Olsen—have all played their parts at least twice on the big screen (Downey Jr. has five turns as Iron Man under his belt now, and Evans, Hemsworth and Johansson have all played their parts four times), so Whedon is blessed in that he could make a sheer, pell-mell action movie with not a smidge of character development and still probably get away with it, because his characters are established cinematic and pop culture brands by this point—we know who they are and what makes them tick. But Whedon is not content to sleepwalk through this, and nor, it seems, are his actors.

What a group. The first Iron Man, released in 2008, not only arguably changed the face of superhero flicks—at least in the Marvel canon—forever, but re-established Robert Downey Jr. as a bona-fide star after years of on-and-off-screen troubles. He could probably play this part in his sleep by now, and it's possible he does, but it must be acknowledged that, when Downey Jr. has writing to match his energy and snappy wit, he may be the most watchable actor alive (it can be argued that his best scenes consist of just his face, in the tight shots of him making commentary while inside his Iron Man suit). Evans’ Steve Rogers isn’t quite as interesting a character as Tony Stark, but he doesn’t need to be, we know what makes Captain America tick, and he’s well-established by now—Cap’s last outing, The Winter Soldier, made almost everyone’s Best Marvel Movies Ever list practically overnight. The actor remains winning in the role. Hemsworth’s Thor is pushed more into the background this time, but the movie doesn’t suffer, as Thor is even less interesting as a character, but dang, we sure do love having him around for the fight scenes so he can swing that hammer. Jeremy Renner, on the other hand, enjoys a Hawkeye resurgence this time around—having been relegated to the background in the first movie—being bumped up from just the guy in the group who uses a bow and arrow to a guy with a family, with cares and fears and a future. Mark Ruffalo is, of course, the third actor to play Bruce Banner on the big screen, but this is his second go-round and he might as well not have had any predecessors—he infuses both vulnerability and shy wit to bring gravitas to the proceedings, making Banner a real, tragic figure.

And yet, it must be said that, with the possible exception of Robert Downey Jr., the most invaluable player in this flick is Scarlett Johansson. While comic book readers obviously knew the Black Widow character, it was difficult, when the actress first appeared in 2010’s Iron Man 2, to see her appointment as anything but the addition of some eye candy. But, starting in Avengers and continuing in Winter Soldier, the actress (and the writers) has worked hard to make Black Widow not a femme fatale or a pretty face but an aching, lonely soul who struggles to maintain an identity behind all the kicks and punches and bullets. Black Widow is here given a flirtation-bordering-on-serious-romance with Bruce Banner, which allows Johansson to play the flirt, the tough girl, and, for a few brief moments, a starry-eyed lady in love, and it is a beautiful thing (the two share one scene of deep revelations that is almost too powerful and moving for a movie like this; it seems something out an indie tearjerker at a film festival). 

The newcomers to the cast have a tough job, making lasting impressions as both actors and characters alongside more proven, well-known, decorated cast members. Aaron Taylor-Johnson (best known for playing another, more lowbrow superhero, Kick-Ass) has an especially tough job because his character, Quicksilver, was played by another actor just last year, in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Even worse, Evan Peters all but stole that movie with his brief but memorable stint as the quickster. Taylor-Johnson gets some witty writing of his own, though, and makes the character notably different by infusing a convincing regional accent. Fun fact—Elizabeth Olsen played Taylor-Johnson’s wife in last year’s Godzilla, here, she’s playing his sister. As the Scarlet Witch, Olsen’s character’s powers make more of an impression than the actress does, but she shows enough promise to make a greater impression in potential (and almost guaranteed) installments.

Finally—last and certainly not least—Age of Ultron is given a great amount of its grit, depth, dread factor, and sheer coolness, by James Spader, who provides the ultra-malevolent voice of the robot Ultron. That voice became a pop-culture touchstone just from the movie’s trailers (who didn’t get goosebumps from his super-creepy take on the classic Pinocchio “there are no strings on me” line?). His drawling yet sharp line readings—often brimming with barely-suppressed rage—coupled with Whedon’s writing, make Ultron, with his plan of human annihilation, less a braying madman bent on world domination (like a generic Bond villain) and more of a scary nihilist like Heath Ledger’s Joker. His character’s grandeur is greatly-enhanced by the amount of references he makes to the Bible and God (indeed, the writing is interesting, given Whedon’s status as an avowed atheist; Ultron’s lines include “upon this rock, I will build my church” and “every now and then, God throws a stone, and believe me, He’s winding up”). It’s thrilling work.

Content

A great amount of the 141-minute run-time is devoted to things going boom, or at least getting bashed around a little bit, and, as mentioned, the villain’s a little scary (“scream, and your whole staff dies”, he snarls to a scientist at one point), and the action’s a little darker and heavier. Some innocent bystanders get banged around a little bit, and there are some shots of bloody wounds. The Witch also tends to hypnotize people into dreamlike trances in which they see visions of devastation and despair. And there a handful of cusswords, something Captain America apparently doesn’t approve of (“language!” he unexpectedly barks at Tony Stark at one point). This movie has a lot of action and drama, but it’s not really anything worse than your average Marvel movie…except for that intense villain.

Bottom Line (I Promise)

It took a while—and repeat viewings—to make me a believer in the first Avengers movie. Age of Ultron made a believer out of me right away. It’s not perfect, but it sets a remarkably high standard for the summer movies of 2015; I rather doubt any of them can quite reach it. It’s a little long, but that’s because it’s so locked and loaded, chock-full of dynamic characters, jaw-dropping action (the Hulk vs the Hulk-buster, omg!) and even legitimately good writing, featuring the kind of stuff you usually don’t see in a blockbuster. The characters matter, they’re developed, they might even bring a tear to your eye (no, seriously—that one part…), and, of course, you cheer for them nonstop. It’ll be hard to pick your favorite character, or your favorite part, and it’ll make you want to see the next one right away.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Written and Directed by Joss Whedon

Based on the comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Rated PG-13

Length: 141 minutes