The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies has nothing much to say, but it takes an awfully long time to say it.

This, the conclusion of the three Hobbit films, tells us, once again, that a cursed object can turn everyday greed into  megalomania.  It tells us that love triangles are a cheap way to generate dramatic tension.  It tells us that somewhere between The Lord of the Rings: The Returnof the King and today, Peter Jackson forgot how to present massive battles in a way that made geographical, military, character, and thematic sense.

Either that, or I really am getting too old for this stuff.

Avengers: The Age of Ultron

It’s probably not a good sign when you’re sitting in Avengers: Age of Ultron and thinking, “Y’know what was a really good Marvel movie?  Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Where’s Robert Redford when you need him?”

Some background: I took my two older boys, ages 15 & 8, to see this movie.  I really wanted to see Mad Max: Fury Road, but fatherhood isn’t about getting what you want.  So, there we sat, popcorn and soda in hand, ready for some Whedon-y goodness.

[On further reflection, it probably wasn’t a good idea to let my 8-yr-old get the medium root beer, which would be a large in any sane world and contained roughly a metric ton of corn syrup.  After about fifteen minutes, he started to squirm, after 30, he was all over the place.  In thirty minute intervals thereafter, he left the (mostly empty) theater to run to the bathroom – probably more for the running than the actual bathroom.]

In the story, Tony Stark is basically Victor Frankenstein and the android Ultron his mad creation.  Unlike Frankenstein, Ultron doesn’t start out innocent and misunderstood.  It starts out evil, a fanatic who sees mass murder as a perfectly acceptable expedient enroute to utopia.  
And then there’s a lot of punching, plus a guy with a bow and arrow saying, “What am I doing here?  I’m just a guy with a bow and arrow!”  And people get hurt, and innocents get killed, and there’s a lot of angst, and it’s all so miserable that I thought I was in a DC movie.  In fact, it’s so miserable that, at the end of the movie, several characters just quit the team.  

Don’t get me wrong: the effects are great, the leads are likeable, and Linda Cardellini and Paul Bettany both shine in supporting roles.  But after two and a half hours, I wanted a little less recycled Shelly and little more Spider-Man learning to swing, or Star Lord disco-ing through space-ruins, or Robert Redford opening his fridge to find a bottle of Newman’s Own salad dressing on the top shelf.  I wanted some fun.  I wanted some laughs.  I wanted some moustache-twirling.  All I got were meditations on mortality, morality, and the use of denouments as leveraging tools in contract negotiations.

But, hey, my boys liked it.  As for me, I am honestly beginning to suspect that I’m getting too old for this stuff.