Hang on: Wasn’t Quicksilver in some X-Men movies? Turns out he was, but that universe hasn’t yet been linked to this one. The sequence also introduces two striking “enhanced” beings to the Marvel screen universe, the brother-sister Maximoff twins: the dream-weaving Scarlet Witch of Elizabeth Olsen and hyperspeed Quicksilver of Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), thinks there might be a door in a cave wall and says, “Please be a secret door, please be a secret door, please be a secret door,” and as he pushes and it opens, says, “Yay” - no exclamation point, the teeny throwaway amid millions of dollars’ worth of computer-generated pandemonium the perfect distillation of Downey’s charm. I didn’t have a clue what was going on: As both storytelling and storyboarding, the sequence is a disgrace.

Synergistically speaking, it’s the big bang.Īge of Ultron opens mid-bang, as the Avengers - Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and others - attempt to snatch Loki’s scepter from HYDRA leader Baron Strucker. (In publishing, profits from blockbuster authors underwrite the “mid list,” but Hollywood blockbusters are ends in themselves.) The “universe” is that rare Marvel, DC, Star Trek, or Star Wars: a tentpole franchise with the potential to spin off a whole constellation of other franchises in films, books, TV shows, games, and so on. Then came tentpole, meaning a franchise so huge it could take care of a studio’s overhead by itself - and make a lot of smaller poles (i.e., movies that neither cost nor stand to earn that much), from a financial standpoint, irrelevant. First came franchise, a term once reserved for 7-Elevens and gas stations, which, when substituted for the previously used series, would make businessmen salivate on cue.

That’s the new Hollywood buzzword: universe. He has managed to locate the epicenter of the “universe” universe.

Perhaps only Joss Whedon - fanboy, scholar, hack, pop visionary, humanist - could satisfy both nerd-do-well Comic-Conners and corporate masters so thoroughly. The amazing thing about Avengers: Age of Ultron is that it’s reasonably enjoyable while feeling less like a movie than an epic sowing of seeds for multiple Marvel properties.

Avengers: Age of Ultron instal the new