Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
May 8, 2015 - “Movies are no longer about the thing,” wrote critic and journalist Mark Harris in a December 2014 essay forGrantland.“They’re about the next thing, the tease, the Easter egg, the post-credit sequence, the promise of a future at which the moment we’re in can only hint.” Harris argues that this encouragement of moviegoers’ eternal anticipation is a thin veil for the cynicism, fear, and purely commercial motivations of today’s studio executives. Why take a risk on something original that could turn out to be unpopular, too topical, or anything other than a franchise capable of easy replication and unimaginable profits?
Avengers: Age of Ultron, the latest box-office titan in the ever-expanding Marvel cinematic universe, complicates and plays into this narrative of Hollywood stagnation and decay.