The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

[Stewball]

The franchise keeps up the good work with excellent humor, clever plot devices and even some semi-in depth dialogue. It does get a bit over-busy or slow at times, but it is 2 1/2 hours after all. Casting James Spader as the voice of Ultron was excellent; one of the most distinctive voices in show business, after James Earl Jones.

[Filligan]

While the film is fun and Spader is as terrific as expected, the film makes the mistake of looking too far ahead in its franchise than focusing on itself. The first Avengers felt like a destination, this Avengers feels like the step to yet another series of films while simultaneously being unable to raise the stakes of the first Avengers. Zoom out out Age of Ultron and inspect the franchise up to this point and all Age of Ultron does is introduce new characters. Yippee.

[Stewball]

While the film is fun and Spader is as terrific as expected, the film makes the mistake of looking too far ahead in its franchise than focusing on itself. The first Avengers felt like a destination, this Avengers feels like the step to yet another series of films while simultaneously being unable to raise the stakes of the first Avengers. Zoom out out Age of Ultron and inspect the franchise up to this point and all Age of Ultron does is introduce new characters. Yippee.

Humor, plot devices and dialogue is all any of the superheros has to offer, really. Action in most (all!) of them has been overrated--and when that's all you've got (*cough* F&F7 *cough*) it's flat as hell. What was the last REALLY good action flick that had realistic, not fantasy, action? Probably Zero Dark Thirty, American Sniper, End of Watch or Nightcrawler--the latter being the only non-military-police drama. WTF!

[Filligan]

Uh, you and I have very different definitions of action films. Action can be a genre, but it's not the primary genre in any of those films, and thus I wouldn't call them action films. Well, maybe End of Watch. The last great action film I saw was probably Skyfall.

But more to the point, I was totally down with what the first Avengers did, and I didn't find any of its action flat or overrated, nor did I think action was all the film had going for it. Age of Ultron needed to take that framework and expand upon it, but it didn't. Instead it retraced the first Avengers' footsteps and spent as much time as possible setting up new films rather than focusing on being a self-contained fun film. Not that Age of Ultron isn't fun, but it has absolutely no tension or stakes to speak of because it's all about heeeeere's what we're doing for the next ten years, whereas the first Avengers actually was fairly self-contained and did have tension and was all the better for it.

[Barthalen]

the film makes the mistake of looking too far ahead in its franchise than focusing on itself.

I completely agree! While the first Avengers had its place in finally getting the pieces together for larger scale threats and fun banter between the characters, this second one kinda... did the same thing. That wouldn't be that big a deal if this movie wasn't supposed to be a part of something greater and so it feels like it was just spinning its wheels.
Winter Soldier has become my benchmark for what a Marvel movie can achieve in pushing the setting in a new direction. Guardians o.t. Galaxy fleshed out the space-side of things more. Compared to that, Avengers 2 sets up Wakanda, some Hulk stuff and adds a few new characters. It really feels like it was set in stone with which status quo the movie had to end, and as a result, what actually happened feels pretty inconsequential.

The movie was kinda fun, don't get me wrong, but I felt disappointed at it just being another big, loud, superhero actioner.

[Stewball]

Uh, you and I have very different definitions of action films. Action can be a genre, but it's not the primary genre in any of those films, and thus I wouldn't call them action films. Well, maybe End of Watch.

Does action have to be the primary element to be termed an action film? Where do you draw the line, 50%, and more importantly, why? Is fantasy a necessary requirement to be a "true" action film?

[Filligan]

I'm really not that interested in talking about what merits genre labels, but more about the content of my original post.

[Stewball]

Well, you brought it up. Typical.

[Filligan]

No, actually, I didn't. The tangent began when you decided to shrug off my thoughts and start a conversation about good action flicks in general. Despite that, I continued to try to focus the conversation on the actual film again, but you were still prattling on about genres and I got bored. It's not a bad topic, it's just not the one I came here to discuss.

[ShogunRua]

I read a very good, enjoyable review of the flick here;

http://filthycritic.com/