I’ve recently been watching The Blacklist on NOW TV and it stars the brilliant James Spader as Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington. The series is about an FBI agent Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone) who is tasked with looking after Red who is on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list.

Every episode has a similar story line. Red tells Liz where she can find a blacklister, Liz and her partner always get very about 30 minutes in and just miss or loose the perpetrator. Finally they catch them about 5/10 minutes before the end of the episode. I do not advise binge watching this, its too much, you definitely need the 6 days between episodes.

The reason it continues to do so well I believe is down to the brilliant cast and quite notably James Spader. But what does this frankly have to do with The Avengers: Age of Ultron?

I simply had no idea that James Spader was cast as Ultron before the movie began, it wasn’t until Ultron made his first appearance that it clicked. Where had I heard that voice? Why do I recognise those facial expressions?

Take a watch of The Blacklist and you’ll see James Spader is a very expressive actor, one of his biggest talents is to convey so much through his face. He has a unique expression that he does with his mouth that I immediately picked up on Ultron’s face.

The reason this is so fascinating to me is that CGI technology has improved so much. Not only encompassing the actors movements, but also the detail to the facial expressions too. So a huge well done to all the VFX studios that worked on Avengers, you’ve done an outstanding job.