Avengers: Age of Ultron

Essential on plot and the weakest Avengers film. It introduces Vision, Wanda and Pietro, it creates the rift that Civil War detonates, and it is visibly a film being pulled in several directions by a slate.

Joss Whedon has spoken since about how difficult the production was and about material he fought to keep and lost, including a long sequence in a cave that survives in a strange, disconnected form. The film has to introduce three characters, service six, set up two sequels, visit four countries and have an opinion about artificial intelligence, in a hundred and forty-one minutes.

What works is the farm. The middle act stops the plot entirely, puts the team in a safe house belonging to a character nobody knew had a family, and lets them be tired and frightened in a kitchen. It was reportedly the sequence Whedon defended hardest and it is the best thing in the film.

James Spader's Ultron is funny and underwritten, a machine with his creator's personality that the film never quite commits to as a tragedy. The Hulk and Iron Man fight in Johannesburg is the moment the franchise's property damage became a plot point, which the next film is about.