Avengers: Age of Ultron (again, more, still no spoilers)

What? I like retro-styled posters.

So, I dashed off my initial thoughts on my phone while I waited for a train, and after a bit of time to ruminate I wanted to put up something a little more substantial, and with a picture. Still no spoilers for anything not in the trailer.

Age of Ultron is a colossal beast of a movie. It's not long like a Peter Jackson movie, but it is absolutely packed with stuff, with barely a chance to breathe. As a consequence, probably its greatest flaw is that it suffers from a shortage of weighty character beats, just because it's so busy fitting in all the plot and action. Given the pace of the film it never really feels its length, so for my money it could have stood to run a bit longer if it made for a more satisfying pay off to the intra-team tensions which make up the emotional core of this movie. As it is, it's not bad, just quick, as the actress said to Tony Stark.

In among all that action, perhaps the most interesting thing to me is that Age of Ultron is a film about change, specifically about exactly the kind of shifting baselines that superheroes should bring about, but rarely do. The technology of the MCU is constantly advancing, such that the Iron Man suit - unbelievably advanced when it was introduced - is now the base level for the Avengers gear, and Pepper Potts is certainly no longer slipping thumb drives into the USB ports of anything so pedestrian as a desktop. Moreover, within a few minutes of the start of the film, the Avengers are noting the presence of enemy 'enhanced' as if that just happens. Truly, this is the Age of Miracles.

Once more, Tony Stark gets the lion's part of the film, although it is less marked than in Assemble* and the ensemble elements are still strong. I think the balance may well have been off in Assemble largely because Robert Downey Jr was the most experienced player, and that the others are just better at working with him here. Everyone gets their moments; for me Hawkeye - very much the also-ran of Assemble - gets some of the stronger character work, and newcomers Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch get a pretty good intro (not incidentally, these three get to work off each other quite a bit.) Thor and Stark both suffer from the absence of their love interests due to budgetary concerns, hinting at romantic troubles that are probably not intended.

The effects are solid, and the film takes to heart the lesson to 'go big or go home', topping the finale of Assemble in terms of threat if not of scale and spectacle. If I'm honest, I'd quite like to see something lower key for the next installment - more Winter Soldier than Dark World, perhaps - but given that it's set to be Civil War and feature everyone without a solo film coming out in the same year, I don't think we're going to get much in the way of restraint. The sound effects are spectacular, but never swamped out the dialogue, and the music - mostly composed by Brian Tyler, with a variation on Alan Silvestri's original Avengers' theme provided by Danny Elfman** - is top drawer superheroic brass.

Script and humour is always important in the MCU, and it's all looking good in this department. There is one moment where the humour jars with a generally sombre scene, and I felt that Whedon could have stood to go a minute without a quip, but overall the humour serves rather than smothers the drama. The players are as solid as ever, with a much-expanded role for Paul Bettany and James Spader turning in a typically excellent performance as the eponymous avuncular psychopath, making a fine meal of the nutritious script.

The film does contain a few head-scratching moments, of which in the name of spoilers I can only really say 'pool', 'lonely', 'nexus' and 'America Fuck Yeah!@ Actually, in regard to the last one, as it comes up within the opening minutes, I will just wonder on what authority the Avengers operate in Eastern Europe and South Africa. They're basically an American (well, Asgardo-American) team. Weirdly, I am much happier with the idea that they do it as loose-cannon private citizens than as part of anything US organised, although hints in the film suggest that Maria Hill's job may be pretty much making sure various world authorities are cool with the Avengers dropping in for a firefight.

Overall however, I think that the film's biggest problem is Avengers Assemble. The first Avengers movie was so successful, the response to it so overwhelmingly positive, and the film itself so significantly different to anything preceding it that doing the whole thing again was always going to labour under the weight of expectation. I don't know if, objectively, Ultron is as good a film as Assemble, but I do know that being just as good would never have been enough.

* Or just Avengers if you're not in the UK, but Assemble and Ultron are convenient shorthands.
** A musical collaboration between Brian Tyler, Danny Elfman and Alan Silvestri; truly we are living in a golden age.