On The Age of Ultron

I know, I know.  The Age of Ultron came out weeks ago.  It took me this long to convince my wife to go see it.  A woman of discerning taste (apart from a suspect moment when she married yours truly), I should have known or at least suspected that maybe I oughta listen to her.

I'm not a movie critic, nor do I want to be.  But there are a few things that I just gotta get off of my chest about The Age of Ultron.

SPOILERS:  I'm writing about a movie.  I will be talking about characters, possibly aspects of the story.  I won't however give away anything that'll make someone that hasn't seen the movie upset because I've spoiled the surprise.  Honestly, if you are surprised by anything in a Marvel movie, I have a bridge that I'd like to sell you.  Anyway, you've been warned; proceed at your own peril.

Without further ado, my Age of Ultron stream of consciousness for your reading pleasure

It all starts with the Avengers attacking a HYDRA castle.  There's an immediate cutshot to Thor, kicking HYDRA ass.  Except actually, its quite obvious he's kicking nothing at all.  One particular kick misses the soldier by a good six inches; Chris Hemsworth looks like he's trying out for the Rockettes rather than hanging out and being the Son of Odin.  Everyone rips on the cheesiness of the old Adam West Batman show and movies- the BAMS! and POWS!.  Here's the deal:  back in the 60's, CGI was but a dream.  I strongly suspect that somewhere out there are green screen prints of the Avengers that are equally comical- grown men and women in costumes punching and kicking air.  Whedon just leaves out the campy sound effects and substitutes some (at times) terrible CGI.  And he doles out a lot of it.  More and more I am having trouble deciding if I am watching actors or a computer simulation, and as time goes on that line continues to blur.

My wife had her best nap of the year, right there in the theater.  Woke up, realized they were still  at the party, and poof! out like a light again for another 20 minutes.

When Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch are the best characters in your movie, something has gone wrong.  That's right, you heard me.  Hawkeye.  When as a character your wife looks you in the eye and questions whether you are really a superhero, it's time to hang up the tights and finally refinish the floor in the backroom, man.  Of course he doesn't, just keeps plucking arrows from his magically regenerating quiver and shooting them at everything that moves, while getting some of the best lines of the movie in at his own expense.  "This city is flying.  I have a bow and arrow.  None of this makes sense."  Well said, Hawkeye, well said.   About the only thing that could have been done with that character was to make him self deprecating, which Renner pulls off nicely.   Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch bring some much needed aggression to the movie; in particular its nice to see a female character kick some ass for a change.   Their back story isn't given a whole lot of attention, but that's OK- the movie helpfully summarizes their characters by stating, "He's fast.  She's weird."  That summary notwithstanding, they fit into the plot well, are relatively drama free, and fight like the world is about to end with little apprehension and annoying banter.

When you have to add characters to an ensemble cast, something is equally wrong.  Half of the reason that this movie is as long as it is is there's too many characters, each of which has to have their own personal conflict, climax, and conclusion, all contained in a single movie.  Every one of them has to have their moment, in several cases, two or three moments.

Except for Tony Stark.  He learns nothing.

In a movie that basically is about impossible people doing impossible things in impossible ways to solve impossible problems, The Hulk flying an airplane was nonetheless laughable.  All I kept thinking of was the cover of the Aces High single by Iron Maiden.

Liberally speaking, Ultron existed for 6 months, maybe a year, max.  That's assuming that they hang out at Hawkeye's crib for like a month, Tony Stark takes a boat to Oslo instead of a plane, and every other trip made takes at least a week to accomplish.  My point is that the Age of Ultron was actually pretty damn short, hardly an age.  Even had his nefarious ploy ultimately been successful, his Age would have been remarkably brief.  I get it, the Moment of Ultron or the Summer of Ultron or the Football Season of Ultron just don't, you know, sing as titles.  What I think actually they're referring to is the length of the movie.  Its LOOOOONGGG man!  I felt like I'd aged a couple of years by the time I walked out of there.

This feel like a movie that I'll watch a couple of years from now and probably enjoy more than I did the first time I saw it, much like The Watchmen.  It'll never achieve cult status of course, but it will have a lasting appeal.  Yet I suspect the movie market may finally be becoming saturated with Super Heroes.  That said, when I find myself thinking, "oh hey, Ant Man doesn't look too bad, actually", I know that they have their hooks in me as well and in 2018 when the next Avengers installment comes out I'll be nagging the wife to go see it once again.


BONUS ROUND TIME:

If you're still reading, you might like this:

Have you ever read a commentary that misses the point more thoroughly than this one?

http://blogs.citypages.com/dressingroom/2015/04/why_avengers_age_of_ultron_fills_this_buffy_fan_with_despair.php

Some will undoubtedly quip that yes, they have read such commentary; indeed they are reading it right now.  To which I can only respond with a muted, quiet you.

I'll spare you the effort of reading the article if you don't want to.  Here's what it boils down to.  Joss Whedon created Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  The writer of this blog really liked Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  The Age of Ultron is nothing like Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  The writer is sad.

On Mother's Day

Its complicated, really.

It has been five years since I was able to say Happy Mother's Day to my Mom.  I was fortunate, really, in that I spent the last one of her life with her.  We spent most of the evening arguing about religion and about her decision to leave her fourth husband, move down the street (literally) from him, but not divorce him because she didn't want to live with the associated stigma.

Like I said, complicated.

Two months later, she was dead.  She'd been sick for a long time, but no matter how well prepared she was for death, it still hit me hard.  I remember everything very vividly after I got the call from my step-father, telling me she was in the hospital, but not why.  Hell, he couldn't even tell me what hospital she was in.  I drove home from a business dinner with two cell phones going, getting my wife working the phones to find my Mom, calling my Dad, calling my step-father, my wife finally finding her so I called her room, only to talk to her priest, chain smoking one Marlboro Light 100 after another as I drove as fast as I could, knowing, that there was nothing I could do except wait until the next day to get on the first plane we could find.

Mostly though I remember the moment I knew she was going to die.  They had given her morphine, you see, for the pain.  But she had a chronic liver disease called Primary Biliary Cirrhosis that meant she couldn't process toxins from her body at all, and that morphine was most certainly going to kill her. The look on my wife's face when I finally understood said it all; she'd put it together, but had let me process it for myself.

I remember seeing her in the ICU; fighting blindly against the restraints that held her, probably fighting to be able to die, to have them stop treating her, pumping her full of medicine, actually.  But for a very brief moment I was able to get her to hear my voice.  She opened one green eye and saw me, just for a moment.  A few tears trickled down her cheek.  Then she closed her eye again and continued to fight until her final breath left her body.

My Mom always wanted me to write the story of her life.  She thought that I had the ability to do it, and she thought that it would make one hell of a story.  She said this with a certain mixture of pride and of wistfulness, which I don't think I will ever fully understand.  And what I think maybe she didn't get was that I'd tell it from my point of view, from my memories, which more often than not were very very different than hers.

My Mother was Codependent.  I know this because when she gave me the wedding ring that my Dad had given her so that I could propose to my then girlfriend and then subsequently made my Dad and Stepfather Number 1 call me to tell me that she couldn't give it up and I had to give it back and I immediately cut off all ties to all of them she had a shrink send me a letter telling me of her diagnosis.   If you don't know what codependency is, here's a brief synopsis.  Codependent people have an unnatural and unhealthy need for external approval of others.  They will do almost anything to obtain that approval and will do so without thought of the consequences to themselves.  They are often involved in intense and unstable relationships.  Exhibit A:  my Mom, married four times.

I think back on it now, and I wish that I could have helped her more with her Codependency.  The problem was that she was so forceful, so insistent, so damn stubborn and, hell, she was my Mother. All I could do was to try to fight back when she tried to drag me into her condition.  After we reunited, largely because of her terminal condition, I could really only be around her for about 2 days before I needed to leave.  My poor wife took up the slack a lot and kept us from killing one another during our visits.

The hell of it is that her codependency made me the love of her life, maybe more so than the "typical" love that a mother would have for her son.  I was her best friend, her confidant.  Her memories of me were almost exclusively joyous and adoring.  And yet they all seemed to be of a time that I could not remember, for reasons I shant go into in this particular rumination, before I was five.  And the memories that she had after five that I could remember just never really jived with my own.

One thing that I will never ever question is that my Mom loved me.  And I loved her.  She was my Mom.  We just didn't get along all that well.

There was a childlike innocence to her that contrasted sharply with a dogged determination and stubbornness that I see in myself from time to time.  There was a twinkle in her eye and a glow to her cheeks more often than not.  She had so much happiness in a life that by all rights really should not have made her all that happy.

I used to be able to put the phone down, go and take a leak, stop in the kitchen, pop open a beer, grab a smoke and light it, then pick the phone back up to hear her talking away, completely oblivious to the fact that I'd been gone for 3-4 minutes.  Sadly, I did this more than once.  She talked a lot, what can I say?

And I will never hear her voice again.  I would give anything to be able to, even if after 45 minutes I had to walk away for a few to gather myself.   That's what I've taken away from this day, and from the time that I've taken to write this post.

Having started this, I think maybe I will try to write her story after all.    But the reality is that it will be my story, with my Mom as the central character.  I guess the best that I can do if I do write it is try to do it with her voice, a glint in my eye, and a damned stubbornness that'll keep me up all hours of the night to get it right.

Cause, really, its complicated.