So I saw The Avengers: Age of Ultron on monday...
Spoilers /rant:
It was a good movie but based on ramblings from a couple of my co-workers who are big Marvel buffs and my own impressions, the movie sometimes dips into Transformers level of ridiculous action / drama. The comedy bits are a little better this time around (like Vision picking up Thor's hammer and the long awkward pause between all the heroes onscreen). But there some issues that I can't quite overcome: Ultron himself is a very strange villain. He's more of an obstacle rather than an actual antagonist who apparentely can only build robots that all the heroes can destroy with ease. Why they didn't destroy Ultron's robot factory I have no idea why. Also, didn't Tony Stark retire after fighting off The Mandarin? And Hulk being in control is entirely dependant on his infatuation with Black Widow? What if Widow pisses him off at one point? And how they Thor and Sven find that magical lake? And what does Scarlett Witch's mind manipulation powers exactly do to all the heroes: are they showing actual visions, fears, memories, visions of what they want to see, the future? And why is it so different from person to person? When did Stark and Banner ever had a previous talk about building a major defense program? It's also weird that Natasha develops feelings for Banner, despite what happened in Captain America: Winter Soldier? Wasn't Shield completely decommisioned after the end of Caps: Winter Soldier? Back to Ultron, the villain gets off so many mixed signals, it feels like they left in all the scary soundbytes in the trailers which leaves his other dialogue strange. At times, he feels like a darker version of Tony Stark rather than a major villain. And why kill Baron Von Strucker offscreen, who is actually a very important villain in the Marvel Universe? And sometimes the CG takes a nose dive, especially when you see Cap take out the Ultron bots, some of it is almost Blade 2 / RIPD level of bad CGI.