Director: Joss Whedon

Screenplay: Joss Whedon

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo

Rating: 5⁄5

There’s a lot to be said about sequels and their relationships to their predecessors, and it’s almost all been said before. So with the usual preamble resoundingly skipped, the heart of the matter is this: _Age of Ultron _very much shares the traditional trait of being a ‘darker’ sequel. It sheds the bombast and excitement of the first _Avengers _film for something more intense, more personal, and ultimately more fulfilling.

The first film was very slow-burn, taking its time to piece the team together – often by pitting the various Avengers against each other first – before everything comes together in a triumphant climactic battle in the middle of New York. _Age of Ultron _gets all of that business out of the way immediately, opening in medias reswith the Avengers’ assault on Baron von Strucker’s mountainous fortress (last seen in the post-credits stinger for The Winter Soldier).

Within the first few minutes, there’s a new twist on _that _shot from the last film, as well as a chance to see all of the Avengers in action – including the new additions to the equation, Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elisabeth Olsen), although they’re not called that here. Not yet. This early on, they’re still Pietr and Wanda Maximoff – and they’re on the opposite side to the Avengers. Any fears that this version of Quicksilver wouldn’t match up to the one seen in last year’s _X-Men: Days of Future Past _can be laid to rest; while he doesn’t quite have any one moment that matches up to his X-Men counterpart’s starring moment, this Quicksilver has a more prolonged role in the storyline to compensate.

Naturally this first battle is won by the Avengers – although the Maximoffs are still at large – and it appears that Hydra may have finally been put to rest, and the team can relax in style. At the party, Whedon’s typical quick-witted interplay comes to the fore, providing a stream of laughs while also showing that these are all characters he understands. A contest to try and lift Thor’s hammer quickly lays out the traits of the group alongside a healthy dose of comedy.

And then Ultron (played magnificently by James Spader) arrives to ruin it all.

Ultron is a fascinating villain. Despite the film’s hefty running time, and his presence in most of it, he still feels weirdly under-used. Created by Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) in an attempt to craft a global peace-keeping program, he definitely has some daddy issues alongside his need to see the human race driven to extinction for its own good. His reasoning behind this – and therefore his entire motivation for doing anything in the film – doesn’t feel as fully explored or fleshed out as it could be. It’s acknowledged a lot, but not really discussed. The daddy issues only really get one moment of being dealt with – and it’s a glorious one that reveals volumes about Ultron as a character, which is why it’s a shame there aren’t more of them. But there’s always an underlying tension to the whole thing, with Ultron very much being his father’s creation: even his speech rhythms subconsciously echo Stark’s, making for some entertaining subversion of standard villain tropes.

But while the father-son dynamic of Stark and Ultron doesn’t fully get its due, the relationships between other characters are almost all given a chance to shine. Vision in particular gets his own father-son storyline with Ultron – one which has a great deal more resolution than Ultron and Stark’s – and it’s one that lands with genuine meaning.

More generally, where _Avengers _had to do a lot of leg work in just getting everyone together, _Age of Ultron _starts off with pretty much everyone involved (at least early on) being a known quantity. With that, it has plenty of room to go off and explore the bonds between characters, and toy with just how they bounce off one another. The connection between Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Bruce Banner/the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) seems to have only grown since the first film – not something anyone really seems to have seen coming – while the ideological conflicts between Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man start to simmer nicely before Civil War.

_Age of Ultron _is a hugely character-driven piece, much more so than its predecessor (and arguably the other Marvel films). It’s to Whedon’s enormous credit that it never loses any entertainment value for that, and it feels like a much richer film for it. _Avengers _occasionally stumbled in its handling of characters, often feeling like the Tony Stark Show, to the detriment of smaller characters like Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). Which is probably why it’s such a joy here that Hawkeye is the absolute heart of Age of Ultron.

It’s hard to put into words just how much Hawkeye _matters _to this film. Almost all of the humanity either comes from or is directly related to him, and it gives the film the vast majority of its emotional beats. Discussions on how mere mortals like Hawkeye are working alongside these gods (literally, in one case) to become something genuinely heroic, simply because it’s the day job. Inspiring speeches on duty and sacrifice. Musings on family, and what being an Avenger means for that. It all stems from Hawkeye. And it is wonderful.

The only thing that stops him from stealing the entire show is The Vision (Paul Bettany). The Vision is an absolute picture – he looks deliriously weird, and it feels like he marks the point where the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally tips over into the kooky, magical space drama side of things.

Guardians of the Galaxy was the first film to really embrace that non-Earth-bound side of the universe, and it was a resounding success, so it’s not exactly an original claim, but the arrival of Vision heralds the dawn of Phase 3. You can feel the shift happening around him, as the dark, broody Phase 2 gives way to the gloriously insane, enormous in scale Phase 3.

The film embraces Vision’s weirdness with outright glee, and he’s easily the best addition to the franchise from this film. That shift between MCU Phases doesn’t come without its simultaneous upsides and downsides, however. There are multiple references to future storylines that feel more than a little shoe-horned in: Thor’s side-plot with the Infinity Stones doesn’t do a huge amount beyond introduce them (once more) as a concept, and vaguely set up _Ragnarok _in the process (in its defence, it does at least get closure of sorts, so it’s not exactly an unresolved plot-thread that doesn’t work in-film).

The various mentions of Wakanda (the home of Black Panther) appear in a scene that feels like it might well have been cut if it didn’t need to exist to set up those plot threads – although since that scene then leads to Ultron’s daddy issues outburst, it’s a fairly good one to have kept it. One of the main disappointments from the film actually comes from the absence of a future film set-up: FX plates were shot for an appearance by Captain Marvel in the film’s final scene, but she was ultimately switched out for another (unnamed here) character.

All this talk of character beats and emotions doesn’t mean _Age of Ultron _doesn’t still deliver on the action. It does, it really does. The special effects are second to none, the action is (mostly) wonderfully shot (it occasionally gets a little choppy and confusing, a complaint that never held for the first film), and it makes great use of all the characters. There’s no standout moment – nothing like “Hulk… smash” or Iron Man’s adventure into the portal – but there are plenty of cheer-worthy segments (one hit in particular triggered the audience I was with to burst out into cheering and applause), and it’s still a visual treat.

Whedon knows that what was magical once won’t necessarily be magical again, and he’s delivered a different film that satisfies those needs while also providing something more. It’s not as euphoric as Avengers, but that may well have been asking the impossible, and the unnecessary. In place of the euphoria comes something more mature and more meaningful. Where there was once only the fight, now there is a reason to keep fighting. You can’t ask for more than that.

But what about the 3D?

As with almost every major blockbuster being released these days, Age of Ultron has been released in both 3D and 2D. But is the extra spend on the 3D worth it?

Unless you’re heading to see the film in IMAX, not really. The 3D does get some use, but it’s nothing special and its presence doesn’t really add to the film in any noticeable way.

The visual are plenty sumptuous enough without it.