FILM SHOWDOWN: Age of Ultron vs. Age of Adaline
We didn’t realize it at the time, but 2015 turned out to be a Golden Age of films about Ages of people. With three years of perspective, it’s time to look back on these groundbreaking Age films and make some definitive calls on how they stack up against each other.
Strap in, because Age of Adaline and Age of Ultron are going head to head and it’s going to be a monster of a showdown. A Battle of Ages for the Ages.
Round 1: The Reveals
A lot of fans were up in arms when Age of Ultron appeared to give away its big plot twist in the second trailer, in a brief shot where Ultron seems to look directly at the camera and say, “I’m 27.”
Once the film finally came out, the angry fans were revealed to be idiots as it turned out nothing was spoiled at all. Ultron, a slippery devil, gave a different age to everyone he talked to, including the audience, who he constantly addresses throughout the movie in a fourth-wall-breaking conceit.
It’s one of the key points of his character, in fact, as behind all his tough talk, we find a soul-eating insecurity that drives everything he does. Ultron broke into the evil robot business as a child prodigy but constantly worried that people wouldn’t take him seriously because of his relative youth. Desperate to keep his age a secret, he keeps sowing conflicting misinformation so that even if the real number came out, nobody would give it any more credibility than the others.
The reveal feels earned at the end, when Ultron’s mom arrives from space for the funeral and in the last moment before she leaves, tells the Avengers, in her powerful and heartbreaking last line, “He was 5.”
Adaline is not as sly with the red herrings. She starts her city-wide rampage in Act 2 with the now-famous catchphrase, “I’m thirty, mofos!” Her age in this movie is less a secret to be revealed at the end than the initial driving motivation behind her destruction of Chicago.
The interesting thing is that the overwhelming amount of CG and the sheer spectacle of a furious woman tearing down skyscrapers with her bare hands threatens to bury this key point, so much that in the final cut, they had to slip a reminder into her death scene, so that her last words are, “I was thirty, mofos.”
Winner: Ultron
Round 2: The Themes
There was a lot of controversy about Age of Adaline revolving around a woman who destroyed a city just because she turned 30. A lot of critics felt like director Paul W.S. Anderson was directly parroting the backwards and insulting assumption that women are worthless after age 30 when in fact his intention was just the opposite.
The villain in fact is the patriarchal society she lives in that convinces her from all angles that she no longer has any value after age 30. “It’s like a Logan’s Run for the ladies,” Anderson often said in interviews.
The theme of Ultron seems a little more dubious in comparison. The main moral seems to be that society unfairly looks down on young people even if they are brilliant in their field (in this case, evil robotry). But the ongoing worship of “tech bro” founders and other young billionaire geniuses seems to belie the movie’s message.
Winner: Adaline
Round 3: The Effects
Age of Adaline deservedly won the Academy Award for visual effects, and no wonder. While inundating at times, the blending of CG and live action was flawless, one could swear that Blake Lively physically put an entire 20 story building in her mouth. Even if you didn’t see it in 3D, you felt like you could reach out and catch the concrete crumbs.
Age of Ultron, meanwhile, was shockingly poor for a Marvel blockbuster. Certainly they are to be lauded for bringing back puppets and practical effects, an increasingly lost art in this digital age, but the decision to use yarn puppets and Lego sets seems questionable.
Winner: Adaline
Round 4: The Hats
Adaline wears a different hat in every scene, each one a work of art, hand-crafted by a woman from the community in each location where the movie was filmed.
In the Ultron movie, meanwhile, nobody wears any hats.
Hats are disgusting health hazards and are breeding grounds for lice and other head parasites.
Winner: Ultron
Final Verdict
Adding it all up, it’s 2–2, so as in any epic battle, this means they’ve met each other with equal opposing force and annihilated each other. Both movies should be destroyed and the crater where they fought should stand as a monument to the folly of war.
