The Avengers: Age of Ultron spoiler-free review

NOTE: We decided to make this review as close to spoiler-free as possible for anyone who hasn't had a chance to see AOU yet, but there will be mentions of plot points that may have escaped you if you haven't kept up with all the TV spots and trailers. Proceed with caution!

Well. I'm not quite sure where to start. I would have liked to have seen the movie again before tackling a review of it, because it's just that big. That part wasn't surprising; I knew the run time, and how many characters Joss Whedon was juggling, and all the connections that needed to be made for Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. Having read a lot of reviews that said Whedon had "Spiderman threed" AOU (yup, that really is a term now) with too many plot points and bad guys, I went into the theater hopeful but wary. I wanted to keep my expectations reasonable.

I'm happy to announce that Age of Ultron not only met, but exceeded my expectations. It had its flaws, certainly - and everyone I've talked to has their own idea of exactly what those flaws were. The ones that seem to be universally agreed upon are ones that, on the whole, are balanced by what Whedon did right.

Age of Ultron begins with a punch, but the action isn't gratuitous. I get really burned out on action that's not ultimately contributing to the forward motion of a story. (i.e. I can't do Transformers movies. Or Nicolas Cage films.) That's because I'm a sucker for character arcs; I could probably watch a whole movie about a conversation between Thor and Captain America so long as it was well-written. For me, Age of Ultron scratched both those itches. The action that launches the movie isn't just eye candy (though be sure to watch for the super long shot that hearkens back to the first Avengers , where you see the whole team doing their thing in one cut). Instead, it unwinds into the point that begins the next two and a half hours of the movie. That's how the action is throughout: intentional, and not brain-numbing.

As for the treatment of our beloved Avengers themselves...

Whedon had four important new characters to unfold, plus a handful of side characters, plus a bundle of cameos, on top of the original Avengers themselves. And he did well. Not perfect, but well.

If you're a Hawkeye fan, you'll be surprised but not disappointed; he gets plenty of attention and some great one-liners, and I feel like I know him so much better for it. Tony is unrepentantly Tony, but a decision he and Bruce make at the start of the movie results in consequences that haunt and challenge him differently than he was haunted and challenged in Iron Man 3. I just had to remind myself that Tony's character mantra seems to be "Three steps forward, two steps back", instead of griping over why he hadn't made more progress. Over the course of the movie, you get to see Captain America settle into his role as leader in a really believable progression that does a nice job setting up for the Civil War. Bruce struggles maybe the most, and I really would have liked more of a window into his head, like we're given for the different Avengers....but that might just be because I love Ruffalo's "gracefully awkward" treatment of the character. We get to see a new side to Natasha that you'll definitely hear people complaining about, but I appreciated it; it made her so much more human. Although I really do feel like she needs and deserves her own movie to finish unpacking what Whedon started. Out of all the Avengers, I feel like Thor's part was the most rushed, but I'm guessing a few of his scenes were cut and will show up in the extended edition, since Joss confirmed that Tom Hiddleston's Loki cameo was chopped. As for the addition of the Maximoff twins to the team, I went from feeling like they were going to have to work really hard to impress me to being way too attached. Hawkeye and Quicksilver's interactions are my favorites, and no, I didn't see that coming.

Ultron's rise is incredibly creepy, and yet his character's Tonyesque snark was definitely a highlight (if a little heavy-handed at times).

Lastly, The Vision. My one disappointment was that he didn't seem as powerful as he should have been, considering his tie to the film's infinity stone. But honestly, Paul Bettany's performance makes up for it. Vision is a graceful character, full of dynamic and potential, and I can only hope we get to see him unpacked in future Marvel flicks.

The movie wraps on just the right note of uncertainty. I was kind of dreading the end, because I assumed Whedon would leave me in turmoil in setting up for Civil Wars, but I walked out of the theater satisfied and not even wringing my hands. And the end credit scene...yeah. Big pay-off.

So what did Whedon do wrong? Considering how much ground he had to cover with so many characters with so much background and so many expectations to meet...not nearly as much as he could have. What did he do right? He made us care about characters we doubted. He balanced action and the exposition in a MAMMOTH story. He connected a dozen dots and drew a few more without losing us. He didn't lie about the darkness the team faces, but he peppered it with lines that made us laugh in spite of them.

All in all, go see this movie, and instead of not letting yourself enjoy it because of what it isn't, appreciate it for what it is. Which, in a world of sequels that can't stand up to their predecessor, is really, really good.