Avengers: Age of Ultron

When I was a kid, comic books were magic.  They transported me into worlds in which ordinary people transformed into heroes--and still, thanks to the advent of the Marvel comics of Stan Lee and others, had to cope with ordinary problems.  No matter how powerful those silver-age Marvel heroes became, they still were clearly people.

Comics were my friends and my teachers.

Watching this second Avengers movie, I became for a time a kid again.  I marveled at all the power and the glory of the Avengers' heroics, and I felt for their humanity.  Despite the challenge of managing a huge cast and the need to deliver action on a regular basis, writer/director Joss Whedon never lost sight of how important the humanity of these heroes is.

For my taste, this is the best comic-book movie ever.  Period.

It's also just a darn good movie.

Yeah, it's sometimes silly, its jokes are often cheesy and in a few cases groan-worthy, and its plot follows a predictable arc, but none of that mattered, at least not to me.

As any great comic series does, this movie shows that even the greatest and most powerful of heroes have limits, that they do fail, and that what matters is what they do afterward, when they could choose to give up.

No doubt part of the sentimental side of me comes from my love of comics and all the hours I spent alone reading them, but I make no apologies for any of that.  Comics helped make me a better person.

Earlier tonight, the four-color dreams of my youth blasted onto the screen and let me be young again, and for that I am grateful.