Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Mark
Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle,
Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen
Direction: Joss Whedon
I'll begin this with the opening lines of the WB Yeats poem, The Second Coming:
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..."
Yeats had penned those lines in 1920, right after the First
World War ended in 1919. He had seen the 'blood-dimmed tide' loosed, and
the drowning of the 'ceremony of innocence'. And he had spoken about a
'rough beast...slouches towards Bethlehem to be born'. The Second
Coming, therefore, wasn't an all-forgiving Messiah's. The Second Coming
was this 'rough beast's'.
Avengers: Age of Ultron has at
its core, pretty much the same message. "You want to protect the world,
but you don't want to change it," says Ultron to the Avengers. And in
his quest of 'changing the world'; letting it evolve, nothing can act as
an obstacle. Not even the world. Ultron is no saviour of the world.
Ultron, but, is interested in the evolution of the world...'and when the
dust settles down, there will be only metal,' comes his near-victory
cry.
Keeping the highfalutin stuff aside, this instalment of
Avengers is a delightful watch. And even when you see the Marvel
universe collapsing, with Ultron at the steering, you want to be
transported to it. Such is the charm of these superheroes and their
world. Age of Ultron begins with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) and Bruce
Banner (Mark Ruffalo) exploring the possibility of pushing science
further. The Avengers raid a Hydra outpost, retrieve Loki's sceptre, and
come across two of Strucker's (Thomas Kretschmann) human experiments.
Strucker's human experiments comprise a brother-sister duo:
Pietro/Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who is capable of moving at
superhuman speed, and Wanda/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), who has
powers of telekinesis and manipulating human minds.
Tony
and Bruce discover an artificial intelligence within their booty - the
sceptre's gem. And self-proclaimed 'mad scientists' that they are, they
end up toying with it, unbeknownst to the other Avengers. In the
process, Ultron is unleashed. In order to take on Ultron and the
destruction threats it poses, and to save the world, the Avengers unite
yet again.
The primary cast of the film - the core
Avengers - consists of Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo,
Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner, who reprise their
respective roles of Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Captain America
and Hawkeye. In their acting, on-screen presence and ease on camera,
these actors are flawless. Downey Jr's caustic wit, added to Hemsworth's
hotness, Ruffalo's mental dilemma, Johansson's jaw-dropping Black
Widow, Renner's family man doppelganger...each actor in the film has
done a commendable job. After all, not for nothing do they enjoy such
fandom, right. Taylor-Johnson and Olsen are praiseworthy in their roles.
They get the overprotective brother and the over-stimulated sister
parts pretty well.
The VFX and special effects are spectacular, as is the case
with any Marvel movie. Or any Hollywood 3D film, for that matter. At a
budget of $250million (In INR, that's about 15839112500...Google took
about 0.38 seconds to come up with that humanly-incalculable result, and
I'm not bothering to put commas in between the numbers to make it
easier on the eye), not having a Marvel film with proper special effects
would be nothing less than a marvel. Joss Whedon's direction deserves
more than a round of applause. Ben Davis captures the stuff in front of
his camera extremely well, be it lifting Thor's hammer scene, or the
ones where the real world is juxtaposed with the superheroes'. At
roughly 2.5 hours, the film doesn't seem a drawl, largely because of the
abundance of high-octane action and Jeffrey Ford-Lisa Lassek's editing.
Yet,
all said and done, Age of Ultron does have its drawbacks. Which, of
course, would make absolutely no difference to the film's Box Office
collections.
Anyway, to the drawbacks. The film uses
Ultron as an enemy for the Avengers. This artificial intelligence
incarnate, packed within a robotic body, and gifted with the voice of
James Spader, isn't really able to invoke much fear in us mortals. So
while an enemy such as Ultron might sound really formidable, thanks to
the fact that it is formless and all, therein lies a hitch. It is due to
this same reason that Ultron doesn't end up looking like it'd stand a
chance in front of the Avengers, scenes of the world falling apart all
around notwithstanding. The film is well-paced, and it does keep the
viewer hooked to the screen, but in a semi-detached kind of way.
Basically, from within your theatre seat, you might wish to be
transported to the world of these superheroes, but then you don't really
want to. It's this dilemma of the viewer that this edition of Avengers
doesn't quite manage to solve.
But then, having said
that, the film is brilliant for its own reasons. And one needs to watch
it, irrespective of who says what. This weekend, take a trip to the
Marvel world. Leave the dilemma outside the theatre.
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