Minor, non-descriptive spoilers for Age of Ultron (and some other films) ahead.
The deleted scenes really help fix some of the weird plot holes in Age of Ultron, mainly Thor's pool party thing where in the release, he's like "LET'S SEE IF THE SPIRITS ACCEPT ME LOLOL" out of goddamn nowhere.
Also, I would have loved Age of Ultron more (and I greatly enjoyed the movie) if Ultron didn't have such a typical Marvel movie villain doomsday plot. Seriously, it's not exciting anymore, and it's more or less the same shit from the first movie. The first bit of the movie, I loved Ultron because he had a personality, he was fun, he seemed like he was going to break the Ronin/ Malakath/ Loki (Avengers 1)/ Red Skull (and Hydra, in Winter Soldier)/ Exploding dude from Iron Man 3 who I can't be bothered to remember his name of because he was fucking boring as hell, mold of having a climax that basically comes down to "omg the world is gunna end if we don't stop theeeem" that has zero stakes and honestly robs the movies of a lot.
Is it really hard to ask for interesting villains with understandable motivations that go beyond "evil for the sake of evil"? Marvel just sets up all these guys as one-off villains and it really shows. We don't get to know them, and the fact they all perish at the end of the movie gets rid of the exciting prospect of them still being out there. Can you imagine how bullshit it would be if in Star Wars, they killed Darth Vader in the first movie? The reason Loki is so popular is because they took the time to develop him as a character, made him compelling, and gave him a long game that wasn't apocalyptic (lolol, well, I have a feeling I know how Thor 3 is going to get started, but up until then) with him simply wanting the Throne of Asgard. He still has evil schemes and does awful shit, but it's not like he gets tidily wrapped up in 2 hours.
I loved Ultron's personality. I liked how he was working with Scarlett Witch and Quicksilver. He was compelling up until basically he just went full in "LOL WORLD ENDING TIME!" around the half-way mark.
I mean, I mentioned Hydra's plan in the earlier paragraph as being in the same frame as the other world-ending plots in the other movies, but at least it was a much more modest scale that twisted things around a bit by making SHIELD's technology being the source of All things Bad.
Is it so much to ask for interesting villains and plots that don't feel unnecessarily high stakes? After you play the "OMG WORLD ENDING!" card, and then you keep doing it, it gets fucking old man. I mean, despite Stane being as flat as a a pita wrap who would later be cloned and reincarnated in that Yellowjacket dude from Ant-Man (do you have any other explanation why they're exactly the same character? I don't. They're seriously identical, motivations and all), Iron Man 1 still ended on an exciting note with just a show down between Tony and Stane with the Arc Reactor blowing up being the serious consequence. I have no idea why they started off modest like that and went straight up to the most high-stakes game ever in no time flat within a couple movies. It makes sense for an Avengers movie, because it's an ensemble of characters who had stand alone movies who can only stop a threat by working together, and then the stakes never went down, even a little bit. You can still have a tense, compelling story without the same goddamn climax every time.
Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't popular because of Ronin and nobody gave a shit about a planet they barely knew potentially getting destroyed, they loved it because of the chemistry between the characters and the fun action scenes.
This is why I think Civil War will actually be cool because there's a real chance that characters will die and they're fighting over something that has a lot of parallels to our own world, freedom verses security. Since it's the movie universe, you don't know who's at risk. Infinity Wars might likewise be as equally high stakes; it's kind of the crown jewel it's all been leading up to, and Marvel would be crazy if they didn't kill off people we cared about. That's the thing; nobody cares when some guy we've seen for two minutes on the screen heroically sacrifices himself. We care a lot when we had several movies to get to know these characters and they get murdered. Do you think anybody would have cared about Agent Coulson if he died in Iron Man 1 confronting Stane? No, they had him in several movies and he had a fair deal of screen time and became quite popular. Then suddenly in the Avengers, he gets murdered (except Marvel is fucking dumb and immediately announces a show starring him with some bullshit explanation of how he survived because they know he's the only way people are going to tune in to Agents of SHIELD), and it's genuinely a harrowing moment in the movie.
More of that please.... just don't give dead characters any more spin offs, plz.