‘Age of Ultron’ fails to rise to the occasion

Hulk%2C+Iron+Man%2C+Captain+America%2C+Hawkeye%2C+Black+Widow+and+Thor+attack.

Courtesy of Marvel Studios

The Avengers spring into action.

Daniel Maraccini, Staff Member

If, like me, you feel indifferent to the whole Marvel movie-takeover, let me tell you what I know you want to hear: “Avengers Age of Ultron” is a mediocre explosion orgy of a blockbuster, featuring more dumb shenanigans by long-winded hammer launchers and red-headed not-quite-superheroes who look cool while mixing cocktails.

Having gotten that out of the way, let me also give you permission to do what I know you want to do deep, deep down: see this movie.

It’s a big event when your least favorite Stan Lee-created superhero shmucks get together, and you, quite understandably, want to be one of the cool kids. This is fine, but just give me these remaining 400 words to vent on it.

We begin somewhere in Russia, I think. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter what country just know that guy with the monocle, Baron Von Strucker played by Thomas Kretschmann, has stolen Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) magic stick, and is using it for dastardly experiments involving an Olsen sibling and hunky 20-something males.

The Avengers, having assembled, work to take back the stick. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) flies around zapping people, The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) smashes and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and The Captain (Chris Evans) combine magic hammer and magic shield to form obnoxious vibratos.

You don’t really want to know what bow and arrow guy and ninja lady are doing. Wait, you do? OK. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is still shooting arrows, and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is still jumping around in slow motion (I seriously don’t remember her fighting any people or robots in this movie. I know it happened, but I just do not remember).

Before grabbing the magic stick, Tony Stark gets his brain invaded by the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). The Scarlet Witch likes what she sees, and after breaking into evil grin, lets Stark precede into an experiment that will clearly go terribly wrong.

That experiment is, of course, the evil super-robot Ultron (voiced by James Spader). For all my fellow Marvel haters: don’t worry, this villain also sucks. His plan is to dislodge a city from the ground, drop it, then watch it explode like a watermelon.

My problem here isn’t that a makeshift meteor is a dumb way to cause mass extinction, my problem is the way Ultron went about doing this.

If you’re going to dislodge a city, why would you pick the random city (whose name I don’t even know)? You know there’s a good chance The Avengers thwart your plan, clear out all the dislodged city’s citizens, then blow up a then empty dislodged city.

If you picked up say, Manhattan, at least when that explodes the debris takes out the other four boroughs. This is actually my biggest problem with Marvel movies

I want more death, more violence.

What did I like about this film? The Scarlet Witch’s hand gestures. I know that sounds like a backhanded compliment (and it is), but they are genuinely entertaining.

There’s one part where she walks out of a 12th century Gothic church in slow motion. It looks like she’s doing a lateral workout machine exercise, only, you know, without the actual lateral workout machine. All of the robots start exploding when she does this.

One last thing that I’ve always wanted to let other people know, but until now have never been given a large enough platform: I hate Tony Stark’s t-shirts.

They’re so aggravating. Aggravating not only because they’re dumb, but because I feel like Joss Whedon thinks it makes Tony Stark look cool.

A t-shirt featuring a shirtless Bruce Lee spinning records on a turntable is not cool. It has never been cool, and I pray to whatever god may be listening that it will never be cool.

But like I mentioned earlier, you should definitely see this movie. Buy two packs of Sourpatch Kids, some licorice, a jumbo ICEE with mixed flavors, nachos and some of those tasty pretzel bites. We at The Inquirer want you to have as much fun as possible with this crackpot of a film.

I personally, want to see you ingest such astronomically high amounts of sugar that you vomit, then feel tingly for the next two hours. Just go all in with this one, you’ll probably have a great time.