Great Action-Packed Sequel

Rating: 9/10 (1 May 2015)

I saw "Avengers:Age of Ultron", starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson- Godzilla_2014, the Kick-Ass movies; Elizabeth Olsen-Godzilla_2014, Oldboy; Paul Bettany-Priest, The Da Vinci Code and the voice of James Spader-The Blacklist_tv, Boston Legal_tv.
This is the second Avengers movie, following the 2012 inauguration, and with more to follow. All of the original members are reunited and there are some new faces, on both the good and the bad sides. Aaron plays Quicksilver and Elizabeth is his sister, the Scarlet Witch. James voices the villain, Ultron while Paul, who has previously voiced Jarvis, is now the Vision. Like most movie adaptations, there are differences here from the books. No mention of the Magneto connection to Aaron & Elizabeth-here they were created by Hydra experiments. Hank Pym created Ultron-in the books-but here he is created by Tony Stark. As long as the story is good, I don't think some changes here and there are that big of a deal; I just consider it is taking place in an alternate universe from the books. Anyway, basically James wants to eliminate the human species and the Avengers want to stop him. Aaron and Elizabeth are taken in by James, at first, but soon see the error of their ways and decide to switch sides to become card carrying members of the Avengers. One of the things that I enjoyed-besides the usual fisticuffs and super heroic action packed battle scenes- was the equal time that the characters had spent on their private lives. One of the Avengers was even shown to have a family, including a wife and kids. Don't get me wrong, the super hero action is fantastic, with some great battles of heroes vs other heroes, as well as heroes vs the bad guys and there is lots of humorous dialogue, to keep things from becoming too dark. Stan Lee makes his usual cameo appearance, as well as a few heroes from earlier movies. There is a death of an Avenger-and it does look like it is supposed to be permanent, but who knows. There is a scene as the end credits start- involving the Infinity gems-but the only thing at the very end is a little note that says, 'The Avengers Will Return.' It's rated "PG-13" for violence & destruction, sci-fi action and some language and has a running time of 2 hours & 21 minutes. I think this one is a worthy sequel and is in fact, better than the first one. I would definitely buy this one on Blu-Ray.