3 stars out of 5
Eh, go see it if you want to. Stuff blows up, people fly around. I expected a little more but, dashed hopes and I are dear old friends.
The thing is, I thought that first Avengers movie was pretty great. Instead of the doom-and-gloom, muted palate of so many recent superhero movies, Avengers was big and bright and lots of fun. Stupid, sure it was, but totally entertaining. Also, it was fresh. We hadn’t seen an Avengers movie before.
Guardians of the Galaxy took the formula and ran with it for the kiddies: An Avengers ripoff that was even more fun.
So along comes Avengers 2 and instead of raising the stakes, the overall feeling seems to be “Uggh, we have to make another one?” The very first real lines of dialogue are Iron Man exclaiming “Shit!” and Captain America scolding “Language!” Then for the rest of the movie, everybody makes fun of Captain America for being a prude. Fine, I get it, pre-teen boys are a huge market for this sort of movie, but can’t we be a little bit smarter? In the same vein, later we get a lazily written sex joke (Ruffalo: “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Johannson: “I thought that was your job”) and a huh-huh-huh-huh homophobic exchange between Iron Man and that not-Iron Man character that Don Cheadle plays. Come on, Joss Whedon, you can do better.
Or maybe he can’t? There’s a time-is-passing montage of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner… doing research. It was such an incredibly boring scene, it seemed like a spoof. (It’s not.) The plot, what there is of one, involves the “ghost in the machine” Ultron (or HAL, or the War Games guy, or Her, etc. etc. etc.) who wants to, yawn, destroy the world. He’s voiced by James Spader in this oddly casual manner so there’s no real feeling of threat. It’s just tired ’80s bad boys Spader and Downey Jr. sniping at each other.
The sub-plot revolves around two boring new characters, these Eastern European Boris-and-Natasha moose-ahnd-squirrel Wonder Twins. Powers activate: Form of “Ripoff of The Flash!” Form of “Hypnotist and Also Random Ability to Switch On Subway Brakes!” The mentalist girl puts some weird brain mojo on all the Avengers, and the movie tries to take on a psychological horror-flick feel. Except Whedon isn’t a skillful enough director to make it genuinely scary.
But come on, we go to these movies for action, and they kindly give us three extended sequences: the hand-to-hand combat scene (Hulk vs. Jumbo Iron Man), the car chase (truck, motorcycle, spaceship), and the all-out-war grand finale. These scenes are entertaining enough, almost enough to make you forget how boring the stuff in-between is. Almost.
And then they set us up for yet another sequel, this time with second-rate characters! Ooh I can’t wait.
It’ll be interesting to see if the next guy can do any better — the Avengers is a particularly ridiculous combination of characters. I thought it was a miracle the first one worked at all, although I do seem to recall a lot of time being spent in that one walking and talking in some kind of dark flying city HQ.
It all about marketing. You just know when you are seeing a movie that was focus grouped to death. These movies are a little ridiculous, but doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. Everything is so corporate with these big films. Even with a great cast, who cares? Money, money money….. Jack ,the first three sentences of this review were precious. Eh!