Avengers: Age of Ultron

There is a lot going on in this movie but it all just seemed kind of pointless and dull to me. Every now and then there would be a good scene or piece of dialogue but for the most part I felt myself getting bored and reaching for my phone to play Cribbage. I guess what I didn't like most is that it all felt like a big filler episode instead of an action packed character driven story arc.

Action, good Fx and a "not-completely-absurd" story. The actors perform well and you can identify them very well with their characters ... but it is all old and without imagination. I suppose nobody was expecting anything else, though ...

This is another one of those movies that you watch primarily for the special effects with you favourite super heroes slugging it out. It is a classical Hollywood product where the story is mostly there just as a vehicle for allowing the special effects team to do their business. As such it is a success. The movie starts of with a display of action and the afore mentioned special effects with an attack by the Avengers on a bad guy stronghold. Not surprisingly the events sows the seeds for things to come. The movie starts off with quite an interesting story idea with the activation of Ultron. However, once he materializes as a physical entity, it became a bit of seen that, been there and done that. Ultron just turns into yet another “standard” comic book villain a’ la Megatron running around trying to look intimidating while implementing his diabolical scheme. Okay, there was a bit of originality here and there but with the good start I kind of expected a wee bit more. Having said that, the movie does indeed fulfil its purpose of showing off a bunch of super heroes slugging it out in a flurry of special effects and, although the story idea was perhaps not used as intelligently as I had hoped, it is not bad (for this kind of movie of course) and hangs together pretty okay. Sure, it is somewhat contrived and the means by which Ultron tries to exterminate humanity is overly complicated but it is still a decent story. Overall the movie was entertaining and provided the necessary special effects and super hero fix for those who are inclined to enjoy those kind of movies. I certainly am and, not surprisingly, the kids liked it as well.