Hollywood whiz kid and libertarian folk figure Joss Whedon (Firefly) finally grinds Marvel’s creative engine to a halt with the flat, overwrought Avengers 2 picture, Avengers: Age of Ultron. It sputters and spins.
With a generic, meaningless title as generic and meaningless as its Ready for Hillary arrow logo movie poster, this mediocrity exploits the past, flaps its lips and signifies nothing. After years of defending and enjoying these comics films, such as Thor, Iron Man and Captain America, including last year’s sequel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is among 2014’s best movies, I found Avengers 2 to be the amalgamation of every negative stereotype about geek-gamer-fanboy subculture; a hyperactive, meaningless mess. If you loved Whedon’s other overrated, overstuffed fare, from one cancelled TV series to another and every bloated thing in between, you’ll love this monster mash, too.
However, if, like me, you were drawn into his blank worlds of TV’s Dollhouse and whatever else and came away utterly unimpressed, this, too, will deflate the dollars and senses. I deliberately braced and lowered expectations before the show just to loosen up in case Marvel let Whedon have his way with this one. I was bored within five minutes.
It takes an effort to waste Robert Downey, Jr.(The Judge), Chris Evans (Snowpiercer), Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and secondary players such as Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction), Anthony Mackie (Black or White) and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker). But writer and director Whedon makes them all look bad, though Evans fares best, with atrocious lines that are supposed to be snappy but instead come off as a half-formed Forties rehash. Everything is too fast, too forced and totally counterfeit. The plot never develops. The characters never develop. The theme involves some sort of indictment of German superman philosophy and propagates the Bush-Obama foreign policy directive to elevate not killing civilians to the highest moral purpose at the expense of letting madmen who’ll destroy everyone go. The Avengers sequel reduces the avenger—the hero—to a sacrificial soldier in a thankless drudgery of duty. More than once, someone shrugs that it’s been a long, bad day.
More than once, I felt this as a long, bad movie. Aside from nitpicks, including that Scarlett Johansson’s character has miraculously lost any trace of an accent that I could have sworn her Black Widow character once had or that James Spader sounds like the National Car Rental ad guy as the voice of evil biotech villain Ultron (not like James Spader), too many characters are shoved into too little plot with no real point.
The result is an arbitrary kitchen sink movie with some of the worst dialogue written for the screen.
“They scratch the surface and never think to look within,” a character says of human beings, for instance. This comes after multiple one-liners, smash-ups and explosions and no exposition. Characters change allegiances for no coherent reason. What usually makes Downey’s caustic Iron Man appealing falls flat without context. I never did figure out why Renner’s bow-and-arrow character was doing in a subplot as deep as a country music video. Throwing in derivations of Silver Streak (1976) or Spider-Man (2002) and a collapsing skyscraper, mega-earthquake and a subplot pairing Johansson (Her) and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, with the romantic chemistry that suggests, and any remaining action heroism is strung out in long-winded riddles, belabored contrivances and sight gags. Disney’s John Carter made more sense.
Add dream sequences, inner turmoil and an anti-climactic showdown in the air between the avengers and Ultron and Avengers: Age of Ultron is at best an action movie with psychobabble and badly written banter.
Three years ago, almost to the day, I wrote about a publicity piece in one of those promotional publications on The Avengers that gave me pause and made me wary of Joss Whedon’s anti-heroism. This weekend, Avengers: Age of Ultron, underestimating its cast, audience and studios and taking its fans for granted, adds nothing to Marvel’s universe and further detracts from the series. Disney’s Thor director, Kenneth Branagh, delivered what may be this year’s best picture, Cinderella. By contrast, Disney’s Avengers director, Joss Whedon, delivers a manic mixture of incomprehensible plot points that minimize Marvel’s iconic heroes in the worst new movie I’ve seen in some time.
Chris Evans makes the new Marvel Studios picture, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a strong, exciting and powerful sequel to 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger. Its theme of bonding with shared Americanism – rightly depicted here as the essence of individualism – echoes throughout the film. There are a few problems, but mostly this movie, released by Disney, makes for an exceptional experience.
First, the problems. Some of the computer simulations, and especially the visually jumbled fight scenes, are distracting and disorienting. It takes one out of the movie. Also, for consistency, it must be mentioned that a sequel should flow perfectly from the original and this one doesn’t strictly speaking; Winter Soldier is contingent upon The Avengers (which I never saw) and this is poor form. The film should stand on its own and instead characters and references pop all over the place that have no prior existing relationship to the lead character and plot. Some sultry superwoman character played by Scarlett Johanson is a major part of the picture and the audience is never properly introduced. And don’t let gushing fans fool you, as gushing fans are prone to do, that this is the best movie ever. It is not; this is a brilliantly conceived comic book hero movie which is powerfully written and produced and well acted, not more than that.
With Evans in the lead, it’s no big deal. He gives the film its power. His all-American good looks, sincerity – really, his seriousness – and ability to portray emotional depth and an honest, upright character exude both what it means to be a captain and what it means to be American. This is crucial, this is powerful and in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is essentially like the story of American whistleblower Edward Snowden, this is everything.
Beginning with a man on the run, in friendly competition with a comrade, and in the deepest sense, the movie jogs around monuments to men such as Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln – men who were giants in forging a nation based on individual rights, a fact which is at the core of why this leaves other comics pics in the dust. War hero and veteran Steve Rogers (aka Captain America) adjusts to life in the new America of the modern age, where he’s been delivered since the first movie’s time transport. The change allows the plot to take a serious, deep turn toward the inner torment of the solider and, more broadly, those who work for the government. Rogers wonders how he will fit in and he wonders aloud whether he wants to; the more he sees of the new American state, the less he likes it. He dares to doubt it.
The new captain of America is strong, somber and, after a mission compromised by a warrior (Johanson) too eager to serve the state without question, skeptical. The action is swift in the overseas operation and Captain America comes on like a ninja with perfect timing, precision strikes and athletic ability. He’s in top form, or, as an Apple Store employee puts it in a good laugh line, he’s “specimen”. The Apple Store serves as an organic product placement (unlike the Chevy brand) fitting the movie’s theme that the rogue individualist thinks for himself, finds refuge in commercialism and sports the most durable, best gear. When he reports to government security SHIELD boss Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who seeks cooperation from world security principal Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford), Steve Rogers further doubts who is friend or foe in the rising military industrial state.
But he never doubts himself. This is why he cashes in on a new friendship with a fellow war veteran named Sam (Anthony Mackie) who tends to those who pay the ultimate price of the military industrial complex. As the fracture in the burgeoning Big Government spreads into rupture, threatening SHIELD’s stated purpose to protect freedom in the country, Captain America comes to understand the fallacy of having faith in the state and the urgency of starting from scratch. As Redford’s distinguished statesman says, with crisp, concise economy: “to build a really better world sometimes means tearing the old one down.” This Hunger Games type dystopian vibe permeates Winter Soldier, which cleverly supplants a mysterious automaton that perfectly represents and dramatizes the movie’s core theme that every individual faces the fundamental choice to get in line and follow orders or break free and think for himself.
Only Captain America sees the big picture and he knows what to do, motivating and activating the few who choose to step forward and reject faith in government – when he expresses consternation that so many have gone wrong, one steps up to say “not everyone” in an emotional scene – and he knows both not to trust everyone and not to discard trust entirely. As he takes on the whole government, with a stirring score by Henry Jackman, he studies the past, including his own (listen for the voice of Gary Sinise narrating at the Smithsonian), thinks about every act and lets himself feel. He sees himself as he is, as he was, in thoughtful and powerful scenes, realizing that his own heroism is a decisive force for Americanism against the villain’s correct observation that civilization is willing to “surrender its freedom voluntarily.” Captain America: The Winter Soldier explicitly rejects sacrificing freedom for security, so don’t expect this film to win Best Picture with a state-sponsored presentation by Mrs. Barack Obama.
Instead, Steve Rogers as the captain of his (and the nation’s) soul runs, hides and seeks refuge from the oppressive state, just like Snowden. He painfully learns the 21st century pitfalls of treating government and technology as a religion with the cost the life of each fellow soldier whom he has had the honor of fighting beside, the leitmotif of this extraordinary cinema series. He is willing to stand alone – he says so, plain and clear – and, in the war between the rights of the individual and the omnipotent power of the state, dramatized here as an epic battle with wings, agility and rationality, he asks no less of each American in return.
The villain, once unmasked, seeks to pit the choice falsely as order versus chaos, just like Obama. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, beautifully portrayed on every level by Chris Evans, depicts what ought to be America’s shining response.
Paramount’s Captain America, directed by Joe Johnston (October Sky, The Wolfman), is another good Marvel serial. Tied into Marvel’s other comics-based pictures, Thorand Iron Man, and culminating in a heroic picture scheduled for release next year, it is weighted down but it moves with action, excitement and solid American heroism.
From eye-popping period design to a rousing patriotic song composed by Alan Menken and performed in a Busby Berkeley style number, the production is crisp, clean and visually arresting. Johnston incorporates the look and pace of both classic movies and comic books, which fits the alternate history World War 2-themed comics character, an intelligent weakling turned all-American hero played by Chris Evans (Fantastic Four). With Hugo Weaving (V for Vendetta) and Toby Jones (The Painted Veil) as Nazi villains, Tommy Lee Jones (The Company Men) for humor, Stanley Tucci (Burlesque) for pathos, and Hayley Atwell (cable TV’s The Pillars of the Earth) for romance, not to mention an international, multiracial band of war heroes evoking The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare, complete with impenetrable Nazi outposts, Captain America hardly has time for himself. The first half is strongest, with a brisk progression and developing bond between pre-hero Steve Rogers, who yearns to fight with his best friend and fellow countrymen, and Tucci’s German scientist. Atwell’s dead aim military ace is a good match for Rogers and his alter ego, and Weaving as the Red Skull foil, trying to out-Nazi the Nazis, is convincing as he schemes to destroy the West like an Islamic terrorist with a Third Reich convertible and a big, bat-shaped bomber aimed for taking out New York City.
The 9/11 parallel is hard to miss, in the 10th year since the worst attack in American history, and Captain America has a better grasp of how to fight the enemy than Clinton, Bush and Obama combined, going into the belly of the beast to wipe them out, granting no quarter to the enemy and not trying to understand their mystical-fascist philosophy. Being true to himself, he fights for his values, his freedom, and his country, with most Americans, from old women to young boys, joining in the crusade, and he does so with a spirit of steel and can-do Americanism. Liberals may feel like they want to throw up, especially because his icy British girlfriend has the same attitude, refusing to cower when faced with barbarians and instead picking up a gun and shooting to kill, not pleading to win hearts and minds. Only the State Department feels otherwise, quite otherwise, in a well-deserved dig at those longtime apologists and appeasers.
But Steve Rogers and his thoroughly self-made Captain America are no cheap cartoon characters. Contrary to anti-emotion types who think men that express emotion are inherently weak, he winces, feels the loss of those he loves, and he prefers to team with those who are different. In fact, you might say Captain America is a sensitive artist, designing his own uniform and sketching a figure on a drawing pad, even performing in musicals. He thinks his way to victory at every turn. But he is resolute in leading those General Patton, who is quoted in Captain America, called “the best minds in the free world.” He may not always get what he wants, and he may not save every comrade in arms, but he’s proud to be an American (in one scene, even an arrogant American), and he thinks and fights like he means it. Stick around for the closing credits, for once not a stream of toilet jokes, if you do, too.
Author’s Note
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