AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

As early as March of 2012, when filming of The Avengers wrapped, Joss Whedon was mulling over plans for the inevitable sequel. “I want to know what makes them tick, what makes them flawed, what makes them fight - and ultimately, what makes them awesome. I go to these movies for those moments when the heroes define themselves, either through action or deliciously overwritten speeches,” he said.

But by the time Disney confirmed a sequel in early May of that year, Whedon had become uncertain about returning as director, having found himself preoccupied with TV’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. By August, however, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Whedon was back on board as writer and director for the sequel to be released in May of 2015, then known only as Avengers 2.

The first obvious clue to the nature of the film came with the announcement of the title, Avengers: Age of Ultron, in late July 0f 2013. Whedon added his own details, “We’re doing our own version of the origin story of Ultron. Ultron has been their chief villain when I read the book. He’s been the Avengers villain. I was amazed anybody was surprised it was going to be him in the movie. Since before I even took the job of making the first one: ’I don’t know if I want to make this movie but the second one should have Ultron in it.’”

Whedon’s other statement should have been a clue. “It’s a little bit darker than the other film since Ultron’s in the house,” he said. “It’s got a sci-fi element to it that’s a little bit stronger than the other film. Getting the team together was so rousing. But seriously, keeping the team together is a completely different problem.”

Indeed, Avengers: Age of Ultron is darker and more cynical than the first teaming of Marvel’s finest. Sure, there was much carnage and mayhem in the first film when a band of invading aliens attacked New York, but that movie never forgot that it was all in good fun, as any Avengers movie ought to be.

            There is far less sympathy here in the moments of destruction. By this time, the series is warming up to Marvel’s Civil War era (the next Captain America movie is already being cheered on for carrying those two words in its title) where, as all fans know, the actions of superheroes can no longer go unregulated.

            Watching Avengers: Age of Ultron it isn’t hard to understand why. The villain is not only Ultron, a robot bent on bringing mass extinction to the planet, but his foolish creator Tony Stark who, much like Dr. Frankenstein, plays with something he knows nothing about and gives birth to a monster. Stark does not get off easy in this movie.

            Whedon admitted to being inspired by Shelley’s horror classic. “It’s our new Frankenstein myth,” he said. “We create something in our own image and the thing turns on us. It has that pain of ‘Well, why was I made? I want to kill Daddy.”

            “In the Marvel universe, there’s a lot of Frankensteins. Steve Rogers himself, one of the better-looking Frankensteins of our era,” he added. “Yeah, there’s always an element to that.  There’s a lot of people, whether they’re trying to do good or bad, who think they have the next big idea.  And the next big idea is usually a very bad one.”

 His team holds him accountable while far away in Easter Europe Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen) still hold a grudge against him for manufacturing the missiles that flew into their home ten years earlier, killing their parents.

            Of course, Ultron was designed as a bringer of peace, but once the program develops a mind of its own it breaks free and by the end of the movie at least three cities have been crushed (Seoul, where a battle with Ultron causes a commuter train to derail into a populated area in a scene reminiscent of the more exciting train fight in Spider-Man 2, a city in southern Africa, the filming was done in Johannesburg in February of 2014, where the metal Ultron wants for his outer shell is manufactured, and Sokovia, a snowy town in Eastern Europe the villainous android uproots from the ground and takes to high altitude with the intention of dropping it like a deadly meteor). Along the way, the band of good guys cause some damage of their own. In a chase through Africa, for instance, Hulk and Iron Man wreck a dozen buildings, an elevator, and the downtown area.

Producer Jeremy Latcham thinks of this as a sort of global protection, saying, “The Avengers saved New York, but the Avengers aren’t just about America. They’re here to protect this blue rock that we all live on.”

            The movie does address that many of the supposed beneficiaries of the Avengers’ heroics may not be exactly approving of the cost of the team’s involvement. If the Avengers are a mirror of how Americans see themselves in a global context (as infallible world liberators), the Maximoff twins start out as something a little closer to reality, speaking for many of the recipients of our intervention.

            Even Latcham conceded as much. “The story that Joss put together with these two kids is really sweet and poignant, and you really understand why they would start on this side of the line. It's a great journey that they go on, from being these rough and tumble kids in Eastern Europe who blame the West, and the Avengers for the plight, the power structure of the world that keeps kids like them down. Over the course of it they realize maybe the Avengers are here for good reason.”

            But the movie brushes off this level of complication with naïve, some would even say irresponsible, simplicity. Elizabeth Olsen’s description of Wanda Maximoff’s character treatment is particularly revealing as to the film’s attitude toward self-inspection.

            “Our characters have a lot of anger, especially towards Tony Stark, and we want revenge,” Olsen said. “We meet Ultron, and he's someone who preaches peace and… believes what we believe, which is that the Avengers create destruction and that Tony Stark's bomb is responsible for killing our parents. My character ends up really having to deal with her ignorance. A lot of problems that happen towards the end of the film are her responsibility.”

            Superhero movies should not be begrudged their moments of darkness. The Dark Knight trilogy set a new precedent because of them and the best action of the superhero movies (most of the Iron Man movies and the two Captain America movies) carried a dose of sadism than many of the lesser ones (the Thor movies) took seriously. There is a certain gusto in the way action heroes maintain grace under pressure and that coolness in the face of death kept the first film afloat toward the end. But the brutality, even at its grimmest, should always add to the excitement. Christopher Nolan’s first two Batman movies had little cheer, but were thrilling because of colorful villains. The final act was a dud largely because of a humorless villain and the unrelenting somberness of the overall screenplay.

            The meaner a foe the higher the thrills usually are, but it’s never fun to further dampen the mood in between the scenes of terror with stark glumness. After all the Michael Bay influence on Joss Whedon, shouldn’t Avengers: Age of Ultron have some fun with its cast of heroes? But all is dark and dreary with none of the first film’s sense of humor. Even Robert Downey Jr. whose wit proved an asset in all four movies where he previously played Iron Man is as lively here as one Tony Stark’s empty armor suits. This problem may have originated early on in production while Joss Whedon was still bustling through the screenplay. As optimistic as Marvel Studio co-president Louis D’Esposito sounded about Iron Man’s contribution to the movie, his statement to IGN indicates that, at least in the early stages, there was some uncertainty about what to do with the character.

            “It's hard for me to say what he's doing what his emotional mindset is, but you can see where it was where we left it at the end of Iron Man 3,” he said. “He's in love with Pepper, he's made a grand gesture to blow up the suits at that point — but in the end, he couldn't help himself. He'll go back to tinkering. That's what he does.”

            The action scenes are fragmented awkwardly into the main fabric. What story there is outside of them stops temporarily and for the whirlwind of explosions, crashes, and smoke and then we’re back to the gloom.

Marvel President Kevin Feige was hopeful for these moments, saying, “There are a lot of scenes that you should be getting excited about. I think I said a long time ago when Joss first did his six-page or 10-page outline for Avengers, there was a lot of work and the movie’s adapted quite a bit since then, but there were like six or seven signature things just in that. I said ‘Joss, even if we don’t do anything else. Just do these seven things, that’s enough for the movie. Now let’s get to work and put it all together.’ Those things are in the movie and are amazing, of which that sequence [where Iron Man and the Hulk destroy an African city] is one.”

  But they don’t feel natural or even organically necessary. Neither is there much to enjoy when the film does settle down to catch its breath. It is a dry spell of a blockbuster with little joy or vigor.

            Ironically, what Age of Ultron does better than its predecessor is give each of the Avengers their time in the spotlight, though much of it is a waste of an interesting character. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is used to best advantage and has the most fun. He is at the center of the film’s best moments, including the one time the film really repeats the fun of the original in an after party scene where each of his teammates tries and fails to lift his hammer.

            Hemsworth also saw the change in his mythological character. “He’s loosened up a bit. I think we lost some of the humor and the naïveté and the sort of fish out of water quality of Thor from the first film into the second one. And there were things I loved about what we did in the second one too, tonally. But that sense of fun was -- I would have liked it to be there a bit more. Joss, I think, felt the same way. So there's more humor in Thor and because he's been on Earth, he's a little more accessible now. He's off Asgard now so he doesn't have to be as regal and kingly as he is in that world, which is nice. I enjoy that more. It's sort of a box, which he gets to step out of off Asgard. You know that stuff just looks out of place, whereas here you can have a gag with the guys and he can be at a party scene in civilian clothes, which is nice.”

            Unfortunately, the movie has little use for Robert Downey Jr.’s talent and so Iron Man is a pale shadow of the character we’ve been following thus far. There is, as was promised, considerably more of Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) this time around.

            “We got to do some interesting stuff with Hawkeye which is a different kind of dark," Whedon said. "It's been fun for Jeremy because he was possessed for so long last time – it's interesting to not be a zombie!”

But fattening his part just to have him forsake the team for family feels like a cheat; a calculated attempt at an emotive statement. Captain America’s (Chris Evans) is interchangeable and the two new forces from the Kremlin, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, are simply not seen enough. The same can be said of War Machine (Don Cheadle) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie), though they are set up as successors for the new Avengers. Some interesting insight is given into Dr. Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) as they contemplate an attraction that can never bloom, but it never amounts to any tangible narrative strength.

Who this shortcoming can be addressed to is hard to guess, but Whedon seems to have had good intentions for the Hulk early on. “The Hulk, we really held back on him for a long while in the first one,” he said. “There’s something terrible coming that you’ll love.” Which is what makes the Hulk so hard to write is that you’re pretending he’s a werewolf when he’s a superhero.  You want it vice versa.  You want to see him, Banner doesn’t want to see him, but you don’t want Banner to be that guy who gets in the way of you seeing him.  So the question is, how has he progressed?  How can we bring changes on what the Hulk does?  And that’s not just in the screenplay, that’s moment to moment, because even when they are putting in temp mix they have a library of two roars. “Aaarrgh!  Uuurrgh!”  What if he wasn’t roaring?  I’m angry, and I’m not roaring.  I’m being very polite to a lot of reporters and I’m filled with rage.”

Feige said the same about Black Widow, “Widow's part in that is very big. We learn more about her past and learn more about where she came from and how she became in that film. The notion of exploring that even further in her own film would be great, and we have some development work with that.”

            Paradoxically, the best thing about Avengers: Age of Ultron is Ultron himself, though he is a far cry from the best villain action movies have to offer. But the evil robot is not without a sense of humor, of the kind only a monster voiced by James Spader could have. His caustic wit can be hard to recognize in such a monotonic voice, but this metallic fiend is given more charm and sleekness than any of the heroes. Of his human co-stars only Andy Serkis is given such splashy treatment and then in a brief scene as a mercenary arms dealer.

From the start, Ultron (comics is a creation of Ant-Man in the comics, a detail altered here so as not to step on the toes of  Ant-Man, Marvel) was brilliantly conceived for the film, starting with the casting of James Spader in late summer 2013.

            “I knew right away what I wanted to do with him,” Whedon said. “He’s always trying to destroy the Avengers, goddamn it, he’s got a bee in his bonnet. He’s not a happy guy, which means he’s an interesting guy. He’s got pain. And the way that manifests is not going to be standard robot stuff. So we’ll take away some of those powers because at some point everybody becomes magic, and I already have someone who’s a witch.”

            Ultron’s villainy has the sort of cold calculated matter-of-factness that has always been Spader’s most striking characteristic. As chilling as his words may be, they often verge into the comic. Chris Evans described the villain’s appeal perfectly, “A lot of times when Ultron starts talking, it’s beautiful. It’s really intelligent stuff. He’s out to do the things he wants to do because he’s disgusted with X, Y, and Z. You could probably sit down with Ultron and have a really intelligent conversation. He could blow your mind with his views.”

            Kevin Feige was one of the first to realize how perfectly Spader was for the man-made monster. “He's a very unique and incredibly exciting and unpredictable actor,” he said. “And Ultron in the comics is a robot, but what's cool about him in the comics -- and certainly how Joss Whedon is interpreting him for the movie -- is that he is much more than just a robot. That he's infused with much character. And I don't want to say too much, but you can imagine James Spader will be very dynamic in his portrayal of this character.”

            Spader himself demonstrated a firm grasp on the robot’s motivation. “I think he sees the Avengers as being part of a problem, a more comprehensive problem in the world,” he said. “I don’t know, he sees the world from a very strange point of view because he’s brand new, he’s very young. He’s been self-created during the first act of the film, and then he—he sees the world around him from a very biblical point of view. Because he’s been able to upload an enormous amount of intelligence and so on, and that’s also been fed into him as well.

So he’s immature, and yet has knowledge of comprehensive, broad history and precedent, and he has created in a very short period of time a rather skewed worldview. Which is certainly not unprecedented! He’s probably self-absorbed.”

            It’s safe to assume that Ultron was Joss Whedon’s passion project for this movie. “I’m having a blast with Ultron,” he said. “He's not a creature of logic - he's a robot who's genuinely disturbed. We're finding out what makes him menacing and at the same time endearing and funny and strange and unexpected, and everything a robot never is.”

            Villains can often make a movie and it’s not unusual for them to upstage heroes. Had Avengers: Age of Ultron given its bad guys the full force they deserve it could well have limped by running on that single engine. By the final battle, however, Avengers, androids, civilians, heroes, and villains have been meshed into a calamitous, humorless, and soulless mess that, if nothing else, is appropriate for the movie it concludes.  

DOUBT

Doubt is a gem of a movie, brave in concept and carrying some of the best performances of 2008. Seldom has a film’s theatrical origin worked so well in its favor. In Doubt, the roots from John Patrick Shanley’s play provides us with no more than what we need to know, the time, place, and situation. It’s 1964 and virtually all of the action takes place within the stone walls of St. Nicholas, a parochial school in the Bronx where Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an unorthodox, forward-thinking priest, clashes with the uncompromisingly traditional Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep). When a chance arises to have him removed amid allegations of improper conduct toward a young boy, the hard-nosed nun moves forward in setting a trap.

            We never know more than any one character does at any given moment about. Doubt is true to its title, operating like a game of chess. We only see the moves, the thoughts remain internalized, as does, indeed, the truth of the allegation. In truth, Father Flynn’s guilt is less important than we may think. Sister Aloysius wants it to be true and is set on proving it. Without evidence, she only need cast enough doubt to damage the Father’s reputation irrevocably. What is less certain is how deeply she believes in her own conviction, though this too is ultimately of little consequence. She is certain of what conclusion she wants and is only concerned with railroading the parish in that direction. For all we are told, her allegations may be true and Doubt gives just enough evidence to suggest that they may not be unfounded. If we are looking for a definite answer, however, we are asking the wrong question.

            Perhaps a better question, though still not the point, is to what degree are Sister Aloysius’s and Father Flynn’s behaviors justified. The Sister is, at least superficially, confident in her righteousness. She admits to be moving “away from God, but in His service;” in other words, bringing down Father Flynn justifies her unholy method. By the end of her ordeal she will have discovered just how troubling stepping away from God is to her. She is likely being sincere when she professes to be acting with the well-being of Donald Miller (Joseph Foster), the school’s only African-American pupil whom the Father has taken under his wing. She takes her position too seriously for us to believe otherwise. But there can also be little doubt that her war against Father Flynn is personal to some degree and started even before his bond with Donald Miller. It was evident at least since the moment the film opens when the priest’s sermon on doubt arises her suspicion. Neither is a secret that she hates, or maybe fears, what he represents; progress in the Catholic Church.

            Sister Aloysius has resisted the passage of time with authoritarian rule even as the Vatican itself was pushing forward, confiscating headsets, banning cough drops (“candy by any name”), and seems to have a particularly harsh view of ballpoint pens. Father Flynn is a new type of force and, because he is her superior, she feels less capable of stopping him. Her only recourse seems to be to ruin his name. When an inappropriate relationship with Donald is suspected, she acts like the parish cat seizing the moment to pounce at the mouse. She needs for the allegation to be true and starts with convincing herself, but has little success with anyone else. The young Sister James (Amy Adams), despite bringing Father Flynn’s odd behavior to the attention of Sister Aloysius in the first place, ultimately gives the priest the benefit of the doubt. Even if Sister Aloysius dismissed Sister James as a hopelessly naïve force of benevolence incapable of seeing evil in anyone, and, indeed, her students often take advantage of her good nature, the bishop also remains unconvinced.

            And yet, Doubt never denies that there may be something to the accusations. There may not be anything wrong with Sister Aloysius’s gut feeling or even her aggressive pursuit for justice. What remains dubious are her motives if only because they are so hard to read. Just how much of it is genuinely inspired by her sense of duty and how much by fear of the wave sweeping the Vatican in the mid-20^th century? She concedes this much; she lied when trying to coerce the Father into a confession, telling him she spoke to a nun from his former parish about the circumstances behind his departure. But even here the ethics are hazy. Had Father Flynn been truly innocent, her rationale goes, He wouldn’t have reason to fear the even if he believed the lie to be true. In context it does appear as if she is rationalizing an unsporting trick, but it might be important to remember that tactics of this nature are not unheard of among law and military officials in getting to the truth. If it’s true, as she says, that Sister Aloysius’s main concern is removing a pedophile from the school, she can be justified in obtaining evidence by any means necessary. The difference in her case is not only that her reasons are ambiguous but that her idea of the truth is preordained, evidence be damned. What she truly believes is the truth is something of a mystery, maybe even to her. But she knows what she needs the truth to be.

            Even for an actress as infallible as Meryl Streep, Sister Aloysius presents a challenge. That her secret thoughts vibrate so strongly is a testament to Streep’s unique understanding of dark souls. Essentially, she delivers a performance within a performance. Sister Aloysius’s dominance over St. Nicholas is, after all, a wall constructed to keep out the progress she fears. It’s a wall that begins to slip, however, the first instance being during a particularly heated exchange with Father Flynn when the dreaded progress (represented by the priest) seems to be gaining the upper hand. Her stern chilling diction melts into the nasal Bronx dialect it shields. The frightening figure she constructed is for the first time exposed as a mere defense mechanism and we can finally understand, if not excuse, her behavior. The post-Vatican II world is as frightening to her as she is to the parish she watches over. As rigidly as she enforces her code of conduct, Sister Aloysius is herself a vulnerable human.

            Not surprisingly, Father Flynn maintains his innocence throughout and garners more support than his opponent. Donald Miller certainly appreciates him. As the only African-American in a school servicing Irish and Italian families (in the few brief scenes offering a view of the community outside the parish walls the movie has the air of a Barry Levinson nostalgia piece) and often the victim of bullying it’s not hard to understand why he welcomes Father Flynn’s friendship.

This is what must have perturbed Daniel S. Cutrara in his book Wicked Cinema: Sex and Religion on Screen when he said of the film, “When the Flynn begins to pay special attention to the only African-American boy in the school, he becomes the target of Sister Aloysius’s investigation. Flynn likens the investigation to a witch hunt that ruins careers, and the priest becomes an object of sympathy for the audience. No abuse is shown on screen, so there remains a reasonable doubt regarding Flynn’s behavior. Granted, innocent priests can become the victims of false claims, which may be how some audience members view Shanley’s character. However, at this stage of the Church’s pedophilia scandal, as the extent of a global cover-up of endemic criminal sexual activity is still being discovered, this film introduces doubt into the discourse around the Church’s culpability.”

But those that believe Father Flynn without question (and many in the audience will) are acting on wishful thinking. We want the outreach toward the child to be honest and, to be sure, for all we are shown in the film, it well may be. But the movie never allows us to rule out the other sinister possibility.

As sincere as Father Flynn seems to be in his concern for the boy, at times he appears close to crossing a line. Suspicion first starts when Donald is called into the rectory, followed by a sighting of the priest tossing the boy’s shirt into his locker. Flynn has an explanation for this, but it’s never proven. A bigger question is why Donald left the encounter looking disturbed and reeking of alcohol. The priest’s account is that he caught Donald drinking wine from the altar and agreed to cover it up fearing Donald would have to step down as an altar boy. Again, though, this account can be neither corroborated nor negated.

In addition, Father Flynn’s occasional odd behavior does his credibility no favors. His talks with the boys about personal hygiene teeters often comes a little too close for comfort and in once instant he is shown touching Donald in a way that would give one pause. Most damningly, he comes close to what could be interpreted as a confession when he tells the Sister that there are some things she can’t understand.

And yet, we want Father Flynn to be innocent. He stands, at least ostensibly, for compassion and innovation. In what is arguably his best performance, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Father Flynn with a clear knowledge of his psyche and inner woes. He knows the truth as Shanley wrote it (and Shanley shared his own answer about the priest’s guilt with none other than the actors who took the role both on stage and screen), but never leads the audience on one way or the other, leaving Father Flynn a compelling enigma to the end. Was he a misunderstood of benevolence representing the winds of change for the Catholic Church or a disturbed pedophile with a deceiving mask of goodness? Could he also be both a forward-thinking clergyman and a criminal? If we sympathize with him, as Cutrara says the film wishes us to, our empathy stems from a distrust of Sister Aloysius’s own intentions.

There is, however, a third reason, voiced by Donald’s mother, played by Viola Davis in a breakthrough performance that can only be described as a one scene wonder. She stands by the priest because she likes what he stands for and the good it is doing to her son outweighs any less savory aspects of his behavior. Donald is a lonely, hurting boy, Mrs. Miller reminds Sister Aloysius during an intense confrontation. His lack of friends and an abusive father leave Father Flynn as the only person he can trust. Why Flynn is interested in her son is not as important to her as the end result; someone is looking out for her son. Even if the nun’s allegations are true, Mrs. Miller argues, are they worth bringing down her son’s only benefactor? By Sister Aloysius’s own admission in the final, Donald certainly didn’t think so.

Doubt is one of those movies that brings out the best in its cast because it features characters that only the best can play well. Its best moments involve the cast playing off each other in a war of ideology. Streep and Hoffman take the best approach by never saying what their characters are thinking having them arrive to their point of eruption slowly and calmly at first. Sister Aloysius’s first confrontation of Flynn starts out amicably enough discussing the year’s Christmas pageant. It’s clear from the nun’s facial signs of repressed aggression that she is luring him into a trap, like a cat offering a mouse a sense of safety before it pounces. The discussion becomes increasingly hostile as disagreement arises between the two over the inclusion of secular songs in the show. Tension keeps rising until both the nun and the priest are at each other’s throats. The accusation is never explicitly stated, but by then Father Flynn understands his opponent well enough to know what her goal is, and it was never about Christmas songs.

Equally fascinating is Mrs. Miller’s talk with Sister Aloysius, completely dominated by Viola Davis’s tour de force performance. Streep, however, also does something amazing, bringing forth a revealing new layer to Sister Aloysius. She is, at heart, a frightened woman of the old ways helpless when set against modern times (represented this time by Mrs. Miller). For the first time, Sister Aloysius realizes how truly alone she is in her struggle against modernity.

John Patrick Shanley’s work in cinema is not extensive, his greatest credit was penning Moonstruck, but his direction and script in Doubt makes a strong case for greater involvement of authors in stage to screen adaptations. None of the provocative challenges of his play are lost in the translation and the film captures the moral complexities of his work. Everything went right, though, including the assembly of a superb cast capable of handling the weight and courage of his material, as a group they make Doubt one of the best films of 2008.  Shanley even demonstrates a mastery of camera work, capturing the coldness of St. Nicolas as it contrasts with the close-knit neighborhood in the Bronx where it sits like a mysterious temple where progress has come to a halt; the perfect place for dark secrets to remain hidden within stone walls.