AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Yeah! Teamwork! Fuck you, robots!
  • AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Yeah! Teamwork! Fuck you, robots!

TV and films are edging closer toward each other: Movies are reaping the benefits of long-form storytelling, even as TV swipes Hollywood's style and ambition. No soulless multimedia conglomerate embodies this hybridization better than Marvel—and it isn't a coincidence that Marvel's best stuff has come from Joss Whedon, a third-generation TV writer who can turn massive casts, sitcom quips, and blockbuster spectacle into movies that are more than the sum of their billion parts.

And there are a billion parts: Avengers: Age of Ultron is the 11th (11th!) Marvel movie, and it features not just the core Avengers—Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk, and Hawkeye—but also tosses in the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the Vision (Paul Bettany), and eeeevil robot Ultron (James Spader, who finally gives the Marvel movies something they've desperately lacked—a decent villain). Things explode, the plot hurtles forward, and everybody cracks jokes. But more importantly—in between all the callbacks to previous films and setups for sequels—Whedon finds a great movie.

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