AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey jun, Chris Evans, James Spader, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Andy Serkis, Stellan Skarsgard
Rating: (M)
Four stars (out of five)
In hindsight, I think I was a bit hard on it: I gave it only three stars and complained that the plot was a rather generic, but I remember it fondly for consistent acting and interesting interactions between the superheroes.
This time the ''A team'' gets to learn more about each other and actually confront something new. We start with the team tracking down Loki's staff and before Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returns it to his home planet, he lets Tony Stark (Robert Downey jun) run some diagnostic tests on it.
It turns out to be even more interesting than your average piece of alien kit, and Tony comes up with the idea of using it to kickstart his Ultron defence project to keep Earth safe from alien invasion.
Ultron then gains its own consciousness and refuses to bend to Stark's will (it would be a mighty short movie if it all worked out as planned). Instead it comes up with its own destructive way to save Earth.
The team has to work together to wrestle control back from Ultron, all the while being rather annoyed with Stark for causing the problem in the first place.
Once again this is well acted with interesting interactions among the characters. Where it falls down is the fight scenes, which tend go on and on without much variation.
- Christine Powley
