AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON: Spectacular but standard! Fun for fans!! [3/5]

If you are a hardcore comic-book fan, you would know what to expect from a specific series, and when. There will be moments of comfort shaken by the flashes of threatening situation to the very existence of mankind. Team should be intact and as any of the old-book sayings would recommend, ‘together’. Meanwhile, you can have a romantic track between the two of leading members, a sentimental family-connection, self-assured guys cooler than ice-crushes, a ‘mightier than ever’ evil force and loads of pages carrying only action-words like ‘Boom’ ‘Bang’ ‘Crash’ ‘Smack’ written all over big & bold.

Marvel’s screen-adaptation and a sequel to 2012’s super-hero flick THE AVENGERS, Joss Whedon’s AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON too doesn’t dare to rule out on the basics and tries its best to serve you ample portions of everything you read in the buffet menu. Tony Stark [Robert Downey Jr.] known for inventing witty one-liners more than scientifically viable gadgets and programs accidently brings an artificial intelligence program into life, and ‘Ultron’ is now planning to extinct human race from earth in order to save it. Initially, it [as Ultron is just another evolved operating system, works by hacking and controlling dense information freely flowing in the virtual world] gets hands of support from a speedster young kid with his twin sister- a mind-manipulating freak seeking personal revenge from Stark. She can easily invade any mind and slide them to a complete opposite track with corrupted visions in the head.

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON gives plenty of space for an entertaining ride having your favorite superheroes by your side. In one particular ‘party’ scene, everyone else tries to lift the immovable hammer of Thor [Chris Hemsworth]. Thor looks quite confident of his caliber and the hammer’s built until Bruce Banner- the hulk [Mark Ruffalo] enters the game. Bruce couldn’t do much but succeeded in shaking Thor’s confidence for a moment. Don’t miss his face! In other, everyone in the team pulls Captain America’s leg for his one of early instructions to watch out for the ‘language’. It all starts in the beginning and keeps coming at regular interval but so incredibly, you are never done with the joke. The film also explores the softer track between Natasha [Scarlett Johansson] and the rage-driven green monster in a man’s body, Bruce [Ruffalo]. The eagerness of being alike mixed with the sadness of uncertainty in the nature of their relationship is heartbreaking. So is the sequence where Stark’s artificial intelligence program JARVIS gets terminated by the evil Ultron. After Johansson’s talking operating system in Spike Zonze’s HER, this was another heartfelt sequence involving some machine.

Whedon creates a world full of explosions, destruction and skyscrapers getting melt down to dirt. The action sequences especially the ones having all the superheroes fighting in slow-motion and in one frame are a treat to watch, but what lacks the most is the depth in the story. I wish the plot gets more thickened by some cleverness and hadn’t just decided to bigger the scale. It’s scenic. It’s thrilling. It’s pure fun. Don’t expect anything out of the box or any unpredicted surprise in the tale! AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON is the latest in a popular series and stays the same. Spectacular but standard! [3/5] 

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2: A regular popcorn fling! Nothing new to offer!! [2.5/5]

How can you not find it amusing when Spider-man himself starts humming his own signature tune in midst of his early face-off with some notorious criminals! In the very next, you get to notice that how miserable, messy and misunderstood a superhero’s normal life can be when at home. Interesting take but that’s that. If you’re seriously looking for something additional, something extra to the previous Garfield starrer movie, I have to break your hearts coldly. Marc Webb’s second in the series THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 has nothing new to offer and is a regular popcorn movie that trusts blindly on its own set of rules to entertain.

Taking story forward from where it ended in the first, the quest for his parent’s inexplicable disappearance still drives Peter Parker anxious and restless when he learns his childhood buddie Harry [Dane DeHaan] is now the new inheritor of OsCorp., after his father’s death. Meanwhile, Max [Jamie Foxx]-an almost invisible ordinary yet extremely susceptible loner and an electric engineer at OsCorp is the new accidental victim of its illegal human-animal mutation program. The ‘Electro’ is his new avatar with super-electric powers. Now, Harry has some hereditary illness that demands Spiderman’s blood as its venom and his only hope is Electro. Together, they are on to wreck-ruin & smash the New York City and the lives of its people, and Spider-man has to prove himself again, in hard times when his love life too is not very smooth.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 shows great promise in glimpse and pieces where a humorous, realistic and sympathetic touch to Spider-man’s regular day-to-day life is being portrayed but soon, it gets derailed or rather I would say takes a U-turn to its own guarded path to entertain, entertain and entertain…and that’s when the jinx of getting in routine hits. Even the drama here is so ‘seen-it-before & sensed-it-before’. Is the fear of losing his love while he’s on his ‘saving the world’ mission not a typical superhero setback?? Also, the rise of villain here is very much a forced practice without having much of a strong explanatory shield to it. Though the visual effects are at par, especially Spider-man’s final face-off with Electro and Harry-turned into-Green Goblin at the magically lit Times Square, it is the sparkling chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone that pulls off most of the scenes.

The 3D effects are worth taking the ride. Watching Spider-man shuffling and juggling in the center of New York City skyscrapers, that too in a rhythmic slow & fast motion technique, is more than just a visual treat. Before getting thinned and restricted by VFX extravaganza in later part, Jamie Foxx makes an incredible impact with his simpleton Max in the first. Emma can never get it wrong with her twinkling and ‘communicating in good volumes’ eyes. Dane DeHaan plays it well but his major will strike soon in the next as suggested at the end.

There should not be any expression of surprise if I say THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 belongs to Andrew Garfield. He’s witty. He’s charming. He’s expressive. And he shoulders the responsibility in a skilled manner. I wish the plot would have been more responsible with a new, fresh and innovative approach. The glimpse and suggestions are there in portions. Watchable! [2.5/5]