Avengers: Age of Ultron

May 23, 2015

So we started to watch Agents of SHIELD the other night and it took about 30 seconds to realize, “FUCK, this is happening after the movie.” So we stopped the DVR and watched Gotham instead…

SO MANY PREVIEWS. Although there wasn’t a preview for Pitch Perfect 2, we were treated to a lady razor commercial co-branded with the film – singing, dancing, shaving. If I see one more razor commercial with a bush symbolically placed in front of a girl’s ladybits, I’m gonna fucking go postal. We get it, you want us to shave our slits. Well, fuck you. Don’t bring my kids into your misogynistic fantasy world. Ahem, excuse me. We already know Jurassic World is gonna be awesome. But I was shocked that the Fantastic Four reboot looks a little awesome, too. I’m still on the fence about Ant-Man – he kinda liked to beat his wife and I’m guessing they’re leaving that out of the movie. Tomorrowland looks straight up DUMB.

Somehow, this is the first Marvel movie we’ve seen together in the theater. I know, right? Life and kids and shit are convenient excuses, but getting down to brass tacks – going to the movies isn’t cheap anymore. Plus – and here is where I show my age – most movies suck now. It’s gonna take a lot to make me spend $50+ to take the whole family to the movies. That’s almost 6 months of Netflix!

So…it was a BIG movie. There was a BIG cast, with BIG fights and BIG explosions. It may have been bigger than the first one, but it certainly wasn’t better. While enjoyable for what it was, I might be suffering from “Marvel fatigue” (I don’t think I invented that term, I surely read it somewhere.) So many characters to pay attention to, plus so many new characters that need to be set up for their own new franchises…ugh. We’ve still got Ant Man and the Fantastic Four reboot coming this summer!

There were a few things about Age of Ultron that made me very happy – one of those is Ultron himself. Even though I don’t know shit about Ultron from the comics, there is not another actor alive that could be as smarmy and sarcastic while going quip for quip with Robert Downey, Jr. There is only one – James Spader. I like to think that if Ultron had won, he would have made Tony Stark his slave and made him pay off his debt to society by whoring him out, ala Less Than Zero. I really did want to cock punch Tony Stark by the end of the film – I was totally rooting for Ultron.

Elizabeth Olsen wasn’t horrible as the Scarlet Witch, just mediocre. Mediocre is better than I expected, since she’s the Olsen Twins’ baby sister. This Quicksilver was also mediocre. (Sorry, Evan Peters nailed it.) And what was up with his hair? It looked like my husband’s (black) hair after I bleached the tips (and gave him horrible chemical burns).

So there’s been a backlash against Captain America and Hawkeye for calling Black Widow a slut. Of course, any feminist – or any human – should be offended by those comments, but not for the reason you think. On the surface, it seems like they’re just slut-shaming Black Widow for flirting with more than one Avenger. But the troubling truth is that they’re reducing her membership in the Avengers to that of a “girlfriend” role (a “Mary Sue”), when she’s anything but just a “girlfriend.”

In High School, I usually ran with a group of guys – headbangers, stoners, whatever. Although I occasionally played the “girlfriend” role, these guys were my friends before and after I was just a “girlfriend”. I assume it was due to similar interests – heavy metal, horror movies and pissing off any adult within a 10 mile radius – and not because they needed a female member to appeal to a certain demographic. I am also equally certain that any of the ones I was “done with” romantically probably called me a slut, too – because most teen boys are dumbasses. My juvenile response, of course, would have been to belittle their manhood…so come on Black Widow, let it out – Hawkeye shoots his arrows “prematurely” and even Captain America can’t compare to what The Hulk is packing?

Like I said, I enjoyed Age of Ultron, but only time will tell if it has the endless re-watchability of the first one.