This comment was posted to reddit on May 10, 2015 at 10:50 pm and was deleted within 23 hour(s) and 59 minutes.
Half in the Bag: Avengers: Age of Ultron
SPOILERS.
Stuff I thought about the movie that they didn't mention:
I liked that Kick Ass and Third Olsen were a married couple in Godzilla, 'cause of the weird somewhat incestual relationship those characters have in the comics. I get why they didn't really play up that relationship in the movie though.
Hawkeye and Black Widow were used appropriately in action scenes in The Avengers. They were not in Age of Ultron. Suddenly Iron Man drones (possibly controlled by an intelligence, not just drones) are beatable by a peashooting .22 pistol and some arrows. And not just one of them - dozens of them.
No Squirrel Girl in the final New Avengers team.
Ultron never seemed like a legit threat. He was a bit spooky when he first appeared in his janky broken robot body but he never hurt anyone in the build up to the climax. He was mostly played as a comedic Tony-esque character with an obfuscated goal ("Humans... EVOLVE!!!"). Even when he finally does hurt someone it's in a very impersonal manner (flying a plane). His evil plan is only revealed right at the end while the Avengers are there to prevent it. And they pretty easily do because they're a massively powered super team against robots that can be shot by a baby pistol and die. Just one of them could effectively guard the kill switch because their opponents were so weak.
In that vein: Legally Not Scarlet Witch felt like a much bigger threat. The trailer goes on about Ultron tearing them apart... but he doesn't, Legally Not Scarlet Witch does. She was the one who overpowered the majority of the team when they fought. She's the one that Inceptioned Tony into wanting to make Ultron II. She's the one that made Thor go on walkabout. She's the one that got Hulk to run wild and eventually run away. And it's not just psychological powers, she's also as physically powerful as them and could herself easily overpower lots of robots and probably Ultron.
They sort of covered this but the second we went to Hawkeye's farm I thought he was going to die but by the time they showed him looking at his family picture before the big final sequence I'd changed my mind, 'cause they were telegraphing it too hard. Whedon is known for killing off characters, especially happy ones. He was playing with the trope about himself.