You can bet that the hype for Avengers Age of Ultron was at an all-time high, especially since the last installment was such a groundbreaking superhero flick. The movie promised to be much bigger and more expensive than ever before, and when it premiered, it didn’t reach the same heights from its predecessor reception wise, but it still managed to win die-hard MCU fans over. In my opinion, while I can say this movie is a step backwards in the story department, Age of Ultron still has many high points that are just enough to make for an overall enjoyable experience.
The Avengers have broken into a secret Hydra base to take back Loki’s scepter from Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker. Then later at the new Avengers tower in New York, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) studies the scepter in his lab and discovers a new form of intelligence unlike anything he’s seen before and with the help of Bruce Banner (Mark Rufflo) he uses this power to start the Ultron defense program. Unfortunately the process goes haywire and Ultron (James Spader) becomes a living breathing cyborg who tries to turn the avengers against each other and uses an army of other cyborgs to annihilate every living thing on the entire planet now it's up to Iron Man, Hulk, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) along with new recruits like Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) to put a stop to Ultron’s Schemes
The story has both its low points as well as its high points. For one I definitely enjoy its new action set pieces and the locations we get to visit. The introductions for the Iron Man hulkbuster and Vision’s birth are definitely some of the movie’s biggest highlights and there are many interesting character developments specifically with Tony Stark that are interesting for expanding upon The Avengers team even if sometimes they get sidelined by other elements that happen in the story. The thing that holds the movie back from being on the same level as The Avengers is in the way that this film executes itself. Unlike before where you don’t necessarily need to see the previous films to enjoy the movie itself. This film is focused on mainly setting up for future MCU movies to come. Because of this, the characters and storytelling can feel rather messy at times and the pacing can range from being quite good to being passable. Luckily, there are more good things about the story than bad, which keeps this movie from being in the bottom tier of the MCU’s worst.
The characters return to the big screen and they are more than welcomed after three years of waiting. As always the avengers team works great off on another and their constant one liners are always a treat. One of the things I felt like could have been improved however is with Tony Stark’s character journey in this movie as it feels rather rushed and not really explained very well which kinda hurts to watch in some respects. I’ve heard bad things about Ultron from fans and while I do agree that he’s no Loki, he was still a decent enough villain even if he doesn't rank up there with the likes of Thanos or Red Skull. Then there are the new characters such as Vision and Scarlet Witch who are great welcoming additions to the marvel universe even if they would end up being more established in future properties than in this movie.
The Cinematography brings the same amount of action packed visualization as before and marvel never ceases to amaze me with how well they are able to come up with some creative superhero action. They come up with some amazing ideas such as a final battle on top of a city that is suspended in the air or just having our main avenger heroes fighting alongside each other with their unique abilities. The CGI effects work very well even when you can tell what is real and what is fake because the visuals are very creatively integrated to work along with the action instead of taking you out of it. Granted the visuals are not nearly as impressive as the last movie, but for what its worth, this movie still delivers on what it needs to with some impressive filmmaking to balance it all out.
The Music is a collaboration from composers Danny Elfman (Edward ScissorHands, Spider-Man (2002)) and Brain Tyler (Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World). Even though the original themes for the Avengers were originally created by Alan Silvestri, these two brilliant composers do a great job at matching the epic tunes created in the previous installment and adding new compositions in the process.
This movie is still good, but it sort of lacks the epicness and freshness of what made the original avengers movie such a groundbreaker. Thankfully it's likable characters both old and new, epic movie score and action packed superhero action that just keeps getting better and better is more than enough to compensate for its somewhat messy storytelling. This movie is still an important step to getting other MCU movies that are in a lot of respects even better than this one. Even though this movie is mainly made for franchise building, it's still an entertaining enough franchise building movie at that.
(Final Grade: B)