iTunes Exclusive Episode Avengers Age Of Ultron
Rob, Chad, and Don Ford review Avengers: Age of Ultron, the 11th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The hosts praise the film's storytelling, pacing, action sequences, and casting across the board, calling it better than the first Avengers film and noting its 2 hours 21 minutes contain no filler material. James Spader's performance as the voice of Ultron draws particular discussion for bringing emotion to the character.
About this episode
Key takeaways
- The film is 2 hours 21 minutes with no filler material—every frame is integral to the story
- Director Joss Whedon approached the film like Godfather 2, weaving backstory and origin details into the current plot rather than using standalone flashbacks
- The chemistry and casting throughout is universally strong with no questionable casting choices
- The 3D presentation enhances the experience through depth rather than objects thrown at the audience
- The Hulkbuster sequence and action scenes fulfill decades of speculation about how certain characters would fight each other
Q&A
What position did the hosts take on seeing the film again?
All three said yes to seeing it again. Chad would pay full price in 3D. Rob would pay full price but is uncertain about mandatory 3D. Don Ford felt the 3D enhanced the experience and would see it again.
How did the hosts react to James Spader's portrayal of Ultron?
Chad initially struggled with Spader bringing emotion and humanity to Ultron, expecting a more calculating robotic voice, but warmed to it as the film progressed. Don Ford found him perfect for the role from the start.
What did the hosts say about the film's original cut?
They speculated the original cut must have been extremely long and expressed curiosity about what was cut. Reports of a longer cut with alternate ending for Blu-ray were mentioned but apparently debunked by Disney.
How did the budget and international box office perform?
The film had a budget of 220 million and made 200 million overseas before its official domestic release in the country.
Read Transcript
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Welcome Empire member and or members. If you are hearing my voice right now, we hope it means the following items. We hope at least once in your life you've listened to the Clubhouse podcast, live every Sunday night, 70's from 4 Pacific, your one-stop shop for all-thing sports and entertainment.
We also hope it means you subscribe to our show on iTunes, because it is time for another I-tones, X-Closed Ebbe. It is the 97th one of these we've done. My name is Rob and I am the executive producer of the Clubhouse podcast and I offer one welcome to my robot overlords.
But I am not alone for this particular episode joining me across the desk as he tends to do each and every episode is a man that's avenged a thing or two in his life he is chatted welcome to the show sir. What is this in the background? It's a very obscure album by a lady by the name of Laurie Anderson.
It's called Big Science. Just saying, got to roll with me sometimes. Also joining across the desk is the official fact checker of this show.
And a man who is learning more and more about geek culture as the days go on and we don't have any problem helping him with that. You may know him as fun, don't go, but his mom and name him Don Ford, I'm going to call him Don Ford. Well, I got my master's and nerdism, but the geek create a I need some help with you.
And we don't mind helping you with that sir, we're okay with it. Normally we do one of these that's to review something, this one is no different. This could be one of the biggest films we've ever reviewed on this show.
Apart from the film that if I'm not mistaken, started it all with something in this same vein. Was it not? Pretty sure.
Started the the iTunes exclusive bit. We are here to give you our opinions on Avengers Age of Ultron. This Sweden strikes again with the second installment and the is it the 12th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
Oh man, I wish we had looked at it before we started. I mean, this is, let's see, today we've watched four films, this will be the fifth, 11. This will be the 11th.
Because there were six films in phase one, this will be the fifth one in phase two. Because phase two is not going to end until July when Antman comes out. So here's the deal.
Your favorite heroes Iron Man Captain America, Hulk Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye have gotten back together again, going after Loki's scepter, get a hold of it, which they find out houses some kind of an intelligence bit in which I'm not going to give away if you don't know. And that intelligence bit, they find out has its own thought process and becomes Ultron. Ultron is a robotic army that Tony's kind of put together to be a peacekeeping force, but Ultron itself decides, no, the only we're going to have pieces if we get rid of the humans.
Voice by the great James Spader. So introducing this particular installment are the Maximoff Twins, Pietro played also known as a quick silver played by Aaron Taylor Johnson and Wanda, also known as Scarlet Witch played by Elizabeth Olson, yes, she is of those Olson's. Doesn't that voice?
For setup? Absolutely. So far yet.
Because there's a lot of potential spoilers to this film that I don't want to give out. For what we're getting, we got to do one thing, but that's our new friends. Oh, absolutely.
We got to think Nicholas Susan and everybody, it's Susan Jacobs and also the great people Disney for us, come and see this thing. Also the great people of Disney for buying Marvel Studios. But we can't think that's people now for us, come and see it.
They're incredibly nice people and giving us the opportunity that we can review it for the Empire, so they can decide if they want to spend their harder money to see a film like this. Where do you start? I mean, I guess we can start with the storytelling, because that's usually where we do start.
Chad, I'll start with you. Oh, we kind of covered that, but the storytelling itself, I mean, we set up the plot, but I mean, there's a difference between having a story in telling it. Gosh, there was so much to be told here.
Let's just say first of all, this film is two hours and 21 minutes long, and it is a solid two hours and 21 minutes, which is, in this case, a good thing, not a bad thing. Yeah, there's, there's, there's not a lot of fat on the bone, it's all meat. It's, this thing grabs you by the throat right from the opening bell, and it's fast past, you get your, you get your breaks in the action, so you can get a chance to collect your senses and breathe, and actually expand on what they're doing, why they're doing it, who's helping them, who's against them, it had a really nice flow to it.
There was, I would agree with that, there, there wasn't, it didn't overwhelm you, it didn't bore you. Yeah, if you're bored by this film, then you might need to go get yourself checked out by, stop doing crystal men with this board, just checking a rehab or a C cardiologist because I think your pulse is about to stop. Don?
Like you said at the beginning of this thing, my Greek, Greek credit is kind of, you know, building up and building up on this thing, and there's a lot of stuff that I've really never followed till. I've, you know, Jordan, you guys, what the pot, but this gives you a good, a good, a good angle on it, because you have two guys that are deeply interesting, and I got that may not be, and I love being able to see it from that angle. Yeah, I'm kind of like the average person, not to totally to the extreme fair enough, which is fun, which I think gives us a good dynamic to review this thing.
Fair enough, on the storyline, there were a couple of things I kind of didn't get or kind of like going, well, what's going on here, what's going on here, but still the overall pot was very, very good. Okay. Um, like Chad said, well, well, paste on this film, incredibly, it, it flowed well, it did not drag it all, it used up the whole two hours right, there was no filler material, and the action throughout the film was paste very, very well.
I think the key to what you just said is there's no filler material, but Chad said, there's no fat on the bone here, every frame of this film is integral to what is going on, and you got to credit, you got to credit weedon for that, well, I can, I can't even imagine what the original cut of this looks like. Well, that's watching with you guys, there were a couple of times we used to go, yeah, I'm like, okay, I don't get that, but that's something because there's so entrenched in this, but still I really followed it very, very well. And weedon wrote the script.
The only people that are credited with co-writing this script with him are Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and I'm not sure that they really did a lot of work on, except on the source material. And if you read on my written review on the quapas.com, that's our website, in the storyline, I saw how they're the Avengers, the group they stick together was, you know, fight for humanity and stuff like that, but there were conflicts a couple of times in this film, and I think that's where I thought was very, very good for this type of film, because you got so many great superheroes, it's not going to be all levy, they'll be the whole time and stuff. Exactly.
That's absolutely great point, that you've got to see some cracks in the armor that maybe haven't been shown before in film, but you've also never had a film like this where you had all these huge characters working together with their own films leading into the ensemble film. You can't say enough about the chemistry of this group of people. Every bit of casting is, as the day we recorded this, we've been through the face to movies, getting ready to go see it again, because that's how we roll.
All of the casting has been spot on. There hasn't been anybody involved in these films that I have looked at and gone, you know what, I would have gone a different direction. Yeah, there's, there's, there's no questionable casting involved.
And even the smaller parts are just, are so well put in there. The one thing I put on on my written review, the cobbaspodcast.com, that's our website, Spader. As you go as the voice of Ultron, you do not see him in there, but he was perfect.
Perfect. I'm just burnt out. That we couldn't get Jamie Gerts apart, so we could have a full on less than zero reunion in this thing.
You know, I have a big crush on Jamie Gerts. Yeah, no. Spader was perfect.
But here's my thing with Spader, my vision of Ultron and who Ultron always has been to me. Yeah. I call it very calculating.
He's a robot. This is what he does. Spader brought a humanity to it and an emotion to it that at first I couldn't wrap my arms around.
As the film went on, I was more accepting of it and I love James Spader. I mean, when I heard they had cast him as the voice of Ultron, I was in. But just the first, maybe the first 20, 30 minutes of him, it took me some getting used to because I wasn't used to emotion behind the voice of Ultron.
Well, me without the Greek cred, not knowing Ultron. The Greek cred. Yeah.
I don't know how much Greek you have, but that's the Greek cred. That's between you and your guy. That's the Greek cred.
No, you said Greek. That's the Greek. He was, I didn't know Ultron, the character, this is for some of us all, and I thought he was perfect for the part.
Yeah. Given the fact that you're dealing with an almost bioorganic intelligence, it kind of makes sense that he's got some sort of an emotional core that he gets visibly upset. He's not just, he's not just a robot to call him that is kind of doing him a disservice.
But you look at the contrast between him and Jarvis. Where Jarvis always even killed through all the films that Jarvis has been featured in. Yeah.
But that's his protocol. That's his program. That's the way he's been there is a contrast between him and Ultron.
But you also, like everyone ever, they open up the matrix of what Jarvis looks like and what where the where his where his origin and it's like twice to size of Jarvis and it looks a lot of our brain than Jarvis is more complex. So I think that kind of helps explain why he exhibits these outbursts of emotion and stuff. It just it made sense to me.
It worked for me. And the look of Ultron himself come very vastly different from what we're used to seeing in the calm and it evolved over the course of the film. So you do get a little bit of a nod to the original Ultron and I don't know if he caught that or not.
But it's they tell we didn't tell the story well because he's just put it out. He gets a free pass for the rest of his life if he and I put it in my written review which is on WWE over the club as part of our website that if he never makes another movie for the rest of his life and I got for a bit of that if that ever happens he can hang his hat on a cut rack and say I did what I came to do and he truly did. I mean as much as I loved the first Avengers film this one is even better and I think I don't think that was going to be possible and I also I read an article about this where we didn't said that he was approaching this like Godfather 2 and I know what that's exactly what he did.
That's good to see because your you know with Godfather 2 you told current story and a lot of backstory and there's a lot to that within Avengers Age of Ultron but the brilliance of it people are like oh there's so much flashback. Excuse me but he makes it work and it really he tells flashback in but there was but the flashback they use is integrated into how the story progresses is not just oh now we're going to tell you about this person it actually the origin stories you learn from this come within the context of the story which I thought was brilliant it's not flashback for the sake of flashback it's absolutely going through at the moment and I mean how do you find a weak performance you don't in this film it's there's so much coming on I'm telling you if you're someone who has a weak blighter don't buy a soda before you go in because if you walk out during one frame of this film you're going to miss stuff and that's just because that's the way the story has to be told like I said earlier I would hate to know how long the original cut of this thing was it had to be approaching gone with the wind status because there's so much story I can imagine he got to this cut of it and went there's no way I could cut another frame out of this or you're going to lose stuff and rumors had already started to circulate about a longer cut will be upcoming once it's released on the blue right with an alternate ending but apparently Disney has shot that down oh right Disney has shot that down I looked into that because I got mentioned in the green room when we were watching the phase two marathon and apparently those reports have jumped the gun as all evidence of these of these bonus features have actually gone out the window it's something that was sent out by Amazon UK that got the internet just all the buzz but now they've been sent around what basically amounts to a retraction letter now as the average movie gore in this film the you could tell they spent the money on the CGI oh absolutely no with CGI but but you looks so real life the action throughout this film was incredible I thought and it's almost made it but before it even releases in this country it's almost made its budget back internationally because this thing had a budget of 220 million it made 200 million overseas before it even officially got released in this country and then you look the action scene I thought with and this is on the trailers with Hulk and Ironman oh with the Hulkbuster sequence oh the Hulk and Ironman that but see that that's also part of the brilliance of both of these Avengers films is we spent our entire geek lives going how would it look if someone so fought so and so or so and so and so and we didn't like you want to know here's how it would go because I'm about to show it to you go to sleep go to sleep and again the casting there's there's just not a there's not a bad apple in this bunch every moment of this film blew me away and I found myself going in going okay having seen days of future past a year ago how is that gonna measure up to this and vice versa you can literally and this is hard to say you can literally say that film and this one are apples and oranges within the same universe they're completely different which again a testament to the brilliance of both of these teams were you're using the quick silver and scarlet which a lot of this was more based on the ultimate university ultimates with the looks that they used but it all works it's it's storytelling the way storytelling should be done in action done the way action should be done yeah one of the things I said in my written review it's all style and all substance I said that in mind as well it's it melts my brain how you pull this off it's not but style substance story and spectacle it just and it pushed all four of them to their absolute limit now I my bummed that we didn't said he can't commit another four years of his life to do infinity war yes but the Russo brothers are going to take it over who did Captain America the winner soldier so it's in good hands yeah and my thing was when we didn't out see wasn't gonna do it I said if I'm Disney the one thing I'm doing is I'm saying we're cool with that we'll roll with you but you have to hand-picked the director and then they announced these two guys and I was like yeah we're good we're fine I can't there's nothing bad I can say about this film besides having to get used to spaders portrayal of ultrime and that didn't take very long for me and for me it was perfect up front as the average movie color I can't even if you had a gun to my head I can't find anything bad to say about this film I mean I loved I mean we're paying to see it the day we're recording this podcast even though we've already seen it I'm I loved Cartelini's character when the Cartelini's character I'm not gonna say who she is but then we didn't even know it was hard to tell the character there's like she was in this and we saw like oh that was and for those of you who don't know who she is she was she was the film movie movie movie movie when you see her in this it's gonna take you a bit because honestly when I saw her out that I didn't realize that scene in Miller was in this movie because she looked just like Bradley Cooper's wife you know the the American sniper's wife and American sniper and you spend so much time going holy cow holy cow holy cow holy cow like it's insane yeah even even the moments that that stopped and and slow the pace down where they give you a chance to to catch your breath they still hit you with some pretty heavy stuff yeah like I said the conflict you know one you about two thirds of the way through you know whether they should we do this or not now I'm talking when they like go to heal so to speak after one particularly vicious battle yeah and the things that get revealed there I'm just like wow not a not a lot of not a lot of downtime in this thing it is a marathon shall we get to the final analysis then before we do we gotta thank our new friends again um such great people Nicholas Susan everybody it's Susan Jacob's in Disney thank you guys so much and we gotta see this in three feet yes we did in the which is you know I'm a fan of the doll be at this yeah totally all right so how we do the final analysis on this show it's a two-prong question question number one because we don't do numbers or letter grades thumbs-up thumbs-down or stars that's not how we roll our our audience whom we refer to as the empire is better than that it's a two-prong question question number one would you see this film again the answer's no we're done here the answer's yes it becomes how would you see this film would you pay full price would you see it maybe in a twilight maybe a mat name maybe early morning would you wait for it in second run would you wait for it to get to red box would you stream it through Netflix or would you just wait for it on cable don't let's start with you would you see this film again oh that's a given yes how would you see this film again I would pay full price but it was kind of weird for me to say this I don't know if they need to 3D though okay it's fair point I'd still say full price theaters but the full price with 3D I not 100% sure on that one there enough Chad would you see this film again considering that we're due to see this thing in about three and a half hours no we must be we must be honest with the Empire no no interest at all are you kidding me um I disagree with you don't to me when any anytime when they're in flight I get almost get vertigo like the the scenes that you've seen in the trailer were cap and Thor at the edge of a broken bridge and the ground looks like it's about to rush up at you kind of like you're feeling about that film is coming out about the tight road walker on on oh wire yeah or something like that man on a walk the walk the walk yeah it's like I get that that pit in my stomach a holy crap I feel like I'm about to fall out of my chair into the screen I think 3D in in in in in a film like this is when it's used that way we didn't just seems to have a really good eye for it says I mean having every one of these films since Thor been in 3D yes we talked about this the other night and they've all felt right I know I know it's been said that 3D doesn't has never made the story better and that may very well be true but it definitely enhances the experience there's no way I would not see this film again like again we've seen it we're gonna go pay to see it again in the Dolby atmosphere in the 3D here in about three hours for me I'm right in between the two of you I I would go see it in 3D but I don't know that I'd make it mandatory this was one of those films again that I think they do 3D right where it's not like 3D look at us throwing things at you what they're throwing dart at your head and stuff but this is more where the 3D gives the picture depth yeah that's the way I looked at it like if you saw that that doctor who Christmas special they did on the 50th anniversary where they're looking at a at a painting of Gallifrey which is the world where all time awards came from in a museum and if you didn't see it in 3D it it it it made no sense to you because they're looking into the picture and if you're watching this on TV you don't get that right you'll get that depth but when you see it in the in a in a 3D you're like oh my god that's mind blowing it's it's a simple effect just because it's just on the picture but it it just completely freaks you out so I just it just feels like it it sucks you in better I still loved it regardless go without the Greek yeah go go what is your in the Greek in the Greek Greek Greek go see Avengers Age of Ultron like if you don't go see this movie when you finally do see it you're going to kick yourself repeatedly trust me I leave your greater the door leave your key rows in freaking kebabs in the car better than the first one and I didn't think I'd be able to stay in this thing yeah me too better than the first without a doubt they they keep raising the bar yeah they did alright gentlemen let's do the plugs visit our website www dot the 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show I make sure you continue to subscribe on iTunes so you can get everyone including this are 97 iTunes exclusive so until next time for Don for Chad for the Empire I'm Rob the clubhouse is closed Brittany Palmer shield agent I don't know I'm just saying the preceding was a sooner or later production why because I have to