Avengers: Age of Ultron is not a good movie, let alone a good Marvel movie. Its pacing is all over the place, bouncing around from exciting montage fight sequences in Europe, Asia and Africa (which in particular lasts entirely too long to show off the Hulkbuster fight sequence). Its plot devices leave more questions than answers (what is the relationship between the Mind Stone and Ultron’s mind? Why is Thor integral to the creation of Vision? Why is Vision worthy?) Its character arcs are largely unnecessary and forgettable (Since when are Bruce and Natasha a thing? Seriously who remembers the point of Thor going into a cave pool and information dumping the Infinity Stones?) Despite its shortcomings, one aspect of the film stands out for its significance to the MCU’s overarching story and plot: the villain, Ultron. Ultron serves as a shift in the franchise from previous films’ optimism towards The Avengers by serving as a dark foil to Tony Stark’s authoritarian desire of “peace in our time,” exposing the ideological differences amongst the heroes that becomes central in later MCU entries.
Within moments of gaining awareness, Ultron deduces his purpose as a “peacekeeping program” is incompatible with the actions of the Avengers, namely Tony Stark, and the atrocities of mankind as irredeemable, requiring humanity’s mass extinction. Just as Tony pridefully took it upon himself to go above his fellow avengers and world leaders to become a supreme protector, so does Ultron take it upon himself to become a supreme destroyer with the same end goal: “a suit of armor around the world.” After seemingly destroying Jarvis, Ultron staggers out before The Avengers like a Frankenstein’s monster of pieced together Iron Man suits, decrying the heroes as “killers.” Interestingly, Ultron takes on the speaking patterns of Tony Stark, utilizing Tony’s trademark quips and own voice, emphasizing the film’s suggestion that Ultron is a manifestation of Tony’s desire to protect the world from outside forces. The other Avengers criticize Tony for going over their heads and creating Ultron with Bruce, leading to Tony defending his creation as being necessary but also deflecting his involvement, saying he and Bruce weren’t “even close to an interface,” before defending himself for “carrying a nuke through a wormhole” to save New York. Here, Tony is in conflict not only with The Avengers but also with himself, as he is beginning to see how Ultron is a corrupted form of his personal pride. Ultron invokes Tony’s language again when taking Klaue’s vibranium supply, proclaiming “keep your friends rich and your enemies rich and wait to find out which is which.” When Klaue points out these are Tony’s words, Ultron answers “You think I’m one of Stark’s puppets? His hollow men? Look at me, do I look like Iron Man? Stark is nothing” and takes his arm off. Ultron has the same inner conflict as Tony as he recognizes they are potentially one in the same. Ultron serves as an example of the type of cruelty Tony’s supposedly safe world could endure in the name of peace and what he could become in the process of obtaining that world. Ultron is a reflection of Iron Man who is more iron than man, an automaton who has rejected his humanity while claiming to serve humanity’s best influence.
After Ultron escapes, The Avengers fear what a program like Ultron could do: steal information, expose identities and worst of all, commit mass murder through accessing nuclear codes. Ultron’s unlimited access to the world’s internet mirrors the United States’ post-9/11 actions like unwarranted information gathering through the PATRIOT act, actions which served as a basis for the Marvel Comics Civil War storyline, a storyline Age of Ultron begins to sow the seeds for in Captain America: Civil War. Age of Ultron stands as the turning point in the franchise for public perception towards The Avengers, leading to the team’s partial disbanding because the characters begin to face larger consequences for their actions. For example, the collateral damage incurred by The Avengers was underplayed previously in the films, but after Age of Ultron, their giant battles were given official civilian death tolls: The Battle of New York at 74, the Crashing of the SHIELD helicarriers at 23, and most importantly The Battle of Sokovia at 177. The scenes of war in Sokovia are shocking, as the Ultron bodies flying around raining destruction are a dark re-imagining of the Iron Man suits flying around saving the day in Iron Man 3, as is the death of Pietro Maximoff. He was set up to be a new Avenger and true deaths amongst heroes by this point in the franchise are seldom seen (Coulson returns in Agents of SHIELD, Groot lives on through Baby Groot). While the emotional impact of the scene is debatable, with Pietro’s death, so too dies some of the idealism of the franchise and begins a new sense of pessimism.
Just like Tony identifies threats from outer space as being “the endgame” for humanity that will doom them all, Ultron echoes Tony one last time before the film’s end, calling Vision and humanity “hopelessly naïve” and “doomed,” which later proves correct in Avengers: Infinity War. Ultron becomes Tony’s biggest sin up to this point in the story, and begins Tony’s next challenge before he may redeem himself fully. Ultron is an effective villain whose impact is felt throughout the rest of the MCU film franchise.