7 Quick Thoughts on Avengers: Age of Ultron (Minor Spoilers)

Kathy and I saw Avengers: Age of Ultron last Thursday night. I'm not offering a full review, but here are a few quick thoughts with some minor spoilers.

• If there was ever a "What He Said" treatment of this movie for me, personally, it's David Betancourt's article at The Washington Post, "'Avengers: Age of Ultron':A fanboy's 11-point breakdown of the masterful sequel." I also appreciated Jessica Gibson's review at Christianity Today for her insights into the movie's treatment of the reality of evil in the world.


• I'm not certain about the relationship between Bruce Banner (The Hulk) and Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow). I mean, what about poor Betty Ross?


• I can't remember now where I saw this (my apologies for no link), but I read that director Joss Whedon is evidently a fan of ballet. In hindsight after seeing the movie, this definitely makes sense. Whedon likes to slow down expansive actions scenes so that the viewer can take a long look at everything going on at once. There's so much going on, in fact, that slow motion is the only way to begin to comprehend all the chararacters' actions at once. When I saw the first of these in the opening scenes of the movie, the word choreography came to mind.


• At two hours and 21 minutes, the movie is quite full, but I've read elsewhere (again, I apologize for no link) that Whedon's original cut is somewhere around three and a half hours! No doubt ticket sales played a factor in the studio cutting it down over an hour (longer movies mean fewer showing, which means less money), but I really hope we get to see Whedon's entire vision for the movie one day in a Director's Cut Release.


• I thought James Spader was perfect as Ultron. Having watched Spader on The Black Listfor the last two years (a role obviously taylor-made for him), I could even "see" Spader's facial expressions in the mechanical movements of Ultron's face.


• Paul Bettany's portrayal of The Vision was wonderful, even though the character's origin was significantly altered from that in the comic books. I wish he had been in more of the movie. I also found it interesting that Kathy noticed the connection between The Vision and Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch) even though she knows nothing of the characters' history together in the comic books.


• Although Elizabeth Olson (Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver) had wonderful chemistry together, I think I still prefer the style of motion for the character a bit better as it was portrayed by Evan Peters in X-Men: Days of Future Past. And for what it's worth, I find it regrettable that there are "rival" versions of these same characters in different movie franchises. The movies would be better if the studios would cooperate a bit more together on issues like this. At least we're going to see a shared Spider-Man.

What about you? What are your thoughts about the movie? Love it? Hate it? Leave your questions, thoughts, comments, and rebuttals in the comments section.