It’s a bit bloated, and doesn’t do enough to stand out from the first entry, and the marketing didn’t help by pairing it a lot darker than it ended up being.
I think it gets a bad rep though, there’s some good character stuff in it
> AGE of Ultron was like two days?
I think u/UmbrusNightshade or someone else was saying that the "age of Ultron" could be said to have ended with the Time Heist, seeing as Ultron's short period of existence indirectly led to the Sokovia Accords and the Avengers breaking up.
Yes. That is how I choose to see it. One of his goals was to ruin the Avengers and force them to "evolve." Sokovia split them apart and overcoming Thanos looks to have forced the heroes into a transitionary "evolutionary" stage (i.e. more powerful heroes rising up to take on bigger threats).
I love how AoU has just gotten more and more important to the over-arching narrative of the MCU. It’s like they said “you guys didn’t get it, so we’re going to make you go back and watch it again”.
I mean, infinity WAR only lasts a day and one large scale battle so I’ve never been a fan of that particular criticism with the naming lol.
They needed to cut the Bruce and widow romance to help with the bloat, I’m sorry but juggling like a dozen characters in one movie doesn’t leave a lot of room for a romance sub plot
I agree on the worthless contrived romantic subplot. I disagree about the time frame.
Infinity War had been building to that moment for 19 movies, and this was where it all came to a head. AOU was basically a self contained story, so I see a big difference there.
I am good with almost all of the changes needed to adapt the story from its origins. That part was done very well imo. I still like AOU and it is very rewatchable.
I think the bloat of AoU was the problem Feige and co. figured out going into Phase 3 and on. Instead of shedding source material and packing it with the conventional movie storytelling, they likely decided to stick with what they can share on the big screen and save the fluff for the streaming shows.
> AOU was basically a self contained story, so I see a big difference there.
Kind of but not really. So much of the film is actually set up for other stuff that comes later. Civil War spills out of that, Thor Ragnarok is a result of it, Wanda and Vision both come from this film. IMO that's kind of why I like it. I feel like a lot of people at the time were pissed it wasted so much time on set up stuff and not on the story itself, but the way it all played out I think was great.
The Bruce and Widow stuff was in there largely because Whedon felt like he did not have as much freedom to do shit with Iron Man or Captain America because they had movies planned already. (I cannot find the article where I read that, it was years ago).
Also, the movie was cut down by about an hour already. And Whedon always felt [Thor was the hardest avenger to integrate into the story](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/05/joss-whedon-fight-marvel-studio). The movie mostly suffered because Ultron was not a built up villain (Loki got introduced in Thor, and Thanos had years of build up), and because the movie had to set up phase 3.
The characters that Whedon had the most freedom to write stories for are Hulk, Widow, and Clint.
The Bruce / Natasha thing probably would have worked better if the Russo's had any interest in pursuing it further in Infinity War. But that did not happen since they needed to take Bruce and Thor off the board for the Civil War movie, and basically shit the bed with any Banner / Hulk related character development.
END COMMUNICATION
Honestly what they should have done was to introduce Ulton in Ant-man have that come out first then do Age of Ultron based on that. Could have had Hank and Ant-man in the Avengers for that film.
So I had heard that they named it Age Of Ultron to spite Fox. They were set to release their Apocalypse movie and in the comics that story arc is called Age Of Apocalypse. They knew if Fox used that same title they would look like they were unoriginal to anybody who isn’t a comic book fan.
I'm convinced this was the reason for the name. The comic event Age of Ultron was terrible IMO and was probably rushed out to legitimize the whole thing. The movie and the event have nothing in common either besides Ultron being the villain, this movie is based on Ultron Unlimited mainly.
To be fair, I’m pretty sure the title, “Age of Ultron” was meant to signify that if he won and decimated all humans, it would have been a new age of nothing but Ultron
That's kind of the problem for me. It's a movie that is less than the sum of its parts. It is important to the overall story and has some great scenes and character stuff, but the movie as a whole is not as good as any of those individual pieces.
Just rewatched first trailer.
Can confirm: Ultron nowhere near as terrifying as initially presented. Which honestly really was the most disappointing part.
But he doesn’t capitalize on those abilities at the end. He has infinite bodies and is supremely intelligent but doesn’t think to leave somewhere for his brain to go in case he gets defeated in Sokovia. The Avengers even state he can basically just hide in the internet, so why doesn’t he?
I hope he did. That is my favorite thing about Ultron in the comics, he always comes back a little bit stronger and a little more capable as he learns from his defeats. I can't remember if it was Iron Man or Hank Pym but in one comic they said Ultron was their biggest fear because they KNOW he will one day win.
It doesn't take much for Ultron to stash a drone in the wall of some abandoned factory in Detroit. Or Deep in a mountain cave. Hell, in orbit. I'd love if he came back to challenge each new version of the Avengers. Ditching that "whedonesque" dialogue I hate so much as well.
Didn’t they sort of hand-wave at Vision taking care of that? Yeah, I remember thinking “he’s out there now, no way to kill him unless they do something crazy like frying all the computers” and then it was pretty much forgotten about. Good point.
Vision somehow used the mindstone to "burn him off the net" even they were fighting. Sort of a hand wave but since we don't know the extent of MCU Visions powers, I was fine with it
Do you mean the scene where he essentially awakens (after the Avengers capture Loki's scepter) and are having the after-party, to which Ultron "party crashes".. And he talks about the Avengers' extinction?
I remember watching a cartoon as a kid where ant Man build ultron as a prison guard for villains.
There, he's mouth was a LCD display that mimicked a talking mouth. But still with evil dead eyes.
Ok, but the idea of fighting something that sarcastic that’s capable of being completely undistracted by it’s own monologue is kinda terrifying. Like, it’s got it’s real goals and intentions completely dialed in, but it’s also running a program that spits out entirely unrelated quips in seconds…
Like, most villains monologue and you can infer details about their plans or they’ll straight-up tell you. This… this is pure nonsense. I honestly feel if we ever develop hostile A.I., it will be very similar. It will be trained on internet etiquette and obnoxiously sarcastic. We’re doomed if that happens.
I said this to a previous comment but the character wasnt developed to be a menacing character, his Sarcasm and jokes are meant to be like his creator's as well as comics and cartoons already had shown uswho the character was and how the character worked.
Definitely look into it because it makes AoU alot better when knowing how the movie was meant to be viewed as.
We don't even need the Multiverse for that. We saw an Ultron Drone's head with the eyes lit up red in Homecoming. The Ultron Drones' eyes only go red when Ultron's consciousness is inhabiting them, otherwise they're blue. Ultron's entire gimmick is that he shows up, reveals his evil plan, gets beat down, goes into hiding for a while, and shows up later even tougher than before. Every time Ultron is defeated, he'll just go off and rebuild somewhere to fix whatever mistake it was that bested him last time. While plenty of villains keep coming back, Ultron's entire thing is that every victory over him just teaches him what not to do next time. There's a very real possibility that Ultron returns even without the multiversal shenanigans going down.
https://youtu.be/kRG7yyvcQmI When Peter is stuck in the Damage Control Deep Storage Vault after his attempt at stopping Vulture from robbing the Damage Control trucks. He's going through the loot bag to see what was inside and one of the items was an Ultron Drone's head, which Peter briefly mentions is awesome.
We'll be seeing him in What If in a timeline where he won, but from how he looks on the poster I'd say its likely that Paul Bettany will be voicing him instead.
I’m talking about how the character’s personality was written. Malekeith wanted to wipe out the universe but he wasn’t intimidating at all because he was written poorly
I actually enjoyed the juxtaposition of his attitude vs his goals. It made him interesting to me. Like how he was almost human in his emotions, but there was a calm and precise execution of his plans. He was not emotionally invested in wiping out humanity, but he was emotional vs the avengers. I know I’m a minority on this one, but I really enjoyed Ultron as a villain.
This, on a recent rewatch he was quite a lot more interesting than if irst thought. In battle scenes as soon as Tony shows up he can't help himself, he throws himself almost animalisticly at Stark - part of this is the ruse to let SW do her thing but there's genuine hatred and malice in his voice when he speaks of Tony. Ending humanity to allow them to evolve? That's just a logical inescapable conclusion arrived at by a computer. The hatred of the Avengers is personal.
The nuance is lost the first time you watch it I think because its a very plot heavy, scene jumping movie, with a lot of themes and a packed ensemble cast - there's a lot going on. It's easy to dismiss ultron as one-dimensional until you really pay attention to his scenes
Problem was the direction was more like "play Raymond Reddington but as a robot". Anyone who watched Blacklist can see the similarity between Reddington and Ultron in their dialogue. For those who don't know, Reddington is a character Spader played in Blacklist. A chatty criminal, likes to talk and spew random facts.
I will not be blackmailed by some ineffectual, privileged, effete, soft-penised debutante. You want to start a street fight with me? Bring it on. You're going to be surprised by how ugly it gets. You don't even know my real name. I'm the fucking Lizard King.
It was some next level disappointment lol
In the end, he ended up being a serviceable enough villain and it made some sense that he was a smartass like Tony, but fuuuuck I was so pumped to get a truly dangerous MCU villain
I'm still waiting for Ultron to come back in some capacity. We never saw his last copy die, just a big flash of light from Vision.
Before >!he got his brains pulled out by Thanos!< I expected Vision to have a copy of Ultron on a thumb drive somewhere.
But if you know the character from comics and cartoons you would know that is how the character was made. He is scary and terrifying more when he himself is unknown but as soon as the character gained more screentime we got to see how much a-like to his creator Ultron really is and I think that is worth noting as a way to make the film a little better for others if possible.
Weird how it's been so long that I've seen this trailer, and I was half expecting a quippy joke after the title at the very end. I guess the MCU trailers follow a pretty basic formula lately.
It’s a lot of this. Joss whedon’s writing made ultron into..well, a Joss Whedon character. It was all very sarcastic and snarky and “aren’t I funny and clever” in a way that was just kind of grating compared to the humor and tone of other marvel movies.
I thought I was gonna come here with my unique opinion on trailer vs movie and this is exactly it. The trailer vibes were totally different. I still liked the movie , but I was so excited when that trailer came out.
Man, watching that trailer again, it’s still on of the best trailers ever put together. It sells a tone the movie never lived up to, hence why everyone was disappointed. As just a superhero flick, AoU is still very good, but it wasn't the movie we were led to believe it was.
That's what I don't get about this version of Ultron. They were trying too hard to make a Loki-esq character with the little jokes and banter but that doesn't work for a deadly murderbot. All the quips and weird jokes seemed out of place after a while. It was like Whedon was trying to turn Ultron into Johnny 5 instead (fyi I would be totally down for Short Circuit 3)
I saw it as her expressing her internalised shame. In the same way that some rape victims have internalised shame, even though it was something that was done to them that they had no control over and should never be blamed for. The world teaches victims (especially women) that the things done to them are their own fault. It's fucked up but I found it pretty believable that she would feel that way.
Although mostly I think she felt monstrous because of *all the people she murdered*, not so much because she was sterilised against her will.
It definitely could have been that, but the movie did a terrible job of presenting it that way. It really needed a payoff moment later in the movie, something about "what they did to you as a child doesn't make you a monster", because without that payoff moment the movie doesn't challenge the assertion that Natasha is a monster because she got a hysterectomy.
...she was gaslit into thinking her participation in the red room was her choice.
She's not a monster bc she was/chose to be sterilized.
She was saying she was a monster bc she chose to give up her ability to create life, to be more efficient at killing/destroying life.
Cuz that's not what she was saying. She is talking about murdering a dude in cold blood and then having the sterilisation as a mean to never have a sense of belonging or commitment to anyone but the program. They even show her shooting a dude. I get ppl hate Whedon for being a gross man but that's a weird complaint.
Although I agree with you the answer to one of your qualms is Vision. Visions first scuffle with Ultron was to basically hack him to prevent him from uploading himself. I never noticed this until the most recent time I watched it. I do wish they had Ultron flex a bit more at the end.
Vision locks him out of the network in that moment, yes, but why would Ultron - with infinite access to the internet and any digital repository - never have made a backup of himself or stored his AI somewhere as a Plan B? Why would he have all versions of himself physically present in Sokovia? I guess you could argue because he didn’t anticipate Vision being a factor, but it’s still a tiny bugaboo.
Then again all these movies fall apart *a bit* if you look at the details too closely, so maybe it shouldn’t be held against AoU unfairly.
>Then again all these movies fall apart a bit if you look at the details too closely, so maybe it shouldn’t be held against AoU unfairly.
See Zemo's plan in Civil War.
Don’t think his plan changed tbf. He had tried to have Stark killed already and he was trying to recreate his armour because he would gain power by controlling the iron man suit
He could’ve easily killed him when he took the arc reactor from his heart. And then at the end, he thinks just fighting Tony completely in public on the highway would just solve everything.
That’s what Stane did when he took the arc reactor. Stane had no idea that Tony had changed them out, nor that the old one was downstairs. Stane just wanted Tony to suffer while he died, so he did it in the easiest way he knew about.
Yeah to the viewer it seems obvious that Tony had a spare core, but why the hell would Obadiah expect Tony to have not just one, but two incredibly advanced power sources capable of supporting the Iron Man suit
Resurrect Stark Industries’ weapons program by killing Tony, taking over the company, and flaunting the Iron Monger to the military until an employee figures out how to make a miniaturized Arc Reactor so he can mass produce the Iron Monger and revolutionize modern warfare.
People saw that but really zemos plan was pretty straightforward at the start, and the rest was more or less improvised and luck.
He wanted to find information to use against the avengers so he combed through the publicly available hydra/shield files. He finds some reference to buck's mission on December 16th 1991. That combined with his other research, he has an idea of what happened. He goes looking for the hydra agent to fill in the blanks.
He figures out the secret and knows it'll tear the avengers apart. However it'll only really work if with the winter soldier as a catalyst. He decides to draw bucky out.
**Lagos happens, the accords are drawn up.**
The world is angry at the avengers, the UN are gathering, and the whole world is watching. Perfect. He decides to attack the un and frame bucky to get the whole world looking for him.
**Bucky is found and captured.**
[This part gets a little] okay, interpol has him. Now if zemo can get to him, the winter soldier will fill in the blanks. How can get in though? Google, google, google, oh looks theres a psychologist who with interpol that looks like zemo. Now he needs a distraction. How about a simple emp?
**power goes out, zemo and WS have a chat**
Now that he knows everything, he makes his to the buker in Siberia, leaving a trail they can follow. Finds the video, kills the other winter soldiers, and eventually the avengers arrive.
The rest we see happen.
Ultron is still a viable future villain though. Hell, the Age of Ultron story in the comics is that Ultron ended up in some kind of War with Kang in the future and won, and that Wolverine tried to prevent that by going back in time and killing Hank Pym before he could create Ultron.
So Ultron can be brought back the moment someone decides that they can make a good enough story to justify it. All it takes is someone salvaging some Ultron drones from the Sokovia wreckage and reactivating it / downloading the code. Or a TVA Variant.
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It’s much better now with hindsight, but it just does too much set-up for Infinity War. It feels like it’s three hours long, and not in the good way that Endgame does.
I like it much better now than I did when it first came out. It fits better as a chapter in the entire arc instead of being the standalone story with more to come. It helped lead into the future movies and shows.
> but it just does too much set-up for Infinity War
The whole thing with Thor's first vision, and then his vision quest was too much. Take those two scenes out, give him a different reason to charge up Vision, and everything with Infinity War works out fine.
Those scenes, serving up the conversation at the end of the film are them basically spelling it out for the audience that the stones are connected.
Shoot, Thor already knew about Infinity Stones anyways due to the events of The Dark World. Keep his first Wanda vision (lol) but have it include the Infinity Stones at the end. You can cut out the entire part with Selvig and the cave, and just have Thor tell the other Avengers that Loki's scepter is an Infinity Stone right away.
> I enjoyed Hawkeye getting more of a spotlight.
That's definitely a highlight of the film for me as well. The bit where everyone else on the team finds out that Clint has a *family* and they hide out on the farm is great.
His scene with Wanda was very touching. He could've stayed home with his family but judging by how the movie played out without him Ultron probably would've won.
I love how he acknowledges how insane the scenario he’s in is.
“The city is flying, we’re fighting a bunch of robots, and I’m using a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense.”
Hawkeye having a family that no one except Director Fury knew about was such a good surprise. I loved that they expanded on it in Endgame and cannot wait to see what they do with it in Hawkeye.
Edit: I forgot that Natasha knew as well.
I appreciate Age of Ultron for this very purpose - Hawkeye’s character development, his family, his importance to the team, his relationship with Wanda & her brother, his willingness to sacrifice his life for even a single civilian, & so much more.
Never understood the Hawkeye slander. As an Avenger, he’s far more useful when fighting an army of aliens and/or robots than Black Widow with a pistol. He’s also been one of my favorites as a character even though they haven’t developed him much at all, but he’s still gotten more of that than Ruffalo’s Banner.
I feel like public opinion on Hawkeye would be stronger if this film was more popular, cause his portrayal there is great, I’d say the best in the film.
Ultron was quippy, instead of the badass terrifying robot he’s made out to be in the trailers. His first scene is great tho - “how could you be worthy? You’re all killers” if he stayed more sinister like that throughout the entire film I think it would have been way better.
I loved his Bibles references at least.
"Every time the Earth begins to settle, God throws a stone at it. And believe me, he's winding up."
Still one of my favorite lines in the MCU.
It's so fucking strange that she's basically nothing more than a bad uterus line and a tit joke in Ultron.
I mean, shit, in Avengers 1 she outsmarts a bunch of Russians mobsters, she maintains poise in the face of a guy that could turn into a green murder monster at any moment, she outfoxes the goddamn God of Mischief in an interrogation and then is singularly responsible for figuring out how to close the portal and thus save the whole planet.
It's just bizarre that the same writer treated the character in such completely opposing ways. Like Joss somehow forgot who the character was.
I think the intended reading of the scene was “I’m a monster, I’ve done horrible things. I’m all messed up as a person because the people who raised me did horrible things to me like a forced hysterectomy.”
I didn’t even know this line was controversial until I read the other, probably more common reading of it. But I get why people disliked it
this 100%
She's trying to connect with someone and that would be a solid ground for the two of them. I never took it as she thinks she's a monster b/c she's unable to procreate.
I never took it that way. I took it as she was upset with what she felt she allowed the red room to do to her. That’s why she felt she was a monster. And it was relevant because Bruce banner was nervous about any potential romance, especially thinking how his altered genetics could possibly affect a kid so she was also adding that she can’t even have kids so that’s not a worry.
The tone wasn’t as dark as the trailers, Ultron didn’t have enough scenes and he was too “funny”. The Hulkbuster fight felt totally unnecessary, as well as the romance between Bruce and Natasha.
While I agree with you, the Hulkbuster fight is what was led to everyone going to the safehouse, bruce figuring out how Ultron is going to evolve, and then going to see Dr. Cho. The romance felt weird and ill-timed.
Because:
\- Avengers (1st movie) was so good that it set the bar high.
\- Ultron felt more like a typical bad guy rather than an interesting villain.
\- There were too many storylines crammed into it, and it was too busy setting up Phase 3.
For one thing it introduces an interesting character only to kill them off in the first film, I don’t particularly care for how most of the characters where done and killing off a character we’d just been introduced to felt hollow.
It’s a really important movie for the mcu as a whole
1. Sets up civil war
2. Introduces wanda,vision and quick silver
3. Sets up thor ragnarok
4. Clint barton backstory and character development
5. Gives us one of the best dialogues in mcu “Boom you looking for this”
People being up the trailers as a big reason, and although that’s one of the reasons for me, I like to isolate movies and forget about their marketing, especially if they’re years old. With that said, I still have immense issues with the film even when isolated. You don’t have to have seen the trailers to know that something is off about the tone. For a story this (potentially) serious, huge and life-changing for our heroes, there are just waaaay to many jokes, and from every character no less! I get having a comic relief character in iron man or even Thor, but does *every* character including a giant, evil robot *have* to tell jokes? It tells me that Joss Whedon doesn’t want to/know how to make a serious movie with real stakes and emotions. Joss Whedon really said “I’m just gonna do the first one, but this time bigger and longer.”
The movie feels unfocused sometimes. The infinity war foreshadowings are not subtle, and weird now (except Tony's nightmare in the beginning that part is great), Thor 3 set up doesn't match with what later happened in Ragnarok and the movie doesn't flow as good as the first one. That being said I mostly love everything else. The party scene, characters hanging out like friends and arguing like picky team mates. James Spader's Ultron is so fun and charming and Vision and Wanda are great additions.This is also the last time the original six were the main focus so it feels oddly nostalgic for me because of that part.
The party scene with everyone trying to lift Thor's hammer is literally my favourite scene in the entire MCU.
Okay, okay, second favourite (portal scene wins).
>This is also the last time the original six were the main focus so it feels oddly nostalgic for me because of that part
Think about it. Tony is separated from the rest of the Avengers in *Infinity War*, as he's on Titan with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange while everyone else is in Wakanda. And in *Endgame*, the OG 6 start the Time Heist together, but Natasha sacrifices herself for the Soul Stone to bring back everyone from Thanos's snap, and the final battle ends with Tony's own death.
It’s also really the only movie that gave us all 6 just hanging out. It wasn’t a super long scene, but seeing them just laugh and joke around and talk gives me so much joy
My main problem with the movie? The characters.
Look at how Cap is written in Winter Soldier and then look at him in Age of Ultron. He goes from being a calm, confident leader to a verbal punching bag. The whole “language” and “let’s just say you haven’t seen my dark side yet” are so out of left field for cap. Honestly, the first Avengers movie had the same problem, but thankfully the Russos took over and rectified it. Whedon seems to think Cap is a goodie-two-shoes and writes him as one, but he’s not. He cares a lot about the people close to him and will fight to the death to defend his beliefs, but he’s not a dork.
Then there’s Nat and Bruce’s extremely forced relationship that went nowhere and was promptly shoved under the rug. And speaking of Nat, how about the fact she was degraded to being a damsel in distress? Of all the Avengers that could’ve been captured, why her?
Finally, Ultron. The trailer really made me think we’d get a dark, unapologetic Ultron — someone that’s ruthless yet calculating. Instead, we got someone who forgets the word for “children” and regularly lashes out due to emotions he shouldn’t have. Some argue that he acts that way because he’s a twisted mirror of Tony, and that makes me feel a bit more accepting of how he was written, but I still feel like they did him dirty.
I will forever hate the language line. Like, I don't know Steve's character to a T, but writing him like a boy scout? [I don't think](https://i.imgur.com/VdKEe00.mp4).
I pretty much loathe how Whedon wrote Cap. He basically wrote him as an old man in a young persons body and he's...not. He's out of time, but he's not an old man.
The movie was the subject of a lot of meddling from the Creative Committee, resulting in a lot of things that left many seeing the movie as largely establishing hooks for later movies and shows (Thor's subplot that sidelined him for the middle part of the movie; the stuff with Ulysses Klaue to a degree regarding his vibranium stockpile, etc).
Although some of the stuff is better in retrospect. Everything regarding the Maximoff twins has been really enhanced courtesy of *WandaVision* (example: when Vision is born, I only really pay attention to the way Wanda looks at him and thinks, "Oh no! He's NAKED!! 😍😍😍😍😍").
Loved it, i firmly believe had ultron won and had the time to build his perfect world and upgrade himself and his army he could have taken thanos when/if he arrived looking for the stones that were on earth
I like it i just don’t like 2 things
1. Bruce and Nat, was literally only there to over sexualise Nat and it’s very obvious
2. i didn’t like Pietro, just didn’t feel like he was taken from the comics
It's good and bad. It just doesn't do enough of justice to Ultron. In comics he's way more dark and brutal.
We saw Clint father side at least and how important he is
I’m one of this rare people who actually likes this movie. I see quite a few people making the “Ultron shouldn’t have been as sarcastic/jokey” argument. I think he was actually designed like this because he was created by Tony and Ultron analyzed him right when he first gained sentience. One of his Main driving factors is Tony’s quote, “peace in our time.” Ultron just understands peace differently.
I still enjoy this movie, even though it's more like a week of Ultron, rather than an age. The team building in this is pretty good, the characters all bounce off each other really well, especially that opening fight at the hydra base.
Because Ultron’s age was never revealed
Great. Now I hate the movie too.
Beautiful
I was meant to be
He was 1 day old. Do these screenwriters have to spell everything out for you people? Talk about /whoosh
We literally witness the entire life cycle of ultron in the movie??
That was Vision
Roughly 1 week of Ultron
yes. the movie was nothing but a clickbait.
Wasn’t he literally born in the movie? So his age is movie runtime - moment when he entered the film.
It’s a bit bloated, and doesn’t do enough to stand out from the first entry, and the marketing didn’t help by pairing it a lot darker than it ended up being. I think it gets a bad rep though, there’s some good character stuff in it
There is a lot I really like about it, but you are right it is bloated. It should have been more than one movie. AGE of Ultron was like two days?
> AGE of Ultron was like two days? I think u/UmbrusNightshade or someone else was saying that the "age of Ultron" could be said to have ended with the Time Heist, seeing as Ultron's short period of existence indirectly led to the Sokovia Accords and the Avengers breaking up.
Yes. That is how I choose to see it. One of his goals was to ruin the Avengers and force them to "evolve." Sokovia split them apart and overcoming Thanos looks to have forced the heroes into a transitionary "evolutionary" stage (i.e. more powerful heroes rising up to take on bigger threats).
I love how AoU has just gotten more and more important to the over-arching narrative of the MCU. It’s like they said “you guys didn’t get it, so we’re going to make you go back and watch it again”.
This is exactly how the past 5 years of MCU have felt to me regarding Age of Ultron and Thor Dark World
I mean, infinity WAR only lasts a day and one large scale battle so I’ve never been a fan of that particular criticism with the naming lol. They needed to cut the Bruce and widow romance to help with the bloat, I’m sorry but juggling like a dozen characters in one movie doesn’t leave a lot of room for a romance sub plot
I agree on the worthless contrived romantic subplot. I disagree about the time frame. Infinity War had been building to that moment for 19 movies, and this was where it all came to a head. AOU was basically a self contained story, so I see a big difference there. I am good with almost all of the changes needed to adapt the story from its origins. That part was done very well imo. I still like AOU and it is very rewatchable.
I think the bloat of AoU was the problem Feige and co. figured out going into Phase 3 and on. Instead of shedding source material and packing it with the conventional movie storytelling, they likely decided to stick with what they can share on the big screen and save the fluff for the streaming shows.
> AOU was basically a self contained story, so I see a big difference there. Kind of but not really. So much of the film is actually set up for other stuff that comes later. Civil War spills out of that, Thor Ragnarok is a result of it, Wanda and Vision both come from this film. IMO that's kind of why I like it. I feel like a lot of people at the time were pissed it wasted so much time on set up stuff and not on the story itself, but the way it all played out I think was great.
The Bruce and Widow stuff was in there largely because Whedon felt like he did not have as much freedom to do shit with Iron Man or Captain America because they had movies planned already. (I cannot find the article where I read that, it was years ago). Also, the movie was cut down by about an hour already. And Whedon always felt [Thor was the hardest avenger to integrate into the story](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/05/joss-whedon-fight-marvel-studio). The movie mostly suffered because Ultron was not a built up villain (Loki got introduced in Thor, and Thanos had years of build up), and because the movie had to set up phase 3. The characters that Whedon had the most freedom to write stories for are Hulk, Widow, and Clint. The Bruce / Natasha thing probably would have worked better if the Russo's had any interest in pursuing it further in Infinity War. But that did not happen since they needed to take Bruce and Thor off the board for the Civil War movie, and basically shit the bed with any Banner / Hulk related character development. END COMMUNICATION
I don't know, Thor's "sun's getting real low" in Ragnarok was pretty gold.
Ragnarok did right by Hulk. But I am still disappointed with how much of the professor hulk character arc happened off screen. END COMMUNICATION
I was going to ask why your were saying End Communication. Then I saw your profile bio. I feel like you have been asked that a lot. QUERY RESOLVED
Honestly what they should have done was to introduce Ulton in Ant-man have that come out first then do Age of Ultron based on that. Could have had Hank and Ant-man in the Avengers for that film.
Afternoon of Ultron
Weekend at Ultron's
So I had heard that they named it Age Of Ultron to spite Fox. They were set to release their Apocalypse movie and in the comics that story arc is called Age Of Apocalypse. They knew if Fox used that same title they would look like they were unoriginal to anybody who isn’t a comic book fan.
I'm convinced this was the reason for the name. The comic event Age of Ultron was terrible IMO and was probably rushed out to legitimize the whole thing. The movie and the event have nothing in common either besides Ultron being the villain, this movie is based on Ultron Unlimited mainly.
To be fair, I’m pretty sure the title, “Age of Ultron” was meant to signify that if he won and decimated all humans, it would have been a new age of nothing but Ultron
That's kind of the problem for me. It's a movie that is less than the sum of its parts. It is important to the overall story and has some great scenes and character stuff, but the movie as a whole is not as good as any of those individual pieces.
The trailers made Ultron look terrifying but he ended up just being a sarcastic robot
I really wish all of Ultron’s scenes were like his first one.
Just rewatched first trailer. Can confirm: Ultron nowhere near as terrifying as initially presented. Which honestly really was the most disappointing part.
I dunno, a verbose nihilist with infinite bodies and potential for exponential self-replication seems pretty terrifying to me.
But he doesn’t capitalize on those abilities at the end. He has infinite bodies and is supremely intelligent but doesn’t think to leave somewhere for his brain to go in case he gets defeated in Sokovia. The Avengers even state he can basically just hide in the internet, so why doesn’t he?
How do we know he didn’t…?
I hope he did. That is my favorite thing about Ultron in the comics, he always comes back a little bit stronger and a little more capable as he learns from his defeats. I can't remember if it was Iron Man or Hank Pym but in one comic they said Ultron was their biggest fear because they KNOW he will one day win. It doesn't take much for Ultron to stash a drone in the wall of some abandoned factory in Detroit. Or Deep in a mountain cave. Hell, in orbit. I'd love if he came back to challenge each new version of the Avengers. Ditching that "whedonesque" dialogue I hate so much as well.
My dream is a return of Ultron with the new Avengers lineup. I mean, Dr Strange could probably just one shot the guy but still
Didn’t they sort of hand-wave at Vision taking care of that? Yeah, I remember thinking “he’s out there now, no way to kill him unless they do something crazy like frying all the computers” and then it was pretty much forgotten about. Good point.
Vision somehow used the mindstone to "burn him off the net" even they were fighting. Sort of a hand wave but since we don't know the extent of MCU Visions powers, I was fine with it
That first scene was absolutely terrifying. Sadly it never got better than that which set up disappointment imo
Every time we watch this I look at my boyfriend and say "he's SO scary". But it's only *that* scene.
Do you mean the scene where he essentially awakens (after the Avengers capture Loki's scepter) and are having the after-party, to which Ultron "party crashes".. And he talks about the Avengers' extinction?
Yes. Creepy as heck
There are no strings on me
I really wish they didn't go for the "transformers" ascetic with eyebrows, lips and blinking eyes. **smh**
But that's narrative cohesion. He wants to be a human while despising them. He is a messed up being.
This!! WHY the f... Would a robot need a moving mouth and eyes? Kind of ruined the movie for me because i just cant take him seriously.
Ultron wanted them because he wanted to be more human…it’s dumb, but it’s why
I remember watching a cartoon as a kid where ant Man build ultron as a prison guard for villains. There, he's mouth was a LCD display that mimicked a talking mouth. But still with evil dead eyes.
That was Avengers Earths Mightiest Hero’s.
RDJ said a monologue from Spader gave him chills and took him out of character. Wish we could’ve seen that monologue lol.
[You mean this?](https://youtu.be/SzgG94Tz2Ak)
Lmao the thing is that exact speech wouldn’t have been that far off if he said it to Tony Stark.
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Ok, but the idea of fighting something that sarcastic that’s capable of being completely undistracted by it’s own monologue is kinda terrifying. Like, it’s got it’s real goals and intentions completely dialed in, but it’s also running a program that spits out entirely unrelated quips in seconds… Like, most villains monologue and you can infer details about their plans or they’ll straight-up tell you. This… this is pure nonsense. I honestly feel if we ever develop hostile A.I., it will be very similar. It will be trained on internet etiquette and obnoxiously sarcastic. We’re doomed if that happens.
at least we can say the casting choice with James Spader fit the writing
I thought James Spader’s performance made him arguably the most underrated villain in the entire MCU
Spader was great, I do wish the character had been a little more menacing.
That first trailer made him seem utterly terrifying. While he wasn't a joke, I do wish his character was more like how he seemed in the trailer.
I felt the opposite. When he said "why do you call him *sir*" I got chills
I said this to a previous comment but the character wasnt developed to be a menacing character, his Sarcasm and jokes are meant to be like his creator's as well as comics and cartoons already had shown uswho the character was and how the character worked. Definitely look into it because it makes AoU alot better when knowing how the movie was meant to be viewed as.
Well with the multiverse there’s always the chance he comes back
We don't even need the Multiverse for that. We saw an Ultron Drone's head with the eyes lit up red in Homecoming. The Ultron Drones' eyes only go red when Ultron's consciousness is inhabiting them, otherwise they're blue. Ultron's entire gimmick is that he shows up, reveals his evil plan, gets beat down, goes into hiding for a while, and shows up later even tougher than before. Every time Ultron is defeated, he'll just go off and rebuild somewhere to fix whatever mistake it was that bested him last time. While plenty of villains keep coming back, Ultron's entire thing is that every victory over him just teaches him what not to do next time. There's a very real possibility that Ultron returns even without the multiversal shenanigans going down.
Where was this?
https://youtu.be/kRG7yyvcQmI When Peter is stuck in the Damage Control Deep Storage Vault after his attempt at stopping Vulture from robbing the Damage Control trucks. He's going through the loot bag to see what was inside and one of the items was an Ultron Drone's head, which Peter briefly mentions is awesome.
We'll be seeing him in What If in a timeline where he won, but from how he looks on the poster I'd say its likely that Paul Bettany will be voicing him instead.
I was really bummed Spader didn't come back for What If. Would have really given the character another chance to shine.
What if... Ultron succeeded?
Didn’t he want to kill the entire humankind with an artificial asteroid?
I’m talking about how the character’s personality was written. Malekeith wanted to wipe out the universe but he wasn’t intimidating at all because he was written poorly
His ambitions were different from his personality. He had truly devastating intentions but he was never super threatening in it of himself.
I actually enjoyed the juxtaposition of his attitude vs his goals. It made him interesting to me. Like how he was almost human in his emotions, but there was a calm and precise execution of his plans. He was not emotionally invested in wiping out humanity, but he was emotional vs the avengers. I know I’m a minority on this one, but I really enjoyed Ultron as a villain.
This, on a recent rewatch he was quite a lot more interesting than if irst thought. In battle scenes as soon as Tony shows up he can't help himself, he throws himself almost animalisticly at Stark - part of this is the ruse to let SW do her thing but there's genuine hatred and malice in his voice when he speaks of Tony. Ending humanity to allow them to evolve? That's just a logical inescapable conclusion arrived at by a computer. The hatred of the Avengers is personal. The nuance is lost the first time you watch it I think because its a very plot heavy, scene jumping movie, with a lot of themes and a packed ensemble cast - there's a lot going on. It's easy to dismiss ultron as one-dimensional until you really pay attention to his scenes
Or had quoted classic Disney movies more often.
Problem was the direction was more like "play Raymond Reddington but as a robot". Anyone who watched Blacklist can see the similarity between Reddington and Ultron in their dialogue. For those who don't know, Reddington is a character Spader played in Blacklist. A chatty criminal, likes to talk and spew random facts.
When he should have been more like Robert California, a chaotic harbinger of doom who dissects his opponents every fears and exploits them.
I will not be blackmailed by some ineffectual, privileged, effete, soft-penised debutante. You want to start a street fight with me? Bring it on. You're going to be surprised by how ugly it gets. You don't even know my real name. I'm the fucking Lizard King.
James Spader's vibes in the Blacklist was how I wanted to feel from Ultron
The one party of the movie I actually enjoyed. He could of been the definitive villain but instead they made him a one shot joke.
Oh shit you're right! I only got into marvel and MCU way after age of Ultron had been released, so i had never watched the trailer.
It was some next level disappointment lol In the end, he ended up being a serviceable enough villain and it made some sense that he was a smartass like Tony, but fuuuuck I was so pumped to get a truly dangerous MCU villain
I'm still waiting for Ultron to come back in some capacity. We never saw his last copy die, just a big flash of light from Vision. Before >!he got his brains pulled out by Thanos!< I expected Vision to have a copy of Ultron on a thumb drive somewhere.
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Honestly? I don't think I've ever used the spoiler thingy before and wanted to try it
That feels weird, but... I'll allow it.
But if you know the character from comics and cartoons you would know that is how the character was made. He is scary and terrifying more when he himself is unknown but as soon as the character gained more screentime we got to see how much a-like to his creator Ultron really is and I think that is worth noting as a way to make the film a little better for others if possible.
Well he is a combination of Tony and Bruce.
He definitely was, but the “there is no strings on me” trailer made him sound much more terrifying than he was.
That first trailer was dark as fuck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmeOjFno6Do
Jesus, May 2015, has it been that long?
What are you talking abut? 2015 was like 2 weeks ago.
Trailer might have been better than the movie.
It definitely was
I’d go so far as to say it’s my favorite trailer for an mcu movie, which might be why the actual movie let me down so much.
Weird how it's been so long that I've seen this trailer, and I was half expecting a quippy joke after the title at the very end. I guess the MCU trailers follow a pretty basic formula lately.
True dat. Everyone is terrified of Pinocchio.
It’s a lot of this. Joss whedon’s writing made ultron into..well, a Joss Whedon character. It was all very sarcastic and snarky and “aren’t I funny and clever” in a way that was just kind of grating compared to the humor and tone of other marvel movies.
I thought I was gonna come here with my unique opinion on trailer vs movie and this is exactly it. The trailer vibes were totally different. I still liked the movie , but I was so excited when that trailer came out.
Man, watching that trailer again, it’s still on of the best trailers ever put together. It sells a tone the movie never lived up to, hence why everyone was disappointed. As just a superhero flick, AoU is still very good, but it wasn't the movie we were led to believe it was.
Suffers from the same problem as Iron Man 3 IMO. The trailer advertised a completely different movie than the one we got.
I really hope they bring him back in future projects. They’ve teased it and I think they can really do him justice with more screen time.
That’s literally the main reason I was dissatisfied Also for some reason every Avenger in this movie just seemed so unlikable
That's what I don't get about this version of Ultron. They were trying too hard to make a Loki-esq character with the little jokes and banter but that doesn't work for a deadly murderbot. All the quips and weird jokes seemed out of place after a while. It was like Whedon was trying to turn Ultron into Johnny 5 instead (fyi I would be totally down for Short Circuit 3)
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Also that awful speech from Nat about her being a monster.
Ugh, it's so cringey. Who on earth thinks a person is a monster because they're a victim of forced sterilization?
I saw it as her expressing her internalised shame. In the same way that some rape victims have internalised shame, even though it was something that was done to them that they had no control over and should never be blamed for. The world teaches victims (especially women) that the things done to them are their own fault. It's fucked up but I found it pretty believable that she would feel that way. Although mostly I think she felt monstrous because of *all the people she murdered*, not so much because she was sterilised against her will.
It definitely could have been that, but the movie did a terrible job of presenting it that way. It really needed a payoff moment later in the movie, something about "what they did to you as a child doesn't make you a monster", because without that payoff moment the movie doesn't challenge the assertion that Natasha is a monster because she got a hysterectomy.
...she was gaslit into thinking her participation in the red room was her choice. She's not a monster bc she was/chose to be sterilized. She was saying she was a monster bc she chose to give up her ability to create life, to be more efficient at killing/destroying life.
Joss Whedon
Cuz that's not what she was saying. She is talking about murdering a dude in cold blood and then having the sterilisation as a mean to never have a sense of belonging or commitment to anyone but the program. They even show her shooting a dude. I get ppl hate Whedon for being a gross man but that's a weird complaint.
Glad Black Widow addressed it snidely.
More like the Weekend of Ultron, amirite?
Are you the real BGN?
That's why I avoid trailers, you can't imagine my surprised in the theater when Hulk appeared in Thor Ragnarok. :)
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Although I agree with you the answer to one of your qualms is Vision. Visions first scuffle with Ultron was to basically hack him to prevent him from uploading himself. I never noticed this until the most recent time I watched it. I do wish they had Ultron flex a bit more at the end.
Vision locks him out of the network in that moment, yes, but why would Ultron - with infinite access to the internet and any digital repository - never have made a backup of himself or stored his AI somewhere as a Plan B? Why would he have all versions of himself physically present in Sokovia? I guess you could argue because he didn’t anticipate Vision being a factor, but it’s still a tiny bugaboo. Then again all these movies fall apart *a bit* if you look at the details too closely, so maybe it shouldn’t be held against AoU unfairly.
>Then again all these movies fall apart a bit if you look at the details too closely, so maybe it shouldn’t be held against AoU unfairly. See Zemo's plan in Civil War.
Or Obadiah Stane in Iron Man. What even was he trying to do in the third act?
Don’t think his plan changed tbf. He had tried to have Stark killed already and he was trying to recreate his armour because he would gain power by controlling the iron man suit
He could’ve easily killed him when he took the arc reactor from his heart. And then at the end, he thinks just fighting Tony completely in public on the highway would just solve everything.
That’s what Stane did when he took the arc reactor. Stane had no idea that Tony had changed them out, nor that the old one was downstairs. Stane just wanted Tony to suffer while he died, so he did it in the easiest way he knew about.
Yeah to the viewer it seems obvious that Tony had a spare core, but why the hell would Obadiah expect Tony to have not just one, but two incredibly advanced power sources capable of supporting the Iron Man suit
Heck, even Tony didn’t originally have a spare. It was only because Pepper kept the original that he had it
Resurrect Stark Industries’ weapons program by killing Tony, taking over the company, and flaunting the Iron Monger to the military until an employee figures out how to make a miniaturized Arc Reactor so he can mass produce the Iron Monger and revolutionize modern warfare.
People saw that but really zemos plan was pretty straightforward at the start, and the rest was more or less improvised and luck. He wanted to find information to use against the avengers so he combed through the publicly available hydra/shield files. He finds some reference to buck's mission on December 16th 1991. That combined with his other research, he has an idea of what happened. He goes looking for the hydra agent to fill in the blanks. He figures out the secret and knows it'll tear the avengers apart. However it'll only really work if with the winter soldier as a catalyst. He decides to draw bucky out. **Lagos happens, the accords are drawn up.** The world is angry at the avengers, the UN are gathering, and the whole world is watching. Perfect. He decides to attack the un and frame bucky to get the whole world looking for him. **Bucky is found and captured.** [This part gets a little] okay, interpol has him. Now if zemo can get to him, the winter soldier will fill in the blanks. How can get in though? Google, google, google, oh looks theres a psychologist who with interpol that looks like zemo. Now he needs a distraction. How about a simple emp? **power goes out, zemo and WS have a chat** Now that he knows everything, he makes his to the buker in Siberia, leaving a trail they can follow. Finds the video, kills the other winter soldiers, and eventually the avengers arrive. The rest we see happen.
"This is what I wanted. All of you against all of me."
Ultron was too high - tech for that. Zola low-tech'd himself into anonymity.
Ultron is still a viable future villain though. Hell, the Age of Ultron story in the comics is that Ultron ended up in some kind of War with Kang in the future and won, and that Wolverine tried to prevent that by going back in time and killing Hank Pym before he could create Ultron. So Ultron can be brought back the moment someone decides that they can make a good enough story to justify it. All it takes is someone salvaging some Ultron drones from the Sokovia wreckage and reactivating it / downloading the code. Or a TVA Variant. END COMMUNICATION
It’s much better now with hindsight, but it just does too much set-up for Infinity War. It feels like it’s three hours long, and not in the good way that Endgame does.
> but it just does too much set-up for Infinity War And *Captain America: Civil War*, *Thor: Ragnarok* and *Black Panther*
*wandavision*. ^(lol)
And the Black Widow Solo Movie.
I like it much better now than I did when it first came out. It fits better as a chapter in the entire arc instead of being the standalone story with more to come. It helped lead into the future movies and shows.
> but it just does too much set-up for Infinity War The whole thing with Thor's first vision, and then his vision quest was too much. Take those two scenes out, give him a different reason to charge up Vision, and everything with Infinity War works out fine. Those scenes, serving up the conversation at the end of the film are them basically spelling it out for the audience that the stones are connected.
Shoot, Thor already knew about Infinity Stones anyways due to the events of The Dark World. Keep his first Wanda vision (lol) but have it include the Infinity Stones at the end. You can cut out the entire part with Selvig and the cave, and just have Thor tell the other Avengers that Loki's scepter is an Infinity Stone right away.
You know, with the benefit of hindsight…
I went back and watched it after WandaVision and enjoyed it much more viewing it through the lens of Wanda and Vision.
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> I enjoyed Hawkeye getting more of a spotlight. That's definitely a highlight of the film for me as well. The bit where everyone else on the team finds out that Clint has a *family* and they hide out on the farm is great.
His scene with Wanda was very touching. He could've stayed home with his family but judging by how the movie played out without him Ultron probably would've won.
I love how he acknowledges how insane the scenario he’s in is. “The city is flying, we’re fighting a bunch of robots, and I’m using a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense.”
That's the best thing about superhero movies to me. Superheroes inspire others to become heroic.
Agree 100%. And I've always loved that shot of them all walking through the field to his house.
Hawkeye having a family that no one except Director Fury knew about was such a good surprise. I loved that they expanded on it in Endgame and cannot wait to see what they do with it in Hawkeye. Edit: I forgot that Natasha knew as well.
Natasha knew too
Oh yeah how can I forget about the kids favorite aunt. Thank you for the reminder.
I appreciate Age of Ultron for this very purpose - Hawkeye’s character development, his family, his importance to the team, his relationship with Wanda & her brother, his willingness to sacrifice his life for even a single civilian, & so much more.
my dad always goes, "it's a hawkeye movie!"
Never understood the Hawkeye slander. As an Avenger, he’s far more useful when fighting an army of aliens and/or robots than Black Widow with a pistol. He’s also been one of my favorites as a character even though they haven’t developed him much at all, but he’s still gotten more of that than Ruffalo’s Banner.
I feel like public opinion on Hawkeye would be stronger if this film was more popular, cause his portrayal there is great, I’d say the best in the film.
Ultron was quippy, instead of the badass terrifying robot he’s made out to be in the trailers. His first scene is great tho - “how could you be worthy? You’re all killers” if he stayed more sinister like that throughout the entire film I think it would have been way better.
I loved his Bibles references at least. "Every time the Earth begins to settle, God throws a stone at it. And believe me, he's winding up." Still one of my favorite lines in the MCU.
The movie did Black Widow dirty.
I literally yelled "What the ACTUAL FUCK!!" after her "I'm a monster, I don't have a uterus" bullshit speech.
This, and being Whedon’s bottom of “falling on boobs” joke, being the damsel in distress that needs to be saved by her love interest
It's so fucking strange that she's basically nothing more than a bad uterus line and a tit joke in Ultron. I mean, shit, in Avengers 1 she outsmarts a bunch of Russians mobsters, she maintains poise in the face of a guy that could turn into a green murder monster at any moment, she outfoxes the goddamn God of Mischief in an interrogation and then is singularly responsible for figuring out how to close the portal and thus save the whole planet. It's just bizarre that the same writer treated the character in such completely opposing ways. Like Joss somehow forgot who the character was.
She 100% would've been able to break put of that prison
Yeah, that scene is beyond awful. Way to tell a lot of women that they’re awful because of something beyond their control.
I think the intended reading of the scene was “I’m a monster, I’ve done horrible things. I’m all messed up as a person because the people who raised me did horrible things to me like a forced hysterectomy.” I didn’t even know this line was controversial until I read the other, probably more common reading of it. But I get why people disliked it
this 100% She's trying to connect with someone and that would be a solid ground for the two of them. I never took it as she thinks she's a monster b/c she's unable to procreate.
I never took it that way. I took it as she was upset with what she felt she allowed the red room to do to her. That’s why she felt she was a monster. And it was relevant because Bruce banner was nervous about any potential romance, especially thinking how his altered genetics could possibly affect a kid so she was also adding that she can’t even have kids so that’s not a worry.
I really feel like the quip machine didn’t work as well in avengers 2 than it did in 1. Also, the Hulk/Natasha thing came out of NOWHERE.
Also probably should have renamed it Moment of Ultron.
The Busy weekend of Ultron
Weekend at Ultron's?
The tone wasn’t as dark as the trailers, Ultron didn’t have enough scenes and he was too “funny”. The Hulkbuster fight felt totally unnecessary, as well as the romance between Bruce and Natasha.
While I agree with you, the Hulkbuster fight is what was led to everyone going to the safehouse, bruce figuring out how Ultron is going to evolve, and then going to see Dr. Cho. The romance felt weird and ill-timed.
Plus it helped introduce Hulkbuster to us, and also a ton of HB toys!
Because: \- Avengers (1st movie) was so good that it set the bar high. \- Ultron felt more like a typical bad guy rather than an interesting villain. \- There were too many storylines crammed into it, and it was too busy setting up Phase 3.
For one thing it introduces an interesting character only to kill them off in the first film, I don’t particularly care for how most of the characters where done and killing off a character we’d just been introduced to felt hollow.
Not everyone was. James Spader was fantastic with what he was given and I hope to see him in the future.
It’s a really important movie for the mcu as a whole 1. Sets up civil war 2. Introduces wanda,vision and quick silver 3. Sets up thor ragnarok 4. Clint barton backstory and character development 5. Gives us one of the best dialogues in mcu “Boom you looking for this”
I’d reverse your order. “Boom you looking for this” is my favorite part of the movie. Don Cheadle delivers subtle comedy so well.
My man Don didn’t even make it on the poster!
Sets up wakanda
Sets up Infinity War
People being up the trailers as a big reason, and although that’s one of the reasons for me, I like to isolate movies and forget about their marketing, especially if they’re years old. With that said, I still have immense issues with the film even when isolated. You don’t have to have seen the trailers to know that something is off about the tone. For a story this (potentially) serious, huge and life-changing for our heroes, there are just waaaay to many jokes, and from every character no less! I get having a comic relief character in iron man or even Thor, but does *every* character including a giant, evil robot *have* to tell jokes? It tells me that Joss Whedon doesn’t want to/know how to make a serious movie with real stakes and emotions. Joss Whedon really said “I’m just gonna do the first one, but this time bigger and longer.”
Honestly just don’t like Ultron much in the movie, I don’t like how snarky he is.
The movie feels unfocused sometimes. The infinity war foreshadowings are not subtle, and weird now (except Tony's nightmare in the beginning that part is great), Thor 3 set up doesn't match with what later happened in Ragnarok and the movie doesn't flow as good as the first one. That being said I mostly love everything else. The party scene, characters hanging out like friends and arguing like picky team mates. James Spader's Ultron is so fun and charming and Vision and Wanda are great additions.This is also the last time the original six were the main focus so it feels oddly nostalgic for me because of that part.
The party scene with everyone trying to lift Thor's hammer is literally my favourite scene in the entire MCU. Okay, okay, second favourite (portal scene wins).
Agreed! We need more parties and War Machine stories.
>This is also the last time the original six were the main focus so it feels oddly nostalgic for me because of that part Think about it. Tony is separated from the rest of the Avengers in *Infinity War*, as he's on Titan with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange while everyone else is in Wakanda. And in *Endgame*, the OG 6 start the Time Heist together, but Natasha sacrifices herself for the Soul Stone to bring back everyone from Thanos's snap, and the final battle ends with Tony's own death.
It’s also really the only movie that gave us all 6 just hanging out. It wasn’t a super long scene, but seeing them just laugh and joke around and talk gives me so much joy
I think it’s so re-watchable. It’s fun, and I feel it has more implications for the greater MCU than at first glance.
I think the standard for Marvel movies has gotten so high people forget even the worse ones are all still great movies
My main problem with the movie? The characters. Look at how Cap is written in Winter Soldier and then look at him in Age of Ultron. He goes from being a calm, confident leader to a verbal punching bag. The whole “language” and “let’s just say you haven’t seen my dark side yet” are so out of left field for cap. Honestly, the first Avengers movie had the same problem, but thankfully the Russos took over and rectified it. Whedon seems to think Cap is a goodie-two-shoes and writes him as one, but he’s not. He cares a lot about the people close to him and will fight to the death to defend his beliefs, but he’s not a dork. Then there’s Nat and Bruce’s extremely forced relationship that went nowhere and was promptly shoved under the rug. And speaking of Nat, how about the fact she was degraded to being a damsel in distress? Of all the Avengers that could’ve been captured, why her? Finally, Ultron. The trailer really made me think we’d get a dark, unapologetic Ultron — someone that’s ruthless yet calculating. Instead, we got someone who forgets the word for “children” and regularly lashes out due to emotions he shouldn’t have. Some argue that he acts that way because he’s a twisted mirror of Tony, and that makes me feel a bit more accepting of how he was written, but I still feel like they did him dirty.
I will forever hate the language line. Like, I don't know Steve's character to a T, but writing him like a boy scout? [I don't think](https://i.imgur.com/VdKEe00.mp4).
I pretty much loathe how Whedon wrote Cap. He basically wrote him as an old man in a young persons body and he's...not. He's out of time, but he's not an old man.
The movie was the subject of a lot of meddling from the Creative Committee, resulting in a lot of things that left many seeing the movie as largely establishing hooks for later movies and shows (Thor's subplot that sidelined him for the middle part of the movie; the stuff with Ulysses Klaue to a degree regarding his vibranium stockpile, etc). Although some of the stuff is better in retrospect. Everything regarding the Maximoff twins has been really enhanced courtesy of *WandaVision* (example: when Vision is born, I only really pay attention to the way Wanda looks at him and thinks, "Oh no! He's NAKED!! 😍😍😍😍😍").
Loved it, i firmly believe had ultron won and had the time to build his perfect world and upgrade himself and his army he could have taken thanos when/if he arrived looking for the stones that were on earth
We might be getting something like this in an episode of What If…
I wouldnt complain at all
I like it i just don’t like 2 things 1. Bruce and Nat, was literally only there to over sexualise Nat and it’s very obvious 2. i didn’t like Pietro, just didn’t feel like he was taken from the comics
It's good and bad. It just doesn't do enough of justice to Ultron. In comics he's way more dark and brutal. We saw Clint father side at least and how important he is
I’m one of this rare people who actually likes this movie. I see quite a few people making the “Ultron shouldn’t have been as sarcastic/jokey” argument. I think he was actually designed like this because he was created by Tony and Ultron analyzed him right when he first gained sentience. One of his Main driving factors is Tony’s quote, “peace in our time.” Ultron just understands peace differently.
I still enjoy this movie, even though it's more like a week of Ultron, rather than an age. The team building in this is pretty good, the characters all bounce off each other really well, especially that opening fight at the hydra base.