My Opinion on Avengers: Age of Ultron

I'd give it a 6/10. Maaaaybe a 6.5. It wasn’t as good as I’ve been hoping for since the summer of 2012, but it was okay. Here’s why that 6.5 isn’t a 10:

Age of Ultron was written by Joss Whedon, whom I used to really like (most notably for Dr. Horrible, Firefly, and The Avengers), but I recently found out that he was being a whiny man-baby and left Marvel studios after getting bitter about pieces in the MCU that other people wrote and criticisms that people have given him (please correct me if I’m wrong; I may not know the whole story). Anyway, I’d read up a few things on Tumblr about it before I went to see it today, so I was expecting to be a little disappointed. What I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t read anything on Tumblr was that the characters of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are supposed to be Romani Jews but were whitewashed by Joss Whedon and written to be affiliated with HYDRA, which is a Nazi organization. Now that doesn’t make very much sense to me. Minus 2 points right there.

wanda and pietro in the comic books
image courtesy newsarama

i don't see a resemblance
image courtesy kdramastars

   

Now I watched the movie, and I was thoroughly entertained by it. There was action (of course) and some really great character development for Hawkeye. This made me really happy because I often feel like he’s an under-appreciated avenger and that he didn’t get enough screen time in the last movie. I was also really happy with the addition of Wanda, Sam, and Rhodey into the Avengers team at the end of the movie. It made me super excited for the next movie to come out. These are the components that made me give it those 6-6.5 points. 

The main thing that caused me to take away those 1.5-2 points is the way that Joss Whedon handled the characters of Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff. Steve wasn’t written very well in the first Avengers movie, so I wasn’t really surprised, but Joss Whedon’s writing really diminished since then if you’re looking at the way he wrote Nat. Neither of these characters got nearly enough screen time in AOU, and in both of the movies, it seems like Steve has only been used as joke material. Many of the jokes that he made in The Avengers were out of character, and in Age of Ultron, it seems that he was only used as the running “language!” joke throughout the film.

Natasha Romanoff is one of my favorite characters ever, and I’m really sad about how she was portrayed in this film. She didn’t have much screen time, either, and the time that she did get was either engaging in a really stupid and forced relationship between her and Bruce, or fighting in a way that was probably just there so the straight males in the audience could see how sexy her body is. The small bit of character development we did get regarding Natasha was in her backstory in the Red Room, and I guess that was pretty cool, but I feel like most of that was shown just so she could connect more with Bruce, and it still seemed pretty forced. 

Overall, I’d say that Age of Ultron was entertaining but disappointing. And frankly, I’m kind of glad that Joss Whedon left Marvel.