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When you review a film that is part of a huge, successful franchise, one with scads of movies already out there and scads more to come, you have to review it in terms of the others in the series. This is the case with Avengers: Age of Ultron. Let me start out by saying that the film, directed by Joss Whedon, is a blast. How could it not be? If you’re a Marvel fan, there is no way you’re going to miss it. Compared to the rest of the Marvel films, however, it doesn’t rank high. Especially compared to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The Vision (Paul Bettany) is phenomenal. He’s exactly what comic book fans are waiting for. The way he contrasts Ultron (James Spader) visually and emotionally is perfect and he looks incredibly cool. Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), aside from her atrocious accent, is a great character and a fantastic addition to the group. The fight scenes are amazing and the party scene (which we’ve largely seen from all the footage online) is a riot. The Hulkbuster armor fight scene is action-packed, though again, we saw a lot of it in trailers.

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However, there are issues. First of all, the fact that Marvel announced its entire slate a few months back takes a lot of the impact away. If we didn’t know about a Black Panther film, the mention of Wakanda would have been mind-blowing. Instead, it fell flat. If you’re going to put it in as more than an “oh my gosh” moment, you have to do more than shove a fight scene in. We know who’s going to live and die in the MCU, considering the films on the way. We also know that Ultron isn’t ultimately going to be a threat for more than 2.5 hours. Not that you’d expect something the villain to win, but it’s a foregone conclusion that he isn’t even partially the big bad in the new films.

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Ultron is problematic as well. Remember when the trailer came out? How menacing he was? Well, he’s not really that scary in the film. He’s just kind of a mess. The relationship between Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and his “son” was totally squandered. I would have loved to see time spent on their interaction and how Ultron reflects Tony’s thought process. They tried, but it was jumbled and sloppy. Remember in Iron Man 3, how Tony was dealing with PTSD from the attack on New York? Well, seeing him still suffering from its effects would have made a lot of his decisions in Age of Ultron make more sense and have more impact. Unfortunately, it’s largely forgotten here. Here we have a Tony Stark who is mostly back to his goofy, jokey self with little evidence of a drive to save humanity. It’s more of a “lookie at what I can do” sort of drive.

I don’t want to give anything away, but when you see the film (and you know you will), you’ll know what I’m talking about here: There is a character who you don’t know much about who we spend a lot of time with, this time around. The revelation could have been done in a few minutes instead of scene after scene. It was a waste of time. Instead, we could have maybe touched on how the effects of Scarlet Witch’s brain hijacking. Instead just seems to appear and then disappear. Especially Black Widow’s (Scarlett Johansson) past, which comic book readers know is pretty dark.

Ultimately, as awesome as the fight scenes are, there isn’t a lot of connection to Ultron’s robot minions. We know it’s Ultron that has to go, and things that are part of one mind, who don’t hurt when you kill them and don’t feel a thing emotionally lower the stakes for the audience significantly.

All of this said, Avengers: Age of Ultron is a fun summer film. Just not one that blew me away. It’s an intro to Phase 3 and not much more.

7/10

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Jenna Busch

Jenna Busch is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Legion of Leia and has hosted and written for sites like Nerdist, ComingSoon.net, Metro, Birth. Movies. Death., IGN, AOL, Huffington Post and more. She co-hosted Cocktails With Stan with the legendary Stan Lee and has appeared on Attack of the Show, Fresh Ink, Tabletop with Wil Wheaton, in the documentary She Makes Comics, on NPR and Al Jazeera America, and has covered film/TV/gaming/comics for years. She's currently a co-host on Most Craved. She's been published in the comics anthology Womanthology, is a chapter author for Star Wars Psychology: Dark Side of the Mind, Game of Thrones Psychology and Star Trek Psychology and more, and owns a terrifying amount of swords and 20-sided dice. There are also those My Little Pony trailer voice overs that give one nightmares.