A solid second outing for everyone's favorite superhero team

Rating: 8/10 (10 September 2015)

When crafting a sequel to any movie, the goal is usually to make it bigger while still retaining the qualities that made people fall in love with the first one. On that alone, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON succeeds marvelously. While the action in THE AVENGERS was mostly confined to New York (at least the climax), ULTRON is more of a globe-hopping adventure. The banter between the team members is as funny as ever and, without the need to bring the team together this time, there was more time allotted to character development, particularly Hawkeye and Black Widow, who haven't had so much to do in the Marvel movies up to this point. Of course, with this expansion comes a handful of new characters to add to all the ones we're familiar with (and most of whom at least make a cameo). Chief among these is Ultron, a sneering villain whose personality is directly based on Stark's. There are also the twins, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, who have a particular connection with Stark that sees them initially aligned with Ultron against the Avengers. To sum up all that's good with the film is quite easy: it's frickin' cool. A slightly more polished way to put this is that it delivers on the all of the witty repartee and CGI-enhanced action that we've come to expect from the MCU. However, there are a few points where it doesn't quite live up to its predecessor. First, the novelty of having the team together has worn off a bit. Second, while the increase in locations is appreciated, the narrative is somewhat more splintered and unwieldy than it possibly should have been. A lot of this has to do with some scenes which are setting up future adventures. Another big part of this has to do with the final action set-piece basically being a redux of the Battle of New York from the first AVENGERS. And, while Ultron is great as the villain always ready with a quip, his motivation remained as opaque and vague as Scarlet Witch's powers (summed up as "weird"). It boils down to not being as streamlined nor as unique as what came before it. Still, none of this really negatively impacted my enjoyment. I was as eager to return to this world as anyone, and Joss Whedon surely didn't disappoint me.