- First time seeing it
- Liked it. I was prepared to be disappointed. I feel like when it came out, some people were underwhelmed. But I was pretty whelmed. It was entertaining all the way through, and I enjoyed my time with this movie
- Not as good as the first Avengers, and not as good as several of the stand-alones. The action was pretty good in this one, but the humour was lacking. The wisecracks missed more than they hit, and for that reason they felt forced. There is a lot of value in just watching these characters bounce off of each other, though
- Speaking of these characters bouncing off of each other: definitely didn't need the Banner/Romanoff romance. Is it conceivable that two of these characters could develop feelings for each other? Sure. Does it make sense that it might have started to happen in between movies? Yep. Did it feel shoehorned in and unnecessary for the overall appeal of this movie? You betcha. Perhaps they chose this plot line to make Hulk departing at the end of the movie more poignant, but I think it could have been just as effective without
- Let's talk Ultron. Once again, we have an entirely CGI character who, for me, was really sold by some solid voice acting. I really liked James Spader's performance. At first he seemed a little smarmy for a murderous AI entity, but when it clicked that he has some of Tony Stark's personality in him, that made more sense. The visual depiction of Ultron, though, was total uncanny valley. The way his mouth and eyes were animated unsettled both Ashley and me. It must be said, though, Ultron has a cute little robot butt.
- I like Elizabeth Olsen as an actress, but that accent got a little dodgy. I knew Quicksilver was in this one, but I had no idea he died in the span of just one movie. There was some cool stuff done with his speed super power, although I think it's hilarious that most of the time when he's fighting people he just goes really fast and bonks into them.
- I dug the climax. It had a similar feel to the climax of the first Avengers, with one charismatic big bad and a whole army of lesser cannon fodder bad guys, which works to serve up some sweet action scenes. And somehow Ultron's plan was even more batshit crazy than Loki's.
- Loved the Hulkbuster fight. And I was the first to acknowledge the incongruity here. This is another punch-up between two CGI characters, something I've railed against in the past, but here it totally worked. So let's analyze this a bit. What did this fight have that other similar scenes haven't?
- a) The fight evolves. It kicks off with a really cool evolution of Tony's Iron Man suit into something we haven't seen before, and it just continues evolving. Hulk rips the suit apart, Tony fixes it. Hulk can't be subdued by a bunch of punches, Tony uses the suit to cage his hand instead. The fight keeps throwing new wrinkles at the viewer
- b) The size and scale of these characters is used to great effect. They wreak havoc and use the setting creatively. Tony hits Hulk with a friggin' elevator car
- c) At this point we care equally about both characters involved, and their relationship to each other makes this a better fight.
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