My wife got her parents to watch Walker Dennis and we got to see Avengers : Age of Ultron!

I really enjoyed the film, a bunch!  There are a slew of little moments and big moments that were pretty awesome.  At two hours a change, it is hard to recall everything so this may be a bit all over the place.

I truly believe that every superhero movie, even the first in the series, should open in the middle of a battle – it kicks the film right off on the right track.  It was a nice connection to have the Avengers be seeking Loki’s specter from the first film.

Nice running gag is started at the beginning when Captain America calls Iron Man on his use of language.

Nice use of Sokovia, Marvel is rich with unique countries so the films should be using that for locations.

We get the Maximoff twins are ‘enhanced” by Strucker’s experiments.  I thought they would state they were, Inhumans, but them being “enhanced” works as they use that term on Agents of SHIELD.  For anyone not watching that show, the end scenes of Season Two episode “Dirty Half Dozen” such a great entire episode, and the beginning scenes of the next episode, “Scars” deal with this film.

They don’t talk until later but I really thought Elizabeth Olsen, portraying Wanda, Scarlet Witch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Quicksilver, did a great job as their characters.  I know Elizabeth Olsen from Josh Radnor’s Liberal Arts.  Apparently she played the wife to Taylor-Johnson’s character in the latest Godzilla film.  Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the titled character in Kick Ass.  Which I didn’t know until I looked it up prior to watching the film.

Quicksilver and Hawkeye get a fun running, pun intended, gag of not seeing something coming.

Hawkeye gets so much more screen time, in this film, probably done to make up to Jeremy Renner’s lack of screen time in the first film.  Which I am all for.  We get to see Clint’s family and where they live, on a farm.  Linda Cardellini portrays Mrs. Barton, she is pregnant at the time.  There is an air of Hawkeye’s death, throughout the film.

Back to the twins, for a moment.  I really like the accents that they have.  I don’t care for Wanda’s powers essentially being, instead of a complicated to explain hex power, she gets light Jean Great slash Phoenix powers.  She has nightmare inducing powers and her blast powers appear more telekinesis.  It is an odd choice.

The Avengers get the specter back, but not until after Wanda zaps Tony with a nightmare.  All the Avengers are dead, he is last to survive.  At this point, he has lame versions of Iron Man, maybe ‘weak’ is the better term, who try to evacuate the civilians from harm.  We get a hint that people are not fond of these Iron Legion armors but it is never referred to again.

Tony jumps out of his armor, as of course he does, and that’s how Wanda is able to put that nightmare spell on him.  This will be a running plotpoint, of Iron Man causing what happens in the film, to his determent.  If he had stayed in the armor, he wouldn’t have been able to be touched.  Next, the Avengers get the specter and Thor wants to take it home but Tony wants to keep it for three days to run experiments on it with Bruce.  Bruce and Tony discover that Hydra was making Artificial Intelligence, and Tony has this initiative called, Ultron, that will put free thinking machines all over the globe, so he finds this short cut and decides to make the AI work with his Ultron program.

Bruce does put up a fight that they should probably talk to everyone else about this, but Tony doesn’t want to hear about killer machines and harshing of his buzz – so he continues forward with SCIENCE!   Which, as a guy who never wants to see robotics get too advance, I’m already shaking my head at Tony.  This, also, irritated my wife so much, as none of the movie should have happened, as Tony is the worst.  I told her that is why I have never been much of an Iron Man fan, but it was nice to finally see this Tony show up in the films.

That brings up that I kept being amazed with how much they were setting up Captain America 3 : Civil War, with Cap and Iron Man butting heads.

I do wish that they could have sneaked Michael Douglas’ Hank Pym into this scene, so that Pym could have had a hand in creating Ultron.  James Spader does an amazing job with the voice.  It is essentially just his regular voice but the visual really adds to it.

The party scene is a real blast, with special cameos with War Machine and Falcon, I wasn’t expecting Falcon.  Natasha and Bruce flirting, was really nice with him not believing she would take an interest him in.  I also like the idea of a fighter who doesn’t fight as he knows he will win.

The scene with the guys are trying to life, Mjolnir, was terrific.  I like that it bunged, just a little, for Cap.  That is a nice touch.  The look on Thor’s face, of such relief, that even Cap can’t lift it, was awesome on Chris Hemsworth’s part.

Ultron, in his most basic state, was odd to concentrate on.  But he delivers his speech and takes off after another good team fight.  We learn that Ultron killed JARVIS, while both of them were in cyberspace.

The team are super quick to turn on Iron Man, as they should be.

Maria Hill was also at the party and it is always a real treat to see Cobie Smulders in a Marvel film.  We also get explanations for why Pepper Potts and Jane Foster are not present, with their respected gentlemen partners competing to see who has the better girlfriend.

There is a wonderful exchange by Hill and Cap, where she explains the Maximoff twins powers.  She shakes her head at the idea of someone allowing themselves to be experimented on.  My favorite response from Cap, “yeah who would allow a German scientist to experiment on you to save your country?”  Such a great in-character moment.

Stan Lee gets a cameo as one of Cap’s war veteran buddies.

We are introduced to Doctor Cho, who will play a larger role later in the film.

Ultorn retreats back to Sokovia, and starts building his robot army.  He also meets the Maximoff twins and gets them to join his mission.  They are mad at Stark for allowing the fall of Sokovia, and they were threaten for days by a bomb of Stark’s that never went off but they were scared to death of it eventually doing its job.  Captain America really stresses how the team needs to communicate better, they win and lose as a team.

Tony has this lame excuse that the Avengers barely got a win in the first film, that they need an army of robots to stand with them, if the next foe is too big for them.  Robots is never the answer, though.

They follow Ultron’s trail to Wakanda, which is awesome.  We see Ulysses Klaue, one of the enemies of Black Panther, his villain name is, Klaw.  In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ultron is the reason why he doesn’t have his hand, as Ultron straight cuts it off.  Ultron is super intense in this film!  Ultron also killed Strucker, while he was in custody.

Ultron is seeking Klaw out as he wants his sweet Vibranium.  Klaw wants money and with a simple thought, Ultron transfers a large sum of money to Klaw.  Ultron gets a classic line “keep your friends rich and your enemies rich and see which one is which,” Klaw recognizes this as something Stark has said before and Ultron is not fond of the comparison.  So Ultron rips off his hand.

I’m reminded, as Ultron makes another Stark-like comment, later to Thor and this reminds me of how Ultron of the comics is based off of Hank Pym’s mindwaves so I imagine that is how movie Ultron works, that his brain is made by Stark, in a way.  When Ultron was coming to life, he had searched the entirety of the Internet, so another option is that there is more information on Stark than the other Avengers, so he was a bigger influence.

Thor, Iron Man and Captain America confront Ultron, on the ship.  It is always awesome to see the Big Three standing together, on film.  Instead of cowering, Ultron attacks and Iron Man eventually tackles him outside and they start flying about.

There is a moment when Iron Man asks Ultron what he wants and Ultron jokes that he would like to explain his evil master plan, right now.

Wanda causes Captain America, Thor and Black Widow to live out their worst nightmares.  Cap, from what I can gather, is worried about constantly outliving everyone he knows.  Black Widow relives her origins of the Red Room, which we got a hint of on Agent Carter’s show.  Thor is at an Asgardian party and it goes badly when a dude starts accusing him of ruining Asgard.  Thor, at first, believes he is too mighty (Mighty Thor reference!) and he is beyond Scarlet Witch’s ability to manipulate him, as he is saying this, he is in his nightmare.  Pretty funny stuff, there!

Hawkeye and Quicksilver have some more back and forth.  I do like the moment when Wanda tries to put Hawkeye under her spell but he is never going to allow himself to be mind controlled again so he puts an unique arrow on her head, that makes her dizzy.  Quicksilver quickly gets his sister out of there.  Once outside, Wanda catches her breath and sees that Bruce Banner was left behind in the Quinjet and she wants to finish her mission.

Ultron finally gets Iron Man to stop chasing him by revealing that the Hulk is on a rampage in Johannesburg.  Hulk is living out his (or Banner’s) nightmare, that he is unstoppable.  There is so much destruction and when Iron Man calls in his Hulkbuster suit, the destruction reaches Man of Steel levels.  Pretty much, the Hulk is seen as a terrorist now.  There is a fun line where Tony finds a building either in the throws of construction or set to be demolished and he states “well, I guess I bought this building” which is a fun line about consequences.  The suped up suit of armor gives him an almost edge against Hulk but the madder Hulk gets, the stronger he gets.    There is a great moment when Iron Man is just hammer punching Hulk and the Hulk just puts a stop to it.  Another great moment is Hulk rips off the hand of the armor and in its place, is a cage like thing that gets Hulk’s hand stuck in it.  Which might give you the impression that is all Tony needs to win but being handcuffed to the Hulk, is never a good idea.

Maria Hill calls the Avengers, who are taxed from their nightmares and the Hulk’s latest actions, they are pretty broken.  Clint takes them to his farmhouse.  I’m all for Hawkeye being married, as his single status isn’t really a key part of his character plus it gives him instant characterization.

There are some wonderful character moments at the farm.  Bruce gets out of a shower and Natasha keeps hinting that she would have joined him, if he had asked.  She reveals that she can’t have babies, after he says he is no good to her as he could never have a baby with someone.  Which is a very intense part of Black Widow’s origins.  That the toxins in her system that keep her from ever being sick, also prevent her from becoming pregnant as a baby is like a very cute infestation.  Plus, Russia’s viewpoint was, that they never wanted their soldiers to be swayed to stay home instead of ready for a mission.

Thor leaves so that he can learn more about his vision and he enlists Dr. Erik Selvig to assist.  They go to the Well of Seeing – great name.  Thor sets up the two part Infinity Wars Avengers films, as he gets a vision of the Infinity Stones that have been revealed thus far.  The Tesseract from Cap’s film, and the main power source of Loki’s specter, the Aether from Thor 2, and the Orb from Guardians of the Galaxy.  There is a fourth stone that was inside the Tesseract – which seems like a cheat to me.  It was this stone that set into action the events of this film, as it was the source that Tony thought had artificial intelligence.

Steve and Tony have a nice scene about teamwork and the importance of communication.  They talk while cutting firewood.  There is a moment when Steve straight up rips a piece of lumber apart with his hands, he was only using the axe as it is the conventional tool.  Laura, Mrs. Hawkeye, asks Tony to look at their tractor.  Before leaving, Tony tells them to not use any of the firewood from his pile – which is a third of Steve’s pile.

Once in the barn, Fury confronts Stark.  Fury wants the world to be saved, as he is quite fond of it.  He also states there is no SHIELD, which is awkward as there is a SHIELD show, so that’s a missed opportunity to promote that show.  Fury and Stark go inside and Fury explains how there is a force that is stopping Ultron from getting the nuclear codes, so Tony believes they have an ally super hacker.  Banner sees a picture of a butterfly that Ms. Hawkeye drew.  He is reminded that Ultron wants to evolve, so a team is going to go after Dr. Cho.

This takes us to Dr. Cho, who puts up a fight against Ultron (not really) and he just taps her with the Specter and now she is under his control.  She creates a new robot body for Ultron, powered by the Mind Stone (nice that one of these gems gets a proper name).  Her clinic is in Korea.  The new body is also going to be built with Vibranium and we get glimpses that the skin is going to purple, which is awesome!

Ultron starts the upload into the new body, once it is complete.  In the process, Wanda can now sense Ultron’s thoughts and now knows that they were supporting the villain of the film.  In her backlash, she snaps Cho out of her mind control and Cho pauses the transfer.  Ultron is not pleased and steals the regeneration cradle and flees.

Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow are the team that was sent to Korea.  Captain America confronts Ultron, Hawkeye gives him the unfriendly and unwanted advice that Cap doesn’t stand a chance against Ultron.  Those two fight in a pretty awesome way from the transport truck to a train.  Meanwhile, Black Widow is trying to get the cradle.  The Twins catch up to Cap to help him fight Ultron.  Black Widow is about to get the cradle inside the Quinjet that Hawkeye is flying.  Ultron knocks the train off the rails and Cap tells Quicksilver to get the civilians out of the path of the train.  Ultron grabs Black Widow by the leg and flies off with her.  Hawkeye wants to go back to get her but Cap tells him to fly the cradle to safety.

Wanda tells Cap that with this new robot body, Stark is most likely going to be tempted to try again at making a new life form, as Ultron was a failure and Stark loves his second chances.

Ultron locks Black Widow inside of a prison that Hydra had made in their base.  He destroys the body we’ve become accustomed to as now he has an even better one, now made of Vibranium.  I do like how we start establishing that, as long as Ultron has body to transfer himself into, he can never be stopped.  Black Widow sends a message to Hawkeye, old school spy style, so he knows she is okay.

Tony sees that the new robot was only 97 percent away from being completed.  He reveals to Bruce that JARVIS was the secret ally they had.  He wants to put JARVIS inside the body, which Bruce doesn’t want to do as that is how they got in this mess in the first place.  Captain America enters the room, all in a panic and Tony – while talking to him – just goes ahead and does it.  Tony Stark, the worst Avenger.

There is a great exchange because Captain America and Iron Man, Iron Man goes with the mentality that preventing a war before it ever starts, is a preferred option.  Cap reminds him that every attempt to ever prevent a war, before it starts, has lead to massive civilian deaths.  Which rings true.

Thor shows up and lightning charges the cradle.  The quick fight between Vision and Thor ends with Thor stating that Vision is one of the good guys, to his fellow Avengers.  Then Vision just hands Thor his hammer, as if it is nothing.  Which is awesome and I wasn’t expecting that, at all!

Which I’m pretty sure when Paul Bettany agreed to be the voice of JARVIS in the first Iron Man film, way back in 2008, he never thought he was going to be the model to one of the greatest Avengers of all time!  Well, at least, Pre-Dissembled.  It is a huge step up from the voice of Tony’s home to being an Avenger!

He is called The Vision, because he was the shining light in Thor’s vision, that helped save the day.  Vision is on the side of life so he will stand against his father, Ultron.  I also wish that he referred to Ultron as his father.  That would have been a nice touch.

The Avengers are back in Sokovia and they are nine members strong (minus Black Widow being held prisoner) – Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Hulk, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch & Vision.  Their first mission is to clear the city of civilians as they are expecting massive destruction, but Cap doesn’t have any plans for tonight, so if this is their last night, he’s available.

Vision fights Ultron, shutting down his ability to connect to the Internet, so his only escape routes is the vast army of robot shells, so the Avengers have to destroy all of these or risk a sequel.

Bruce saves Natasha, they have plans to just leave the fight.  Which I really like that turn of events.  Made even better by Natasha pushing Bruce off of a cliff, as she needs the Hulk.  They will conclude their final mission.  Though, this will be the end of the short HulkWidow as both Hulk and Bruce know that they can’t run away with Natasha, the Black Widow.  I do like how Bruce and Natasha kiss but the angle of the kiss, isn’t super romantic, more finale style.

Ultron’s big scheme is being kicked off.  Inside the church is Ultron’s machine that is capable of lifting the country out of the Earth.  The higher it goes, once Ultorn decides, it will drop and completely destroy the world below.  He has plans of extinction – so the stakes are as high as they get!

An old SHIELD Hellicarrier arrives, as Coulson has been working on this – super secretly, throughout the second season.  We haven’t even had hints of it until the (barely) tie-in episode.  Fury is the commander of the Hellicarrier and Maria Hill is on board.  Back in the farm, the last thing he says is that he will be back and most likely in dramatic fashion – he lived up to that.

Captain America is excited as now they can get the civilians off the newly made floating island.  Once all civilians are accounted for, the Avengers can take the fight to Ultron.  Which is a pretty cool visual, seeing all nine heroes fighting off a slew of cronies.

Iron Man, Thor and Vision knock Ultron out and do heavy damage to his main body.  I wish we got Thor saying, “Ultron, we will have words with thee” as that would have been awesome.

With the Hellicarrier taking on more civilians, the Ultron army turns their attention to the air ship.  We see that War Machine has been on board the whole time, which is odd that he waited that long to jump out.  Unfortunately, no Falcon to join the team, as well.

Ultron steals a Quinjet and starts blasting at the final life raft.  Hawkeye was going to get on board this one but a mother notices her son hasn’t joined her yet.  There is this terrific moment when Hawkeye puts his head down, as he knows that this boy is going to be the death of him.  Ultron starts firing and the bullets get closer to Hawkeye, as he grabs the boy.  He, heroically, turns around so the bullets would ideally pierce his skin, and hopefully not the boy’s, when at the last moment, Quicksilver pushes the two of them behind a wall.  Why he couldn’t have just pushed all three to the side, is beyond me.  We get Quicksilver’s death – so we won’t live in a world of two film franchise’s have multiple Quicksilvers.  I sort of like the attitude of the Avengers’ Pietro as Days of Future Past’s Quicksilver is way too fun and Quicksilver is rarely fun.

Hulk takes the fight to Ultron and wails on him.  Scarlet Witch is left behind in the church to keep facing off all of the Ultrons.  There was a great moment, sorry my memory is all over the place for this post, when Hawkeye saves Wanda and they end up in an abandon building.  She is done fighting and wants to just stop.  He tells her that she can stop, Hawkeye will inform her brother of where she is and he can get her to safety in a moment.  Or she can step through the door and become an Avenger.  It is a really great moment, as it shows why Hawkeye likes being an Avenger and Wanda joins the ranks after a minute or two.  So she is still riding off of that high, while in the church.

Wanda feels her brother’s death and seeks out Ultorn.  She finds him in a bus and rips his heart out.  Of course, doing this left the church unattended and one of the little Ultron bots presses the big button and the island starts to fall.

One of my favorite moments, as a fan of the relationship, is when Vision saves Wanda – which I wish there was an image of that, or just of the two of them on screen together – but it is still too early for that.  I hope that the films gives us this relationship, as it is one of my favorites of Marvel.

Iron Man and Thor destroy the mechanism that Tony had hinted at earlier, of how to fix this situation, if it came to it.  Cap resisted the idea, at first, as people were still on the island.  Now everybody is on the Hellicarrier and they no longer need the land mass.

Once it is destroyed, Black Widow calls the Hulk, trying to direct him to how to turn off the stealth mode of the Quinjet.  Instead of taking her suggestions, he turns off the video conference.  She realizes that the Hulk (and Banner) don’t want to pursue the relationship, or can’t.

Vision finds the last Ultron robot, on the ground.  They exchange some words and Vision blows up the last droid.  The “I was born yesterday” line is pretty clever.

We have a nice time jump.  We are in upstate New York, with the new Avengers facility.  Fury is running it, Dr. Cho is there, as is Maria Hill and Dr. Selvig is there as well.  I wonder if Agents of SHIELD will ever visit this site or recognize its existence.  I do like the idea of the Avengers’ headquarters not being an obvious target for attacks.  Keep that nonsense to the woods, and cut down on the civilian and collateral damage.

Tony tells Steve that he is done with the Avengers, which makes sense.  Natasha gets a text from Clint, they named their son – Nathaniel Pietro Barton.  Thor leaves, knowing that the Mind Stone is secure and safe with Vision.  As Tony and Steve are walking Thor out, they continue to have an exchange about how his hammer works.  Since the Vision is a machine, so it doesn’t count that he can lift the hammer.  It would be the same as if an elevator lifted the hammer to a higher floor.  In the big final battle, Vision hits Ultron with the hammer and hands it back to Thor.  They joke about how the hammer is off-balance, Thor states it is due to being able to hit harder.

Fury tells Natasha that they found an empty Quinjet in the ocean so the Hulk is somewhere out there, alone.

The film, proper, ends with Captain America retrieving Black Widow as they join the Avengers – War Machine, Falcon, Vision and Scarlet Witch.  Six members, not that bad.  I’ve read that all of these peeps will be in Captain America 3 : Civil War.  Which is pretty awesome, and it makes sense to set up a more affordable team, as quickly as possible.

The mid credit scene is Thanos putting on the Infinity Gauntlet as he is tired of all of his lackeys failing him.  So things are now, on!  I’m glad there wasn’t a bonus post credit scene, as my bladder couldn’t hold out one more moment!

Such a great film!

. . .

http://marvel.wikia.com/Avengers:_Age_of_Ultron

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_Age_of_Ultron

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395427/quotes

Links used to refresh my memory of the film.