Avengers: Age of Ultron - Movie Review

Directed by Joss Whedon

I've got to finish my promised Marvel reviews (listed on the left), as well as my reviews for both Amazing Spider-Man movies, so let's get to the next one in queue - Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Marvel's sequel to their 2012 spectacle was a clear hit-and-miss, with the entire fan base being divided right down the middle with their appraisal of the effort. The story centers around an artificial intelligence being created by Tony Stark (altered from the source material), who goes rogue and attempt to bring the world down. 

So let's talk about Ultron first. Was he better than Loki? In some ways. He was more involved with the events that were going on in the movie, and really he was working for himself, while Loki was evidently working for Thanos. However, he probably wasn't as good a character as Loki, but to be fair, Loki has been in three movies. James Spader voicing Ultron, though, that was exquisite. There's no voice in the world that would have been better or even remotely as good.
Ultron, as a character, was a little bit strange. He wasn't nearly as menacing as he is in the world of comic books, and his mouth could move while talking with no explanation as to how. He had a weird sense of humour about him that worked sometimes, but other times it was really odd. Also, Ultron is created, flees, and then suddenly has a body that would take a while to meld. There should have been phases to it, where his body got better and better with each upgrade. This movie really only sees one upgrade, and in retrospect it seems like nothing.
So Ultron was both good and bad. 

Now what Joss Whedon got spot on in this movie is the protagonists because they are developed to great extents, particularly Hawkeye, who desperately needed character depth, which was given to him in layers in this movie. Some of it may have come off as setting up future films, but in a cinematic universe, everything ties in. 

Now the pacing of this movie isn't very orthodox. While most comic book movies introduce the villain right at the start, Ultron didn't come into the fray until a good chunk into the movie. Ultron himself takes on Iron Man on his own in one scene, and then Captain America on his own in another, so the movie did a good job of highlighting one-on-one scenarios, but one thing I think the movie could do without is the Hulkbuster scene. The time that it used up could have been used to develop Ultron some more or try to make the cave scene with Thor make sense (the deleted scene fixed that, though). It was a fun scene, but it didn't need to be in there at all. 

The third act of this movie is criticised a lot. There are problems with it, but overall, I like it. The way Ultron goes out, I'm not a big fan of. That could have been done better, and he really should have been a bigger threat in this film. 

On a scale where M is the lowest, and R is the highest possible rating, with the highlighted letter being the rating:

Avengers: Age of Ultron: MIHIR