The worst Marvel film I've ever seen.

Rating: 1/10 (7 May 2015)

This review contains spoilers, you should read it anyway because it's not worth seeing. My mate fell asleep next to me, I found myself battering my head into the head rest, and a geeky guy to my left kept cackling at the in-references that most there didn't understand. They kept coming and I knew they were there because I would hear 3 or 4 nasal geeks cackle at them. In a full theatre. Everyone looked bored.
In comparison to worthy action films like the first Captain America (masterpiece), the first and even, second Thor film (beautifully shot and amazing set pieces) This was... Horrendous and made no sense immediately from the beginning. It was like I came into the cinema half way through the film. This is not a film built for people who haven't seen the other films, hell, this isn't even a film made for people who *have* seen all the other films but not the TV series and the special limited edition comic book. It's a obsessive geeks film, made for other obsessive geeks and (apologies for any antagonism caused, I'm just annoyed at how this film has damaged the cinematic universe of marvel by being so weak) nobody else will get it. I watch a lot of shield on TV and it still didn't make sense.
We join the avengers with no explanation in the middle of a fight in the forest, we don't know who they are fighting for ten minutes (we don't find out for 30 minutes and even then it relies on you having seen the last 4 movies to understand) and I immediately find myself struggling to care, as jokes are made and they effortlessly dispatch the enemy with their super powers I find myself thinking "any army could have dealt with this, why the avengers?" And that's the problem, the first enemy is weak, so you find yourself being confused and bored. Stark picks up Loki's sceptre and the next confusing moment comes - why was it missing in the first place, why did they know to go there for it??? This isn't explained.
We join Stark in his lab and he is experimenting on the sceptre, discovering it is a computer, not a power source, or maybe even both. He discovers this in about ten minutes, it feels like half the movie should be dedicated to such a complex piece of reverse engineering and it makes no sense that it takes 5 minutes. Stark took a whole movie to create his own power source for Iron Man, yet we're led to believe he can reverse engineer more advanced alien technology in 6 minutes.
Speaking of Stark, no characters are given backgrounds here, if you haven't seen previous films expect to understand nothing and be baffled. In comparison to other Marvel films where things make sense without background knowledge.
From here the sceptre is used to integrate an AI with the Internet or some such nonsense. Apparently before Stark couldn't do it, lacking a powerful enough computer. Yet Stark already had an AI he created so it's like wut??? A blue blob of light attacks a brown blob of light in Stark's lab and none of it makes any coherent sense in even a vagueeee way. I'm not talking it being based on actual science (although the best Marvel films suspend your disbelief and don't feel completely ridiculous), it's just literally confusing, special fx blue lights sending out lines of blue against brown blobs and apparently the Internet is invaded and I'm like wut is going onnn... The AI gets a body and blah blah blah. By now it's been 40 minutes (btw this film is soooo overlong) and nothing makes sense or is interesting or has happened of note.
From there is a series of fights, none of which are interesting as the Avenger characters are so powerful and the opposition so weak you don't even question their ability to win, making them pointless.
A character is introduced who is apparently a witch, at first she just influences minds, but by the end of the film she's suddenly developed into some sort of Keanu Reeves Matrix type person with red mist around her hands and she uses her powers to hit people with red mist and can stop bullets and it's like, um where has this come from, earlier she had to hide in a cupboard? Her character is so poorly developed that when she joins the Avengers I don't care whether she lives or dies.
I won't waste time on the new red android with the stone is his head, I don't even remember what his name is - although I note I think towards the end they started to mention his name without even explaining where it came from. He literally randomly appears in scenes and it's like "who cares?". Then there's the machine used to create him, it's not explained at all it's just like "oh noes Ultron will use the machine to create a new body!!!1". Where did the machine come from? Who knows, that could be a film in itself. It's just another deus ex machina. One that is probably better than this nonsense.
Speaking of deus ex machina, there's the bit where Samuel L Jackson pops back from death with a massive ship to save everyone in the city. Like the worst attempt to sort a bad plot ever.
Literally worse than batman and robin, that at least was meant to be a joke. How ironic that Whedon, famous for being a geek, did a worse Marvel film then Kenneth Branagh. I mean you don't think of the Shakespeare guy and think "I bet he'd do a good film about Norse aliens" but he does. He makes this look like a nightmarish nonsensical joke. Which it is.