The Avengers want to kill Ultron to save the world

Rating: Null/10 (29 November 2015)

Everything about Avengers: Age of Ultron feels indulgent. Watching the film is like plugging through a TV box set in a single sitting. That's meant as a compliment, and if it sounds like a criticism, you're probably yet to experience the supreme contentedness that comes with bingen on five Game of Thrones episodes back-to-back.
Joss Whedon's film gives you that same pop-culture sugar rush, stacking characters, conflicts, subplots and background treats like tiers of wedding cake – far more than you'd think you could possibly cram into a little under two and a half hours without the whole thing crumbling under the weight of its own calorie count. But the structure holds, and the film flies past at speed. Among its other attributes, it's the first long blockbuster in years to feel short.
Avengers: Age of Ultron rounds off the second two-year phase of Marvel Studios' ongoing superhero serial, just as the fun but messier Avengers Assemble, also directed by Whedon, did the same thing for phase one in 2012.
It literally hits the ground running, with a three-minute, digitally crocheted tracking shot of the whole gang – Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) – hurtling through a frozen forest. Their destination is a Colditz-like castle where the terrorist group Hydra have in their clutches a crystal of (literally) Earth-shattering importance.