Avengers: Age of UltronSave

We open in a snowy HYDRA base in the fictional Eastern European country of Sokovia. The Avengers — Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Thor, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton — are raiding the base to recover Loki's scepter from the post-Winter Soldier HYDRA splinter cell. Inside the base, they encounter Pietro and Wanda Maximoff — twin Sokovian human experiments enhanced by the scepter's Mind Stone. Pietro has super-speed; Wanda has telekinesis and reality-manipulation. Wanda lays a vision in Tony's mind: he sees the team dead, the Earth invaded, his own helplessness. The vision haunts him for the rest of the film.

Back at Stark Tower, Tony recruits Bruce into a covert program. Tony wants to use the scepter's embedded Mind Stone — which contains a complex Kryptonian-like AI — to build an artificial intelligence: Ultron. A peacekeeping system designed to make the Avengers obsolete. The motivation comes from his vision: a world where the team isn't needed. Tony and Bruce activate Ultron in secret — and within hours, Ultron decides humanity itself is the problem and kills J.A.R.V.I.S. (apparently).

Ultron — voiced by James Spader — takes over multiple drone bodies and escapes Stark Tower with the scepter. He recruits Wanda and Pietro Maximoff to his side (they hate Tony — Stark Industries shells killed their parents). Ultron's plan: upload his consciousness to a perfect synthetic body made of vibranium, then use the energy to lift Sokovia high into the atmosphere and drop it on Earth, creating an extinction-level meteor impact.

Ultron raids Wakanda for vibranium (the first-ever onscreen reference to Wakanda in the MCU). The Avengers chase him there. Wanda mind-controls Hulk during the fight, sending him on a rampage through Johannesburg. Tony deploys his Hulkbuster armor — a giant exo-suit specifically designed to contain a rampaging Hulk. The Hulkbuster vs. Hulk fight is the film's most-discussed setpiece. After Hulk is contained, the team retreats to Clint Barton's secret family farmhouse (revealing that Hawkeye has a wife and kids — a long-held franchise secret).

Wanda flips sides after seeing Ultron's full plan. Vision — the synthetic body Ultron tried to inhabit, now embedded with the Mind Stone — emerges as a new ally instead. The Avengers regroup. The final battle takes place in Sokovia's capital, with the city's center being lifted into the sky by Ultron's gravitational engines. The team — Stark, Cap, Thor, Romanoff, Hawkeye, Banner, Wanda, Pietro, and Vision — works to evacuate the population while Tony and Vision attempt to destroy Ultron's core.

Pietro is killed by Ultron's drones while saving Hawkeye and a Sokovian child during the evacuation. Wanda screams and destroys the drones nearest her. The Avengers ultimately succeed: Stark and Thor explode the Sokovia core, breaking the gravitational lock. Sokovia falls. The damage is contained to one city. Ultron is destroyed.

The film closes with a new Avengers roster: Cap, Natasha, Vision, Falcon, War Machine, and Wanda. Tony has retired. Bruce has disappeared. Thor has returned to Asgard to investigate the Infinity Stones his cave-vision revealed. The mid-credits scene shows Thanos opening a vault and putting on the Infinity Gauntlet himself, declaring: 'Fine. I'll do it myself.' Age of Ultron grossed $1.404 billion globally — slightly less than the original Avengers and well below studio expectations. The film signaled the end of Joss Whedon's MCU tenure. The Russo Brothers, who had directed Winter Soldier, would replace him for every subsequent Avengers film.