Avengers: Age of Ultron

I think it's safe to say that Marvel Studios have gotten themselves to a safe enough place to be comfortable and confident in the movies they are making. The latest films have been branching out into various genres (political thriller with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, comedy sci-fi with Guardians of the Galaxy) and they have now reserved the main Avengers movies for the generic beat-em-up that most superheroes become. Despite this, Age of Ultron isn't entirely a slugfest and does try to take a softer approach with a few of its characters.

The movie starts right in the middle of an intense action sequence, with the team of the Avengers (Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, The Hulk and Hawkeye) assaulting a fortress in the European country of Sokovia in an attempt to retrieve the sceptre of Loki from Hydra (see Captain America: The Winter Soldier). Once Tony Stark gets his hands on it, he realises that the sceptre possesses the technology to develop complex artificial intelligence, something that he and Bruce Banner have been interested in developing for a while. But Stark's plans for this AI program, named Ultron, goes awry and the program soon goes rogue with plans to destroy mankind. It's up to the Avengers to, you know, save the day.

In this film, we get to have a closer look some of the characters outside the big three (Thor, Cap, Iron Man) and it is slightly refreshing. The relationship between Black Widow and Hulk is explored and heavily hinted at being romantic and Hawkeye is revealed to have a wife and children, a fact that surprised not only the audience, the characters in the film. These smaller arcs are somewhat refreshing and satisfying.

There is a lot of assumed knowledge that comes with watching this film. Not only are you expected to have done your homework and be completely up to date with the Cinematic Universe, but you are also expected to have some knowledge of what is happening in the comic books or else you will be left in the dark as to who some of these new characters are. This film introduces us to three new heroes on top of the villain, whose storyline does make sense. The new characters are the Maximoff twins, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) (otherwise known as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver). We of course saw a much better version of Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but that is beside the point. We also are introduced to Vision (Paul Bettany), who is another advanced cyborg imprinted with Tony Stark's manservant Jarvis' own AI.

This movie is definitely the kind that moves from action sequence to action sequence with a little talking in between, just enough so you know what's going on. And it's pretty impressive too. The action is enough to keep you amazed at what's going on. There is also an array of humour in the movie, enough for everyone to have a laugh.

Most of the performances are pretty stock standard, as all the actors have gone way too deep with these characters. The ones that stuck out the most for me were James Spader (Stargate) lending his amazingly authoritative and terrifying voice to Ultron and Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, although her accent did drop a few times. Of all the Avengers, Chris Hemsworth probably gave the best performance. His outsider status as an Aussie probably helps him get in the mindset of the god Thor.

Ultimately this film is incredibly entertaining and isn't extremely taxing. Fans of the movies will get all sorts of excited and people with limited knowledge of this things will still enjoy the large scale of the film.