Not the Best Marvel film, but it's up there!

Rating: 9/10 (1 May 2015)

About a month after seeing "Furious 7," here I am after screening the new "Avengers" film and I realize...the two are very similar. The family aspect isn't a big theme in the Marvel film, but aspects of extreme action, humorous dialogue, and outward ridiculousness involving a team of super-humans make the two films quite comparable.
In the newest Marvel piece, The Avengers are forced to take on a form of evil artificial intelligence, in the form of a robot named Ultron, when he is created by Tony Stark, who brought him to life with good intentions. With the help of a Russian brother and sister pair that were given special abilities, Ultron plans to evolve the human race into some kind of human-android hybrid and wipe out the humans currently living on earth.
The film itself is filled with intense action throughout, as Marvel films usually are, brought together through some very quick cutting mixed with some pretty impressive long takes of our heroes taking on the baddies. The sci-fi action goes beyond any type of sequences Marvel has done in the past, and is crazy fun to witness.
While the action was expected, what surprised me was just how funny the film is. Until, "Guardians of the Galaxy," I was pretty convinced that excessive comedy didn't belong in these types of films. Now, both "Guardians" and "Age of Ultron" have proved me wrong. There are moments of dialogue between the characters that are genuinely hilarious and filled the theater with laughter. There are still those corny lines mixed in, but the script was much better written than, well, films like "Furious 7."
While the film gets most things spot-on, there is one gnawing aspect of the film that serves as its only big downfall. The problem is that the last half hour or so, while in a different context, is strikingly similar to the last half hour of the original "Avengers" film. The ending is definitely much more exciting than the first, but it was somewhat sad to see a fun story build up to something so unoriginal.
While "Age of Ultron" doesn't achieve quite as much as "Guardians of the Galaxy" did last year, it is still one of Marvel's best products to date and completely exceeds the slightly overrated first "Avengers" film. The best thing about these films is how much closer we get to each character with each installment. I can only hope the world is ready to buckle in for the sure-to-be wild ride that is coming up in the future Marvel films.