Avengers: Age of Ultron (4½ Stars)

I'm continuing with my Easter Marvel films session. If I watch "Age of Ultron" today and "Ant-Man" tomorrow, that means I shall have watched the 9th, 11th and 12th films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I skipped the 10th film, "Guardians of the Galaxy", but that's not a problem because it's not in the continuity of the Earth-based Marvel films. As far as I know the Guardians and the Avengers won't meet each other until "Avengers: Infinity War", the 19th film in the MCU.

After watching the film today I realised that the MCU's version of Vision has the same characteristics as his counterpart in the comics, even though he has different powers and a different origin. It seems that the MCU Vision is supposed to be a combination of the Vision and Adam Warlock. In the comics both characters are placid philosophers, but the difference is that Adam Warlock is plagued by self-doubt and guilt, emotions lacking from the Vision. The only inner torment felt by the Vision was regret that he wasn't a human, as brought to a head in Avengers #58, "Even an android can cry", considered to be one of the best comics ever written.

Yesterday I watched "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and I made a few remarks about the budding romance between Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers. I wondered how it would continue. Now I have my answer. It doesn't continue at all. In "Age of Ultron" her only interest is in Bruce Banner. It seems that Steve's kiss wasn't good enough to keep her interest.

I also asked whether Natasha was ever referred to as the Black Widow, and I found an answer in this film. In one of the early scenes a fellow Avenger (off-screen, but I believe it was Captain America) calls her Widow (without "Black"). That's a good enough answer.

Google has introduced an annoying new limitation. The length of a post's labels, including the spaces, isn't allowed to exceed 200 characters. I've already reviewed this film before, and I wanted to copy the labels unchanged from this post, but I got an error message. The length of the labels is 240 characters. That means I have to remove at least three actor names from my new post. I've removed Stan Lee, Josh Brolin and Stellan Skarsgard, because they have the shortest screen time in the film. That brings me down to 198 characters. I'll try to re-add them later in the posts list without going via the editor. That might work. If you see the three missing labels when you read my post you'll know that I succeeded.

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