I have always believed that a movie
should be considered good or bad in the context of expectations that movie has
raised among its viewers i.e. a great romance track inside of a suspense flick doesn’t
work for me, similarly a movie supposedly about reservation in India i.e. ‘Aarakshan’
suddenly becoming about private tuition in the second half is as close to fraud
as a movie can reach in this business. But
when did delivering a movie as expected became a bad thing, may be today for
me.
Marvel Cinematic Universe popularly
known as MCU is currently having a large number of hit franchisees under its
belt; Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Avengers, Guardians of Galaxy, Agents of
SHIELD, Agent Carter, Dare Devil with only exception of Hulk being a non profitable
venture. Future projects include next installments of Thor, Captain America,
Avengers, Guardians of Galaxy, and continuation of Agents of SHIELD, four more TV
series with Netflix, introduction of new super heroes like Ant Man, Doctor
Strange, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Inhumans and a possible reboot of
Spiderman. Not to mention a few short movies here and there and tie in comics.
Avengers: Age of Ultron had been a
keenly awaited movie worldwide and probable will reach 1 billion dollar mark as
well. The movie has been released in India before USA which shows the importance
of this market. However coming back to the question of expectations, does the
movie deliver on them? Yes it does and that exactly is my problem.
I have watched all the above mentioned
movies/ series, and found one thing in common, give or take it becomes repetitive,
in the movies there will be a new villain with new power and the hero will come
and defeat it with his super powers, add a few tangy dialogues and a lot of
special effect, with a hint of corny emotions and voila the next movie is
ready.
Some Spoilers ahead
How this Avenger movie is different
from the last one is a difficult question to answer, like last movie we have a
super villain ‘Ultron’ in place of ‘Loki’, we have its ‘robot’ army in place of
‘Chitari’ army, the last villain wanted world dominance, this one wants world annihilation,
we have similar conflict among the band of super heroes, we have a big fight
with all the super heroes fighting the army, even we have the same ‘Thanos’ is
the post credit scene as the last one. So in the next movie the same structure
will be there with ‘Thanos’ in place of ‘Ultron’ and a lot of new super heroes
will be joining the band wagon with required or non required skills, but in the
end it will be more or less same.
If you have been following on all
the movies that certainly you should watch this one too, and of course it is a
well made movie, the humor comes in bits and pieces, but is still good, but as
a whole the movie is a little week on story line and lacks coherence, like the
reasons ‘Ultron’ gives to destroy everything is hardly effective, storyline
between Hulk and Black Widow looked forced on the narrative and is as off
repeated as cliché go, hell it reminded me of ‘Ek Tha Tiger’, leave everything
and run. Even the bath Thor took went over my head like a missile. Having too
many characters to deal within allotted time is a tough task anyway. Although I
liked Jeremy Renner’s performance and character development and voice of James
Spader is as mesmerizing as ever.
Spoilers end
However the movie is not boring, and
can be a reasonable watch, but don’t expect anything you haven’t seen before. I
always appreciate a basic conflict in the movie storyline which was seriously
missing here, maybe ‘Captain America: Civil War’ will satisfy me on that front,
but till then, I had enough of super hero drama, its time to explore other genres
and read a few good books.
Rating ***. 
