Now rewatching “Age of Ultron,” which I actually own on Amazon, and I don’t know if it’s the CGI or watching in HD instead of shitty illegal videos, but things look weirdly fake.
I kind of love Pietro’s Eurotrash track suit.
Wanda senses that letting Tony take the Mind Stone is the best way to screw the Avengers. Interesting. I didn’t remember that bit.
Chris Hemsworth’s British accent is really bad.
What did Ultron make his first body out of and why was it such a mess?
How does Ultron keep building new bodies? Where is he getting the materials? Where does the model come from?
Those are Some Titties Steve has in that shirt. I can even see his nipples.
Now rewatching “Age of Ultron,” which I actually own on Amazon, and I don’t know if it’s the CGI or watching in HD instead of shitty illegal videos, but things look weirdly fake.
I kind of love Pietro’s Eurotrash track suit.
Wanda senses that letting Tony take the Mind Stone is the best way to screw the Avengers. Interesting. I didn’t remember that bit.
Now rewatching “Age of Ultron,” which I actually own on Amazon, and I don’t know if it’s the CGI or watching in HD instead of shitty illegal videos, but things look weirdly fake.
One thing that kinda always baffles me is the whole, “Tony Stark created a murderbot!!” debate – not because Tony was necessarily in the right in attempting to harness alien power but because, as bad as Joss Whedon’s writing is, the one thing AOU does well is provide textual evidence and canonical support to the notion that a) Tony never intended to create Ultron as we see him, and that b) it is most assuredly not fully his fault.
I kinda think half of the blame towards Tony comes from misunderstanding what Ultron was meant to be, because people seem to be under this impression that Ultron was genuinely meant to be a weapon of some sorts, when it was much the opposite. The original programming was meant to be an AI which, like Jarvis, controls a group of Iron Man Legionnaires (unwearable Iron Man suits) which we’ve already seen in action. The programme was already touched upon in IM3 where Tony created several suits but later destroyed them in an attempt to move forward. The second set we actually see in AOU as the Avengers infiltrate the Hydra base at the beginning – their mission is to help evacuate or protect the civilians (”Strucker won’t care about civilians. Send out the Iron Legion”). The sole purpose of the program is to protect civilians and that’s what makes the later casualties in the final battle of Sokovia (and in CACW, the mention of Charles Spencer) so ironic and tragic.
Moving on from the fact that Ultron was meant to be something that was already in the works and proving to be useful, there is so much textual evidence and so much sub-text proving that the sceptre’s power is already in some way sentient, given the fact that there’s a Mind Stone in it. I know that people are eager to dismiss this but just look at the amount of evidence:
“I was asleep”. Ultron states this upon “waking” up, suggesting he was in some way already alive and sentient.
The attempt to integrate the programme fails – not just once, but a total of 76 times as shown on screen. Tony and Bruce give up, not understand where they went wrong (”What did we miss?”). When Ultron awakens himself, Jarvis remarks that he’s “not certain what triggered [Ultron’s] programming-”.
Earlier in the scene, Bruce remarks that scans of the sceptre make it look like a brain, and that it looks “like it’s thinking” – although, it’s not a “human mind”. The implication is that whatever is being housed by the sceptre is already, in some way, alive.
Again, Tony states that he and Bruce were “nowhere close to an interface”, which begs the question as to how Ultron not only woke himself up, but actually managed to go against his programming.
I mean, one of the most important scenes proving this is that Thor, upon having his vision, states that the twins’ “powers, our horrors, Ultron himself, it all came from the Mind Stone”. Given that the power is alien and that Thor knows the most about the Infinity Stones, I would say this sentence is significant in showing how little control Tony had over what he was creating – and how unaware he was of it’s true purpose.
I’m not saying that Tony was necessarily right in meddling with a volatile and dangerous alien weapon but I’m not sure Tony would have even attempted to try this had it not been for Wanda’s vision. I’m not saying Tony didn’t choose to do this (although again this is debatable given his state of mind), but there’s no doubt in my mind that Wanda’s manipulation of Tony mentally had brought these ideas to the forefront of his mind, firstly because Tony actually blew up and destroyed his last Legion in IM3 as a way to try to stop his obsessive PTSD-induced tinkering, and also because as Bruce remarks, Ultron was just a “fantasy” – and until now, there seemed to be no way to actually make it work.
Regardless of whether Tony would have messed around with it or not, there’s no doubt again that Wanda did influence him in his decision; not only does Fury believe so (”the Maximoff girl, she’s working you Stark”), but Wanda admits to it; “I saw Stark’s fear, I knew it would make him self destruct”. Wanda’s placement of visions in Tony’s head (and the rest of the Avengers’) is not only invasive and brings to question the ethical implications of her powers, but it is a direct trigger to Tony, who canonically has PTSD due to the alien invasion in the Avengers. The parallel between Tony building his first Legion during a manic and paranoid phase at which his PTSD was at its worst, and attempting to make Ultron after being shown a vision relating to his PTSD is stark throughout the movie to anyone who payed attention to IM3, and yet it goes on ignored by many. Not to mention, Bruce’s entire involvement in creating Ultron (and later, also Vision) seems to go on ignored or wildly misinterpreted.
To me, Tony’s flaws lie in not consulting him team about the AI, or Thor about an alien power; more concerning perhaps is the ethical, moral and political questions that such a programme raises, which in some ways becomes important again in CACW, where Tony’s failures push him towards signing the Accords and trying to create a system of accountability. I wouldn’t however state that AOU was meant to be so decisive in saying Ultron, and all of Ultron’s actions, were solely Tony’s fault, so much as it was a tragic series of events that snowballed and very quickly got out of control.
OK, why was it necessary to add that “as bad as Joss Whedon’s writing is” disclaimer at the beginning? The entire thrust of this post is that AOU was very well-constructed in terms of its conception of how the Mind Stone works and treatment of Tony’s character. I’m tempted to think the initial disclaimer was just to ward off attacks from overzealous Tumblrites who might detect a heretical departure from the moralistic consensus that because Whedon’s feminism is flawed, nothing about his writing could possibly be good.
Yeah, he’s funny and all. And that was the point of the movie. But look at his past movies. He isn’t frantic, he isn’t the cause of all jokes, he isn’t comfortable around his friends most of the time. Bruce was stern, an incredibly intelligent physicist. He didn’t have this cute little worried attitude. And that bothers me. They made him stupid. They made his intelligence a joke in the movie. And maybe it’s good that he’s “happier” but it’s an incredibly polar change considering Ragnarok Bruce is picking up rsactly where Ultron Bruce left, so there’s no time for any character development. See the gifs for comparison. It just doesn’t seem like the same character.
They made everyone stupid. Ragnarok is either stupid or dickish and everyone suffers for it. Thor lying to Hulk and to Bruce about their alter egos, using Bruce without a second glance is such a dick move. Not funny, just… Ew.
@fuckyeahrichardiii also pointed out that this Bruce didn’t seem to care that he had spent 2 years killing people for fun as the Hulk. A major part of Bruce’s character in the two Avengers movies—and presumably also in The Incredible Hulk, though I haven’t seen it—is his guilt over the damage he does when he’s in Hulk form. In AOU, when Thor does his “report on the Hulk” and talks about the gates of Hel being filled with the screams of his enemies (which is how you do Thor humor, btw), Bruce groans and covers his face because he hates the idea of killing people. (And then Thor picks up on his discomfort and starts backtracking, because pre-Ragnarok Thor, while he may be a little obtuse about other people’s feelings, actually cares about them.) In fact, the reason Bruce/Hulk leaves Earth at the end of AOU is because he’s so distraught over the damage he did and the danger he put people in when Wanda messed with him in Johannesburg.
Yep. Bruce is *tortured* at the damage he does pretty consistently in all the MCU except for Ragnarok. In Ragnarok I saw Mark Ruffalo playing a put upon nerd who whined a lot, rather than an intelligent man who struggled with horrific anxiety (that open nerve line in Avengers was perfection) and the unwelcome burden of being the Hulk. TW did the same awful shit with Bruce that he did with Loki: he took several movies’ worth of beautiful, 3D character development and gutted all of that so that the audience could laugh at it.
Absolute fucking garbage. God, the movie makes me more angry the more I think about it.
Yeah, he’s funny and all. And that was the point of the movie. But look at his past movies. He isn’t frantic, he isn’t the cause of all jokes, he isn’t comfortable around his friends most of the time. Bruce was stern, an incredibly intelligent physicist. He didn’t have this cute little worried attitude. And that bothers me. They made him stupid. They made his intelligence a joke in the movie. And maybe it’s good that he’s “happier” but it’s an incredibly polar change considering Ragnarok Bruce is picking up rsactly where Ultron Bruce left, so there’s no time for any character development. See the gifs for comparison. It just doesn’t seem like the same character.
They made everyone stupid. Ragnarok is either stupid or dickish and everyone suffers for it. Thor lying to Hulk and to Bruce about their alter egos, using Bruce without a second glance is such a dick move. Not funny, just… Ew.
@fuckyeahrichardiii also pointed out that this Bruce didn’t seem to care that he had spent 2 years killing people for fun as the Hulk. A major part of Bruce’s character in the two Avengers movies—and presumably also in The Incredible Hulk, though I haven’t seen it—is his guilt over the damage he does when he’s in Hulk form. In AOU, when Thor does his “report on the Hulk” and talks about the gates of Hel being filled with the screams of his enemies (which is how you do Thor humor, btw), Bruce groans and covers his face because he hates the idea of killing people. (And then Thor picks up on his discomfort and starts backtracking, because pre-Ragnarok Thor, while he may be a little obtuse about other people’s feelings, actually cares about them.) In fact, the reason Bruce/Hulk leaves Earth at the end of AOU is because he’s so distraught over the damage he did and the danger he put people in when Wanda messed with him in Johannesburg.
But when it comes to the ultimate Marvel villain, come
on, it’s Loki. Not a single MCU villain to date comes close to touching
the pathos of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, who basically stole Thor even before he was revealed to be an antagonistic force. We care
about Loki, even when he’s doing awful things, and his story is
ultimately one of tragedy. That’s what makes him compelling, and that’s
what no other Marvel movie has been able to replicate. Granted, Loki got
to build his pathos as a friendly face first before being outed as a
baddie, but even in The Avengers there’s a
dynamism to the performance and the role that makes it utterly
watchable. Here’s hoping Loki sticks around for a very, very long time.
I largely agree with the ordering and analysis – especially #1 and 2 – but I would have put Thanos higher on the grounds of his background presence in The Avengers and the utter creepiness of his role as Gamora and Nebula’s “father” in the GOTG movies. I also would have put Red Skull lower, because I found him kind of a boring, predictable cartoon “I vant to take over ze vorld” villain in much the same way as Malekith and Hela. (Yeah, I know, the Nazis really were like that… except that Red Skull isn’t really a Nazi, and doesn’t care about the race stuff, so his motivation is just sort of confusing. Just like Hydra’s motivations in general, as the discussion of Alexander Pierce notes.)
I definitely would have put Ultron higher than Red Skull, precisely for the reasons the writer describes:
Writer/director Joss Whedon is asking big, difficult, and dark questions with this film concerning parentage and basic humanism, and James Spader’s evil robot Ultron is something of a mouthpiece for these ideas and concerns. Ultron is essentially Tony’s legacy in humanoid form, and this is a story of a son denying his father and carving out a legacy of his own. While the visual design of the character is a bit underwhelming, his motivations and Shakespearean-like dialogue are delectable, and Spader makes a meal of it. That final scene between Ultron and Vision, discussing the value of humanity itself, is something that could only come from the mind of Whedon in the context of a massive blockbuster sequel, and Ultron makes for one of the MCU’s very best baddies.
This writer – free of Tumblr’s self-righteous, aesthetically indiscriminate animus against Joss Whedon (and probably a white dude, which of course automatically discredits him, except in certain circles when he ranks Loki #1…) – recognizes what still makes Whedon an interesting writer: the philosophical issues he’s willing to take on even in an action movie. Maybe it wasn’t very effective if audiences didn’t really get what was going on: the question whether humanity, considering all its horrors, deserves to exist; whether logically infallible computerized intelligence would do better morally; whether it’s immoral to destroy a form of life whose existence is, on balance, a bad thing; whether and how AI, as a human creation, counts as a successor to or even a descendant of humanity… Black Panther makes its moral/philosophical issues pretty obvious and accessible; and perhaps people on Tumblr will say that the issues Age of Ultron raises, abstract as they are, are ones that only white men could care about (in the way that so-called Effective Altruists in Silicon Valley have decided, absurdly, that the most urgent moral problem is preventing the AI revolution because, even though it’s having no effects now, if/when it does come the consequences will be so cataclysmic). Admittedly, I am white (in most contexts), and as a reasonably successful analytic philosopher I might count as an honorary man, so perhaps it’s no counterargument that I find it interesting and still like Joss Whedon’s writing.
I think the biggest problem I have with Thor’s characterization in Ragnarok is that Thor’s not a comedian, and a Thor movie shouldn’t be a comedy. Thor can be funny, and Thor movies can have funny moments, but the core shouldn’t be comedy. That’s more mainstream entertaining (I admit, I find Ragnarok amusing/entertaining), but it’s not Thor. It never has been. Thor has always been deeply emotional, (over)dramatic, and reverent. That’s why it pisses me off to see people say that Ragnarok is what Thor movies always should have been, and the characterization is the best it’s ever been. No. This isn’t Thor. Those characters aren’t Thor or Loki, they’re the comedic simplification of those characters.
This seems right. Guardians of the Galaxy should be funny (and it is); you can get some pathos out of Star-Lord’s and Rocket’s stories (and they do), but they basically are comedians – it’s part of their character. If Thor is funny in his movies, either Thor shouldn’t be in on the joke – the way Thor 1 gets humor out of his confusion and awkwardness without resorting to ridicule – or it should be dignified and deadpan, the way Thor is in TDW (“Space is fine,” hanging the hammer on the coat rack) and Age of Ultron (“You’re all not worthy”; stepping on the Lego and then nudging it out of the way; his interactions with Vision; “as long as there is life in my breast, I am… running out of things to say”; “With the exception of this one [Tony], there’s nothing that can’t be explained”). The bickering with Loki in TDW is also good Thor humor, because we see him as a typical brother, but it never breaks character. Oh yeah, and the bilgesnipe exchange with Coulson in The Avengers.
All of this is subtle humor. In fact, I got the most examples out of AOU, probably because clever, subtle humor is Joss Whedon’s thing; he’s very practiced at making old, serious, generally dignified people funny in an in-character way (see: Rupert Giles, Angel, Shepherd Book; Spike and Wesley are less dignified, but vaguely in the same category). I’m not sure exactly which added scenes in TDW he wrote (other than the bro-boat and the shapeshifting); I don’t think he wrote the bickering in the spaceship, but he might have (in case they expanded that scene in reshoots). It’s hard to make Thor funny, so you need a writer with a specific sensibility and skill set. Taika Waititi (and Eric Pearson, however much of his script actually survived) does not have that sensibility; his way of making ancient vampires funny in What We Do in the Shadows was to deprive them of dignity. So of course we should expect that his way of making Thor and Loki funny was to deprive them of dignity.
Loki is the Philosopher King 