Yesterday, for a lark, I checked to see showtimes for Avengers: Age of Ultron. To my great surprise I discovered that there were showings of the movie on April 30, beginning at 7PM. This was seemed odd to me, as the movie is not “officially released” until May 1, so I drove over to the theatre to confirm the listing.

This is a long way to say that I saw Age of Ultron last night at 7:30 PM. Below is my non-spoiler review.

First, James Spader steals the show. His voice is amazing, and the emotional range he displays gives the character an amazing nuance. Ultron’s dialog, was hit or miss, but Spader took what he was given and sprinted with it.

Second, this was the first MCU ¹ movie where I felt I was reading the comic book panels which showed the “regular people who happen to be heroes” story-arc. As I always liked those portions of the books, particularly in the X-Men titles, I really appreciated this appearing in the film.

Third, make sure you get up to date on Agents of Shield before watching this film. Actually, Age of Ultron ties together quite a number of threads in the MCU. It’s fascinating to see them all come together.

Fourth, there was a lot of humor woven into the film. It’s not over-the-top, and often was used to show how the heroes had come together to form a real team in-between the two films. Much of the humor I enjoyed, some of it not so much. At any rate, this film does not take itself too seriously – and it fits. Hawkeye sums it up best, and you can partially catch how he does so in the trailers so that’s not a spoiler. Still, after finishing Daredevil the lightheartedness of Ultron was quite a gear-shift.

It wasn’t the greatest movie ever, but it didn’t disappoint me one bit. All in all a worthy sequel for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.