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| He's got an awesome design. |
Very recently billionaire genius
Elon Musk sided with genius Physicist Steven Hawking on the topic of creating
artificial intelligence. According to Musk, creating thinking machines is
tantamount to “summoning the Demon,” if we don’t step carefully in this branch
of science. If evil mechanical beings like Ultron lie on the road of AI, I can
understand the fear. Like with a few previous character’s, I’m going to go in
the character’s chronological order, not how the events unfolded in the comic
storyline. It's a little easier on the noodle.
Ultron was originally created by
Hank Pym, better known as Ant-man, as a lab assistant. Pym, wanting to work
with someone of comparable intellect who didn’t have Tony Stark’s more dickish
qualities, copied his brain patterns into the robot. Things went well, for
about five seconds. After being switched on Ultron almost immediately went
berserk, knocking Pym unconscious before wiping the brilliant scientist’s mind
of ever creating Ultron, before the machine escaped. How he did that when
Ultron-1 seemed to be mounted to the floor is anyone’s guess.
Ultron spent the next few years in
hiding, “reinventing” himself. Sorry, bad joke, but seriously he spent an
unspecified time upgrading and altering himself before returning to the limelight.
Now calling himself Ultron-5, Ultron took up the identity of The Crimson Cowl
and recreated the anti-Avenger villain team-up, the Masters of Evil. He also
created his own android minion, using a left over body from the old school
robot Human Torch and brainwave patterns of a hero named Wonder Man, which he named
the Vision. Vision was sent in to infiltrate the Avengers, but like his own
maker before him, Vision betrayed his creator and officially joined the Avengers.
For those who don’t know Wonder Man, whom was created by the villainous Baron
Zemo to also infiltrate the Avengers, also rebelled against his maker. So, seriously,
Ultron probably should have seen this coming. Together, the Avenger’s defeated
Ultron’s Masters of Evil and dismantled the evil automaton. Unfortunately. Ultron's
cyber brain escaped into a new body, this one being composed of the nigh indestructible
Adamantium. At this point he started going by Ultron-6, and started the pattern
of Ultron dying, being rebuilt and adding a point to his post name number. I
believe the most recent one was Ultron-20 or so. Can’t keep a good…evil Robot
down, I guess.
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| Skynet, eat your heart out. |
Ultron, as a robot, has a number of
superhuman abilities and fun little accessories. He is incredibly strong, fast,
and intelligent. He can fly at nearly supersonic speeds. He comes with a number
of weapons like concussive energy blasts, missiles, hypnotic attachments, and an “encephalo-ray”
that puts people into a near deathlike coma. He’s like an evil life sized action
figure. His body, from Ultron-6 onward, is composed of adamantium, which makes
him virtually indestructible. He is capable of transferring a fraction, or all,
of his consciousness and memories into other Ultron bodies or computer systems
with enough memory. He has also capable of building seemingly unlimited Ultron
clones, made of lesser metals, which he can control via a hive mind like
connection. Picture 10,000 of these robots talking in perfect sync. It’s a
creepy image, isn’t it?
Ultron appears in a number of
Marvel related franchises. He was a recurring villain in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Ultron is initially
introduced as Hank Pym’s assistant android, as well as the guard to various supervillain
prisons. Things worked well because Ultron itself was incapable of causing undo harm to others, apparently Pym hadn't even taught him the concept of violence. Why he was cool guarding a prison filled with violent criminals is anyone's guess. The problem occurred when Kang the Conqueror led an invasion from the
future. Outnumbered and outgunned, Hank Pym was forced to teach his Ultron army
the concept of violence to assist the Heroes in defeating Kang. They put down Kang's invasion, but Ultron is clearly starting to malfunction. Later, Ultron
hires a number of villains to distract the Avenger’s before making his grand
entrance as a crazed villain. He singlehandedly defeated the Avengers, forced
Hulk to revert back to Bruce Banner by sucking up his Gama energy, and
seemingly vaporized Thor, before they were able to take him down. He was played
by Wally Wingert, the voice of Hank Pym on the show, but was later replaced by
Tom Kane. Good call, Kane just sounds so much more menacing that Wingert. Look
Wingert up, can you possibly see that voice sounding evil? I sure can’t.
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| His head is supposedly modeled after an ant's. Pym you need to get out more. |
He was one of the inner circle of
the Doctor Doom’s Masters of Evil in the game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance voiced by James Horan. I’ve said it
before, and I’ll say it again, if you have a PS2 or a good emulator, find and
play this game. It’s great.
He will be the major antagonist of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Shocking,
right? He’ll be played by actor James Spader. Doctor Daniel Jackson from the Stargate movie is now a homicidal robot
conquerer, weird. My understanding is that this time around Stark is the maker
of Ultron, although I’ve heard a rumor that the program that Stark uses was
originally created by Hank Pym. Not sure of that one though. There is only one
trailer of AoU at the moment, ending with Ultron uttering the line from Pinocchio,
“There are no strings on me.” It gave me chills.
Ultron is your pretty basic evil
android. He hates humanity because inferior humans made him, and that in and of
itself is apparently a huge affront to Ultron’s dignity. He’s an incredibly tenacious
villain, never stopping in his goal to wipe out all mankind. While one or two
versions of Ultron have tried to redeem himself, most of them are stone
cold killers. He’ll destroy us all one day, simply because he’ll keep trying to
kill mankind until the end of time. Got to give him points for trying. A little tidbit that makes Ultron a little more interesting than other standard evil robots is that he seems to suffer from an Oedipal Complex. I know, Robot, so technically he doesn't really have either a father to want to usurp or a mother to misplace certain feelings towards. But, Hank Pym is his maker, which is sort of like a father, and Janet van Dyne at the time was Pym's Girlfriend, which kind of fits her into the mother category. Heck, Ultron's first attempt to make his own robotic companion involved taking a copy of van Dyne's consciousness and implanting it into a robot he dubbed Jocaste. Oedipus' mother, for those who don't know. Need I say more? He's a screwed up evil android and that's why we love to hate him. Next
time, not sure, so until then have a good time. Happy Halloween everybody.
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| Ultron doesn't mess around. |
http://marvel.wikia.com/Ultron_%28Earth-616%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultron
http://marvel.wikia.com/Ultron_%28Earth-8096%29
http://www.comicvine.com/profile/johnkmccubbin91/blog/why-age-of-ultron-hasn-t-hit-the-mark-so-far/90664/
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