I watched Avengers: Age of Ultron on a Friday of its opening weekend so I walked in psyched beyond words. I love everything that Joss Whedon has done: Alien: Resurrection, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along, Dollhouse, The Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers. I watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. even though it is incredibly uneven despite having a stronger second season. I’m pretty much locked in to the Marvel universe, adored Agent Carter and love Daredevil (I’m only 3 episodes in). Marvel and Whedon’s excellence could only last so long.
It felt like Avengers: Age of Ultron was missing a movie in between this one and the first Avengers. We’re supposed to assume that before Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Avengers have been a team filled with camaraderie and love for each other, but I didn’t buy it. They didn’t earn it, and I’m not assuming it because of the banter, which suffers from Christopher Nolan disease-I could barely hear it over the music and explosions.
I know that all the Marvel movies are setting the stage for subsequent movies, but Avengers: Age of Ultron did so self-consciously and unevenly with mixed success. The pacing was simultaneously too rushed and too slow. There was not enough character development and too many tropes. I want to marry James Spader’s voice, but is James Spader cursed? Does his excellence suck all other forms of excellence from the room? I’m glad that the cities in peril were other than the usual iconic cities, but there was nothing to truly make us invested in those cities before danger strikes like in most action films. It was like there was a list of awesome fight scenes that Avengers: Age of Ultron wanted to depict so it did so then paused and said, “Oh, I guess that we should have some talking now.” Unlike The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron’s character conflicts felt like they were insulting the characters’ intelligence and felt more contrived than believable. It was overstuffed, but not nutritious. The antagonists were believable up to a point, but if I thought about it for more than a few seconds, I got Looper levels of angry

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

It had more CGI than soul despite the emo heroes & future heroes’ individual crises. I actually didn’t have a problem with Black Widow in The Avengers, but I’m giving Avengers: Age of Ultron all the side eye. She is sad because she is sterile and was an assassin. Can we stop making the ability or the desire to have a baby a character trait please? It is just lazy writing. Yes, it happens in real life, but when a guy is a villain or a hero, it does not stem from a low sperm count. It is part of who he is as an individual. She is a normal human being who can fight and not get hurt with and against people with ridiculous powers. Agent Carter did it better with less resources and without the clunky dialogue. Unfortunately by omitting Pepper, a normal, childless woman, it furthers this premise and takes away from many of Stark’s more human moments. Avengers: Age of Ultron’s Stark is basically humorless and stuck in the lab when he isn’t stuck in the suit.
In contrast, Hawkeye has now become the Coulson of the group because he has a family. Again being normal is proportional to your fertility. It made him likable and interesting unlike his minimal role in The Avengers, but it also made me think that he needs to quit the job.
As any Whedon fan knows, Whedon is a humanist atheist who embraces a Euro-centric Christian heritage, which means that he brings amazing layered Biblical references to the table which in turn provide deeper meaning to his stories and dialogue. In The Avengers, Stark and The Hulk are the scientists and atheists who scoff at and defeat gods on a daily basis. Cap is a Christian. Thor is literally a god. They eventually become a community united to face an eternal evil, which each of them characterize in their own belief traditions. The Avengers had something relatable for all viewers while referencing a struggle more epic than just the one on the screen.
In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Whedon’s belief references fell flat and remained superficial if not slightly disturbing and offensive. The atheists are hopeless, reckless doomsday preppers who are only capable of self-destruction and isolation. Thor, the only god, lost faith in himself because he recognizes that the only true God is Vision, “I AM.” The wannabe pop culture version of the Old Testament God, Ultron, occupies a church in the center of town and makes allusions to building a church on a rock, which is a Jesus speaking about the apostle Peter reference. If The Avengers suggested that a community of disparate individuals with different belief system could become a team and destroy evil, Avengers: Age of Ultron seems to undo all of that and suggest that we plant the inevitable seeds of our destruction, but not in a joyful way like The Cabin in the Woods. When the happy ending comes, and Cap decides to create a new team, I didn’t feel psyched, but weary–this again. You apparently didn’t successfully create a team the first time, but you’re going to do a spinoff. Is Whedon suffering Ridley Scott disease? Noooooooo!
I don’t mind tearing down a team, but considering that the Avengers have not been a team for long on screen–and no, one party does not make me believe that they became besties in the interim, Avengers: Age of Ultron didn’t earn the fracturing. They were always fractured, and then they were unified for TWO battles on screen. TWO! I don’t mind keeping the individual characters separated in their individual movies if I have to get this dreck. We needed a movie to show how the Avengers became a team and unified after Hydra destroyed S.H.I.E.L.D., not a movie about how The Avengers made one hit song before the music died. Maybe I see too many movies, but Avengers: Age of Ultron was all unearned angst and action. It was a step back for the franchise.