MINI MOVIE REVIEW: “Avengers: The Age of Ultron” (2015)

Black Widow nearly drowns in a sea of testosterone.

Well, as expected, this flick is awash with the XXXXXXXXXXXXSSSSSSSS BOOM! AND SHIT’S FLYIN’ EVERYWHERE! that we have come to love and expect from the Avengers movies.  Costumes are form fitting, muscularly padded, and CGI-laden.  Black Widow’s outfit is apparently enhanced not only with boobs akimbo but also with rope light.  Hawkeye’s quiver is self-replenishing.  Thor’s hair never gets in his eyes.  Tony Stark, while no longer making weapons, has a “relief fund” that must be in excess of the GNP of the entire planet.  Psychics are thrown out the window to the point where even I, with my degree in Fine Arts is thinking, “um, no way, but whatever, because this movie is pretty cool to watch.”

So yeah, it’s fun, it’s cool, a crap load of stuff gets blown up, and James Spader makes one great villain.  And there was a Eugene O’Neill reference thrown in.

The really NOT cool parts — and there’s two — made me both cringe and get pretty damned perturbed, and you’ve probably heard about both of them already:

Tony Stark attempts to lift Thor’s hammer and says, “If I’m deemed worthy, I’m bringing back the rite of Primae Nocti.” Um, yeah, whether there’s any real evidence of this actually existing — and also, even as a weak attempt at a joke — still NOT COOL.

Natalia/Black Widow, in a tender moment with Bruce Banner/Hulk, reveals that in her School of Our Lady of Assassin Training and Bleeding Dagger Through the Skull, part of her “graduation” ceremony was forced sterilization, and she says that Hulk is not the only monster here.  Association of lack of ability to bear children with being a monster?  Really, really, NOT COOL.

Still a good movie, but really, some things …. Joss Whedon, I really expected better from you.