Avengers: Age of Ultron spoiler review: a four star film with a rushed first act

This is my full spoiler review of Avengers: Age of Ultron, so if you haven't seen it, turn back now. My verdict: this was a really good movie, and I would even go so far as to say it was a great movie. It was not a perfect movie by a long shot, though. I'd call it a four star film, not a five star one.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) was directed by Joss Whedon and stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson. It follows the Avengers getting back together to fight a brand new enemy they created themselves, Ultron. At the time, it was possible this would be Whedon's final film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though many people hoped it wouldn't be.

Loki's scepter and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. lead-in to Age of Ultron

The most recent episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the time segued directly into this film. It showed what was left of S.H.I.E.L.D. finding Loki's scepter, which led straight into the opening moments of Age of Ultron. The scepter is once again the primary artifact, but surprisingly, Loki himself isn't in the movie. We had heard he was going to be, but he's not.

The film introduced four new characters to the MCU: Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Ultron and the Vision. Technically two of them die, but we don't know for sure, given how these movies work. Comic fans know Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are Magneto's children, but because Disney doesn't have the rights to the X-Men, the film never references that. It does talk about their childhood at one point.

Age of Ultron's first half feels rushed and disjointed

Before anything else, I'll say this: "I was not bored one bit." There wasn't a single moment in the film that bored me. Even so, the pacing in the first half was extremely disjointed, and I felt it needed better editing. The origin of Ultron was way too fast, and the establishment and character development for Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were not what they should have been.

These are the challenges you face when you squeeze a big story into one movie. The comics have issue after issue after issue to establish and develop characters. A film can't do that, so they had to rush it.

The movie opens with the Avengers assembled and invading a Hydra base. It's a very smooth first action sequence with great choreography, very typical of the MCU, especially Guardians of the Galaxy and the first Avengers film, and it establishes that the team is back together. At the end of Iron Man 3, Tony Stark appeared to retire from being Iron Man, but he's back in the suit here. I suppose the location of Loki's scepter was important enough to bring him back into the fold.

The Black Widow and Hulk romance comes out of nowhere

We also start to see what the trailer teased, the romance between Black Widow and the Hulk. It's a big focus of the movie, but we never saw any hints of it before. It seems like something that happened between the last Avengers movie and this one.

The Avengers grab the scepter, and then we meet Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, who appeared in a Hydra base in an earlier Captain America post-credits scene. We find out later that they allowed themselves to be captured. Their backstory isn't fleshed out. I suppose Marvel might flesh it out more in the future, but I personally don't think so.

If I remember correctly, they saw a grenade marked Stark before their house blew up, and they've had a vendetta against Tony Stark ever since. That's why they volunteered to join Hydra and be experimented on. We see their skills early: Quicksilver has super speed, and Scarlet Witch can get into your head and mess with you, like Professor X can.

How Tony Stark builds Ultron, and why trust is the movie's theme

Scarlet Witch uses her powers on Tony Stark, and he sees visions of the Chitauri from the first movie and the trauma he went through, which was documented in Iron Man 3. That's what springs the story into action, because it motivates Tony to restart the Ultron project. The project hadn't been mentioned until now, and apparently Bruce Banner knows about it, since they talk about it after the battle.

Stark and Banner discover an artificial intelligence inside the scepter's gem, which we later learn is one of the Infinity Stones. That AI is what Stark needs to complete the Ultron project. This part gets interesting and a little confusing, and I think some of it ties into the mid-credits scene.

The one theme I felt the movie hammered home strongly was that even though these characters are a great team that saved the world in the first Avengers, there are still major trust issues and secrets. We see it with Stark, with Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye, and with the Hulk trying to keep his feelings for Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow a secret. These become an ongoing issue.

James Spader's Ultron is funny and menacing, but his hatred needed more time

Stark merges the AI with his project to create the sentient Ultron. In a very strange scene, Ultron is born. He wakes up, Jarvis, the computer AI, talks to him, and Ultron sees visions of humanity's crimes, like war crimes. In the comics, Ultron has a god complex and deems humanity too sick to survive, like in Ghostbusters. What's interesting is that his solution is to do the very same thing and kill all of us, which shows he's AI but also partially human. That duality is a very interesting theme in this film.

I like the movie, and I like Ultron's portrayal for the most part, but I don't think we got a real sense of his anger. Some people will say he doesn't have his grudge against Ant-Man and the Wasp because Ant-Man doesn't arrive until the next movie. That's fine; I knew they'd change that. But I felt Whedon should have spent more time establishing Ultron's hatred for humanity. We saw it, but it went by so fast that it was very hard to digest.

Ultron immediately shuts down Jarvis, takes over some old, beat up Iron Man suits, and attacks the Avengers at the big party from the trailer, catching them off guard. One suit escapes with the scepter. Ultron is established as essentially a computer virus spread throughout Stark's systems. The next time we see him, he's in a throne room with his first body. In the comics he had multiple forms, getting stronger each time he came back. Here you suddenly see him in his body, and that's it. I'm guessing he built it from broken pieces of metal, but it's never explained, which to me isn't a good thing.

Ultron goes to Strucker's base, rebuilds it, and starts building an army of drones. The Maximoff twins come in, and we learn about their revenge against Stark. Ultron tells them he's going to destroy the Avengers. What he doesn't tell them, which is why they turn good later, is that he plans to wipe out all of humanity.

They visit Ulysses Klaue, played by Andy Serkis. I suspected this and it was true: Klaue is the primary antagonist for Black Panther, and I was sure at the time that Serkis would be back for that movie. Klaue is a weapons dealer who once worked with Stark. Ultron wants vibranium. I figured out before the film came out that he wanted it for a perfect body, but there's another purpose too. It was fun seeing Serkis's face for once, since he's usually doing motion capture. Ultron cuts off Klaue's arm and apologizes, and James Spader as Ultron was very funny, very menacing and very good.

Hulk versus Hulkbuster may be my favorite sequence

The Avengers show up for a big fight against Wanda, Pietro and Ultron. Scarlet Witch uses her powers on the Avengers' minds. Thor sees strange visions of Asgard, Black Widow sees visions of her troubled past, and the Hulk loses his mind. That leads to the huge city fight from the trailer between Hulk and the Hulkbuster, which is called Veronica in this movie.

This was an amazing sequence, maybe my favorite in the whole movie, though I haven't decided yet. They tore the city apart, and it was an incredible visual spectacle and a fun fight that went back and forth.

Here's my criticism, though. For the first half, the film felt like "a series of action scenes and filler in between them" to build to those action scenes. It didn't feel like a free flowing plot. I feel like they spaced out the action scenes and then filled in the blanks about how we got there. I understand why they established her powers, and a comic book movie needs spectacle because people come for the sizzle as much as the steak. It was just way more apparent here than in the first Avengers. Some of it wasn't necessary, but I still liked the scene, and everybody was on point.

Hawkeye gets more development than pretty much any other character

The news coverage turns against the Avengers over the destruction from the Hulk fight, so they retreat. We discover Hawkeye has a double life with a family and children we didn't know about, and the team hides at his ranch. The film put more development into Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye than pretty much any other character, including Ultron. He gets a much bigger role and is the centerpiece of much of the action.

I felt the Black Widow and Hawkeye storylines took over the movie more than the new characters did, which to me isn't a good thing, though I understand they only had so much time. Thor, hung up on his visions of Asgard, senses something bad is coming and leaves on his own quest.

We get more of Black Widow's backstory: she can't have a baby, and the plan was that she and Banner would flee together and get away from all of this. Then Nick Fury shows up, and Samuel L. Jackson got a huge reaction in the theater. He tells the team now is not the time to run, because Ultron's endgame is wiping out civilization. The audience knows that, but the characters think it's personal against Stark and the Avengers.

Ultron's plan to wipe out humanity matches the comics

That plan is accurate to the comics. What the film somewhat missed is how complex Ultron is there. He hates humanity for what it has done to itself and sees humans as inferior, with himself and his army as the future of the Earth. Yet his method is death and destruction, the very thing he hates about humans, and he reproduces by making copies of himself, just as humans do. Ultron is very human even though he hates humans. The film did capture that, even if the comics had more time.

The Vision's birth is an amazing scene

Ultron goes to South Korea and forces Bruce Banner's colleague Helen to use the vibranium, synthetic tissue and the gem, officially confirmed in this movie as an Infinity Stone, to create a living being that's half machine. As Ultron begins uploading himself into the body, Scarlet Witch reads his mind and learns he wants to wipe out the planet. The Maximoffs turn on Ultron and become good guys, a babyface turn, as they say in wrestling.

Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow fight Ultron in the city and manage to grab the body, which becomes the Vision, but Ultron captures Black Widow. The twins help Cap but still have issues with Stark over their family, telling Cap that Ultron is like Stark. That's not true, but there are similarities.

Back at their base, the Avengers argue. Stark and Banner want to bring the Vision to life, while Captain America worries this is exactly how Ultron was born. Thor arrives out of nowhere and shoots lightning into the pod, and the Vision awakens. It's an amazing scene. Thor reveals the gem on his forehead is one of the six Infinity Stones and that someone has been manipulating events to bring the stones together for a very bad purpose.

Just like we all thought, the Vision can wield Thor's hammer, which was awesome and was teased earlier. He's part Ultron and part Jarvis, but he really was Jarvis, both in the story and because Paul Bettany, who voices Jarvis, played him, so it all made sense. He's a very good, sympathetic character. I didn't expect him to join only in the third act, but that was fine. I love that character and was very happy to see him on the big screen.

The Sokovia finale and Quicksilver's death

Ultron installs the vibranium under a city in Sokovia so it lifts into the clouds, planning to crash it into the ground and cause global extinction. It's very comic booky, creative and well done. Honestly, though, I don't understand how that would wipe out people on the other side of the Earth. I can see it killing people nearby, and I guess the idea was to turn it into a meteor, but I still don't think it would end all life. I think it would have been better if Ultron had used his clones to go around killing people.

Nick Fury arrives with a gigantic new sky base, and we see Maria Hill and War Machine. The fight is more individual battles until everyone comes together beneath a church. Everybody gets their moment. Black Widow convinces the Hulk to fight after he hesitates out of fear of hurting innocent people again, and he has great scenes.

Then comes the scene people were not happy about. With his army dwindling, Ultron hijacks a flying ship and opens fire, and Quicksilver saves a little boy and Hawkeye at the cost of his own life. Maybe they wanted to give the X-Men a chance to use the character; I don't really know. Grief stricken, Scarlet Witch explodes, destroys a bunch of Ultrons, and tears the heart out of Ultron's primary body in an awesome scene. But Ultron isn't dead, because he's everywhere, and there are many false finishes. A damaged clone triggers the city's fall, but with everyone evacuated, Thor and Tony shatter it with lightning.

In the final confrontation, Ultron tells the Vision humans are doomed, and the Vision agrees but says not everything beautiful has to last forever. That's very deep stuff. Ultron attacks, and the Vision blows him up. That's the end of Ultron, or so we think. Maybe somebody made a copy of him on a hard drive somewhere.

The new Avengers lineup and the Thanos mid-credits scene

The Avengers end up with a new base in Upstate New York. Thor says some secret force is manipulating events but feels the yellow Mind Stone is safe with the Vision. Tony leaves with Hawkeye, with a tease that he's retiring again. Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff walk in to train the new Avengers: War Machine, Scarlet Witch, the Vision and the Falcon, heading into Captain America: Civil War, which I expected at the time to be like another Avengers movie.

One thing I forgot: Nick Fury explains that something has been blocking Ultron from the nuclear codes he wants, very much like Skynet. I guess it was Jarvis, but I don't know; maybe another viewing would clarify it. My favorite part was the mid-credits scene, and there's no end credits scene. Thanos opens a storage vault, grabs the gauntlet, and says he'll do it himself. I lost my mind.

Verdict: Age of Ultron is better and darker than the first Avengers

The second half was fantastic, visually incredible like nothing I've seen before, and so was the Hulk and Hulkbuster fight. Everybody got to shine, and many characters got some development. The cons are not enough development for Ultron and a rushed, disjointed first part. This is one of those times a movie would have benefited from at least five to ten more minutes. I'm not a huge fan of three hour movies, but a bit more would have helped develop these characters.

It's a good, solid, four star movie. I would put it above the first Avengers, and if you ask me, it's a lot darker and took a lot more risks.