Avengers: Age of Ultron, Buffy and Falling in Love With My Girlfriend

Four blog entries in and I'm already straying from the Comics in Comics Communion to talk about a movie; talk about my jumping the shark moment. As an avid fan of comics for several years, and an active cinephile for even longer, my relationship with films (and television shows) based on comic books is fractured, to put it lightly. The comic fan in me is delighted by the prospect of seeing the beloved costumed heroes from my books standing tall on the big screen, even more-so when the movies actually adhere to the text and borrow from existing comic storylines. The film goer in me is frustrated by how visually lacking comic book movies tend to be; how they get sabotaged by my least favourite Hollywood directors (Christopher Nolan and Zach Snyder, to name a few); and how directors I like are handcuffed to the overarching house style of the company that employs them. I knew I was never going to get it, but I liked to fantasize what a Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age of Ultron would look like. That movie doesn't exist. This is Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, with Joss Whedon getting first dibs on doughnuts at the start of every shooting day.

To be honest, my relationship with Avengers: Age of Ultron isn't even that simple. For the weeks preceding my viewing, I was terrified of this movie; terrified by watching the new work from the man who created my favourite television series of all time.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn't just a TV show for me. It altered my life more than any other work of art I've come across, putting me in the living situation I'm currently in. Its memorabilia is splashed on my walls and book shelves; Buffy calendars, Buffy Pop Funkos. I read the continuing adventures of Buffy every month in comic book form, and have been actively doing so for the last three and a half years. Buffy even wakes me up every day; its theme song my phone's alarm clock sound and ringtone. So of course, it's literally impossible for me to go a day without thinking about Buffy.

That's just small potatoes, though. It's possible I just happen to really like this TV show, and that could be the end of it. But it goes deeper. Buffy saved the life of my girlfriend of three plus years, and would shortly after bring us together.

Willow and I met near the end of 2007, on the message board section of the Rotten Tomatoes website. My budding cinephilia and desire to expand my movie watching and talk movies all the time led me to join the forum, which at the time was still a huge online community of every personality imaginable. Over the next couple years on this forum I would make friends and friendly acquaintances I still have to this day, even though none of us still interact on that specific message board anymore. Willow and I were at a similar point in our lives; we are just months apart in age, and both grew serious into film at roughly the same time too. Our tastes too were similar, as we quickly bonded over horror movies.

I had previously watched through portions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my own from 2008-2009, liking it well enough, but it never sticking with me. For a reason I'm not even sure of, I picked it up once more. It was February 2011. Something clicked. This wasn't just a show, for me. This was my show. I had never feverishly connected with art as much as I did during the 15 days I ran through the entire 144 episode series (which averages out to 9 1/2 episodes/nearly 7 hours every day). To call it a roller coaster of emotions is grand understatement. I lived and breathed these characters.

Midway through my series watch-through I told Willow (still “just a friend”) that she needed to watch it as well. Our tastes were so often in sync that I just knew it would win her over like it did me. She followed suit, and by the time I watched the last episode she was already several seasons in. Her viewing was a little more spaced out than mine; closer to a month, I recall. Our mode of dialogue changed drastically during this time period. Our conversations moved from the public message boards to private messaging; they grew from sentences into paragraphs; grew from what we were watching into discussions of our personal lives; but even still, Buffy was at the centre of it all. These conversations became a daily part of our lives. The series meant the world to her, as it did me. When Willow came out as trans the following year kick-starting our relationship immediately, she even named herself after her favourite character. Unfortunately, neither Spike Dobbin nor William the Bloody Dobbin have a pleasant ring to them, otherwise I'd have considered the same.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer our metaphorical wedding band, created a bond between us that grows stronger every day; even still, as we've now been living together nearly eight months.

Buffy lifted the bar so high that it's not even earthly possible for Joss Whedon to create anything else we may like as much. Still, his career is followed in regularity in our house hold, and he sometimes reminds us of “the Joss of old” (what up, Cabin in the Woods). His work with Marvel Studios is, well, not the work I'll remember him by. That's obvious. But I can't dismiss them at first sight, either. If I could, I wouldn't be writing this thing in the first place. Nearly a week after seeing it, I'm still thinking about Avengers: Age of Ultron; the movie that is, the movie that could be, the movie I would love.

With few exceptions, I don't care for movies that can be described as blockbusters. Big budget Hollywood film politics doesn't care an ounce for creativity, so it's frustrating to see the system hire some wonderfully talented individuals and then put roadblocks up all around them (Whedon), or to fight so hard against what the creator wants to do that they end up leaving the project altogether (see: Edgar Wright and Michelle MacLaren).

As a comic fan, I watch and get a hint of enjoyment out of the Marvel Studios films simply by seeing these cool characters brought to life in a competent fashion. As a cinephile, I'm always left with dissatisfaction (even for the few of their movies that I actually like). It's mind boggling sometimes. From an aesthetic stand point, I think comics are maybe the strongest medium in North America mass media today. The medium is in a superbly rich period, with writers and artists actively pushing themselves and the art, creating comics we would never have seen even as short as five years ago (Bitch Planet and Sex Criminals, to name a couple) and companies like Valiant and Marvel doing refreshingly original takes on the tired superhero genre (Hawkeye and Divinity). The Marvel and DC comic book movies of today don't have the visual spark their source material's artform is so frequently delivering. They don't break narrative conventions or stray from formula. They don't look like comic books (the ass kicking Dredd does, but that's not a Big Two title).

As the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues ever onward, I grow more and more tired of its existence. I feel now I've now seen the same movie 11 times. At least the Friday the 13^th series had the decency to only waste your life 85 minutes at a time.

Avengers: Age of Ultron does some really good things, which not surprisingly feel like the most Whedon-y parts of the movie:

-The relationship between Black Widow and Hulk is the emotional backbone of this movie, and I wish it could have a movie to itself. Widow/Johansson continues being the undisputed high point of this entire universe, and why again isn't there a solo Black Widow movie?

-Scarlet Witch's sub plot had a lot more substance than I was expecting. She triggered the most visually interesting sequence in the entire film, too: the dreams by Widow, Cap, Thor. Again, I wish there was some more of this. I'm repeating myself, I know, when there's so little in a 140 minute movie I genuinely love, I want there to be a lot more of it to savour.

-The safe house/Hawkeye's sub plot is one of the movie's refreshing breaks from nonsensically orchestrated action mayhem. Unfortunately, Jeremy Renner simply does not know what to do as Clint Barton. He is not a bad actor, but for some reason he doesn't "get" Hawkeye. He doesn't know what to do with the character, so he chooses to do nothing. Renner-as-Hawkeye is a saltine cracker that has been left outside overnight during a thunderstorm.

-The Avengers one by one drunkenly attempting to lift Thor's hammer. The entire party was pretty good, now that I think about it.

-The mini action set piece that opens the movie is actually pretty cool to watch, with its stand out digital tracking shot a more interesting 10 seconds than the entirety of some other MCU movies.

Everything else is pretty messy. Whedon tried making Ultron the wise cracking Big Bad that Loki was, which is embarrassingly a little difficult to watch. James Spader tries his damnedest, but when Ultron dialogue could easily be mistaken for Tony Stark dialogue, that's a big problem. The static robotic face also hinders the character, with Spader's emotions not coming across as eloquently as they should. The execution on Ultron is a massive botch job. Thor's little solo mission in the middle of the film is confusing and only barely explained. Likewise, Vision's birth is just as muddled. Quicksilver is competing for Blandest Superhero on The Avengers Award (don't worry, Hawkeye is the lifelong holder of that beauty). Black Widow getting thrown into prison and forgotten about is infuriating. Everyone wants to interpret the sterilization scene as sexist (I don't think it is). If you want to find some problematic women character utilization, why not talk about the movie tossing aside Widow for its final hour, or how it doesn't even pass the Bechdel test (with two women Avengers on the roster, and Maria Hill in a bunch of scenes, that's sorta unforgivable). And following in the tradition of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the climatic action set piece is garbage; illogically choreographed; impossible to follow; the frequency of cuts negate the poignancy of the human body in motion.

The bottom line: did I like Avengers: Age of Ultron or not? Before I started writing this I had an answer to that question. Now, I'm not even sure anymore. I just know I don't want to discuss this damn movie series anymore. I want to throw on “Once More, With Feeling” and remember a time when Joss Whedon directed beautiful images.