Avengers: Age of Ultron

Hear that? That was the sum­mer block­buster starter pis­tol going off. Speed­ing out of the blocks, quip­ping as it bounds, is Marvel’s mighty Avengers: Age of Ultron. Like all of these big-bud­get, big name movies it plays by estab­lished laws carved out of a need for action, explo­sions, A‑listers look­ing buff and ref­er­ences to oth­er assets with­in the studio’s ever-expand­ing Universe.

In the case of com­ic-book adap­ta­tions, there are also the pre-exist­ing guide­lines to char­ac­ters and worlds and how all should look and behave. To review a Mar­vel movie as if the direc­tor had the cre­ative free­dom to end with a whim­si­cal song-and-dance num­ber would be like blam­ing a no-bud­get movie for not star­ring Scar­lett Johansson.

Whether you go to the cin­e­ma for this type of for­mu­la­ic spec­ta­cle is a dif­fer­ent ques­tion. But if there was ever an ingre­di­ent to com­bine with the stu­dio-approved list of addi­tives to give a dish some zing, it is the inim­itable writer/​director Joss Whe­don. From sharp­en­ing his teeth on Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er to play­ing mer­ry hell with hor­ror con­ven­tions in The Cab­in in the Woods (as writer) to mak­ing the sparki­est dia­logue in his pre­vi­ous Mar­vel out­ing, Avengers Assem­ble, Whedon’s wit is brac­ing and know­ing enough to under­cut all humbug.

Intro­duc­ing a pre­view screen­ing of Age of Ultron, he said: ​“Thank you so much for com­ing out and see­ing this movie that I hate so much, that I’m so tired of but that was made with so much love. I just hope that you enjoy it.” In con­ced­ing the weari­some qual­i­ties of being part of a huge machine, he makes the machine seem some­how human and charming.

Machines and humans and how the two crossover and clash is the sub­ject of Age of Ultron. The action begins lit­er­al­ly with action as Cap­tain Amer­i­ca (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr), The Hulk (Mark Ruf­fa­lo), Black Wid­ow (Scar­lett Johans­son), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Hawk­eye (Jere­my Ren­ner) descend upon Hydra in order to con­fis­cate an item of enig­mat­ic impor­tance: Loki’s Scep­tre. Hydra responds by unleash­ing ​‘The Twins’, Wan­da and Pietro Max­i­moff aka The Scar­let Witch and Quick­sil­ver, played respec­tive­ly by a mad-eyed Eliz­a­beth Olsen and Aaron Tay­lor-John­son chan­nelling New Roman­tic surfer chic. Their pow­ers — in short — are: ​“He’s fast. She’s weird.” The Scar­lett Witch’s tal­ent for mind con­trol, in the form of plung­ing the super­heroes back into the unre­solved trau­mas of their past expos­es vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and puts the fas­ci­nat­ing obser­va­tion that strength is a mat­ter of stay­ing in the present.

Anoth­er nar­ra­tive seed plant­ed dur­ing the first big fight is the ten­der green shoots of romance between a larg­er but still ten­der green life­form and the token open­ing-line-up female. The plea­sure of watch­ing the sul­tri­est actress on the plan­et flirt with Mark Ruf­fa­lo doing his win­ning­ly bash­ful Mark Ruf­fa­lo thing also pro­vides moments of qui­etude, of which there are oth­er­wise next to none, as the plot rolls for­ward amid action, one-lin­ers and CGI and action, one-lin­ers and team talks and…

Whe­don makes his style count in the qual­i­ty of the one-lin­ers. There are no meat-head­ed testos­terone-fuelled swear­fests. A run­ning jokes comes after Cap prim­ly calls out a team mem­ber for ​“lan­guage.” All char­ac­ters are so wry, so wit­ty, so ref­er­en­tial. Also to Whedon’s cred­it, all char­ac­ters get the chance (albeit in a mut­ter form as they charge towards dis­as­ter) to wear their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and, thanks to Scar­let Witch induced flash­backs, the painful events that forge their cur­rent goals.

There is some­thing to be said for the sight of gen­uine Hol­ly­wood tal­ent at their most ath­let­ic and bat­tle-ready deliv­er­ing char­ac­ter-appro­pri­ate wit­ti­cisms out of the cor­ner of their mouths as they shoot across the screen. So many art-house vet­er­ans now plough their niche right to the top of Mount Mon­ey. Most of the high­est-billed stars have done indie work. Join­ing them are Samuel L Jack­son, Cobie Smul­ders, Paul Bet­tany, James Spad­er, Hay­ley Atwell, Andy Serkis, Julie Delpy, Idris Elba and Stel­lan Skars­gård for vary­ing lengths of time (Julie Delpy and Elba appear in blink-and-miss-em parts) and the film is rich­er because no one is sup­press­ing the quirks that make them com­pelling stars.

While quirks are not sup­pressed they are not giv­en the space or time to make more than a momen­tary impact. This is a pris­tine, glass and met­al, futur­ist Apple Store world that is ready to blow at any sec­ond. Civil­ians are rolled out to scream and flee from col­laps­ing rub­ble, smok­ing car­nage and a stomp­ing Hulk. Inno­va­tion points come dur­ing fight chore­og­ra­phy when an ele­va­tor is swung around like a ham­mer throw and we get a boing-boing-boing com­e­dy fast punch sequence between The Hulk and Ultron.

Ah yes, Ultron — he of whom the age it is ​“of”. With­out want­i­ng to spoil a twisty-turny plot that moves too fast to ques­tion and thus requires a degree of post-view­ing unpick­ing, Ultron comes in a form that mod­ern audi­ences will recog­nise as a threat: a com­put­er virus. He blos­soms into a robot of the exoskele­tal, skin­less Ter­mi­na­tor vari­ety, armed not just with down­loaded arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence but also philo­soph­i­cal savvy. At times, it feels like the film is about to inves­ti­gate the notion that decid­ing who is good and who is evil is just a mat­ter of where you’re stand­ing when a bomb explodes. The most excit­ing moments come when these ideas are fired into the audi­ence on the back of Whedon’s pierc­ing dia­logue. ​“God, you right­eous man, pre­tend­ing that you can live with­out war,” sneers Ultron at Cap­tain Amer­i­ca. Could this be a super­hero movie about the moral ambi­gu­i­ty of superheroes?

Not exact­ly. Although it is a cred­it to Whe­don and the glim­mer­ing cast that the thought even occurs. Sub­ver­sive ideas are there to enter­tain and dis­tract as the wheels of a tem­plat­ed movie force of nature spins to the inevitable end­ing, which has bound up in its DNA the ori­gins of the next force of movie nature and the next and the next. No won­der Whe­don sound­ed tired. To quote Nick Fury: ​“These things mul­ti­ply faster than a Catholic rabbit.”

The philo­soph­i­cal vignettes might not have the nar­ra­tive weight to be any­thing oth­er than beguil­ing curios tossed out and then for­got­ten about but there are enough of them, deliv­ered sharply enough by delight­ful movie stars at the top of their game, to make Age of Ultron one of the most thought­ful­ly dri­ven mon­ster vehi­cles you are like­ly to see in a sum­mer rammed with pow­er­ful, glossy, mech­a­nised beasts.