Worthy of Thor's hammer!

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2015)

Even up to this day, I regret not seeing The Avengers in theaters when it came out! I'm in love with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Iron Man, Captain America and the Guardians of the Galaxy... Just writing down the titles gets me excited. The Avengers would be the culmination of all these epic superheroes! And by god it was! It was clever, it was fast, it was epic, it was funny, it was awesome! The Avengers set the bar at such a level, the curse of bad sequels was bound to pop up its nasty head. Well, with great pleasure, I can say it hasn't. Avengers: Age of Ultron (without "The" for some reason) is so much fun it's crazy. The action is quick, epic and on point. The teamwork is so awesome: just think about combining Cap's shield and Thor's hammer and let your imagination run wild. That's what the creators of AOU did with the action scenes: just let their creativity flow and use these amazing super abilities and just mix and mash them together to create some epic visuals.
The story is quite interesting: Tony Stark wants to create a robotic army of peacekeepers to take over from the Avengers and make them no longer needed. This backfires when his creation Ultron activates and his A.I. concludes that humanity's extinction is the only way to ensure peace on earth. It's interesting to see the cracks develop within the team. The twin who were teased at the end of The Winter Soldier come to the scene and start stirring up trouble. I was so happy to see Hawk Eye shine in the flick. In part one he was just a stool for the freaking awesome Loki for most of the film but now he gets so much more to do and he's just such a lovable character!
Visually, Age of Ultron is up to par with previous Marvel movies. It looks great, especially the climax of the movie is just a joy to watch.
I had some gripes with the film though. For starters I found it quite odd to see Iron Man just doing his thing when it wasn't explained how he came back from his retirement after Iron Man 3. I'm glad he's back but some info would be nice. Secondly there's a romance which feels out of place because it wasn't earned in previous movies. It kind of feels forced and out of the blue.
The music is epic and grand. The Avengers theme is back and it's awesome!
Summary: Fun and epic sequel with minor gripes.