Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

[antovolk]

If you're referring to the IRONMAN 2 moment of leading to greater things for another movie, then you should be used to that by now cause that will never change... Will you have this same complaint if WB/DC go this route with BvsS leading into JUSTICE LEAGUE???

No, I'm referring to it being overstuffed and inorganic with such things. With BvS/Justice League the lead in will be much more organic I feel.

[Wormow]

Did any of you who didn't really like the first Avengers find yourselves enjoying this one more or thought it was better?

[JohnnyGossamer]

But was IM3's ending an "Iron Man" no more? Or more like he doesn't need gazillions of high tech suits to hide himself from his fears and insecurities because Stark IS Iron Man and without him in the suits, they are just droning empty shells. The man makes the suit. The hero is the man inside. The suit is the reflection of his inner self for good (genius philanthropist) and not the worst (paranoid selfish).

This. I thought this is how Black wanted the end interpreted as well.

[kaijukurt]

Solid but not spectacular for me.

The action and plot lines in general do get hard to follow sometimes, and I have a feeling some casual viewers will get a bit confused/lost through the movie.

The wit didn't seem to be very strong this time around. Audience seemed to laugh more and harder at the first one's attempts at humor.

The sometimes "been there done that" feel makes me admire the first Avengers a lot more.

Now on to the positives: there are a lot of good action setpieces, and every member gets a moment to shine. I'm sure a lot of people will be fond of Vision/Wanda soon after.

Plus, I think Spader killed it as Ultron. A nice job setting up phase 3 as well. Liking the new Avengers status quo especially.

Anyway, a solid 7.5/10 for me.

[ddddeeee]

Somehow better and worse than the first at the same time. Hmm. I'll review when I see it again tonight.

[kaijukurt]

Somehow better and worse than the first at the same time. Hmm. I'll review when I see it again tonight.

Pretty much this.

There are things it does better than the first and things it does...not as good.

However, I think the wit and freshness of the first give it a much bigger edge.

[ddddeeee]

Pretty much this.

There are things it does better than the first and things it does...not as good.

However, I think the wit and freshness of the first give it a much bigger edge.

There's a certain spark gone for sure but the cast and characters are a lot tighter and I enjoyed watching them together a lot more than in the first.

[kaijukurt]

There's a certain spark gone for sure but the cast and characters are a lot tighter and I enjoyed watching them together a lot more than in the first.

True. I'll probably appreciate this more with a rewatch.

[pepsa]

Did any of you who didn't really like the first Avengers find yourselves enjoying this one more or thought it was better?

 

I did like the first one, but tought this one was beter. It's darker, I personaly think their were more and beter jokes. So there is that.

[The Stingray]

My issues with Ultron as a villain:

 

- He looks corny as hell

- He is overwritten and has some really cringe-worthy dialogue

- I remember Whedon describing him as complex and multifaceted, but they barely scratch the surface of that. At the end of the day he is your run-of-the-mill villain, hell-bent on destroying the world

[BoxOfficeZ]

I'm also annoyed with Stark creating Ultron, but he's forgiven way too quickly and its glossed over. In the first Iron Man he's horrified that he created those weapons that are killing civilians and puts a stop to it. In this, he's like "oh well". Zero repercussions. 

[The Stingray]

I'm also annoyed with Stark creating Ultron, but he's forgiven way too quickly and its glossed over. In the first Iron Man he's horrified that he created those weapons that are killing civilians and puts a stop to it. In this, he's like "oh well". Zero repercussions. 

 

Or when the twins tell the story of bombs dropping on their home, killing their family, and the name on the bombs is Tony Stark. That shit was interesting, but they never explored that. Instead next thing you know they go and team up with him. That to me is poor characterization, and I think it stems from having to juggle 20 different characters.

[ddddeeee]

I'm also annoyed with Stark creating Ultron, but he's forgiven way too quickly and its glossed over. In the first Iron Man he's horrified that he created those weapons that are killing civilians and puts a stop to it. In this, he's like "oh well". Zero repercussions.

Yeah as fun as it was, the big three being all smiles at the end didn't ring true.

[chasmmi]

I really liked it and probably prefer it to the original.

 

I was not prepared for Hawkeye being the best thing in an Avengers film though

[Goffe]

It's overcrowded. Brought almost everyone that had more than one minute screen time in the previous movie and tried to pay sort of a homage to them, like a tv series finale. It didn't work because this is not the final film and there are too many characters for a feature film, it feels like an unnecessary fan service to best honest.

 

It's overplotted. There were many subplots that should have been cut in favor of a leaner and more focused movie. Banner/Romanoff romance, the hallucinations created by Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye's family are a few examples of subplots that didn't quite work because it was either badly executed or went nowhere.

 

The third act is a mess of big proportions, easily the most generic climax for a movie with so much pedigree behind it I've seen in years. They committed the mistake of putting the emotional weight on the shoulders of a character that we barely knew and didn't care about. Ultron, the best Marvel villain, conveniently disappeared during 75% climax while the heroes were saving civilians (aka awfully boring filler) reappearing just in time for a similar "Puny God" joke of the previous movie. The action was arguably the most uninteresting of the already not so great action of the first two acts of the movie .

 

Talking about the action, it seems that Whedon took advices from Michael Bay to do the action sequences, making it incomprehensible and unnecessarily frenetic, unfortunately Whedon doesn't have that Bay touch to make the action look spectacular. 

 

Other problems I had with it was the bad sound mix that buried the score, that episode of the week feel, dislocated humor in serious moments and roll eyes worth conveniences like Helicarrier saving the day.

 

Ultron, as said before, is the best Marvel villain to date, a breath of fresh in terms of characterization, Spader does such a great voice work. He and the best character to come out of this, Vision, share the best moments of the films, including the amzing Vision & Ultron first conversation. 

65/100

 

The Avengers 80/100

Iron Man 80/100

Guardians of the Galaxy 75/100

Thor 70/100

The Incredible Hulk 65/100

Avengers: Age of Ultron 65/100

Thor: The Dark World 65/100

Iron Man 3 60/100

Captain America Winter Soldier 55/100

Iron Man 2 50/100

Captain America: The First Avenger

Edited April 25, 2015 by Goffe

[Goffe]

It makes my head hurt that they used a similar "Puny God" joke at the end, of course they had to make the villain a joke, again.

[Bulldawg626]

 

My issues with Ultron as a villain:

 

- He looks corny as hell

- He is overwritten and has some really cringe-worthy dialogue

- I remember Whedon describing him as complex and multifaceted, but they barely scratch the surface of that. At the end of the day he is your run-of-the-mill villain, hell-bent on destroying the world

 

 

He really just felt like an evil Iron Man to me in terms of how he spoke and acted.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Bulldawg

[Goffe]

I loved the stark(deliberate usage) contrast between this and MoS when it comes to civilian casualties.

The Avengers go above and beyond to clear civilians from the city.

Superman:Let them die.

Well, Superman is just one guy and Zod didn't act like Ultron and disappeared for most of the climax for no particular reason.

[Rsyu]

Ultron was a worthy villain in my opinion. His multifaceted character, for me, gave strong impressions of frankenstein, pinocchio and Joker all at once. His abilities were never the main focus as I agree he was portrayed as being pretty weak. Rather his character portrayal was of more interest to me. His very un-machinelike nature of jealousy and rage as well as the thirst to better himself in his quest for evolution from being an artificial intelligance to being something more was a powerful and thought provoking theme that hasn't been explored very often.

People focus too much on the negatives AoU had rather than seeing the positives. not that there wasn't plenty wrong with the film but it got a lot of things right too and that for me made it a very enjoyable watch.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Rsyu

[Nostalgia]

An artificial intelligence villain whose intelligence is just lol. He wants to kill avengers , has widow in his hands what he does is locker her up like a 1970's villain, may be even they could have done better than this. Third act was a sum of transformers ( infact this action sequence is no match to a transformer) that never ends with villain just roaming like an stupid.

So much could have been done with the writing of villain , he had all the abilities to be a top notch villain.All left in the end was a complete mess #period. Take a leaf from nolan atleast it would be skyfall , not from transformers.

Only positive thing is it's racy screenplay which will be good enough for most of the audience.