When we look back at the four Avengers films, Age Of Ultron stands out as something of a red-headed stepchild within the MCU. Upon rewatching the film since its 2015 release, it’s safe to say it’s easily the weakest Avengers sequel due to the sheer number of forced narrative and character threads it had to juggle. One might even call Age Of Ultron downright bad compared to Marvel’s many other films.
But the thing that saves Age Of Ultron from being nothing more than a bad Avengers sequel is one small scene where nothing really happens beyond the team talking crap to one another. You know the scene I’m referring to.
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Taking place after the opening act’s bombastic action sequence, Age Of Ultron slows things down to something akin to a hangout by letting all of its characters enjoy each other’s company in a relaxed party setting.
Black Widow flirts with Bruce Banner, Tony Stark and Thor make fun of Rhodey’s piss poor storytelling abilities, and Stan Lee gets drunk with Steve Rogers. It’s just glorious.
Things get even better when the male Avengers all get into a pissing contest over who can lift Mjölnir. The quality banter between everyone is only topped by the moment when Thor freaks out after seeing Steve Rogers budges his hammer just the littlest bit.
It’s only a five-ish minute scene squeezed into an overstuffed 141 minute film, but those five minutes do more to redeem Age Of Ultron than all of its action scenes, quips, fan service, and world-building moments combined.
In those brief moments, Age Of Ultron goes from loud, overstuffed blockbuster to a simply party movie. In doing so, it revealed the real reason why people follow the MCU religion and get so hyped every time a new movie comes along.
Sure the action scenes are a visual delight, the Easter eggs are fun to hunt, and the world-building serves as great treats for long-time Marvel fans. But the real reason we watch MCU movies is just to see the characters interact during the quiet moments.
The joking about, the meaningful chats, and the forging of bonds between clashing egos and personalities. That’s what make the Marvel movies so good and Age Of Ultron just happened to have the finest character-centric scene we’ll likely ever see in the MCU. It’s just a shame the rest of the movie doesn’t come anywhere near close to that quippy, alcohol-fueled high point.
Sadly, we’ll never get the Avengers hangout movie we all wished for given the events of Endgame. But for five glorious minutes, Age Of Ultron showed us all just how great that hypothetical movie would’ve been had Marvel just let its characters relax a bit instead of being so preoccupied with building up the MCU.
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