Where Avengers was lighthearted and triumphant, AoU was dark and disturbing, building on the main characters' already-established character flaws and using them as weapons against them, and to develop their characters further. Each of the main characters, save Hawkeye, were given visions by Scarlet Witch, before her and her brother's heel/face turn, showing them their nightmares. Bruce Banner is made into the monster again, leading to him turning down the affections of one of his friends and going off on his own again. Black Widow is shown visions of her past, reminding her of who she used to be and what she has done. Captain America is reminded of all that he has lost. Thor is shown his home as his society falls apart. As a prince who was once on a path of failure, this cannot be easy for him. And finally, Iron Man, who always thinks he can do everything himself, who is the only person who saw all that waits out in space when he went through the portal in the previous movie, sees the potential consequences if he fails to protect his friends. This is what leads him to create Ultron, after he discovers a conscious computer residing in the gem in Loki's staff. He just wants to protect life and the world, and his girlfriend, and his friends on the Avengers. It isn't his fault that he didn't understand what he was creating.
The creation of Ultron, who feels that humanity is the greatest threat to the planet, is immediately a point of contention between the members of the team, but they all understand that Tony was just trying to do what was best. They all have seen horrible things done for the right reasons, or at least reasons that they doer thought were right. It is why they are so willing to forgive Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, even though they begin the conflict working with Ultron against the Avengers, who they see as a genuine threat. These characters alone weren't too spectacular, but their change throughout the movie, and relationships with other characters made them stronger. Scarlet Witch had to decide if saving others was worth forgiving Tony Stark, whose company made the weapon which killed her parents, and was helped in her decision by the words of Hawkeye. Quicksilver immediately developed an interesting rivalry with Hawkeye. They were both brought into the fold through the actions of this character, who, like Hulk in the first movie, completely stole the show.
In fact, this was the movie's main strength. Ultron himself wasn't too strong a villain. He was interesting, but many of the things that he did and said seemed like really extreme versions of things that you might see Iron Man do or say. He was cool, and frightening, and well-performed, but he was nowhere near as good as Loki. And writer/directer Joss Whedon knew this. Instead of giving focus to Ultron more than was absolutely necessary, he made this movie about the heroes and their personal enemies, and it was a lot more effective a movie for it. Thanks to Whedon's writing, which has a flair for making ridiculous plot lines believable in a serious way (seriously, there are plenty of examples from Buffy alone), this movie even manages to largely balance the various set-ups present for the upcoming movies in the Cinematic Universe. There were obvious tie-ins to the upcoming Captain America: Civil War throughout this movie. In fact, the contention between Tony and the others in this movie could be considered stage one of the contention which will be present in that movie, which will break up the team. There was no Coulson sneaking off to retrieve Thor's Hammer stuck out like a sore thumb scene in this movie, unlike Iron Man 2 which had many scenes like this, and suffered from them greatly. The only scenes which reeked of set-up-itis were the scenes in Thor's visions which were clearly there to build up intrigue going into Thor: Ragnarok.
Even these scenes, however, worked in the film's advantage in the end. Thor goes seeking clarity in the wake of these visions, and the resulting process is what reveals to him that the stone in Loki's staff is the Mind Gem, one of the legendary Infinity Stones. This brings us to the best scene in the entire movie: the birth of Vision. Thor returns from his vision quest to find Tony trying again to create life. He plans to merge the body which Ultron intended to be his final form, with some of Ultron's own mind still inside, with the A.I. JARVIS, and the Mind Gem itself. Now Thor knows what this Gem is and how much potential for evil it possesses. He and tony fight, but the process continues, and before long Vision is born. He immediately proves himself to be as Ultron was intended to be: a defender of life, and a companion worthy of Thor's camaraderie. He repairs the divisions forming between the various Avengers just in time for the final battle to begin. Vision goes with them to this final battle, to confront Ultron, as willing to give his life for humanity as any of the others.
The final battle was interesting and spectacular, and something that I've never seen in an action movie before, at least not in this form. I won't give it away. I know there are spoilers in this review, but so far I've tried to keep them to things that could be derived from the trailers and even basic knowledge of the source material. This is not such a thing. It's intense, and gives the Avengers plenty of opportunities to prove that, despite the monsters living inside them, they are all what they choose to be, and they choose to be heroes. And that's the overlying theme here. It isn't that everyone has a dark side, which is what I thought coming out of this movie, it's that everyone has a choice in what to be. Some choose better than others. Widow chooses to be a hero, despite the fact that she sees herself as the biggest monster out of them all. Hulk chooses to believe that the monster in him is stronger than the man. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver choose to believe in Tony's choice to be a better man, and that choice saves the Avengers, and the world, but leads to tragedy.
Nothing will ever recapture what made Avengers so great. Nothing. This movie failed to do so, because it couldn't, and Joss Whedon, being the brilliant writer that he is, didn't even try. This movie already had a plethora of developed characters to work with, and it developed them even further, building upon their stories already in progress, and using those stories to drive this one. It was a character driven piece, in the truest sense, and it simply wouldn't have been as good had it not been. The action pieces in this movie were spectacular, but what I came out of the theater remembering most was the people, and their stories and relationships with one another. Like Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron is something unique amongst summer blockbusters, it just isn't unique in the same way, and it is better for it, earning an outstanding 9 out of 10.
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