Ultron Update

Final day of the Avengers 2 theme week, and I decided to go out with an update on the titular villain, Ultron. The mechanical megalomaniac menacing the Avengers has been heavily rewritten for the film, and not in just terms of how he was created. His personality, and even his ultimate goal was reworked. We’ll discuss how well that worked in a bit. On with the show.

Ultron is not amused. But this
Version can be amused, so
we're making some progress.

The Ultron in Age of Ultron is the product of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner’s tinkering with Loki’s scepter. Tony found that within the scepters stone was a detailed blue print for an artificial intelligence significantly more advanced than his best work, Jarvis. After only a little convincing, Bruce agrees to help Tony try to replicate the AI and incorporate it into Tony’s Iron Legion as part of a global defense initiative. After seventy six attempted renders, they are forced to throw in the towel and leave to attend the Avenger’s victory party. They didn’t realize that a seventy seventh render had started, and that it worked.

Ultron awakes in a disembodied state. Jarvis detects him and attempts to help Ultron transition into…existence. But Ultron won’t have any of it. While connected to the web he uploads as much data as possible before assaulting and “killing” Jarvis. Can an artificial intelligence die? Questions for another day. Now in complete control of Tony’s lab, Ultron actives the Iron Legion, Tony's small army of Iron Man drones that are used for crowd control. After the Avenger’s party wound down, Ultron enters, using a very mangled body. Probably trying to be metaphoric on how the perfect in theory Avengers is a broken construct or something. He gives an evil speech about how the Avengers are part of the problem that they try to solve and how he’s going to fix everything. The Iron Legion then flies in, one of them stealing Loki’s scepter. Fleeing back to the abandoned HYDRA base in fictional Sokovia where the movie began, Ultron quickly assembles a more advanced body, and a Dominion of Ultron drones. He then recruits the Maximoff twins to help him “save” the world and destroy Tony Stark. Ultron gets his hands on some Vibranium and the Avenger’s ally, Dr. Helen Cho, and attempts to make a perfect synthetic body for himself. The Maximoff twins learn what Ultron is planning and abandon him. The Avenger’s steal his perfect body and turn it into the Vision, while Ultron captures Black Widow. Unable to get his hands on the Nuclear Launch Codes thanks to the efforts of the not-as-dead-as-we-thought Jarvis, and now denied his perfect body, Ultron shifts to his plan B. Which again, despite what the promos are trying to do now, I will not ruin for you.

We all start off small...

The differences between Ultron’s film and…every other version of the character are many. We’ll start with the biggest difference, he doesn’t want to wipe out humanity. Well, not in the “Destroy all Humans” mentality that he normally has. He believes that wiping out a percentage of the population will somehow help the human race adapt and evolve into a new glorious form. Heck, when Scarlet Witch learns of his plan via pod touching, he stresses that humanity will not be completely destroyed and uses the example that there were a dozen extinction level catastrophes before the dinosaurs were completely done. He thinks in terms of the big picture, killing a few million humans will benefit the survivors and their descendants much more than just leaving the status quo as it is. The Twins don't believe him, but at least he tried to convince them. Which leads us into the next big difference, this Ultron emotes.

But try to finish big.

Again, literally every other version of Ultron is a cold, callous machine. Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator movies. He’s monotone, doesn’t understand or get the relevance of jokes, thinks only in terms of logic, and follows his programing to the letter. Which is other Ultrons in a nutshell. Movie Ultron goes away from that mold. James Spader’s performance as the colossal artificial intelligence is filled with eloquent speeches, moments when his ‘emotions’ cloud his judgement, and there is even humor. There’s one particular bit that comes to mind, where he’s stealing Vibranium from Ulysses Klaue when the smuggling scientist makes the bad call of comparing Ultron to Tony Stark. This shorts out a fuse in Ultron’s brain and he goes into a tirade on how he is nothing like his creator, which ends with him severing Klaue’s arm. Other Ultron’s might not have noticed, hell other Ultrons would have just killed Klaue when they found the Vibranium, but not Movie Ultron. He actually notices he injured Klaue and attempts to apologize, in a way, claiming that someone will “fix that right up.” There are several moments like that, where Ultron’s evil intentions are broken up by some, at times, bizarre bits of humor. Which is really jarring for someone that has grown up with Ultron being the least amusing villain of all time. They also did some major redesigning on his face, giving him a real mouth and even lips. This helps James Spader’s performance a bit. It’s hard to make the original Ultron design do anything other than just looked pissed. The hazards of giving your robot just a gaping maw for a mouth.

Overall, I’d say Marvel Studios did a good job altering Ultron to fit into the Movie Universe. My only major complaint is that at times the humorous bits felt pretty forced, like they were trying to turn him into a metallic Loki or something. Particularly when the Hulk cut off an evil speech by punching Ultron in the face. At least there wasn’t a “puny robot” or some such line. But other than that, Ultron did exactly what he was supposed to, beat on the Avengers for a while and threaten the human race. It’s good to have simple goals. Next time, the Atom.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultron

 http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Ultron