In the 1980s, the then U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who evidently framed his defence policies based on ideas gleaned from comic books, was fixated on a missile defence programme that was bombastically called ‘Star Wars’. Under that plan, incoming Soviet missiles were to be shot down in mid-flight by a missile ‘shield’ to avert a feared nuclear attack on the U.S. The efficacy of such a defence programme was never established, and although a variant of that shield operates today to effectively defend Israel from the Hamas, the ‘Star Wars’ plan never really gained traction.
In Avengers: Age of Ultron , ‘Iron Man’ Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) devises just such a ‘peacekeeping’ drone programme to defend humanity against alien attacks. But as happens with all such well-intentioned efforts, he ends up creating a self-mutating Frankenstein infused with artificial intelligence that convinces itself that the shortest road to world peace is the extermination of all humans — and of the Avengers army.
If one takes a reductionist view of things, all superhero movies play on only one unvarying theme: some new evil threatens humanity, and the superheroes team up to save the world. It’s in the fine details between those plotline bookends that cinematic mastery manifests itself.
And, boy, does Joss Whedon, a consummate master of the craft, pack it in! He spins a yarn that’s majestically spectacular and vividly action-packed, throwing you straight into a thrilling battle scene even before you’ve fully settled into your recliner. He keeps up that tempo for the entire film, pausing only briefly and intermittently to provide the softer touches to the film: the tender moments when the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) soothes the savage beast in Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), or the syrupy revelation that Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is a regular ‘family guy’, or even the comical scene where the Avengers take turns to try and lift Thor’s enchanted hammer Mjolnir.
These relatively slow-paced scenes aren’t just intended to ‘humanise’ the superheroes; they allow viewers to catch their breath momentarily before being swept away by the next wave of pulsating action. Without these sequences, you’d walk out reeling, as if you’d been at the receiving end of all those inter-galactic biffs and bangs.
Age of Ultron has the most VFX shots for any Marvel movie to date. In this case, it’s money well-spent: their combined effect, in 3D, is splendid. And, of course, the cast is an embarrassment of riches. But in the end, it’s Whedon’s wizardry that brings it all together — and delivers a riveting slam-dunk of a movie.