Trailer almost as misleading as Iron Man 3's (Spoilers)

Rating: 6/10 (12 June 2015)

I wanted to score this film higher but although I do love spectacle, it just felt way too mindlessly Michael Bay-esque and the scale of explosions and destruction served no purpose.
I felt that almost every other problem I had with the film could have been addressed by simply splitting the thing up into two parts like they are planning to do with Infinity War. I mean, when I think about the missed marketing opportunity (Avengers 2 split into 2 parts, followed by Avengers 3 split into 3 parts-how brilliant would that have been?) it really just compounds the problem and makes Marvel seem all the more foolish for it.
Had this solution been utilized, there would have been so much more room for essential things like new characters' backstories, and development for old and new characters, especially main villain Ultron. The sinister "There are no strings on me" from the trailer that sent chills up my spine came to naught as Ultron became essentially a dark mirror of Tony Stark with way too little behind his motivation to do anything he did (like most of Iron Man's villains so far), let alone to despise and resent his creator the way he seems to. Also, more gradual evolutions in his plans to ultimately concoct and carry out what became his final scheme would have been better too.
The twins suffered the same problem of lack of exposure and development. Vision too, but I could forgive that if only because the character was intended to be something of an enigma, but for the former two to actually join forces with Ultron, I would have expected much more backstory, perhaps a flashback rather than simply being told what happened to make them vengeful against Stark and company.
Trying to cram everything, including the excessive one-liners, into a single film was, regrettably, a disaster. If what I hear about there being a 4-hour cut of the film, that would probably have fixed just about every problem I addressed. This was a serious problem with a simple solution that they had years to decide to release in two parts and just dropped the ball.
For what it's worth, it was entertaining enough, definitely set up a lot of future intrigue, and the interactions of the team together, now that their familiarity has increased, were very pleasing and the increased team dynamic as far as combat is concerned was more than a little satisfying but the ride was just too fast to enjoy everything properly and be given everything on our wish list. With the ever-expanding nature of the MCU, dropping us into what felt more like an 'in media res' scenario that never bothered to go back and explain how point A led to point B was a foolhardy decision, creating an even greater sense of overly accelerated pacing and unanswered questions.
Don't expect this one to deliver what the first one did. A bloated, runaway mess may not have been what they were going for but they ought to have known that this recipe would have inevitably ended up as one.