Ranking Joss Whedon's Projects - From Worst To Best
8. Avengers: Age Of Ultron
To be totally fair, after the overwhelming success of The Avengers, it would be pretty much impossible for its sequel to live up to the unfairly high expectations set for it. As it stands, The Avengers: Age of Ultron is fine, certainly better than many of the other superhero films floating out there. But it somehow manages to capture the magic of the first Avengers film.
Making Tony Stark patently unlikable may have been a major misstep in the process, and the introduction of the bizarrely charming Maximoff twins and the fascinating Vision weren't quite enough to make up for it. Also...ScarJo and Mark Ruffalo? Kind of out of nowhere. The random aside with Hawkeye's family was a nice breath of fresh air, though.
The budget's there, the acting is solid, but there's just something lacking in the execution. It's really asking a lot to expect it to surpass the first, though. Sure, there are Godfather: Part II's and Empire Strikes Back's out there, but they're really the exception that proves the rule.