Avengers: Age of Ultron

"Marvel is playing games with the audience "Find ten differences". Leaving aside the obligatory "bigger, longer, more expensive, more computer effects", it is indistinguishable from the first movie. What you would miss terribly is a charismatic villain (again), it is noticeably lacking the human element (again), what is completely absent is any fear of the characters (again), everyone is just playing with each other in a harmless way (again) and the final hour turns into one big not escalating, confusing and an interchangeable CGI action mess (again), in which just a bunch of bad guys from space replace countless robots. It is almost impossible to tell the first and the second movie apart, because each of them has the same pros and cons, so you know exactly in advance what and in what form you will get. Which, of course, applies to some extent to all (cinema) Marvel movies. The question is whether to take this established "corporate unified approach" as a good thing or bad. (04/30/2015)

I am an old and conservative man who is no longer fast enough for the pace of Michael Bay's hypnagogue sessions, and I am increasingly enjoying wooden characters who constantly need to feed their egos. I can laugh at all that and forget about the absolutely tragic love cooing of a rookie and Russian, which I would without hesitation call one of the biggest directing failures in the history of Marvel. Again, the Avengers are not getting anywhere and are working with the same (and not completely fresh) model of action, and I do not see any exorbitant escalation in them. I enjoyed it, for example, because for the first time in the history of Marvel films, I was afraid for the life of one of the characters, and also because it is the first solo for Hawkeye, who knocked me on my ass from the back lines. I got what I came for. A slow, lightly leather and conservative costume event, which is starting to be particularly intimate in its grandeur, because it is basically a party of friends who long for rest. (04/30/2015)

Grandiose, with clear resonance, characters filled to the brim – and yet I want more. Especially since this director's oversight was likely the last. Those who followed Joss Whedon's most complex work, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, under circumstances other than coming home from school at the age of thirteen, know that some of the narrative archetypes were already being tossed out by the king of geeks almost two decades ago. And even though this time the story about how Beauty had to save the Beast (Black Widow and Hulk) and the one about the man who has no supernatural or technologically driven abilities and yet must be enough for the local gods (Hawkeye) is limited in this way, it does not yield any worse storytelling. Just tell it faster. That's also the only downside to the peak of the entire Phase Two. It has to hint at events from all the solo films and lay the groundwork for Avengers: Infinity War, so it's no wonder that there's not enough time for everyone involved. It doesn't matter for Iron Man, Thor, or Cap, because even though we adore them, we'll soon see them in separate adventures and their roles, cut down to a flawed genius, a courageous warrior, and an honorable leader, which will be more than enough. The bigger problem is with the twins, who have a lot of potential, which Ultron – functioning as their origin – has no chance of fulfilling. So there's no point in kidding ourselves, those two and a half hours are desperately short for a bunch of plotlines and two bunches of characters. If it's true that the original Whedon's cut was over three hours, I'm not surprised at all, and secondly, I request a private screening because the world would not have seen a better comic book shop. (05/04/2015)

Given the number of characters and the nature of the plot, there's two hours of action, ten minutes of plot, and ten minutes of credits... plus the final scenes. There wasn't room for a film, although Widow and Hulk aren’t a bad pairing, and with Hawkeye staying at home, it was very promising. The only positives for me are Wanda, Vision, and Peggy's cameo. (07/16/2015)

The same thing over and over again. Unfortunately, there is a lack of coherence and it lacks the dynamism of the first film. Among all the comic-book clichés, the only things that remain are the well-developed characters and the sharp emphasis on the supporting, not so powerful, yet very interesting figures (Hawkeye, Black Widow). The could have spared the nonsense with the Hulk, as well as the cheap action just for the sake of it, but those smooth digital sequences are cool, right? (even though they look lilke Zack Snyder’s stuff.) Joss Whedon doesn’t deliver anything revolutionary, he just pockets a lot of money because he does what works the most: a little bit of everything, so no one gets offended and everyone gets their fill. I wonder how many dozens of comics with the same plot narrative and framework Hollywood will have to make before audiences realise that it's all the same? Then a creator like Nolan will have to come in and rewrite history again. (04/30/2015)