Avengers: Age of Ultron - Average Avengers

I’ve been quite happily ploughing through Marvel’s ‘shared cinematic universe.’ I’ve never read a single Marvel comic, so I can’t claim to say how faithful each movie is to its source material, but I just enjoy them anyway for what they are – good, popcorn-munching, special effects-fests.  The original 'Avengers' film was, in my opinion, about as perfect as it could be – it was the coming together of all the individual superheroes and it did it really well, giving each of them appropriate screen time.  Therefore, what I’m trying to say is that I couldn’t wait for ‘part II.’

Now I’ve watched it, I just feel a bit hollow.  I didn’t hate it, but it didn’t leave half as much of a mark on me as the original.  Again, the Earth’s finest superheroes come together to fend off a new evil that’s threatening to destroy the planet.  In the first outing, the villain was Thor’s nasty brother, Loki, played brilliantly by Tom Hiddleston.  Soon after part II was announced we were informed that James Spader would be voicing the new baddie – the titular ‘Ultron.’ Now, James Spader is a great actor and more than capable of nailing the role as a comic book villain.  However, he’s only there in voice.  His metal, robot character is completely computer-generated and I just didn’t find him threatening enough (in the same way I was hardly that intimidated by ‘General Grievous in 'Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith').

And that was pretty much my main gripe.  The Avengers themselves were still pretty cool.  There was banter between the central characters and – again – Robert Downey Jr was excellent as Iron Man.  Plus there was a pretty awesome fight scene about half way through between two of the characters.  So it wasn’t all bad.  In fact, it wasn’t bad at all – just muted.  It all felt a bit bland and simply going through the numbers of being an epic blockbuster.  I hear that there were more than a few clashes of heads between writer/director Joss Whedon and the people who were overall in charge of the franchise.  He's come out publicly since and criticised his own film by saying there are scenes in there which he'd rather not have used.  They were forced in there by those responsible to set up future films in the series.  And, now I've watched the film a second time, I can see how they do slow things down a bit and pull you out of the actual story you're watching.

All in all, it’s an okay outing.  I’m sure kids all over the world will love it and buy all the toys in the sequel’s range.  For me, the two Avengers films could be summed up by the fact that I could barely look away during the first one, but this one I found my mind wandering and tempted to check my mobile phone enough time.  However, every interaction between Iron Man and Thor makes it all worth while.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that