Marvel's first misfire

Rating: 4/10 (24 April 2015)

When Tony Stark's plan for an artificially intelligent global defence system codenamed "Ultron" turns against its puny human masters, murderous robots are soon running rampage and it's up to Earth's mightiest heroes to save the day.
As a big Marvel fanboy preparing to view the 11th movie to date in Marvel's ever-expanding cinematic universe, I had a hundred questions on my mind walking in. How was Age of Ultron going to handle the very significant events of the three movies released since the first Avengers, particularly the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D and exile of Nick Fury that took place in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the escape of Loki in Thor 2? What could bring Iron Man back from his girlfriend mandated semi-retirement in Iron Man 3? How were the team going to be reassembled without Fury pulling the strings? What was going to let the Hulk off his leash this time?
These questions, and many others, were basically bulldozed over. Age of Ultron gambles big with its opening scene. We are thrown straight into a dizzying action sequence with all the team united in an assault on a Hydra stronghold: a foreboding castle in the fictional Eastern European country of "Sokovia". I felt that this was a bit of a cheap cop-out, given that the first movie had spent so much time and effort coming up with believable motivations for each of its very different characters to want to risk life and limb. (It also raises questions as to why, if S.H.I.E.L.D and Fury are out of the picture, who organised and coordinated this raid - Pepper Potts?)
From this rather confusing opening, the movie then stumbles through a party scene at Stark Towers. The iffy dialogue and characterization starts to become noticeable at this point. Gone is the wit and panache that made the first Avengers so memorable, particularly the hilarious internal bickering of the team. At this point, serious alarm bells were ringing in my head and we weren't even ten minutes into the movie. I almost wanted to gently tell them to take it back and try it again.
Things really took a turn for the bizarre when the screenwriters decided that Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) should fall for Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo.) This is very unlike Joss Whedon, who is usually renowned for writing good female characters. Black Widow has been established through three movies as detached, manipulative, and professional: it's what allows her to survive as an assassin. It's like they suddenly realized that she is only a girl, and therefore should be in love with someone. The Hulk is an odd choice of crush too, seeing as her and Captain America (Chris Evans) had much better will-they-won't- they chemistry in The Winter Soldier, and didn't the Hulk kind of repeatedly try to stomp her flat in the first Avengers? (PS The subplot with her backstory and the "Red Room" is incredibly icky.)
By the time we get to the scenes in the middle with Hawkeye's surprise wife and children, the movie had officially fallen apart, at least by the stratospheric standards of the first movie. There were so many characters standing around doing literally nothing. Thor, in particular, is a very busy individual with affairs to attend to on multiple realms. To see him shuffling around a pokey house in the woods was immersion shattering.
Ultron himself is equal parts inventive and clichéd as the antagonist. Having an evil robot as your main bad guy has to be carefully handled as it can feel too easily that you've picked up a generic supervillain from the Acme Bad Guy vending machine in the lobby. However, I liked the idea that he basically exists in the data cloud, and can easily destroy and recreate himself into new and better bodies. It's not really clear why he turns evil about three seconds after his creation. (Perhaps having James Spader's voice will just naturally do that to you.) It's also never explained why he has a snarky, gloating personality either. I got the strong feeling they were trying to channel Loki from the first movie.
Two new players are introduced: Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), not to be confused with the entirely different incarnation of the Quicksilver character in X-Men: Days of Future Past, released less than a year ago. Like the returning characters, their motivations are paper-thin, and it strains credulity when halfway through Ultron wrecking some city or other they suddenly think about his actions for the first time and realise that he's the bad guy.
In summary: every single aspect of this movie feels slightly off. Everything from the plot to the pacing to the acting to the humor has been fumbled. In particular, Tony Stark / Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) really does not feel like himself at all. I was also surprised at how poorly the action compared to both the first Avengers and also The Winter Soldier, which surprised us all by coming from nowhere with a pair of first-time directors at the helm and pulling off some of the best set pieces of all time.
Before Age of Ultron, I would have said that Iron Man 2 was the weakest in the Marvelverse so far, but even that managed to create some memorable scenes and characters. I can only hope that this will be Marvel's one inexplicable blip, and that the upcoming Ant-Man and / or Captain America 3 can restore the franchise to the heights we know that they are capable of.