Avengers: Age of Ultron

***Avengers: Age of Ultron*** is a 2015 American superhero film, based on the Marcel Comics superhero team the Avengers and produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is a sequel to the 2012 film The Avengers.

## Plot

In the aftermath of HYDRA's return, S.H.I.E.L.D. has gone defunct and HYDRA is now operating publicly as a terrorist organization. Sleeper agents of HYDRA that weren't arrested stole Loki's scepter and set up hidden bases all over the planet. In response, the Avengers decided it's time to regroup and takedown HYDRA. For the next year, the team defeated every HYDRA base until they found the final base in the nation of Sokovia. While raiding the base, Hawkeye is attacked by a Sokovian teenager who runs incredibly fast and is then heavily injured forcing him to retreat for the rest of the battle. While the rest of the team fights HYDRA, Iron Man reaches inside of the base and finds Loki's scepter, but when he grabs it a Sokovian teenage girl uses strange psychic powers to induce a hallucination into Tony in which the Avengers are all dead. While still shocked, Tony takes the scepter. Although the mission was a success, the two mutant Sokovians, and HYDRA's new leader Wolfgang von Strucker is still on the loose. Nevertheless, HYDRA's been dealt with for the moment and the group decides to celebrate in three days before Thor takes the scepter to Asgard. Tony asks Thor to let him study the scepter to learn more about it.

Back home, Doctor Cho uses a special chamber that produces artificial muscle tissues to heal Hawkeye while Banner and Natasha seem to be getting close. Maria Hill also informs the group that the Sokovian teenagers that attacked them are Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, they had volunteered for HYDRA's experiments to create their own superpowered soldiers with Loki's scepter. Pietro runs at inhuman speeds and Wanda has telekinetic and mind-controlling powers. Tony finds out the scepter's energy is oddly familiar to an AI and asks Banner to help him use the scepter to complete his "**Ultron program**". Ever since the Chitauri invasion and Aldrich Killian's vengeance campaign, Tony's feared that the Avengers won't be enough to protect the world and has been working on a super AI that can operate the Iron Man suits on its own which would be named "Ultron". Banner reluctantly agrees but the two decide to keep their experiment secret as Thor still thinks they're just studying the scepter. Three days later, the Avengers are having a party to celebrate their victory over HYDRA, when suddenly Ultron activates on its own. J.A.R.V.I.S. introduces himself to Ultron, only for Ultron to respond by killing J.A.R.V.I.S. and possessing several Iron Man suits.

Ultron attacks the Avengers and escapes with the scepter before declaring he'll save the world by killing the avengers. The team angrily confronts Tony for messing with the scepter and creating a genocidal maniac robot in the process, but Tony defends his decision by asking the rest of the Avengers if they ever considered what would happen if they faced an enemy too strong for them and were defeated. Ultron goes to Sokovia and convinces Wanda and Pietro, who hate the Avengers because a Stark Industries missile killed their parents years ago, to help him destroy the Avengers. A few days later, Von Strucker is found dead and a large amount of Vibranium is stolen from the country of Wakanda, the team concludes that this must be Ultron's doing and also find out the Maximoffs are helping him. In South Africa, Ultron takes Ulysses Klaus's stolen Vibranium. The Avengers arrive and try to fight Ultron, but Wanda uses her powers to induce hallucinations into all of them except Hawkeye involving their worst fears. Thor in particular has a strange blurry vision about six glowing gems. Ultron escapes while Hawkeye fights Pietro and Wanda forcibly turns Banner into Hulk and unleashes him in a nearby city, forcing Tony to use the Hulkbuster armor to stop Hulk.

After that fiasco, the Avengers go hide at Hawkeye's house, where they learn he has a family. While on the farm, tension increases between Tony and Steve. Nick Fury comes and encourages the Avengers to continue fighting Ultron and informs them that for some reason Ultron can't get access to nuclear weapons. Ultron uses the scepter to brainwash Doctor Cho and use her tissue generating chamber to build a new body for himself using a mixture of Vibranium and synthetic muscle tissue. He also breaks the scepter to reveal a mysterious yellow gem that was stored inside it. Thor leaves the farm to search for Erik Shelving and investigate his strange vision when they fought the Maximoffs. Thor repeats the vision but this time more clearly, there he sees six colored gems being placed in a glove followed by a red humanoid creature holding one of the gems on its forehead. While Ultron uploads his AI to his new body by attaching the yellow Gem to its forehead like in Thor's Vision, Wanda takes the chance to read his mind and learn that Ultron plans to exterminate the entire mankind. Knowing this, the Maximoffs betray Ultron just as the Avengers attack, forcing Ultron to halt the uploading to fight them. During the fight, Captain America recovers the chamber which is taken to Tony and Banner so they can destroy the body, while the Maximoffs decide to help the Avengers now aware of Ultron's true nature, and Romanoff is kidnapped. Wanda panics when she learns Tony has the chamber and fears that he'll turn it into a second Ultron.

While studying the body, Tony finds out that J.A.R.V.I.S. survived Ultron's initial attack and is the reason why Ultron can't reach Nuclear weapons. He suggests Banner upload J.A.R.V.I.S. into the body to bring it to life to essentially create what Ultron was meant to be, except with J.A.R.V.I.S. operating it so the body won't be a genocidal maniac as well. Steve and the Maximoffs confront Tony and Banner to try to stop them when suddenly Thor appears and brings the body to life. A humanoid synthetic creature with J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice comes out of the chamber, it briefly attacks but soon calms down and identifies himself as "The Vision". Thor explains that the yellow gem on Vision's forehead is none other than the **Mind Stone, one of the six Infinity Stones a.k.a. the most powerful objects in the universe.** Not only that, the Aether that Malekith used and the Tesseract were also Infinity Stones, meaning at least three Infinity Stones have appeared in recent years (four counting the one the Guardians of the Galaxy found which Thor was unaware of at the time). The Mind Stone was inside Loki's scepter and is what created Ultron and gave the Maximoff's power, but if it's on their side via The Vision it'll be their triumph card to defeat Ultron for good. Most of the group remains wary of Vision, but Vision proves he's trustworthy by lifting Thor's hammer.

Vision explains that Ultron will be hiding in Sokovia and is planning to build a doomsday device to kill every organic being on the planet so they must go stop him now. Vision and the Maximoffs are officially welcomed to the Avengers before everyone leaves for Sokovia. At Sokovia, Ultron reveals he's installed machines that lift an entire chunk of the country into the air, once it's high enough he'll drop it down and the crash will essentially replicate the meteorite that extinguished the dinosaurs. Banner sneaks into Natasha's prison and frees her. She and Hulk join the rest of the group just as the city starts to rise. Iron Man works on a plan to prevent the crash, but the only option he finds is to overload the engines levitating it than blasting it with Thor's electricity so they'll explode and destroy the entire city. The Avengers fight Ultron's army of Sentry droids while trying to evacuate as many citizens as possible from the floating city using S.H.I.E.L.D.'s helicarriers. The Vision arrives and forces Ultron out of the network meaning he has no means to escape should he be defeated. Ultron finds his army is being crippled and the Avengers won't let him reach the lever to drop the city so he hijacks a fighter jet and shoots at them. Hawkeye is almost hit by Ultron but Pietro saves him, at the cost of his own life. Hulk jumps into Ultron's jet and knocks him back to the city while the rest of the Avengers make it to the helicarriers.

Wanda senses her brother's death and, in a fit of rage, goes after Ultron to personally destroy him, but in doing so allows a stray Ultron droid to activate the lever. As the city descends, Vision saves Wanda while Thor and Iron Man execute their plan to destroy the city before it crashes. Back at the ground, Vision finds Ultron uploaded on his last drone. The two share a brief conversation about how mankind is doomed, but Vision decides he'll protect them and kills off Ultron for good. Hulk, still on the jet, decides to abandon the Avengers and goes off the radar. In the aftermath of the battle, Thor decides to leave to investigate the Infinity Stones because it isn't a coincidence that so many Infinity Stones have appeared lately but is confident that the Mind Stone is safe in Vision's hands. Tony and Hawkeye decide to quit the Avengers for the time being. With Hulk M.I.A., Tony and Hawkeye retired and Thor went, Steve and Natasha decide to form a new Avengers group with Falcon, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, and Vision.

In the post-credits scene, Thanos puts on the Infinity Glove and decides to go hunt the Infinity Stones himself.

## Good Qualities

1. Having everything being setted up and established in the previous movie, it's absolutely cool and fun to see our main heroes (Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye) cooperating as a team. It's awesome to see them go on missions and work together, like in the opening scene and the action sequences, and even just having fun and interacting with each other, like in the party scene. The actors' chemistry really added a lot. In a nutshell, it's the main characters what really carries the film all along.
2. The main theme, while similar to the first Avengers movie, has a more sinister tone to fit with Ultron.
3. Paul Bettany, the actor who voiced J.A.R.V.I.S., now portrays Vision. This fits with the fact that Vision was created from J.A.R.V.I.S.
4. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, two X-Men who happen to be Magneto's children in the X-Men canon, make a guest appearance with Scarlet Witch becoming a recurring character.
5. Good use of foreshadowing and establishing:
	* The aftermath of the movie ties very well into Captain America: Civil War.
	* Tony's accidental creation of Ultron would go on to have major implications for both *Avengers: Infinity War* and *Avengers: Endgame*.
	* The Infinity Stones officially become a major plot element of the MCU, and it's revealed that, so far, four stones have appeared.
	* Wakanda and Black Panther are briefly mentioned. Likewise, Ulysses Klaue appears as a minor antagonist and would later return in the *Black Panther* movie.
6. Wanda and Pietro are likeable characters, getting character development throughout the film.
	* Even after this film, Wanda continues to get character development, by a lot. Eventually, she and Vision got their own show.
7. Ultron manages to make *"I've Got No Strings"* from *Pinocchio* sound utterly terrifying in a good way.
8. Funny scenes, such as:
	* Iron Man punching Hulk and saying “Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep” which is very funny.
	* The scene where Thor tests the other Avengers on who is worthy enough to lift his hammer, the Mjolnir is also a little funny, as well as amusing, and this scene was also interesting.
		+ It also foreshadowed Captain America being worthy of the Mjolnir as well.
9. Awesome action scenes like the awesome opening battle sequence and the final battle.
10. Ultron is a really good and likeable villain, who is, if not, an even better villain than Thanos.
11. ***"Is that the best thing you can do?!"***
	* ***"You had to asked."***

## Bad Qualities

1. Ultron was kind of wasted as a villain; not to mention his questionable characterization of him constantly throwing corny one-liners.
2. Tony's characterization was very inconsistent and mishandled too. In *Iron Man 3* we saw a very vulnerable depiction of him, dealing with paranoia and PTSD over the possible idea of another attack to society. While those reasons, and Scarlet Witch's vision, is what essentialy pushes him to create Ultron, he seems more to do it out of pride and arrogance, rather than fear and concern. Plus, he seems to have forgotten his character development, and is again acting like his original selfish self.
3. The plot is a little all over the place and overstuffed. There are several set-ups and storylines rather than being a simple superhero movie. Whether or not Whedon was intentionally setting up *Captain America: Civil War* with Tony and Steve is unclear. However, it's quite obvious he was forced to set up a lot of future projects at the expense of his own storytelling.
	* While great characters, Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch don't really add much to the story and only serve to have their characters introduced.
	* It doesn't help the fact that Whedon also wanted to include Spider-Man and Captain Marvel.
	* The scene where Thor has a vision of the Infinity Stones was very intrusive because it had nothing to do with the plot and only served to tease future movies.
4. **The movie is way too quippy**, and the worst part is that most of the attempts at humor feel forced and bad. This has become a common mistake in MCU movies.
5. Aaron Taylor Johnson's acting as Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver, while decent, is kinda bland, especially when compared to Evan Peters' amazing performance in the *X-Men* movies. His costume, while faithful to the comics, also looks bland.
6. Speaking of Quicksilver, his death was forced. He could've ran faster than the speed of the bullets to save Hawkeye, instead of sacrificing himself.
	* The reason he was killed off was because of legal issues with Fox, who owned the X-Men rights at the time.
7. **False advertising:**
	* The trailers also gave the impression that this was going to be a sequel with a dark, eerie and more dramatic tone when, like the previous movie, it's a science fiction action superhero comedy film. The tone didn't really changed.
	* In the final moment of the movie trailer, a broken Captain America shield is shown hinting at something tragic for the character, when in the actual movie this is a vision that occurs 15 minutes after the start.
	* Despite being called *Age of Ultron*, the events of the movie happen in the course of a week. However...In episode 8 of Disney+ animated series What If...? the "Age of Ultron" finally happened.

## Reception

Although positively received, *Age of Ultron* was noted by many to not be as good as the first Avengers movie. It has a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 368 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Exuberant and eye-popping, Avengers: Age of Ultron serves as an overstuffed but mostly satisfying sequel, reuniting its predecessor's unwieldy cast with a few new additions and a worthy foe." On Metacritic, it has a 66/100 based on 49 critics, signifying "generally favorable reviews".

## Videos

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## Trivia

* Quicksilver's death marks the first time a main character actually dies onscreen.

Template:Marvel Cinematic Universe

## External Links

* Template:IMDb
* Template:Rotten Tomatoes