Grown Man Finds Most Embarrassing Possible Use of His Time

By Jia Tolentino | May 5, 2015 | 3:00pm

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Over at Esquire, Stephen Marche—who you may remember from that time he described one single Megan Fox eyebrow as “the sublime, a force of nature, the patterns of waves crisscrossing a lake, snow avalanching down the side of a mountain, an elaborately camouflaged butterfly”—did a great thing by getting a nine-year-old to go out and review Avengers: The Age of Ultron.

“The people who need to judge a movie like Avengers: Age of Ultron are the people who they are actually built for: nine-year old boys,” Marche writes, sensibly. The chosen nine-year-old, in turn, shows tremendous initiative by stacking his review with sick burns:

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If you like movies about robots who make jokes, or movies about girls singing lullabyes to the Hulk, or movies about cities that float into the air for no reason, Age of Ultron will be right up your alley. It was not up my alley.

“There was this new guy who I didn’t really understand with a red face who gets born about two hours into it,” writes the nine-year-old. “They go to South Africa at one point. I don’t know why they do. They just do.” (This, incidentally, sounds almost exactly like Anthony Lane’s faux-ingenuous New Yorker review of the same movie.) Nine-year-old homie even shows the great and terrible precocity to end his review with an #actually:

And by the way one of the characters, Quicksilver, he shouldn’t be in the Avengers. He’s actually a part of the X-Men.

The very first comment on this article was written by a grown man whose LinkedIn profile describes him as “an out-of-the-box thinker that loves to brainstorm new ideas and solutions to problems.” Here is the comment.

The premise for this whole article is false—the movie was actually made for me: a middle-aged guy that grew up on comics books, and has enough disposable income to totally geek out and buy the movie, the toys, etc in an effort to re-capture the youth that is quickly disappearing in the rearview mirror. It was made for the geeks that read every blog post about the who’s and why’s, looked at all the production stills and followed the negotiations between Marvel and Fox to allow Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch to appear in both films. It was made of the geeks that watch a less-than-stellar show like Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. simply because it is part of the MCU. It is made for the geeks that actually know what the MCU stands for. It is made for the geeks that are scared they will have their first heart attack before we finally get to see Thanos on screen for any longer than a fleeting cameo (2019 or 2020).

Stand aside 9 year olds, this isn’t your movie. It is mine. And I loved it.

Hell yeah, bro, you really clowned that kid. You are the true fan. Total hero. Shoutout to Darin Velin, a grown man who knows how to allocate his time.

Image via Marvel

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