Too many ingredients and not enough time to cook!

Rating: 6/10 (24 April 2015)

Following the first Avengers film was always going to be a very difficult task. That was a really great superhero film which had the major plus of (finally) getting the Hulk 95% right (just need to have him talk like he does in the comics). Sadly there are many problems with the second Avengers film...
1: The story is poor. There is no explaining why the Avengers are back together again, they just suddenly are and attacking a Hydra base. Plus there's a HUGE flaw regarding Ultron and the Internet too. Despite being able to see everything allows he allows Avengers to contact each other still and Iron Man to still use his suits.
2: The villain: He's not menacing enough. There's really no motive to drive him and his acts other than some messed up programming. And his army of Iron Man like robots were not intimidating at all.
3: The CGI. It's not in the same league as the effects in the first movie IMO which were far more convincing. Considering the main villain and his army is ALL CGI, this was VERY important and one of the bigger failings of the film.
4: The Avengers didn't stop him The vision did.
5:Too many characters made everything feel forced and the story seemed incomplete. Like trying to make a 3 course dinner in 20 minutes - you just can't cook that many ingredients in that short a time.
6: The Hulk. The best character in the Avengers (and highlight of the last film) was totally ruined in this movie. He is totally pointless and doesn't do anything of note. They have him move like an ape (which he does not), he only threw TWO punches in the entire film and instead had him grabbing and throwing robots rather than punching and smashing them - HUGE mistake IMO and not faithful to the character at all. Just when you think they have nailed the Hulk, they take him backwards again (sigh).
There's some good humour and lots of action, but you feel like you'd seen it all before in Iron Man 2 and 3 and there's no great standout moments in this movie, where the first was littered with them. Some of the other elements of the sub plots felt forced and were uninteresting and the end...hardly a great climax. Overall really disappointing to be honest. It's not terrible, but it's far from great and a poor show compared to its predecessor.