Avengers: Age of Ultron Review

First off, I am disappointed by the lack of any members of SHIELD Team 616 appearing in this movie. I'm not sure what they would have contributed to the plot, but Marvel can't keep them off the big screen forever. If Marvel were to put the SHIELD team in a future movie, it'd probably be an Earth-based one and they'd want to avoid stealing attention from any new characters that were introduced. So the only places they could appear are Cap 3, Infinity War, and Inhumans. Civil War and Infinity War seem pretty crowded, especially with the rumors that the Defenders are going to appear in Infinity War 2. I might just go on a genocidal rampage if Chloe Bennet doesn't get a leading role in Inhumans. Skye's arguably more of a main character in Agents of SHIELD than Coulson is and she's the one who connected the audience to the Inhumans.

Literally no part of this plot would have happened if Coulson hadn't tipped Maria off to the location of the scepter. Ultron only came about because Tony hijacked the AI from inside the Mind Gem. He wouldn't have gotten his hands on the gem if Coulson hadn't tipped the Avengers off to the location of Loki's scepter. This actually leads me to wonder if the Avengers know where that information came from. They would know Maria gave it to them, but do they know she got it from Coulson? If they do know he's alive, there was no indication of it in the movie.

The Avengers are now aware that something is up with the infinity stones. Thor said that four have know come into play in the past few years, which is too many to be a coincidence. To count them off, we have the Tessaract in Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers, the Aether in Thor: The Dark World, the Mind Gem in this film and The Avengers, and the Power Stone in Guardians of the Galaxy. It appears that Thor knows about the events of Guardians of the Galaxy, which means either there's some sort of communication going on between Nova Corps and Asgard or Heimdall saw the use of an infinity stone and informed Odin and Thor.

The mid-credits scene is very ominous. Thanos has stepped up his game to acquire the infinity stones and will probably be going after one in the next space-based movie (I mean, they can't all be on Earth). The only two such movie between now and Infinity War are Thor: Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy 2. With two gems left to go, I'm predicting one each. In Norse mythology, Ragnarok is the day of reckoning for the gods of Asgard. Something with time travel capabilities could easily bring a civilization such as the Asgardians to their knees. I would love to the movie to be a Doctor Who crossover with the Time Gem turning out to be the Key to Time, but I don't think that's going to happen (someone write fan fic of it anyway, please). The other remaining gem is the soul gem, but I'm not sure how that would factor into Guardians of the Galaxy.

This movie cancels out the leading theory for why the Black Panther makes an appearance in Captain America: Civil War. In some of the promo material released for this movie there was an image of Steve's broken shield. Fans figured Ultron destroyed it and Steve will venture to Wakanda in the upcoming movie to get more vibranium. Well, it turns out the shield was only broken in a hallucination Tony suffered at the hands of Wanda. Marvel has confirmed that T'Challa will be appearing in the movie, so my guess is that Steve's hunt for Bucky will somehow lead him to Wakanda. Either that, or T'Challa wants the Avengers to make up for them damage his kingdom suffered during the fight with the Hulk.