El
destino del planeta pende de un hilo cuando Tony Stark intenta hacer funcionar
un inactivo programa para mantener la paz. Las cosas le salen mal y los héroes
más poderosos, incluyendo Iron Man, Capitán América, la Viuda Negra, Thor, el
Increíble Hulk y Ojo de Halcón, se ven enfrentados a la prueba definitiva.
Cuando
el villano Ultrón aparece, es tarea de Los Vengadores el detenerle antes de que
lleve a cabo sus terribles planes para el mundo. Inesperadas alianzas y acción
por doquier sientan las bases para una épica aventura global.
Los
Vengadores: la era de Ultrón es la segunda película de la saga protagonizada
por los héroes más poderosos del mundo. El reparto cuenta con Robert Downey
Jr.( Iron Man) Chris Evans (Capitán América), Scarlett Johansson (Viuda Negra),
Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Jeremy Renner (Ojo de Halcón),
Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Cobie Smulders (Agente Maria Hill), James Spader
(Ultrón), Elizabeth Olsen (Bruja escarlata), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Pietro
Maximoff) y Paul Bettany (Vision).
Cuando Tony Stark intenta reactivar un programa
caído en desuso cuyo objetivo es mantener la paz, las cosas empiezan a torcerse
y los héroes más poderosos de la Tierra, incluyendo a Iron Man, Capitán
América, Thor, El Increíble Hulk, Viuda Negra y Ojo de Halcón, tendrán que
afrontar la prueba definitiva cuando el destino del planeta se ponga en juego.
Cuando el villano Ultron emerge, le corresponderá a Los Vengadores detener sus
terribles planes, que junto a incómodas alianzas llevarán a una inesperada
acción que allanará el camino para una épica y única aventura. (FILMAFFINITY)
Críticas
"La película de superhéroes más
exitosa de todos los tiempos logra una secuela superdimensionada con un alma
sorprendentemente grande (...) Joss Whedon aporta un toque más suelto,
innovador y elegante a esta hábil continuación"
Scott Foundas:
Variety
"Una estimulante cabalgata de
diversión. La secuela de 'Los Vengadores' puede que sea el presagio de una
nueva avalancha de películas de superhéroes, pero si todas resultan tan
entretenidas como ésta ¿Cuál es el problema? (...) Puntuación: ★★★★ (sobre
5)"
Peter Bradshaw: The
Guardian
"Los superhéroes de la taquilla
regresan, un poco menos potentes. (...) Esta vez las escenas de acción no
siempre están a la altura, y algunos de los personajes se quedan en una especie
de 'tierra de nadie' a nivel dramático."
Todd McCarthy: The
Hollywood Reporter
"No tienes que ser un 'geek' de
Marvel para encontrarle el punto. En esta secuela (...) Joss Whedon logra la
dominación de la taquilla mundial, la película se salta las barreras,
volviéndose más oscura y más profunda (...) Puntuación: ★★★½
"Tiene
un gran reparto y efectos especiales realmente espectaculares, pero en última
instancia resulta encrespada y abultada. (...) Puntuación: ★★★
(sobre 5)"
Geoffrey
Macnab: The Independent
"Whedon
y su gran y talentoso elenco (...) suministran la suficiente aventura, risas y
rotundo espectáculo como para garantizar que el público sienta que ha merecido
la pena gastarse el dinero.
"
Tim
Grierson : Screendaily
"En
el fondo 'Ultron' tiene un argumento sencillo, incluso, poco original (...) Aún
así sigue siendo una película de Joss Whedon, repleta con todos sus tics,
secuencias de acción ágiles y los chistes pomposos y punzantes que esperamos.
(...) Puntuación: ★★★
(sobre 5)"
Tom
Huddleston: Time Out
"Aunque
'La era de Ultrón' está menos cohesionada que 'Los Vengadores', también es más
ambiciosa y rica en personalidad, ofreciendo a cada Vengador la oportunidad de
desarrollarse (...) Puntuación: ★★★★ (sobre 5)"
Emma
Dibdin: Digital Spy
"Prueba
que no necesitamos más películas de 'Vengadores' (...) Es vistosa, pero ¿No
hemos visto esto ya antes? (...) carece de cualquier intento de sorprender a la
audiencia"
Eric
Kohn: Indiewire
Another summer season, another superhero spectacular —
these are the days (and nights) of our moviegoing lives. The one under review
today, Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” isn’t half-bad, largely because of
its director, Joss Whedon. Here’s a guess: Some viewers will love it, others will
hate it, and still others will yawn at its very existence. None of this matters
because the most relevant thing about a movie like this is that its quality is
almost entirely irrelevant. It was created to crush the box office,
entertainment media and audience resistance, and mission, you know, already
accomplished. In an age of lock-step entertainment, pushback isn’t just
immaterial; it is also suspect.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Marvel's Avengers: Age of UltronMAY 1, 2015
James Spader at Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif.James
Spader Prepares for ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’APRIL 22, 2015
This is a familiar lament, especially from those of us
who didn’t grow up worshiping at the altar of Stan Lee et al. or don’t watch
movies based on brand affiliation. (Guilty!) It’s a good question whether the
big studios’ dependence on comic books is hurting American mainstream cinema
and whether they can figure out how to survive without suckling at Marvel’s
great multiplatform teat. For a Marvel agnostic like me, the single most
interesting thing about “Age of Ultron” is that you can sense that Mr. Whedon,
having helped build a universal earnings machine with the first “Avengers,” has
now struggled mightily, touchingly, to invest this behemoth with some life.
He has and he hasn’t — in a movie that is by turns a
diverting and dreary blur of babbling and fighting that translates into faces
in close-ups or bodies in longer shots. The gang’s all here, of course,
including the billionaire egoist Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.); the straightedge
hero, Captain America (Chris Evans); the E.T. Viking with the hammer and hair,
Thor (Chris Hemsworth); the token chick, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson); some
dude with arrows, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner); and that computer-assisted leviathan,
the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). Rounding out the A-listers is Samuel L. Jackson, who
as Nick Fury brings a beautiful bald skull along with an Old Testament vibe and
a black leather coat straight out of Shaft’s closet. Mr. Jackson has a
nine-movie deal with Marvel; he has two more to go.
If you’re not acquainted with the intricacies of the
Marvel universe, it can be hard to keep track of who’s doing what to whom and
especially why. In story terms, the movie — Mr. Whedon wrote “Age of Ultron” as
well as directed — is outlandishly overpacked, taking place on multiple fronts
against various foes both terrestrial and galactic. Mr. Whedon opens with one
of those Bond-style blowouts that’s so old-fashioned it even includes a
Nazi-type villain, Strucker, whom the German actor Thomas Kretschmann plays all
too briefly with a sneer and a monocle. Strucker evokes the continental cads à
la Erich von Stroheim and is meant to be a Mengele type whose work has produced
a special set of twins: the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver
(Aaron Taylor-Johnson).
Like much of the rest of the main cast, Ms. Olsen and
Mr. Taylor-Johnson are appealing, attractive performers who usually show up in
independent productions that probably cost less to make than this one’s
craft-services bill. Their newness to this world distinguishes them when the
screen becomes too crowded; so do the intensity of their contrapuntal
performances and the pathos of their characters’ back story as refugees turned
lab rats. Mr. Whedon is a sensitive director of actors, as he showed for years
while shepherding “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” His characters banter and quip
like screwball loons while parading their cultural literacy (here, someone
name-drops Eugene O’Neill), but these are linguistic fig leaves for men and
women who feel and hurt deeply.
The upshot here is a movie that lumbers along like a
front-line tank, hauling the enormous weight of the entire Marvel enterprise
along with it, only to routinely work itself into a frenzy of action and then
(shades of the Buffyverse) chill out with scenes of relaxed camaraderie,
challenging romance and domestic intimacy. A lot of effort has been expended so
that the Hulk can make like a big baby with tantrum issues, tossing cars and
whatnot around like toys, including in a disastrously protracted street brawl
that stops the movie dead. Once the character reverts to ordinary form as Bruce
Banner, though, Mr. Ruffalo lifts his every scene, as does Ms. Johansson, even if
she doesn’t have much to do but strut in her form-fitting costume and exchange
meaningful looks with a romantic foil.
These too-short interludes of the Black Widow
grappling with a difficult love interest modestly humanize the movie, which
helps a bit with both its rhythm and scale, making it less of a monotonous
special-effects blowout. Repeatedly, Mr. Whedon injects something alive into
the mix, be it a woman’s fingers tenderly caressing a computer-generated wrist
or children leaping into a father’s embrace. This assertion of flesh-and-blood
vulnerability extends to several narrative points, including a nod at the
military industrial complex that is almost touchingly pointless given how much
of this movie has been dedicated to ensuring obliterating violence looks cool.
Even the villainous alien, Ultron, playfully voiced with mellifluous menace by
James Spader, philosophically chews the cud about humankind.
Mr. Whedon chews over the same in “Age of Ultron” (war
and people, what are they good for?) in his efforts to personalize the material
while dutifully hitting all the genre notes. This “Avengers” doesn’t always pop
the way that the first one sometimes did, partly because its villain isn’t as
memorable, despite Mr. Spader’s silky threat. And, as is often the case in
these comic-book movies, most of the fights are interminable and fatiguing,
though Mr. Whedon does fold in moments of beauty, including when the image
slows down with each Avenger centered in the frame both together and
individually. This centering crystallizes the dynamic that is paramount to the
Avengers story and also suggests the behind-the-scenes push-and-pull battle
that Mr. Whedon has waged over two movies.
