Avengers: Age of Ultron

For F*** Magazine

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

Director : Joss Whedon

Cast : Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, James Spader, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Samuel L. Jackson

Genre : Comics/Action/Adventure

Run Time : 141 mins

Opens : 23 April 2015

(The following review is spoiler-free)

Earth’s mightiest heroes boldly step forth into a new age in the closing chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s second phase. The Avengers, comprising Tony Stark/Iron Man (Downey Jr.), Thor (Hemsworth), Steve Rogers/Captain America (Evans), Bruce Banner/Hulk (Ruffalo), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Johansson) and Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Renner) have unfinished business to attend to. Loki’s sceptre is being held in a Hydra stronghold, and in the process of retrieving the otherworldly weapon, the team confronts the twins Pietro (Taylor-Johnson) and Wanda (Olsen) Maximoff, the products of Hydra genetic enhancement experiments. Stark and Banner have an experiment of their own, the artificial intelligence system Ultron (Spader), intended as a security net for the world. However, the sentient robot has nefarious plans of its own, violently rebelling against its creators. The Avengers’ only hope may lie in Vision (Bettany), an old friend in a new form. 

            2012’s The Avengers was a monumental event, the glorious apex of Marvel Studios’ diligent world-building. Now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has truly earned the right to call itself a “universe”, Age of Ultron uniting a multitude of familiar faces while introducing new players. There’s the welcome feeling that the gang’s all here, but not just for the sake of it. This is a significant achievement on multiple levels; writer-director Joss Whedon taking on the Herculean challenge of topping the first Avengers film while charting a course forward for all of these characters. Once again, Whedon demonstrates a remarkable command of the tone, peppering the screenplay with delightfully zippy witticisms (Stark references playwright Eugene O’Neill and the practice of Prima Nocta) yet establishing the stakes and delivering genuine drama when it is required. 

What stands out as the most impressive element of this blockbuster isn’t the wham-bam spectacle, it’s the character development. While many action movies are marketed as being “character-driven”, more often than not, the plot seems like a minor inconvenience at best, fiddly bits of story standing in the way of stuff blowing up. This isn’t the case here. Whedon cleverly builds upon the relationships established in the previous films, including the “science bros” bond between Stark and Banner and the dysfunctional family dynamic within the team as a whole. Whedon is unafraid to have sizeable stretches of the film driven solely by drama or comedy in between the action, without the movie feeling like it’s spinning its wheels until Hulk next smashes something or Cap tosses his shield. The conflict has its place, there is angst but not moping and the bristling tension that arises from disagreements within the team is balanced with the sheer satisfaction of seeing our heroes work in conjunction with each other.

This is not to say that the spectacle is in short supply – far from it. This is a major tentpole release that was guaranteed to do gangbusters even before a single word of the screenplay was written, but if Avengers: Age of Ultron is anything to go by, producer Kevin Feige and the folks at Marvel Studios are not about to rest on their laurels or just let these movies “make themselves”. The film’s opening, which involves the Avengers storming Baron Von Strucker’s (Thomas Kretschmann) mountain fortress, reintroduces viewers to our heroes in the thick of it with a slick, unbroken long take. There’s also a fair bit of globe-trotting, the story taking the team from their home base in New York to the fictional Eastern European city of Sokovia, South Africa and South Korea.

The movie’s signature set piece is the battle between Iron Man in his heavy-duty Hulkbuster armour and the Hulk. Stark is reluctant to fight Banner, shading the knock-down drag-out brawl with more emotional hues than a typical beat ‘em up. The climactic showdown, while familiar in the sense that it’s the plucky good guys against a horde of bad guys while trying to get innocent citizens to safety, is sufficiently different from the “big fight in a big city” finales that have become the norm in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

After defeating Loki, the Avengers’ primary adversary in this sequel is the titular Ultron, voiced by James Spader, who also performed some motion capture work to play the 8 foot tall robot. Ultron is both a physical and intellectual challenge to the Avengers and his motivations are set up quickly and efficiently. Malevolent artificial intelligence is something of a hoary sci-fi trope and one could argue that 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000 still stands at the top of the heap, but Ultron certainly fulfils all the big bad pre-requisites. Spader is a casting coup; his sonorous, supercilious line delivery both threatening and entertaining. There’s also the appeal of the “I’ve got no strings” motif, even more amusing given that Robert Downey Jr. is rumoured to be playing both Geppetto and Pinocchio in an upcoming live-action version of the story.

Whedon has put admirable effort into improving the characterisations we were presented with in the first film. Hawkeye in particular gets his moment in the sun; Renner having voiced his disappointment that the character spent most of the first Avengers under Loki’s mind control. Paul Bettany finally steps out of the recording booth to play cyber-butler JARVIS’ corporeal form, Vision, lending the character an elegant combination of strength and serenity.

The character of Scarlet Witch, with her ability to play dangerous mind games as she enters into the memories and feelings of those under her thrall, presents the audience with an opportunity to explore the deepest, darkest fears of our heroes. Elizabeth Olsen is a haunted, ethereal presence as Wanda, her powers taking their own toll on her psyche. The hallucinatory scenes also shed light on Black Widow’s past, these unsettling sequences feeling straight out of a horror movie.

Much was made about how Fox’s X-Men: Days of Future Past beat Marvel Studios to the punch when it came to putting speedster Quicksilver on the big screen. While Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Pietro doesn’t quite have a bit as memorable as the “Time in a Bottle” kitchen run from DoFP, his Quicksilver is still pretty cool. The bond between the twins is conveyed convincingly by both Taylor-Johnson and Olsen. Mark Ruffalo continues to be an excellent Bruce Banner, this film showing how the character is at once Dr. Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s Monster and the inner turmoil that results from this dichotomy. There’s also a romance between Banner and Romanoff which can feel a little forced at times but is for the most part really quite sweet. A scene early on in which Black Widow tries to calm the savage beast reminded this reviewer of the interaction between King Kong and Ann Darrow.

It pains us a little to say this and we don’t want to come off as dismissive of the efforts of the army of visual effects artists who slaved away on this film, but the CGI does border on the excessive. It’s not sloppily done and there are a mind-boggling number of visual effects shots, but at times during the Hulkbuster vs. Hulk fight, the two computer-generated characters going at it seem like just that, as if one were playing a video-game. Still, this is a minor quibble and if the film were nothing but pixel-heavy battles, then we’d have a problem. Instead, we have a compelling, dramatic story, characters that are fleshed-out and easy to get invested in, plenty of morsels for hard-core fans and lots of quotable lines and some imagery courtesy of cinematographer Ben Davis that’s destined to become iconic. While there is no post-credits stinger, there is a tag after the main-on-end titles sequence that’s as tantalising as ever. Bring on Phase 3!

Summary: Avengers: Age of Ultron can boast that it’s about the Avengers as characters and Joss Whedon’s ability to deliver excellent dialogue and moving storytelling in addition to earth-shattering spectacle remains unparalleled.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

The Judge

For F*** Magazine

THE JUDGE

Director : David Dobkin

Cast : Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jeremy Strong, Billy Bob Thornton, Dax Shepard, Sarah Lancaster, Leighton Meester

Genre : Crime/Drama

Opens : 16 October 2014

Rating : NC-16 (Coarse Language)

Run time: 141 mins

Remember when after the worst of his personal troubles and before his comeback as a marquee name, Robert Downey Jr. would star in dramas like The Singing Detective, A Guide to Recognising Your Saints and Charlie Bartlett (with the occasional The Shaggy Dog because he had to pay the bills)? The Judge, Downey Jr.’s first full-on drama in a while, harks back to those days. He plays Hank Palmer, a hotshot lawyer who reluctantly returns to his hometown of Carlinville, Indiana when his mother dies. He sees his brothers Glen (D’onofrio) and Dale (Strong) again but there’s one reunion he’s truly dreading: that with his estranged father, the titular Judge, Joseph Palmer (Duvall). Hank can’t wait to escape back to Chicago when he learns his father is accused of murder. Hank has to defend his father against prosecutor Dwight Dickham (Thornton) while father and son are at each other’s throats. Hank also takes the opportunity to mend other bridges and rekindle a romance with his high school sweetheart Samantha (Farmiga).

            If you’ve seen the trailers for the film, you might find it tonally hard to place. Indeed, this is a movie that has plenty of heavy family drama but begins with a moment of slapstick toilet humour. A character also experiences acute bowel function failure and it’s supposed to be a sad moment but it might be seen as unintentionally funny. It seems director David Dobkin was aiming for “bittersweet”, but misjudges this on several occasions. The screenplay by Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque piles on the clichés: tempestuous father-son relationship, the prodigal son returning against his will, the adorable little daughter whom our main character hasn’t been the best dad to, a mentally handicapped younger brother and a teen romance from which both parties have never really moved on, all set in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. It sometimes appears that the writers are aware of the overly-familiar, often sentimental nature of the script, attempting to temper this with wiseacre cynicism. This results in an uneven film that almost lurches from shouting match conflicts to a sappy home video montage set to Bon Iver’s “Holocene”.

There’s one cliché we left out in the above paragraph: that of the protagonist being a glib, sharp-tongued “man of Teflon” lawyer. Robert Downey Jr. attacks the role in his typical charismatic, entertaining fashion. He once described his take on Tony Stark as “a likeable asshole” and that’s a character type he excels at playing. Schenk and Dubuque have written lots of snarky, snappy dialogue for the Hank Palmer character, and lines like “I’ll extract the truth from your ass like tree sap” just sound great when they fly off Downey Jr.’s tongue. It’s nothing particularly risky for him but he’s far from sleepwalking through this one either. The big draw is seeing the two Roberts play against each other and Duvall once again proves why he’s considered a living legend. Judge Joseph Palmer is a proud, stern man who has suffered a personal loss and conceals his vulnerabilities, someone who has spent years in the courtroom but suddenly finds himself on the other side, standing trial. Duvall is able to cut through the overly-calculated moments of tenderness to deliver an affecting, thoughtful performance.

            While the film is squarely Downey Jr.’s and Duvall’s to carry, the supporting cast is generally decent too and Vincent D’onofrio’s role in this movie means that Iron Man and the soon-to-be-Kingpin are brothers. Farmiga, blonde, sporting a tattoo and pretty much unrecognisable, is convincing as the diner proprietor who finds herself falling for her high school sweetheart while still being very much wise to his ways. Dax Shepard plays the fumbling, earnest small-town lawyer/antique shop owner a little too broad and Jeremy Strong’s portrayal of the mentally-challenged Dale is cringe-inducing, though this is like due more to the way the character is written as the awkward comic relief than his actual performance.

            In addition to the performances, the cinematography by Janusz Kamiński, Steven Spielberg’s regular Director of Photography, is praiseworthy. With the way the film is lit and shot, Kamiński conveys the combination of small-town home and hearth with the feeling of feeling trapped in a place with too many bad memories associated with it. When the film and its cast was announced, there were murmurs of its awards potential, but this one is very unlikely to stand against the other films of the upcoming awards season. Director Dobkin, known for comedies like Wedding Crashers and Shanghai Knights, is at least a little out of his depth dealing with the family dysfunction and the courtroom drama in The Judge. However, thanks to the strong lead turns from Downey Jr. and Duvall, this is worth a look.

Summary: It’s unsubtle, cliché-ridden and slightly too long, but The Judge boasts the memorable onscreen father-son pairing of Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Iron Man 3

Movie Review                                                                                                                  25/4/13

IRON MAN 3

2013

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Guy Pearce, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Kingsley, Don Cheadle

Directed by: Shane Black

   

        In the interest of full disclosure, let it be known that this reviewer is more of a DC Comics fan than a Marvel one. That said, he hasn’t missed a single one of the films in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, established with 2008’s Iron Man. The time has sped by on rocket boots, and with the Phase I films all in the bag, Phase II begins where it all started, with Iron Man.

            Robert Downey Jr. (who else?) is back as Tony Stark, tinkering with new gadgets even as the events of The Avengers give him sleepless nights. His girl Friday Pepper Potts (Paltrow) has moved in with him, but Stark just won’t give her the time of day even as the holidays approach. Enter the enigmatic terrorist mastermind The Mandarin (Kingsley), perpetrator of a series of vicious bomb attacks, one of which critically wounds Tony’s ex-bodyguard Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau). Tony swears revenge, and his home is assaulted by the Mandarin’s forces in return. Stranded in rural Tennessee, he enlists the help of a local kid (Ty Simpkins) to help patch his armour in anticipation of The Mandarin’s next strike. Tony also discovers links to Dr Aldrich Killian and Dr Maya Hansen, developers of the Extremis virus – a revolutionary piece of biotechnology that has turned dangerously unstable.

            Iron Man 3 is nothing short of a game-changer for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the film, Happy Hogan doesn’t work directly for Tony Stark anymore – a bit of leaning-against-the-fourth-wall winking, seeing as how Jon Favreau has passed on the director’s baton to Shane Black, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Drew Pearce. Once one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood, Black proves he’s still got the mojo he displayed with his screenplays for Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout in spades. Iron Man 3 has got his stamp all over it (notice the Christmas-time setting) and yet also delivers everything we’ve come to expect of a big-budget superhero blockbuster at the same time.

            The film is tightly-plotted and expertly paced; audiences certainly won’t be twiddling their thumbs waiting impatiently for the next action scene to roll around. Said action scenes are plenty inventive though – a daring mid-air rescue which Stark compares to playing “Barrel of Monkeys” and a dazzlingly-choreographed finale involving Stark hopping in and out of an array of Iron Man suits mid-combat being the prime examples. Black shows that he understands how important such displays are to the type of film he’s making, but never lets the story get drowned out by the din of high-octane bells and whistles.

            A section of viewers have taken Iron Man 2 to task for spending too much of its running time in setting up the big event, The Avengers. Iron Man 3 suffers no such problem. The focus is squarely back on Tony Stark, and by now it is impossible to imagine the character being played by anyone other than Robert Downey Jr. At this point in a franchise, the leading man is wont to display signs of weariness or that he’s only doing it for the paycheck – nope, not here. Downey Jr., armed with a new batch of one-liners and an even bigger new batch of armoured outfits, is having as much fun with the role as ever.

He doesn’t feel like he’s hogging the spotlight though, because both Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow get more to do here in their supporting parts. Col. James Rhodes’ “War Machine” has been given an image makeover and renamed “Iron Patriot”; the film doing a good job of showing how Rhodey is at his best fighting alongside Iron Man instead of merely playing errand boy for the US military. Pepper Potts finally gets to step out of her “beleaguered assistant” corner and throw some punches of her own, playing a pivotal part in the film’s climactic shipping dock battle. The subplot with Ty Simpkins’ character serving as Stark’s kid sidekick of sorts could have come off as twee, but it doesn’t eat into the meat of the proceedings and Stark’s interactions with the boy are amusing and heartfelt.

Also new to the series are Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce and Rebecca Hall. The Mandarin, the Fu-Manchu like archenemy of Iron Man in the comics, is reimagined as an unkempt, somewhat theatrical figure of the shadows – though there is of course more to him than that. Stalwart comic book fans might not like the way the character is ultimately handled, but it is clever enough and didn’t really bother this reviewer. Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian is a scientist who was ignored by Stark earlier in his career and doesn’t take too kindly to this, re-entering the fray with slicked-back hair and a spray tan. Pearce plays the “mousy to charismatic” angle well, when it could well have been overly cartoonish à la Jim Carrey’s Riddler in Batman Forever. The beautiful Rebecca Hall doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but is one of those actresses who plays “hot scientist” without a hitch.

It would seem that doing anything new within the confines of the wham-bam comic book blockbuster genre would be difficult, since every new entry seems to be measured against The Avengers or The Dark Knight trilogy. It is to the credit of Shane Black and the team behind Iron Man 3 then that the film is effortlessly invigorating, assured in its tone with a good sprinkling of humour mixed in with awe-inspiring, effects-heavy action sequences and well-written character moments. There probably isn’t a better way to kick off Phase II of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe than with this flick.

SUMMARY: Iron Man emerges tri-umphant under the direction of Shane Black with a three-quel that is anything but same-old same-old.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong 

Marvel's The Avengers

For F*** Magazine

Movie Review                                                                                                              1/5/12

MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS

(2012)

Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo

Directed by: Joss Whedon

Marvel Studios/Paramount Pictures/Walt Disney Pictures

           

            Ah, it feels like 2008 all over again. This summer’s crop of blockbusters seems to be a bountiful harvest, the likes of which have not been seen since that glorious year. In addition to traditional action movie fare, we’re getting two Marvel movies and a Batman sequel – just like in 2008! Thing is, since Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk, Marvel has given us the likes of Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America, carefully constructing their movie universe – and DC has given us, uh, Green Lantern.

            The capstone to Marvel’s movie pyramid is this, The Avengers, the long-awaited mother of all team-ups first hinted at by S.H.I.E.L.D spymaster Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) in the post-credits sequence for Iron Man. Here, Fury wrangles up Iron Man/Tony Stark (Downey Jr), Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Ruffalo), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner). Their opponent: Thor’s vengeful half-brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who brings with him the alien Chitauri army to wreak havoc on earth. However, the in-fighting and ego clashes within the team itself threaten to break the heroes apart before the villains do.

           “Big man in a suit of amour,” Thor challenges Tony. “Take that away and what are you?” The movie's “suit of armour” would have to be its lavish production design, visual effects that are as high in quality as they are quantity and all the hype and marketing (Avengers cologne? Seriously?) However, take that away and the audience is left fleshed-out characters, a well-constructed mesh of a story, firecracker dialogue and solid performances across-the-board. This is something of a feat considering the immense scale, heavyweight ensemble and various other factors.

            Writer-director Joss Whedon is a self-professed comics super-fanboy and a veteran of cult-favourite TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, and knows a thing or two about character development. Here, he has managed to make a team-up movie that is more than the sum of its parts and that doesn’t collapse under its own weight. Everyone gets their time to shine, which could have well been a problem with all the comic book personalities jostling for the spotlight. His agile screenplay is also quick with the quips, including such gems as Iron Man’s ribbing of Thor (“doth mother know you weareth her drapes?”), S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and Captain America fanboy Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) telling his hero “I watched you while you slept”, and Captain America instructing “Hulk? Smash.”

            The film is fine as a stand-alone piece, although it does help to have watched the earlier Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. It’s actually a good thing that almost everyone has played their characters before, and return to the roles with much ease. Robert Downey Jr is all snarky machismo as usual, Chris Evans ably portrays the old-fashion hero flung into a chaotic modern world, Chris Hemsworth channels a slightly more matured demigod that is still prone to brashness and Scarlett Johansson kicks more butt, though she faces competition from Cobie Smulders as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill, who frankly looks better in a catsuit. Mark Ruffalo is the newcomer, filling in for Edward Norton. Ruffalo possesses a scruffy, mild-mannered charm, and while his Banner is a close second to Norton’s (tied with Eric Bana’s), it works better for the team movie than his predecessor’s does. Oh, and there’s Jeremy Renner as the least interesting character – he does what he can, which is mostly looking cool with a bow and arrow.

            Tom Hiddleston is back as Loki, who was also the main villain of Thor. He portrays Thor’s adopted brother as something of a maniacal old-fashioned supervillain, prone to cackling, commanding people to kneel before him and launching into the occasional “puny earthlings” speech. Problem is, Loki’s vendetta is more with Thor himself than with the whole gang, and the Chitauri amount to nothing more than backup singers. It makes one wonder who might have been a better candidate for the villain of the piece. A mid-credits bonus scene promises that things will get worse for the Avengers in the sequel, though.

            Lest this review make the movie sound like an intimate character drama (it was codenamed “Group Hug” during production), rest assured that there is spectacle galore. There is a clever mix of big-scale action sequences and smaller hand-to-hand brawls, and the sets – which include the helicarrier, the airborne headquarters of the team, a crumbling Russian warehouse where Black Widow fights would-be interrogators, a Stuttgart opera house and the climactic battle against the alien invaders in New York, are all excellent playing fields for things to unfold. However, this sometimes borders on visual overkill, with so much happening so fast. The use of post-converted 3D is among the most effective ever though.

Marvel has been pretty consistent with the movies that make up their Cinematic Universe and produced by their own studio, and continue the trend with their biggest yet. All the components that make a successful comic book movie blockbuster have been welded together, spray-painted with nice glossy colours and packaged in a pretty box. To follow through with the analogy, it would fly off the shelves just like the actual Avengers action figures probably will.

SUMMARY: The crown jewel of the Marvel movie crown is a big, sparkly rock that was worth every penny it took to get it made.

RATING: 4/5 STARS

Jedd Jong