Too many jokes and explosions, but not much of anything else.

Rating: 4/10 (15 May 2015)

'Avengers: Age of Ultron' is the 11th installment to the MCU franchise and a sequel to the 2012 smash hit, Avenger's Assemble. It stars Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo and James Spader as Ultron. Both written and directed by Joss Whedon.
In this movie we start with the team invading Baron Von Strucker's base of operations in the fictional country of Sokovia, as he is in the possession of Loki's scepter. A weapon that is capable of some pretty powerful stuff. The Avengers need to get it back as it is deadly when in the wrong hands. When they make it back to stark tower Tony Stark (RDJ) realizes he can use it to kick start is 'Ultron' Initiative. A peace keeping program that is supposed to protect the earth from any outside intruders (Aliens etc). Things do not go to plan and instead of creating something to protect them, Tony ends up creating an artificial intelligence hell bent on destroying the Avengers.
Let us start with Ultron. Now I never watched any of the trailers as I wanted to go into this movie with every scene completely new in my mind. After the movie finished I decided to then go and watch all the trailers. I must say, that in my opinion the trailers made Utron to be a lot more menacing and threatening than he actually was on screen. Now he wasn't a terrible villain unlike *cough* Malaketh *cough*. But he wasn't exactly great either. Most of the destruction of the team actually came from the twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff aka Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, mainly Wanda. He could have been a bad ass who could finally be the one to push the Avengers, he just wasn't.
While Ultron himself was not terrible one thing was, his development. There is little to no development for him, whatsoever. So he thinks that he's trying to save the world when he's in fact doing the opposite. Yes, they gave him personality, which to be fair wasn't that hard to do as he's pretty much just a Tony Stark 2.0. His motives were stupid, he goes from realizing he's an AI to wanting to destroy the world within a 10 second time frame. It is a a shame as he could have been the greatest villain in the MCU, not to be THAT guy, but that still belongs to Loki.
Another thing I didn't really like was the relationship between Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Banner (Mark Ruffalo). While it did kind of serve a purpose and added to the movie I just found the whole thing to be forced. You could bring up a point that it happened long before the time period of this movie, but given the conversation during the party that seems impossible to be the case. The conversation itself was also kind of cringy IMO. i had a "what the hell" face throughout the entire scene.
Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) was a bad ASS in this movie. Throughout most of the first Avengers Clint was a puppet being controlled by Loki. The rest of the movie all he did was provide cover from on top of a building, and was pretty much completely out of the action. Not in this movie though. Hawkeye was a front runner throughout most of this movie, he took charge and actually kicked most of the ass. I also love how this movie kind of made fun of the fact that Clint is just a guy and all he does is a fire a bow and arrow. They joke about the fact that they don't really need him when in fact, the biggest joke of all is how much they actually do.
The humour was completely hit and miss for me, but more of the latter. The problem I have with MCU movies, is that apart from Winter Soldier, they're just pretty much comedies. The story of this movie is pretty much, a couple of lines about piece, annihilation and fighting together with about 2 hours of jokes and one liners. They advertised that they were going to go darker with this one. They really didn't. Sure it had elements of darkness but it was pretty much just the same forced crap as usual. They don't need every member of the team cracking wise every 5 seconds, have it more serious, have it more brooding and maybe just have one person as the comic relief not EVERYONE. You can still make a dark movie and still have it lighthearted at parts. The Russo brother did that really well with Winter Soldier and i can't wait to see what they bring to the table for Infinity Wars.
On another positive note the action in this movie was pretty awesome. It is a very entertaining movie. If you just want to go and enjoy a movie, maybe lose a couple of brain cells while you're at it then this is the perfect movie for you. I know it kind of relies on it for the most part but in other cases it's just completely not necessary. If you haven't guessed i'm talking about the CGI. I mean, they CGI'd captain America riding a bike. What is the point of that? That's more pointless than CGing Green Lantern's mask in the 2011 movie of the same name.
Is it the best of the MCU? In my opinion no. Not even close to it. Is it one of the more entertaining movies of the MCU? You bet your ass it is. Chances are, if you loved the first one you will most likely love this one, too.
Verdict: This movie could have been so much more than just mindless entertaining popcorn fodder, but it just didn't really do it for me. 6 out of 10