Sunday, April 26, 2015

Avengers : Age of Ultron (2015)



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 ***. 

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