The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

  Ok, it's been a couple of days.  I'm hoping everyone (yes, world.  Everyone.) has seen Age of Ultron by now.  If not, what are you waiting for?  Are you scared of disappointment?  Well, I can tell you that it is not the same level as The Avengers.  How could it be?  Even the director, Joss Whedon, said that they struggled with comparisons themselves.  That's why there's no post-credit sequence on this one.  They couldn't top the shwarma scene from the first one and they didn't want to make people sit through ten minutes of credits just to be disappointed.  I'm sure there were people who sat through the credits anyway, but there's just no helping sometimes.

After a couple of years, The Avengers have finally gotten a lead on the location of Loki's staff.  It's being used by Baron Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann) to change people and give them powers.  His two success stories are a pair of twins, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who have their own agenda to pursue.  Wanda plants a suggestion in Tony Stark's (Robert Downey, Jr.) mind, playing on his residual fears of alien invasion.  He sweet-talks Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) into helping him use the staff to create a genuine artificial intelligence called Ultron (James Spader).  Unfortunately, beta testing with AI is notoriously difficult as Ultron immediately decides that the best way to keep the planet safe is to annihilate it.  The team, already beginning to show stress fractures after Tony's foray off the reservation, tries to pin down the elusive creature only to be set back time and again by Wanda's mental manipulations.  Except for Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) who noped the fuck out of mind control after being Loki's bitch.

Joss Whedon sets the bar so high for ensemble movies.  He manages to give everyone in the cast a big enough role to appeal to each one's fanbase without sacrificing plot or pacing.  Even the downbeats, like when the Avengers retreat to a safe house to lick their wounds, manage to pack in enough character development that it never feels like a step back.  Plus, he also set up Black Panther, Captain America:  Civil War, Thor:  Ragnarok and The Avengers:  Infinity War.  That's damn impressive.

Ugh, I feel like I could talk about this movie forever.  I could do a whole post on how awesome James Spader is as Ultron, on the adorable yet improbable Black Widow love story, and on the totally underrated Hawkeye finally getting a chance to shine.  But I'm going to restrain myself and let you all make your own opinions.  So just go see it already.