Plot: Taking place sometime after the events of The Winter Soldier, The Avengers raid a HYDRA outpost to finally retrieve Loki's scepter. Before Thor goes to Asgard with the scepter however, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner discover an artificial intelligence within the gem inside the scepter, and secretly find a way to use it for Tony's "Ultron" global defense program. This backfires when the sentient being of Ultron is created, and he decides that the only way to save Earth is to eradicate humans. So it's up to The Avengers to find a way to stop Ultron and his allies, the Maximoff twins; Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, from destroying the human race.
Whoa...just...just whoa. Obviously it's an extremely good whoa, but it's also the kind where even now as I write this review after a good night's sleep soon after watching the film, I'm still having trouble processing what I just saw. In many respects, this was exactly what I was hoping for and so, so, SO much more. The first scene just sets the right mood for the movie when The Avengers attack the HYDRA outpost. They just let them do what they tend to do best when the next major threat hasn't occurred yet: fight whole armies of their other enemies to stop their latest schemes, be it A.I.M., HYDRA, and so on. But as soon as Ultron attacks and begins his evil plans, it's practically nothing but character development and action all the way through. Joss Whedon made it clear shortly after the first movie that the second film will have more character development then action. And while I'd say there's more than plenty of action all the same, it's marveling (pardon the pun) at what he gives us for character development. We finally have Captain America and Iron Man as the co-leaders of the Avengers, which leads to showing how they collaborate and express their different opinions. We also get a nice improvement from the first film with giving us Black Widow and Hawkeye. We finally go into Black Widow's origin over how she was trained to be an assassin and what it does to her. Frankly, this is something I thought we were never going to get any more than we are ever going to find out what happened in Budapest with her and Hawkeye. And Hawkeye, man, was he even better than what I hoped for this movie. As much as I liked him in the first film, there was this part of me that wished that we saw more of him where he's not really the least of the avengers in terms of screen time and especially with action since he's a guy with a bow and arrows. But here we see him intact with the team more, he is less "useless" and more awesome, we even see more of who is is as a person and what his motivations are as a team member. I won't give away what they do with him on the latter two things, but it certainly fills the void from out lack of time spent with him in the Marvel cinematic universe. There's also some time spent with Hulk and Black Widow and what goes on between them that...is had to take in from a comic book nerd's point of view, but it still works with the story and even ties into little bits of the first Avengers film. Honestly, Thor had the least amount of focus in terms of character development, which isn't bad, but it makes his part in the story less interesting then what everyone else is going through. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch admittingly didn't get quite enough time to go deep enough into who they are as individual people, but they still pull of the basics about them while still being relevant to the story. And then you have the main antagonist of the film, Ultron. Where do I begin with Ultron? I guess I should start by plainly saying that he was almost exactly what I expected him to be. His motivation, his main goal, his numerous bodies, it's all there. The only thing that I would nitpick about him is that he has more of a human-like personality to him that makes him menacing, but also have some sort of soft side to him. Keep in mind as I say this however, that this is a comic book nerd kind of nitpick. Because generally, Ultron has appeared in the comics to be a robotic villain of hard cold logic like most other robotic villains such as the Terminator/Skynet, Shockwave, Braniac and so on. But at the same time, it makes sense that he's less like them because it helps him stand out more as a robotic villain, and it keeps the tone of the film in not being too dark for its general audience, especially kids. The action is even bigger than any Marvel film has gone before (including Guardians of the Galaxy in its own way). There's so many fights of different locations and sizes that it's hard to keep track of them all...at least for a first viewing of the film to be sure. The comedy (big shock) still does a good job in giving us some pretty good laughs. If there's anything that resembles a real problem for the film, it would be that the film might have too much going on. Because it's like I said early in this review, there's a lot to process. But for me personally, I don't see it as a problem at all. Similar to how I feel about The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I enjoy that it gives so many different things because all of those things are just so great. In fact, I think it gives us the feel of a crossover comic book like Civil War, or Infinite Crisis, or Fear Itself, where it's filled it so much action, character development and story for everyone who is participating in the major event, making the entire experience very epic. So given that, I personally would say that calling this movie overstuffed is a nitpick at most. And seeing how most other people have reacted to it so far, it's probably a safe bet that the majority of the audience for this film feel that way.
And that's my review for Avengers: Age of Ultron. What can I really say? It's a great sequel that goes deeper into the world of the Avengers and the characters and action that goes with it. It's bigger, it's deeper, it's funny, it gives so much of what is in the Marvel universe, it's just a ton. If you haven't seen it yet, you better do so now. I know I want to see it in theaters at least 2-3 ish more times, it's so good...and as an attempt to help kick off Avatar from being the highest grossing film of all time. I know that's just silly but...let's be honest guys, that bugger's gotta go!
Rating: 95%
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