So, the Avenger's (non-spoilers in original comment)

[The Curmudgeon]

I was half way through the Avenger's: Age of Ultron when I began thinking how big of a "thing" this whole Marvel series is, and it's amazing how quickly and easily the movie going masses have embraced the whole thing. An entire series of interlocking movies, connecting and continuing exactly like the comic books they've come from. It really is something special.

The movies have been SO successful you can almost expect (and forgive) them for half-assing it in one film to just get to the good shit in the next movie (cough Iron Man 3 cough), but, thankfully, the new Avenger's movie hits on both barrels. Plenty of eye-popping action visuals, great dialogue, and an AWESOME villain in Spader's weird, dis-jointed and ultra menacing Ultron. It's also nice to see that the film really gives time to let the characters develop and get more personalities behind the suits.

Everything is set nicely up for the new Captain America and Thor movies. Long may it continue.

[trashcanman]

Cap 3 is looking to be the biggest one yet. Sadly, I'm rating Avengers 2 a mere "good" instead of the "mind-blowingly awesome" I was counting on, but it was far from a waste of time. And yeah, Ultron is the best super villain since Ledger's Joker easily. I kind of love that a significant number of film critics didn't have a clue what his motivation was. It was there, but you had to read between the lines a little because part of what made Ultron such a cool and interesting villain was that he wanted everybody to understand his motivations, but refused to spell it out for them.

Also, fun fact: Joss Whedon deleted his Twitter account in the wake of angry feminist hate including death threats and actual offers to fight him over Stark's "prima nocta" joke, the Banner/Widow pairing, and a misunderstanding of Widow's line about being "a monster" as suggesting that all childless women are monsters among some charges that appear to be made up. See if you can make it to the end of this sampling with a shred of faith in humanity left. I failed.

storify.com/Astojap/wehdon-twitter-hate

People are now suggesting that Ultron's genocidal motives came about while he was in the internet witnessing this sort of human insanity. It kind of makes him the tragic hero when you look at it that way.

[The Curmudgeon]

Sigh. Yeah, I'd heard about some of this shit (the Black Widow being a "damsel in distress", despite the fact she kicked ass for pretty much the rest of the movie). OK, I can see why some humourless Twitter dicks would take offence to the "prima nocta" comment, but you need to consider that a) it's Tony Stark, who has been portrayed as a womanizing, drinking playboy for four movies so far, so that's exactly the sort of joke (read "JOKE") his character would make and b) if you're that fucking over sensitive, stop watching everything and get off the internet. If Ultron had been filled with half the pointless, self-indulgent petulance and fake rage that Twitter is built on he'd have been fucking unstoppable.

So what disappointed you about the film, Trash?

[trashcanman]

It was just good instead of great overall. Amazing action scenes, but the characterizations weren't nearly as good as they were the first time out. I wasn't really feeling Natasha and Banner as a couple, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's motivations weren't ever really clear, the whole floating city thing was just kind of "meh" as far as epic set pieces go; it just kind of felt to me that Whedon was kind of half-assing the whole thing. Like he came up with this awesome version of a classic villain and these incredible action scenes, threw in some quips and nerd bait references, and then just got tired of the whole project before he could completely tie it all together.