AVENGERS Helmer Joss Whedon Admits He Didn't Know What To Do With Thanos; Praises INFINITY WAR Directors

@ODanil - Agreed. Not sure why some folks thought it underdelivered. It's top 5 in the MCU for me. And well above the first Avengers.

@Tonic24k - I don't know if it's super underrated, but the hate makes no sense to me.

It's like the response everyone seemed to have to Gotg vol 2, or even Kingsman 2, where neither is necessarily a worse film, but since there's quite a bit of the same, people weren't as blown away by the second helping.

That being said, I actually do think the overall story for Ultron is better than A1, since A1 has a thinner plot than all but a few other mcu entries. Not complaining about A1, I loved it, but it was necessary to keep the plot simple to spoonfeed the concept to the general audience.

We've all seen what happens when the story doesn't make itself easy to follow for newcomers, or tries too hard to, or has bad marketing... (justice league and the defenders).

@Tonic24k - Here's what I didn't like about it:
1) I hated that Ultron had a world ending evil plan. When he dismissed the notion of it early in the movie, I was quite excited, but then...ugh. Many of the great Ultron stories are very personal, and I would have preferred something more along those lines. Age of Ultron began and ended with the Avengers fighting a faceless horde of villains.
2) I didn't care for most of the character work in the movie. The Cap and Tony woodchopping scene was great, but aside from that, it was very weak. I didn't like what they did with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Black Widow and Hulk, Hawkeye and Thor. That's a really big portion of the team.
3) I really didn't like that they used the movie to essentially kill Agents of SHIELD. That whole "This is what SHIELD is supposed to be" BS was very low rent. I know Feige and Perlmutter have their differences, but keep it out of the movies. It was unnecessary. Just have the Avengers save the day.
4) I thought all the references to them saving people was over the top and ridiculous. I hated Man of Steel as much as anyone, but I found all that stuff to be petty.

That being said, there's a lot to like. The wood chopping scene, the hammer lifting scene, Pretty much everything to do with Vision was great, and all the work they did in Civil War and Infinity War has made Age of Ultron a far better and more essential part of the MCU than the placeholder it felt like when it came out.

@ODanil - Love AoU. Like it a TINY bit more than Avengers 1.

My main gripes are how he handled Black Widow and killing off Quicksilver. But I watch it all the time, and enjoy it more and more.