In Avengers: Age of Ultron 2015 Tony Stark and Bruce Banner try to jump-start a dormant peacekeeping program called Ultron. Things go horribly wrong and it’s up to Earth’s mightiest heroes to stop the villainous Ultron from enacting his terrible plan.

‘Marvel: Creating the Cinematic Universe’ screens all the films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe including Avengers: Age of Ultron at the Australian Cinémathèque. This is a great opportunity to see the films then the never-before-seen set pieces which have inspired the exhibition.

‘Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war. Invaders create avengers. People create… smaller people? Children! I lost the word there. Children, designed to supplant them.’

Ultron

In Joss Whedon’s second outing at the helm of the world’s most fractious Super Hero team, the Avengers retrieve Loki’s sceptre from a Hydra base in Eastern Europe’s Sokovia, where they also encounter two new entities, superfast Pietro Maximoff–Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his psychic twin Wanda, the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). The yellow Infinity Stone in the sceptre lets Tony Stark complete his secret global security project, Ultron. When the project turns sentient, it concludes that only wiping out humanity, starting with the Avengers, will save the Earth.

In the culmination of the threads of the Cinematic Universe that have touched on the heroes’ unrestrained power, the code underlying Stark’s loyal A.I. assistant, JARVIS, comes into the third dimension as Vision (Paul Bettany), animated by the Mind Stone and taking on a Vibranium body. The expanded Avengers may ‘win’ the battle in Sokovia, but at what cost?

DELVE DEEPER INTO THE AVENGERS AND THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE

Go behind the scenes to experience more than 500 unique objects seen in your favourite films which offer a glimpse into the work of production designers, storyboarding and pre‑visualisation artists, costume and prop designers, and visual effects artists alongside the original comic books which introduced the characters and influenced the films.

TICKETS CINEMA | EXHIBITION | UP LATE / BUY THE PUBLICATION

Film notes by Dan Cameron
Feature image: Installation view of the ‘Alternate dimensions’ room, ‘Marvel: Creating the Cinematic Universe’, GOMA 2017 / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA