Three out of the four Avengers movies connected with Marvel fans across the world and rank among the MCU’s greatest entries. But one of them — the second one, Avengers: Age of Ultron — stands out as the undeniable weakest link. This was partly a result of Joss Whedon butting heads with the studio and losing a lot of the creative freedom he had with the first movie.
There are worse movies in the franchise, from Iron Man 2 to Thor: The Dark World, but Age of Ultron stands as a disappointment. There’s still a lot to enjoy in the movie, but it’s far from perfect.
Right: Opening Set Piece
In the opening set piece of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes infiltrate a Hydra facility in Sokovia and take down Baron Strucker, one of the team’s most iconic adversaries from the comics (who, admittedly, is kind of wasted here).
Aside from being an action-packed sequence with some delightful character moments, it perfectly reintroduced fans to every Avenger and caught them up with their arcs, like Black Widow being able to calm down the Hulk and Tony Stark developing new armor.
Wrong: Ultron’s Arc
As a villain, Ultron is too big to feel like a real threat. He plans to wipe out the entire human race to save the planet from the people destroying it. Too much is at stake, so the fight against Ultron fails to connect with the audience.
In the final battle, the Avengers don’t outwit Ultron or use a technique that was planted earlier in the script; they just blasted him with lasers and thunder and the Hulk until he was destroyed.
Right: James Spader’s Performance As Ultron
Ultron’s arc falls flat because he’s not written well enough to stand out as one of the MCU’s great villains like his predecessor Loki or his successor Thanos.
But James Spader gives a fantastic performance in the role and his voice work is truly chilling. He brings the same calm, collected creepiness to Ultron that he brought to roles like Red Reddington and Robert California, this time with a more sinister angle.
Wrong: Black Widow’s Arc
Nothing about Black Widow’s arc in Age of Ultron works. Her main purpose on the team is calming down the Hulk with a lullaby, a perfect metaphor for Marvel’s gender problem. She’s kidnapped by the bad guy in the second act and serves as a damsel in distress who needs to be rescued in the third.
Her romance with Bruce Banner came out of nowhere and has that horrible scene in which she compares herself to the monster in Banner just because she’s infertile.
Right: The After-Party
One of the great things about superhero comic books that don’t translate too well to superhero movies is the day-to-day lives of the heroes themselves. In comics, fans get to see what the heroes get up to in their spare time, whereas movies usually focus on their battles against world-ending threats and ultra-powerful supervillains.
But in Age of Ultron, fans got to see the daily lives of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, particularly during the party scene in Avengers Tower and the banter-laden after-party that follows.
Wrong: Quicksilver’s Razor-Thin Characterization
A couple of new superheroes got introduced into the fold in Age of Ultron, including Quicksilver, one of the rare MCU characters whose entire arc is confined to a single movie.
His sacrificial death failed to make a substantial impact because his characterization up to that point was razor-thin. It boils down to Quicksilver and Hawkeye teasing each other about what they do or do not see coming.
Right: The “Avengers, Assemble!” Tease
“Avengers, assemble!” is Captain America’s catchphrase in the comics. As the leader of the team, that’s what he says to gather Earth’s Mightiest Heroes together.
In the first Avengers movie, he didn’t say it. And he didn’t say it in the second one, either — in fact, he wouldn’t say it until the final battle of the fourth movie — but there was a delightful tease in Age of Ultron’s final moments as he begins to say it before being cut off as the end credits roll.
Wrong: Generic Final Battle
After delivering a heck of a final battle sequence in the first Avengers movie, Joss Whedon fell short with the final battle in the sequel. The Battle of Sokovia is a pretty generic set piece, with superheroes beating up robots to run out the clock.
Every great battle sequence has its own internal story structure, with rising action, increasingly complicated stakes, and a peak in the tension, but Age of Ultron’s final battle has none of that; it’s just a mess.
Right: Visiting Hawkeye’s Farm
Joss Whedon reportedly had to fight Marvel to keep the sequence in Age of Ultron in which the team stays at Hawkeye’s farm. It’s rare — and risky — for a superhero blockbuster to have a huge half-hour chunk right in the middle with no action, but this is one of the best scenes in the movie.
It gave fans a chance to see the Avengers in their off-time. Getting to know the characters intimately in scenes like this added layers of emotional substance to the action.
Wrong: Bridging The Gaps Between Other Movies
The main problem with Avengers: Age of Ultron is that it serves primarily to bridge the gaps between various other movies in the MCU. The plot takes a detour to the outskirts of Wakanda to introduce Ulysses Klaue ahead of Black Panther.
There's also Thor taking a bath to set up the Infinity Stones storyline and the Hulk vanishing off the face of the Earth to set up Thor: Ragnarok. Most of Age of Ultron’s plot points expose a crucial shortcoming in the cinematic universe model.