Avengers: Age of Ultron

It hardly seems possible but Avengers: Age of Ultron fares worse than its relentlessly mediocre predecessor, as the movie suffers from a pervasively lifeless, artificial vibe that’s compounded by an almost total lack of compelling characters and a proliferation of hopelessly generic action sequences. The narrative, which follows the Avengers as they battle a deadly new threat called Ultron (James Spader), progresses at an almost glacial pace and possess few (if any) sequences designed to pique one’s non-existent interest, with filmmaker Joss Whedon’s pervasively wrongheaded sensibilities in evidence right from the word go. (The movie does, after all, kick off with a bland battle that feels like it’d be more at home within a video game, with the various battles that follow falling into exactly the same category.) Far more problematic is Whedon’s ongoing failure to provide even a single engaging character-based moment, as Avengers: Age of Ultron is, for the most part, far more concerned with its often unintelligible storyline than with developing its characters or finding compelling things for them to do. (There is, for example, an ongoing romantic subplot involving Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner and Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff that couldn’t possibly be less interesting.) The sole bright spot within the proceedings is Spader’s sardonic turn as the title villain, as the actor delivers a sharp, charismatic vocal performance that stands in sharp contrast to the banal efforts of his many costars (ie the entirety of the movie’s central cast phones in their work to a degree that’s astonishing). By the time the movie finally lumbers to its typically over-the-top, meaningless finale, Avengers: Age of Ultron firmly confirms its place as the nadir of the Marvel cinematic universe – which is no small feat, certainly, given that the studio’s output has been almost uniformly terrible.

* out of ****