The second all-star Avengers adventure is decidedly less effective than the first one, though they share many of the same characteristics.  Most interestingly to me, this is the third 2015 movie to explore sentient Artificial Intelligence, and the only one which positively predicts that AI will attempt to depose humanity in the near future.  It’s a possibility in the other scenarios (Chappie, Ex Machina), but here it is presented as a done deal.

Joss Whedon’s film is populated with more than a dozen main characters, and I have problems with two of them.  According to Whedon’s script, Ultron’s ascendance is due to Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.).  Stark’s creation of Ultron is based on a need to protect the Earth from outside forces (like in the first movie), but Stark’s blindness of Ultron’s danger is never convincing to me.  It doesn’t jibe with the Iron Man movies, where he is thoughtfully reckless.  Here, he seems obsessedly reckless; he doesn’t seem like the same guy.  And Ultron is voiced by James Spader at his smarmiest; it’s far too cartoonish to be effective.  Better if Ultron had been completely stern and straight with no sense of humor at all.

As an action movie this is acceptable, if not spectacular.  I’m tired of fighting scenes that fly by so fast you can’t tell who is doing what.  The coolest moment is when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) comes to the rescue in the flying aircraft carrier as the town is being lifted into the sky.  But other material is problematic to me.  Shouldn’t Ultron’s robots be difficult to destroy?  What are they doing there except to fight the superheroes?  Why is Jarvis / Vision all good and Ultron all bad?  There’s more, but I can’t remember all the qualms I had about this silliness.  At least Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) was finally given a character to inhabit.  It’s nice to see an Avenger with a family and a real home life.

These superhero movies thrill millions of people and make billions of dollars, and that’s fine.  I’m not against them as a genre; I just have little interest, especially when they disappoint me.  In this case, more is less.  Too many characters, too much mayhem, not enough character development.  I liked the first Avengers, but I cannot recall many specifics about it now, three years later.  I’ve already begun to forget this movie, just one week later.  ☆ ☆.  12 May 2015.