Made Movies: Avengers: Age of Ultron Review

There’s many ways to spend two hours, doing charity work, fighting a cougar, or accepting that “ I’m home alone” text. Only two of those will make you scream like a schoolgirl in the way “Avengers: Age of Ultron” did.

“Age of Ultron” has the team facing a new robotic villain created by Tony Stark(Robert Downey Jr) that sets to destroy The Avengers and the world. The team will have to face internal struggles on top of possibly the biggest threat they’ve faced to date.

Character interactions stood out as the strong point as watching these characters banter is the heart and soul of this movie. The engaging dialogue makes it hard to notice any long period of no action not on screen because the audience is hanging on to every word.

Writer/Director, Joss Whedon, continues to show this movie is not built off of huge action pieces, but also a script. The running jokes were strong throughout, making for bigger laughs each time showing that.

This movie plays with more complicated themes, which excel the more straightforward original in the aspect with concepts like, good and evil, playing God, are Thor’s abs real, the important stuff.

The two most expendable Avengers got the most character development this time around, with Black Widow(Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye(Jeremy Renner) got to showcase why they deserve to be in this film.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver didn’t live up to the bar set by Evan Peters standout performance last year in X-Men. His acting, was perfectly fine, it was more like Quicksilver was just there and didn’t do much.

Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch was the best new character and the one to look out for going forward. Her powers and vengeful personality add a new dynamic that brings life to her scenes.

The opening scene started out strong with perhaps the best set piece in the film showing the Avengers do what they do best, cause mass amounts of damage no insurance will cover.

The action was very well choreographed and directed, but there weren’t really as many stand out moments like in the last film, the triple threat in the forest or Hulk smashing Loki.

The movie doesn’t recapture that magic the first did with seeing all these larger than life characters together on screen for the first time ever. It takes a few steps forward and you know the rest of this sentence.

Parts such as the South Korea sequence were forgettable and would have been best left on the cutting room floor. Thor has a subplot that doesn’t really go anywhere; luckily things go so quick these are minor gripes.

It’s easy to see that the cast are so used to these characters after playing them so long. Little ad-libs like Tony Stark doing a little bit of dancing and humming as he invades an enemy fortress are loved and welcomed.

Ultron(James Spader) is a cunning villain, who was also sympathetic because he believed everything did was actually good, instead of the cliché “I’m evil”, while twirling his robotic mustache(rostache?). Yet, never feeling unbeatable, it was more like a question of when the team would defeat him rather than if they would.

Setting up the seeds for Civil War in this film gave great glimpses of what’s to come in next year’s movie when the heroes battle each other. There are many tense sense involving Cap and Tony that give audiences of mouth covering moments.

The 3-D felt like it was an afterthought and the only reason someone wouldn’t forget it was because ever so often the movie would throw a pebble or shoe, except in 3-D! This is disappointing considering how the previous Marvel movie “Guardians of the Galaxy”, made such good use of it.

The film is great and stands solid by itself, but when comparing it to the previous Avenger’s film or even the more recent Marvel film’s like Guardians or Winter Solider, it doesn’t stand as tall. “Age of Ultron” is a great summer flick with depth and some content that fumbles in parts.

Like and comment with your thoughts on the movie or whatever your fingers feel like typing. Follow for more movie, game and music review on the IMS channel.

Call Of Duty Hits The Mark

There are three things certain in life, death, taxes and a new Call of Duty game every year. Loved ones will not be seen for weeks as one of the most addictive online shooters is back to claim their lives.

It could possibly be the most popular and hated gaming franchise because “it’s the same every year”. This year, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare aims to blow away the nay sayers with an explosive basket full of new features and gameplay additions.

People who play don’t even touch the single player, should check it out this year or else a well-crafted campaign would be missed. To sum it up for the “bro’s”, Kevin Spacey is evil and you’re the good hero with 5’o clock shadow who must defeat him.

While there are new tweaks that change up single player, it’s mostly still the player as a one man army creating thousands of orphans after mowing through wave after wave of enemies.

A variety of locations, engaging story and cool gadgets make the campaign worthwhile. I would go into it more but the multiplayer is where the meat of the game lies.

Being a veteran of the series, I jumped straight in a multiplayer match thinking “I know how this works” and ended up saying” where’s that instruction manual?” as bullets riddled my body from every direction.

The new Exo-suits dramatically change the way the game is played, but fundamentally it is still CoD at its core. Jetpack boosting, shields and other abilities make for fresh as well as fast paced gameplay.

Players used to just have to look out for others at doors, maybe some ladders. Nowhere is safe with players coming from the windows, the roof, anywhere big enough for a gun to fit through really.

There are the usual game modes of Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, and Free For All. The best is Infected with whoever becomes the infected trying to convert all other players by the end. When you’re the last one left, while everyone else has turned and is hunting for you makes for the most thrilling moments online.

Level design is very solid with the best examples being Riot, Retreat and Terrace. Big multilayered stages make for plentiful routes and tactics for players to have.

Pick 13 system allows for more freedom on what kind of loadout a player wants. Everything costs a point and deciding what to spend it on is the most difficultly someone will have.

Advanced Warfare’s art direction aims has a futuristic vibe as gorgeous building architecture take a high tech yet contemporary approach with designs that are foreign yet familiar.

The sound is very noticeable step up from past iterations as every bullet; laser and other projectiles have a crisp pop to them. Usually, headphones are needed to hear these small details but next generation hardware allows for bigger uncompressed audio files.

The negatives are that the weapons can be a bit unbalanced to the point most people will use the same one powerful weapon. The co-op mode isn’t very fun as some of the older titles and lag on some of the matches can be a real annoyance as this game requires twitch reactions

If I were to recap the countless hours I spent on multiplayer it would be filled with curse words. Yet it always provided fun as the shouting was always followed by a smile. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare takes the franchise in a bold new direction with fun moments to be had around every corner.