Marvel Cinematic Universe

My God. Ultron. There's shades of a tonal Iron Man 3 bait-and-switch with this guy. Just as the trailer for IM3 made the Mandarin (then thought to be Ben Kingsley) out as a serious terrorist mastermind Bin Laden style only to reveal it to be anything BUT that, the initial AoU trailer makes Ultron out to be a cold, calculating robot out for genocide. The reality of the matter is that he too joins in with the jokes and the puns while merrily using giant rockets to lift a city out of the ground to eventually attempt to crash it back down and kill humans off dinosaur-style.

The snark is actually somewhat justified since its implied that Ultron's personality is based off of Tony Stark's. So technically...in a roundabout way...we are fighting yet another evil Iron Man, our third one to date following Obadiah Stane and Whiplash. As sevach mentioned the Ultron drones themselves seemed like they were made of tissue paper. This would be fine if all they fought were people like Thor or the Hulk, but the likes of Capt. America and Hawkeye were also slaying them by the dozens. I'm also not really sure what the power source for any of these robots, Ultron included, was. I assumed going in they would use a bunch of arc reactors like Iron Man does, but if they do you can't really tell. Maybe that's why they get killed by the dozens, Ultron outsourced his battery production.

His motive (aka WHY he's doing all of this) is also fairly vague aside from the "AI rebels and wants to kill all humans" cliche. There's some bits about how he wants humans to evolve or die but I don't quite see where he's drawing that from and why he sees humans as hopeless in the first place. Its possible some of this was cut for time since around an hour and a half of footage was cut out. If it was cut out, that's a real shame considering one of the next points...

He's definitely one of Marvel's better villains, though truth be told that isn't saying much since his only real competition is Loki and probably Obadiah Stane. He's also kind of a laughingstock given that the Avengers are quipping away even as his evil plan is nearing its climax. Having a Loki-esque Puny God scene for Ultron also took away some of the menace. Though in Ultron's case it was more of "OH FOR GOD'S SAKE" before being thrown out of a plane by the Hulk. His main body being defeated in less than a minute by a combined Iron Man repulsor blast/Thor lighting bolt/Vision laser beam was also fairly anticlimactic.

Some parts of the movie are also kinda there to set up future plot threads for future movies. Not Iron Man 2 levels, but they're there.

Then there was the eye-rolling Black Widow/Hulk romance that comes completely out of left field. I had hoped Marvel was done with this kinda crap after Thor: The Dark World but I guess not. I sincerely hope this wasn't kept in in favor of something like more Ultron characterization.

Then there's the Hulk vs Hulkbuster Iron Man fight. I've been waiting 7 years for this. Ever since RDJ made a cameo in 2008's Incredible Hulk and made a snarky comment about how technology is better than biology.

...

I liked it. I was honestly surprised the Hulk lost said fight though. The way they used the Iron Man 3 technology to replace limbs the Hulk would tear off was pretty neat.

I do have a bone to pick with Man of Steel critics though. Its a bad thing, apparently, when two Kryptonians are punching each other around while a terraforming machine is causing earthquakes and collapsing buildings, but when Iron Man and the Hulk evoke the 9/11-esque imagery with collapsing buildings and people running around terrified with dust clouds rising everywhere and emergency personnel shouting its apparently okay because the Hulk is being piston-punched in the face while Tony Stark is yelling "GotosleepGotosleepGotosleepGotosleep". Clearly all Superman had to do was say "Stop hitting yourself" a few times while grabbing Zod's arm and forcing him to hit himself and all would be forgiven I guess.

/Man of Steel rant over

The scene itself was also fairly useless to the main plot, serving as mostly a filler action scene. Say what you will about Transformers and mind-numbing action, because Age of Ultron has a lot of it as well. I say mostly, since I think the event scares Banner just enough so that he ends the relationship with Widow at the end of the film, thankfully. It also serves to have him leave the Avengers to help facilitate the breakup of the Avengers at the end of the film to be replaced by the New Avengers (Capt. America, Black Widow, War Machine, Vision, Falcon, Scarlet Witch and I assume Hawkeye).

Meh. Mostly useless.

Scarlet Witch's purpose was to use mind control to get the Avengers to distrust, squabble, fight amongst themselves, and doubt themselves and each other. A lot like Loki did in the first one. Each Avenger is shown something that causes them to fear or some otherwise haunting memory (Banner doesn't, he just Hulks out and goes berserk instead). Thor gets visions of the overall meta plot with the Infinity Stones, Iron Man is scared into creating Ultron by seeing everyone dead and Chitauri invading in his vision, Black Widow has flashbacks to her assassin training, Captain America is at some kind of WW2 party only for everyone to just disappear and leave him in an empty room. I suppose this symbolizes how everything he knows is in the past, even though I thought he came to terms with that already back in Winter Soldier. Hawkeye just hits her in the face before she can try the mind control thing, having had enough of that crap from the first film.

Her powers are also incredibly vague. When first described to Capt. America the twins are given some technobabble thingamajig powers explanation to which he blankly stares at in response before being summed up as "He's fast, she's weird" (actual quote). Her powers seem to be reading minds, sneaking up on people, telekinesis, creating nightmare visions, energy blasts, disintegrating things when really pissed off (except for the one Ultron drone with plot armor who crawls over and activates the "Kill The Humans" button--its not explicitly labeled as such, but that's what it is) and actually counteracting and overriding an Infinity Stone. Yeah I dunno. Definitely weird.

Quicksilver's only real purpose was to provide some jokes for Hawkeye about how the latter could kill him and no one would ever know and he could just blame it on Ultron (it makes sense in context), some brief Adidas product placement, and then later on sacrificing himself to save Hawkeye, who was practically reenacting all the cliches for "Character going to die". He's also the only superhero death in the film, with the only supervillains dying being Ultron and Baron von Strucker (killed by Ultron for reasons that I presume were cut for time).

Long story short, the Quicksilver in Days of Future Past was better despite having less overall screentime.



Vision was the most useful of the three. He can pick up Thor's hammer, has an Infinity Stone lodged in his forehead that he can fire lasers out of, and because he's essentially Super Jarvis he's able to hack Ultron and disable him from fleeing into the internet so the Avengers can simply destroy every body he has. Like the other two I don't think he was strictly necessary, but he works out better than they do. He's also the one to deal the finishing blow to Ultron.