Avengers: Age of Ultron

I think it's safe to say that Marvel Studios have gotten themselves to a safe enough place to be comfortable and confident in the movies they are making. The latest films have been branching out into various genres (political thriller with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, comedy sci-fi with Guardians of the Galaxy) and they have now reserved the main Avengers movies for the generic beat-em-up that most superheroes become. Despite this, Age of Ultron isn't entirely a slugfest and does try to take a softer approach with a few of its characters.

The movie starts right in the middle of an intense action sequence, with the team of the Avengers (Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, The Hulk and Hawkeye) assaulting a fortress in the European country of Sokovia in an attempt to retrieve the sceptre of Loki from Hydra (see Captain America: The Winter Soldier). Once Tony Stark gets his hands on it, he realises that the sceptre possesses the technology to develop complex artificial intelligence, something that he and Bruce Banner have been interested in developing for a while. But Stark's plans for this AI program, named Ultron, goes awry and the program soon goes rogue with plans to destroy mankind. It's up to the Avengers to, you know, save the day.

In this film, we get to have a closer look some of the characters outside the big three (Thor, Cap, Iron Man) and it is slightly refreshing. The relationship between Black Widow and Hulk is explored and heavily hinted at being romantic and Hawkeye is revealed to have a wife and children, a fact that surprised not only the audience, the characters in the film. These smaller arcs are somewhat refreshing and satisfying.

There is a lot of assumed knowledge that comes with watching this film. Not only are you expected to have done your homework and be completely up to date with the Cinematic Universe, but you are also expected to have some knowledge of what is happening in the comic books or else you will be left in the dark as to who some of these new characters are. This film introduces us to three new heroes on top of the villain, whose storyline does make sense. The new characters are the Maximoff twins, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) (otherwise known as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver). We of course saw a much better version of Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but that is beside the point. We also are introduced to Vision (Paul Bettany), who is another advanced cyborg imprinted with Tony Stark's manservant Jarvis' own AI.

This movie is definitely the kind that moves from action sequence to action sequence with a little talking in between, just enough so you know what's going on. And it's pretty impressive too. The action is enough to keep you amazed at what's going on. There is also an array of humour in the movie, enough for everyone to have a laugh.

Most of the performances are pretty stock standard, as all the actors have gone way too deep with these characters. The ones that stuck out the most for me were James Spader (Stargate) lending his amazingly authoritative and terrifying voice to Ultron and Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, although her accent did drop a few times. Of all the Avengers, Chris Hemsworth probably gave the best performance. His outsider status as an Aussie probably helps him get in the mindset of the god Thor.

Ultimately this film is incredibly entertaining and isn't extremely taxing. Fans of the movies will get all sorts of excited and people with limited knowledge of this things will still enjoy the large scale of the film.

Godzilla

I have known about Godzilla my whole life. Even before 1998's Godzilla came out, I knew of this massive beast that went about causing destruction and chaos in Japan. I even have some of the Japanese films on DVD, so I understand the excitement and strange hero status surrounding the creature. Needless to say I was skeptical about a new American version of the character.

It wasn't until I saw some of the creature design pictures of how Godzilla would look in this movie that my confidence was restored. It was going to be the same as the old Japanese films I used to watch as a kid. In fact in watching the movie, it's amazing to see that they went one step further and somehow made the monster look like a guy in suit.

I was a bit disappointed however that as soon as the monster arrived on the scene, the human story that they had built up in the first thirty minutes of the movie, was thrown to the wayside. In the older films they still maintained the human character's, well, character.

And there are some truly talented actors in this film. Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston is really good at playing a hysterical character and David Strathairn (The Bourne Ultimatum), one of my favourite actors, plays a badass US Navy Admiral. On the other hand I felt as though they underused Elizabeth Olsen, who is a really talented actress.

Verdict: A proper anglicised version of a fantastic franchise. At many times the audience was cheering for Godzilla.

Kick-Ass 2

As much as the original Kick-Ass presented us with what it would be like if there were actually real life superheroes, this film deals us with the consequences of what it is to be a superhero. I can't help but feeling like this film was made as a public service announcement for those people who actually want to do this kind of thing.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has given up fighting crime as the superhero Kick-Ass and wants to live the life of a regular teenager. Soon he starts training again with Mindy Macready (Chloe Grace Moretz), formerly Hit-Girl. Before long, he joins a group of other superheroes headed by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey). Meanwhile, Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is still brooding over the fact that Kick-Ass killed his father and vows to kill him as the world's first supervillain, The Motherf***er.

I felt that this movie was just a little weaker than the original film and I have a feeling that this was down to it having a different director. Matthew Vaughn (also known as Guy Ritchie's producer) gave the last film a certain energy that this one lacked. Jeff Wadlow (who also wrote the script) did an alright job at showing us the consequences of being a superhero. I think that I may be being a bit harsh on him, as Kick-Ass is a tough act to follow.

Taylor-Johnson did a great job playing a character who is torn between what he thinks his duty is and what he thinks a teenager should be doing. There are few scenes between him and his father (played by Garrett Brown) that really shows his inner conflict.

Moretz does a fantastic job as Macready, who is trying to learn to be a normal girl after the events of the last film. She has an energy and passion for acting that I really think will pay off for her in the future.

Jim Carrey once again shines in a film. Unlike Burt Wonderstone, where he outshone the stars, he really complements the rest of the cast. A lot of the humour in the film comes from his character's wacky view on being a superhero. It is a shame that he has since denounced the level of violence in the film, but it is good to point out that these violent actions do have heavy repercussions in the film.

There are also some very funny cameos from Donald Faison (Scrubs), John Lequizamo (Ice Age, Super Mario Bros.) and Iain Glen (everybody's favourite khaleesi bodyguard from Game of Thrones) as Chris D'Amico's truly terrifying uncle.

Verdict: The first Kick-Ass did seem like lightning in a bottle, but this film still does a great job with the cast and characters and does have some truly funny parts.