Okay, this is kind of hard for me to explain, so bear with me.
After the movie ended I said to my buddy Dave that I felt like I had just read a big crossover comic event, but I couldn't figure out why. Discussing it with other buddy Rich the next day I was able to nail it down.
After Dave saw the first Avengers, he said how each hero's parts felt like a continuation from their solo films, leading to them all meeting up and their stories naturally flowing into one another to become one common narrative.
Age of Ultron felt like the opposite of that-- when we last saw Tony Stark, he had lost his internal power source, destroyed all his armor and was talking about giving up being Iron Man. When we last saw Rhodey he had now become Iron Patriot. And Thor was using a different means of getting to and from Asgard in Avengers, since the Bifrost Bridge had been destroyed (at least that's how it seemed to me). And the Avengers itself ended with the team going their separate ways and Fury being asked "What if we need them again?"
So Age of Ultron starts and not only is everyone back together already, they've obviously been back together for quite a while. Stark is Iron Man again. Rhodey is War Machine again. The bifrost bridge is working again. And the Falcon has added his costume colors to his wings (which I really liked, by the way). And everytime one of these things came up, part of my brain was saying "But I thought..."
So the approach for Age of Ultron is that each character's story has kept going off-camera. They've all managed to restore their status quo, we just didn't see how.
And that's *why* it felt like a crossover to me. I felt like everyone else's comics had kept publishing but I had only been reading Agents of SHIELD, so I was out of the loop on all of these developments. The only difference being that when it happens in comic crossover events it's because I chose to not buy the other comics every month, whereas here I had no say in the matter.
So that's what bugged me. And since it kept happening from the first scene to the last, it kept bugging me over and over again, and left me feeling disappointed when the movie was over. Maybe now that I realize it and know what happened to everyone, I'll be able to enjoy it more on its own next time.
Which is not to say that I think it's a bad movie. There was a lot in here that I enjoyed. The Vision was awesome. I liked the many different Ultrons giving nods to his various comic book looks. And the character interaction in general were all wonderful. I had a good time, and that's what counts.
