Avengers Assemble II

Today’s movie review is for the recently released: “Avengers: Age of Ultron“.   This movie is an advance case of super-heroes extremis: wow, there are a lot of them.  In fact, there is such an overload of them (characters) the movie has to create humanizing back stories to make the central characters (the original Avengers) overall movie believable.  It also – I guess – is creating future movie leads, by throwing a lot of characters at us, but only giving them cameo roles.  So, is the sequel as good as the original?  So, so…  In some ways better.  In some, worse.
I would argue the action scenes and special effects are much better.  The humanizing also adds a great deal to the movie.  I particularly enjoyed the “pick up the hammer” scene.  This scene is exactly the type of scene which adds humanity to the movie, but reinforces the “super” part of super-hero.  There are probably seven to ten such moments in the movie and they work.  Supporting this (the back stories) are the numerous one-liners thrown in throughout the movie.
What doesn’t work?  Well, most of the movie doesn’t make much sense.  Why are things happening and / or why did they happen to lead up to the current point?  A lot wasn’t terribly clear (to me at least).  The bottom line was that I simply decided early on the movie wasn’t going to make a lot of sense and just tried to enjoy it as a comic-book, action movie.  From then on (well, reminding myself frequently) the movie was very enjoyable.
Final recommendation:  strong recommendation.  Good early summer entertainment!  Not the greatest movie, but a reasonable progression of action scenes based around a story with a great villain.  I can’t wait for the DVD!  How ’bout that?  I got through the entire “review” without mentioning the name of a single character or actor and with no spoilers.  I’m not sure if I should be proud or not??  If you like comic-book movies (I do), you’ll thoroughly enjoy this movie.  I did!!
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On This Day In:
2014	Turning Pages
2013	We Are All Accountable
2012	American Sign Language
2011	Happy Disproof
2010	Book Review – Managing Your Government Career

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But If I Had To Perish Twice…

They say you die twice.  One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.
—    Banksy
[With apologies to Robert Frost (see here)…    —    KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2014	Turning Pages
2013	We Are All Accountable
2012	American Sign Language
2011	Happy Disproof
2010	Book Review – Managing Your Government Career

Read Full Post »