Avengers Age of Ultron Review - SPOILERS

Rating: 6/10 (25 April 2015)

The main issue with this film is certainly the pacing, its condensed story structure leaves very little time to really absorb each character, there are too many subplots running throughout the film.
Iron Man's self destructive trend, Scarlett Witch's and Quicksilver's character arcs, Ultron's justification for the end of the world, Vision's choice to be for humanity, Hulk and Black Widow's romance and their own feelings about their place in the world, Hawkeye's background, minor characters making cameo arcs and with that comes at least an hour of fight sequences (ala Man of Steel influence). Excess would be the sin of this film and lack of moments of self reflection effects the film in a non positive manner.
Problems begin with starting with a big fight sequence that takes you completely out of the characterisation and puts them in an objectified position, it should have really slowly reintroduced to you to the world instead of heading in.
The problems continues with Aaron Taylor-Johanson's Russian accent which was just off putting for some reason and his limited time for characterisation did not leave you weeping for like Coulson.
Ultron's flawed design and Metallic lip movements seemed unnecessary for a robot and expensive and also he wasn't as interesting a Loki. The amount of robots brought back unwanted nostalgia for the climaxes of Iron Man 2 and 3. This after all not a Transformers franchise!! Vision in my opinion was fine, he looked good to me, and his connection to Scarlett Witch was watchable.
However Thor was completely underused and just knowing where to put the infinity stone at that specific moment in time is a moment that cannot suspend disbelief.
The jokes mainly felt, due to pacing issues and tonal difference, kinda like bad throwaway one liners though some of the landed appropriately however what I did need fleshed out was Black Widow's hide the zucchini talent, that would have been very entertaining.
The choreography for the fight scenes were ambitious and watched by themselves is an excellent example of superhero team fight, but in this film often messy in relation to its story structure. Captain America's fight sequences being fundamentally my favourite.
What this film can't compare to it's predecessor, organic moments of characterisation and visual comedy. The first team-up, the battle for New York, "Always being Angry", the big "Owie", "Hulk vs Thor", "Hulk saving Iron Man"", "having red in your ledger" and "mewling quim". The lack of memorability for me at least is what causes the root of my disappointment in this film.
That's why I cannot give it a 7.0, Whedon can do better he's an organic writer who got caught up in an overly ambitious plan to tell an entire season of Buffy in 2.20 hrs. Stripping it down, even building up the flash backs from the very beginning to the last one where Scarlett Witch attached to Tony would have worked better, even at a sense of mystery why the flashbacks occurred to create that tension and maybe push it more toward they Arne't fears actual vision of what can occur would be thematically more interesting.
Final verdict 6.8/10