"How is humanity saved if it's not allowed to evolve?"

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2016)

Just as I was with "4:Rise of the Silver Surfer", it surprised me that the Marvel folks took another page out of the Star Trek play-book with their Avengers story here. In the Fantastic Four flick, the 'destroyer of planets' looked remarkably similar to a huge dust vortex from the TV series episode 'The Doomsday Machine' that was laying waste to entire worlds in it's path. In this film, the directive given Ultron by Tony Stark involves a global peacekeeping initiative, but it's programming strongly resembles a plan to do away with all imperfection. That's exactly what happened in the TV Star Trek episode "The Changeling", in which a hokey looking computer named NOMAD became determined to destroy anything that didn't meet squarely with it's self appointed definition of perfection. If Captain Kirk were involved in this story, he might have steered the Avengers to a plan that involved using logic to demonstrate that blowing stuff up was not a perfect solution.
Well if it's mind blowing action and special effects you're looking for you should get your fill here. Movies like this couldn't have been made even a decade ago but the march of time continues to produce effects on a larger and grander scale. I particularly liked Scarlet Witch's (Elizabeth Olsen) neuroelectric interfacing telekinesis, another way of explaining those spectacular red-bursts effectively used against the Ultron robotic army. The Vision character (Paul Bettany) distracted me somewhat; he looked like he might have stepped out of the pages of a Valiant comic and looked out of place here. It's probably just me.
As for the rest of the super-heroes, they performed admirably but somehow none of this seemed very fresh to me. The film got some mileage out of the Thor Hammer business and I had to stop and think about that elevator quip. And Stan Lee always entertains with his ubiquitous cameo, here claiming "You're all not worthy" to the core group as he's carried out on an overabundance of Grunhel's fleet liquor. For me, I guess it's the little things that get my attention instead of the mind numbing battle action.