Only little surprise left after all those promotions

Rating: 7/10 (23 April 2015)

Following Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), the team storms Struecker's mansion, reclaiming Loki's scepter as Tony gets Scarlet Witch's mind poking. Clint gets injured facing Quicksilver. Hawkeye gets healed using Dr. Helen Cho's tissue generating cradle. With data from the scepter's gem Tony gets Bruce to create a peacekeeping AI Ultron. Instead, Ultron goes haywire and tries to kill The Avengers. Ultron makes body copies, spreads through the internet, then flees with Loki's scepter. Ultron tracks Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch and recruits them saying they are after the same peace. They track Ultron at Wakanda. But Scarlet Witch tricks the entire team except Hawkeye. The worst effect is to Hulk, who then rages through the city, with only Iron Man using a special Hulkbuster armor manages to pacify him. Low at morale, the team retreats to a safe house, Clint's home. They realign themselves but Thor separates himself and seeks Erik Selvig for help. Nick Fury comes to the team with information.
They find they've forgotten Dr. Cho. It turns out that Ultron hypnotized her into using the cradle to create a vibranium enhanced body, to which he'll insert himself as the consciousness. As the body, his vision, nears completion, Ultron takes the gem from Loki's scepter and put it at Vision's forehead. The Avengers crashes the lab and Ultron flees. Previously unable to read Ultron's mind due to his inorganic origin, now she can as Ultron's mind is being downloaded into the body. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver detach from Ultron and helps The Avenegers from the fallout of Ultron's escape. They eventually gain the body but Ultron kidnaps Black Widow. Hawkeye brings the body to Tony who intends to give it live, injecting JARVIS as it's consciousness. Steve objects to it but Thor comes and charges lightning onto the cradle, giving life to Vision. Vision states he's not Ultron nor JARVIS but entirely his own being. He tracks Ultron back to Sokovia, so they heads out to confront him and rescue Black Widow.
They arrive at Sokovia and evacuate civilians out. But when they face Ultron, who has built an army of copies, they find out his real plan; levitating the whole Sokovia city with jet propulsion, and crash it down from a certain height, creating the effect of the meteor which wiped the dinosaurs out. The team fight to protect civilians but the city is already sky high. Nick Fury comes with the old SHIELD heli-carrier and transports the remaining civilians. The Avenegers then protects the propulsion core from Ultron so he doesn't disable it to crash the rock down. Quicksilver gets shot and dies. Scarlet Witch feels it and lets down her guard as an Ultron copy kills the core. Iron Man and Thor team up to crack and split the rock down. When finally Ultron runs out of copies, he flees the scene and Vision catches up to him and finishes him out.
The story as a whole is typical of any Marvel movie. But the screenplay is in fact very well thought of. I really like how the script quotes from the Bible evenly for the misguided mind as Ultron's and for the righteous mind as Vision's. Presence of humor throughout and Stan Lee's cameo return as signatures, minus a real post credit scene.
One thing that I feel as this movie's disappointment is those promotional clips, and early shed details have showed so much that it feels that there's only little surprise left in the story elements. Although I should say the Hawkeye twist is a neat one. The other thing that feels weird is how Natasha Romanoff is placed in connection to previous movies. She's with Bruce Banner here, when instead we saw her implying something with Hawkeye at the first Avengers movie, and last year with Steve Rogers in The Winter Soldier.
The movie feels a bit nagging because the smaller details don't add up. The thing in the trailers about the African American woman in the pool where Thor takes a dip didn't appear anywhere in the movie. There's also Thor dialog saying there's already four Infinity Gems out, without any mention of any Asgardian knowing about the events of Guardians of the Galaxy. Also there's the sudden term change in referring to super-humans, from 'miracles' in The Winter Soldier's post credit scene, to 'enhanceds' in here.
The characters feel more deeply developed, and that's good. Through a certain story element we get to see the heroes' deep dark thoughts and their responses to them. Sadly this isn't also applied very much on the villain Ultron as his animosity only shouts out through his witty dialog lines and sinister voice of James Spader. Yes he thinks as fast as electricity itself as he's an AI. But this feels inadequate and makes the movie rather shallow in regards of what drives th villain.
The action scenes are as promised in the trailers, epic. The opening sequence on Struecker's mansion a nice set-piece that feels very much flowing even though it has so many camera and focus change points between the characters. I really enjoyed the Hulk vs Hulkbuster sequence. Even though the trailers have been showing much, but the fight's end is really an epic sight.
The action overall is quite nice. The main characters can really keep their characters and weave themselves into the the story with them. The added heroes also had their acting pieced together neatly by the good directing job. James Spader can really use his voice to compensate more on the lack of character deepening. Having Andy Serkis serves good in bridging on to the next Captain America or Black Panther movie.
My view for Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) is a score of 7 out of 10 and a surefire recommendation to go and enjoy it in the cinemas.