2012's The Avengers was a remarkable achievement. For the first time, a film combined elements and characters from a series of preceding films. Thus, Iron Man , The Incredible Hulk , Iron Man 2 , Thor , and Captain America all set the stage for The Avengers and box office gold was the result. The film was ambitious, thrilling, and while the plot would tend to disintegrate if you stared at it for more than a few seconds, it was, above all else, grand fun. Now here we have its sequel and while Avengers: Age of Ultron is occasionally lots of fun, it just doesn't hang together as well and ultimately feels empty. Part of this is because this is, in essence, a middle film, and partly because there's just too much going on. While the film starts strong, builds reasonably well, it just collapses under its own weight by the end. I also can't shake the feeling that there's some validity to the complaints about how Black Widow, and women in general within the film, were h
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