Halt on Ultron

Rating: 2/10 (5 June 2015)

Despite the expensive special effects and excellent actors, I believe this one will be remembered as a B-movie in the near future. I was wondering why I heard no one commenting on how awesome the new Avengers movie was, but I decided to see it anyway. I think the only Marvel movies that are worse are X-Men 3 (the one with Phoenix) and maybe the Ang-Lee-directed Hulk.
All superhero stories (in fact, most stories) follow the same basic pattern: the good guys need to stop the villain who wants to destroy the city or the world. What sets them apart is the depth and likability of the characters, the consistency of the plot, the quality of the dialogue.
In the Thor (and Iron Man) movies, you have intelligent heroes with a lot of power, but too much pride and hubris. They get set back because of their arrogance, but they are always compelling and inspire sympathy.
In this turkey, all the heroes are one-dimensional with no defining personality. I felt like the actors were tired of playing the same role (understandable) but they wanted to rake in more millions of dollars (who wouldn't). Even so, the movie could've been saved by a good script, but the dialogue was the worst part. Every sentence was a cliché, every joke a forced, unfunny one- liner. You can't explain this away by blaming it on the fact that it's a Disney movie, because this installment actually has more sexual innuendo than any other.
The one saving grace, though, was the cameo of the actress from Freaks and Geeks. She gave a heartfelt performance, but didn't have good dialogue to work with. Still, for her I raise my rating to a 2. The Olsen sister was fine, but why not hire a Russian actress? Is it so critical to have a famous name that they can't get an authentic Russian accent?
Actually, even worse than the dialogue, the worst part was the villain Ultron. If you think about it, the name is pretty stupid, and subconsciously, I think this kept me from seeing the movie for a while. From the title "Age of Ultron" I thought he was going to be a supervillain on par with Apocalypse. I thought he was going to take over the world and have some kind of dystopian world government which the Avengers would infiltrate. Instead, he's this goofy robot that sounds like a badguy from a Western. He's not threatening, just cartoonish, and personally I cringed or laughed every time he came on screen. I feel about him, in many ways, the same way I feel about Nuclear Man from Superman IV.
In fact, there is another parallel with Superman IV. (I'm thinking of the space scene in that movie.) Ultron brings up the floating island in order to crash it down. When it's falling, you see the fire of the atmosphere burning it on reentry. But it was never burning when it was going up! So there's that inconsistency, but also, wouldn't the vacuum of space and the heat of the atmosphere have killed the heroes who weren't wearing suits?
Frankly, I feel this movie insults the intelligence of the audience and demeans the actors. I don't think we're the ones that should be blamed for watching these movies, it's the people who write these scripts. Only from a TV movie might one expect such an illiterate, rushed script. I don't want to dissuade anyone from seeing the movie, but you'll thank me if you see it without paying for it as an MST3K-style comedy.