Everything you wanted it to be

Rating: 9/10 (22 April 2015)

Quickie Review:
The Avengers are now a fully functioning team stopping other groups who have nefarious agendas. On one of their missions, Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) comes across a dormant peacekeeping program. When activated the program named Ultron (James Spader) sees only one solution to achieve peace, human extinction. One of the most highly anticipated movies of the year, Avengers: Age of Ultron has a lot to live up to, and it achieves it in spades. This is not a shallow action film, it is a direct sequel to the first Avengers continuing the story of the team and their relationships. Ultron posed a formidable threat to our heroes, and he did it with confidence and attitude. Avengers AOU is an action-packed, funny, geek out inducing, and most importantly an all-out fun movie that you will want to see multiple times.
Full Review:
I've been looking forward to this movie not for days, weeks, or months. No, I've been waiting for years. So much so that I went for the midnight premiere on a working day. My expectations were sky- high and wow I left the cinema ecstatic and with a giant smile on my face.
Right from the start we kick off with an amazing action scene showing the whole Avengers team taking on the bad guys. I was covered in nerd goosebumps. It shouldn't be a surprise that all the action sequences were top notch. In fact, they are better than the first Avengers because you get to see more of their teamwork. It is exciting to see how they communicate and improvise off of each other's tools and skills. As amazing as these scenes were, the strange thing is they weren't even the best parts of the movie. What I enjoyed the most was the banter between all the characters. The witty dialog had me laughing countless times. I think I can safely say, this was the funniest Marvel movie so far. Yes Avengers AOU is also the darkest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but director Joss Whedon always found a way to not let that compromise the fun. A large part of that had to do with the way the characters were handled.
These are not the same heroes we knew from Avengers, they have changed, there are new relationships and priorities. All of that brought a new dynamic within the team we hadn't seen before. Everyone, including the new additions such as Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) get their fair share of screen time to shine. Even, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) was finally shown as a badass. He was integral to keeping the team together when things were at their worst. Now let's talk about the guy who was making Avengers' day worse, Ultron. In the trailers he is shown as a menacing villain with an imposing presence, and that is true physically but his personality was more than that. In many ways he had more base human traits than you might expect: fear, jealousy, anger, and most surprisingly a great sense of humor. He had a great cocky attitude about everything he did, which was a dimension to the character that I didn't anticipate but fit really into the tone of the movie.
There is so much more I want to talk about but I want you to experience it all yourself. The vastly overwhelming positives drown out any "complaints" I have. Seriously there were moments I couldn't contain myself from cheering and I was not alone in that. So many times the cinema burst into joyous laughter and thunderous applause. Avengers AOU is everything I wanted it to be, more fun, more action, more epicness that make even the most casual viewer's inner nerd come out of the cinema drooling for more.
P.S. There is only one mid-credits scene. Once you see that scene you can leave the cinema knowing you are not missing anything.
Check out more on my movie review blog The Stub Collector: http://thestubcollector.wordpress.com/