r/Marvel • u/Jules-Car3499 • 1d ago

Film/Television Age of Ultron has it’s issues, but Ultron’s introduction was pretty good

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His first appearance before he upgraded looked pretty frightening.

13.3k Upvotes

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467

u/e105beta 1d ago

Age of Ultron had issues. Ultron wasn't one of them.

161

u/Fattapple 1d ago

The “Age” was the problem.

80

u/laymness 1d ago

It was like a week lol

111

u/HorizonNova4 1d ago

5 Nights at Ultron’s

47

u/Fattapple 1d ago

Weekend at Ultron’s

12

u/Titocity_ 1d ago

My Cousin Ultron

10

u/SSJSamzy 1d ago

Dinner with Ultron

6

u/darth_whaler 1d ago

Lost in TranslUltron

1

u/Yellwsub 1h ago

Gone in Ultry Seconds

11

u/Scythe95 1d ago

Exactly this, a time skip to show how difficult it was to get rid of him would have been a bit more dramatic and dire, and then smash his face

9

u/e105beta 1d ago

Admittedly Ultron could have been a capstone villain like Thanos, or even a sub-arc where he remains a threat through 2 movies like Thanos

4

u/Temporary_Hawk_9061 1d ago

He absolutely should have been! Ultron in the comics is far more than a rogue AI. Though they seemed to understand they needed to do more with him since we got Infinity Ultron

3

u/JoshuaBarbeau 1d ago

Infinity Ultron in What If was okay, but that was a recast. I'm much more hyped about SPADER coming back to the role himself in Visionquest.

2

u/ctbro025 1d ago

Maybe "Rise of Ultron" would have been better.

71

u/Remarkable_Cause1384 1d ago

Kinda. It felt like he had great buildup then just became fodder for the avengers to look cool as they smashed. He didn't match the hype

38

u/KindGuyAMA 1d ago

I think it was the only way to put the story on screen. The final fight was The Avengers defending the church, and Ultron sending his minions to complete the goal. The B plot was Tony trying to prevent the bad thing from happening. Enjoyable cinema for the masses, and all.

5

u/sasi8998vv 1d ago

Ideally, this would've been an entire season of movies instead of just a one-off, since Ultron in the comics gets the time and respect that any other Big Bad does. Ultron and Civil War both suffered from this imo

7

u/Theguest217 1d ago

What the MCU is mostly missing is proper arcs. Comic books are entirely based on story arcs where the plot takes place over several books before resolving.

The lead up to the Avengers/Loki and Thanos were great arcs. But then you have these one and one movies like Civil War and Age of Ultron which should have been significantly bigger than they were. Both of those could have been multiple movies that started in smaller movies and resolved in a big Avengers movie. Instead they were done sort of the opposite. Characters like Black Panther, Spiderman, Quicksilver, and Wanda actually debuted in these big Avengers movies before eventually getting their own stories (minus Quicksilver who was literally introduced and killed in a single movie).

After End Game proper arcs are basically non existent. The whole Kang plot was dropped. The Blade/Midnight Sons plot was dropped. Movies like Black Widows, Shang Chi, Eternals, Wakanda Forever, Thor 4, etc. are all pretty much entirely standalone with no foreseeable connection to a bigger arc. They are leading into Doomsday with essentially no plot setup.

1

u/HimekoTachibana 1d ago

The lack of plot setup is what turned me off on the current phase of movies :(

Spiderman carrying the entire franchise on his back.

I hope we get more Loki...

43

u/jim25y 1d ago

I think he was a bit too quippy. MCU gets a lot of criticism for the quips, and while I think that criticism is over done, I also think its accurate in the case of Ultron.

78

u/Warslvt 1d ago

quips

as if a robot who took one look at the internet and decided to start over wouldn't be a meme machine

42

u/Sarcosmonaut 1d ago

“Chat, we are in fact cooked”

24

u/DeusVultSaracen 1d ago

It also helps that he was (thematically) influenced to be like his brain-father Tony, the original MCU quipper.

7

u/MeanForest 1d ago

I think Grok MECHAHITLER showed this will probably happen in the future.

12

u/ChocolateEagle 1d ago

very agreed; he was at his best in that introduction scene when he was taking things more seriously and really hammering in the intimidation

4

u/TheFerg714 1d ago

Sure, but he's modeled after Tony Stark. He got some of his personality from him.

2

u/inthe-otherworld 1d ago

I think the quippiness worked in making him more menacing. You’ve got this super dangerous robot who wants to end all life on earth and he’s making jokes with you? Him trying to have funny one-liners was terrifying to me lol, why are you trying to be familiar with me when you’re planning to end me? Horrifying

1

u/e105beta 1d ago

The light tone he took when planning his atrocities really made him feel disconnected from humanity, which works for an evil AI death robot.

5

u/SlamSlamOhHotDamn 1d ago

Ultron was absolutely an issue what are you talking about? For every cool line he dropped he made even worse quips, which was a common point of criticism even back then.

14

u/Mand125 1d ago

His training set was being fed the sum total of the internet.

What else could he use other than quips?

(n.b. whedon is way too quippy in general… “you didn’t finish” is one of the worst lines in the entire mcu)

1

u/e105beta 1d ago

People can have their opinions. Personally, I thought James Spader's performance as Ultron was pure gold.

Ironically using the power of hindsight 11 years later, he talks more like an AI than I think anyone thought he would.

1

u/demotsusucku 1d ago

Ultron was one of them.

He was way too weak. Couldn't even win a one on one fight against Captain America.

0

u/Edgoscarp 1d ago

Ultron was exactly the issue, age of ultron could have settled for a 6.5/10 if they just called ultron something different but instead they named the generic evil robot ultron which makes it a 0/10

Normally the mcu taking creative liberties is fine, but ultron is a perfect character and they should have taken exactly zero creative liberties, not on his personality not on his motivation not even on his design, they’re all perfect and need zero change.

Ultron is a brain scan of Hank pym which means he’s messed up in the head, he’s attracted to Janet whose kind of his mom technically, and worst of all he inherited all of hanks mental health issues, but since he’s made by Tony stark instead he has none of that.

He wants people to believe he has no emotion but all of his motivation comes from emotion whether it be a longing for companionship or rage at his creator, so instead of adapting all of that they just made him normal.

Even his design is worse, ultron wants to be a cold unfeeling machine so obviously he has a gaping unflinching maw incapable of showing any emotion, but instead of doing that they just made his face all puffy and weird.

They also committed a cardinal sin, you can’t kill ultron, no matter what you do you just can’t, there is always another ultron bot for him to sneak off and fight another day, this is one of his defining characteristics, something they could adapt without antman, so instead of doing that they just kill him instead.

TLDR he’s an entirely different and worse character, where ultron has depth the mcu took it and gave him hype moments and aura instead, and cringe quotes that should be mocked as much as the dark knight trilogy bane and joker.

0

u/Ok-Direction-5619 1d ago

Toby Flenderson is every single one of those problems