I’m going to keep this review short and spoiler-free for those of you who haven’t had a chance to see Avengers: Age of Ultron yet. A longer, more detailed review will follow shortly.

Are you asking yourself, “Should I see Avengers: Age of Ultron?” The answer is yes. I wouldn’t rank Avengers: Age of Ultron as the best Marvel Studios movie; that distinction belongs to either Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Guardians of the Galaxy depending on what day you ask me the question. But Avengers: Age of Ultron is good, perhaps as good or just shy of being as good as the first Avengers movie.

The action in the movie is fast-paced and the fight scenes are superbly choreographed. Marvel is really killing it with their fight scenes lately between this movie and the Daredevil Netflix series. The movie is full of great character bits, and introduces us to new interpersonal relationships between the characters. Plus we learn some secrets about one Avenger that completely threw me.

Ultron as a villain was excellent. Ultron is both menacing and creepy. While I liked Loki as the villain in Avengers, I felt like a lot of that movie was the team fighting endless hordes of facelss aliens. But here, we get a central villain that isn’t the pawn of another villain. Ultron is his own man, as he likes to point out repeatedly in the movie.

If you’re a fan of the Avengers comic, I think you’ll be very happy with the way the characters are portrayed. Quicksilver is brash. Cap’s shield bounces off things and returns to him (with a better answer than Cap just being great at throwing it).

Avengers: Age of Ultron is excellent. Overall, I would give it an 8 or 9 out of 10. See it in the theater, and see it in 3D. The 3D in the movie itself is cool, but not game changing. But if you see the movie in 3D, you’ll also see the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer in 3D and that alone is worth the price of the upgrade.