Avengers: Age of Ultron

Our Review

The overstuffed one. Joss Whedon’s second and last Avengers film tries to advance every character, launch three new ones, set up two future movies, and stage a doomsday finale, and the strain shows in every seam. It is still a good time for two hours, and then you feel the hour you were owed go up in Sokovia.

James Spader’s Ultron is the film’s best idea, a villain who inherited his maker’s snark without his conscience, all silky menace and wounded ego. He is also never scary, a quipping ghost in the machine, which drains the threat. The party scene, the team taking turns lifting the hammer, is the warmest single scene in the franchise’s middle era, and the farm interlude gives the film a breather it needed more of.

Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor Johnson arrive as the Maximoff twins, one of whom the movie can barely fit. The Hulk versus Hulkbuster smackdown delivers the spectacle quota. The climax, a city lifted into the sky by a doomsday device, is Marvel’s first real case of finale fatigue, the moment the formula started visibly creaking.

Our score: 6/10. Fun, crowded, and faintly exhausting.