Avengers: Age of Ultron Deserved A Better Setup

The Avengers movies have made a huge impact on the superhero genre.  So much in fact, they have carved their imprint in cinema.  Whether someone hates or loves the films, no one can take away from the success and meaning those movies have.  What made most of them work is that the MCU took its time to set them up.  Through some connective tissue, most notable through Infinity Stones, helped set the path.  So when those movies arrived, fans’ patience and anticipation was paid off.  One of the films though, came short with this formula.  While Avengers, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame had some backing, Avengers: Age of Ultron did not have much.  There were some things behind the scenes that got involved but creatively, not much was used to set up the second installment.  The first phase selectively put clues in previous films.  That was a strategy the MCU should have done to make Avengers: Age of Ultron’s arrival more natural.  There were a few chances for the MCU to plant the seed for Avengers: Age of Ultron just like they did with the three other films.

The first film where the groundwork could have been laid out is Iron Man 3.  It was the first Iron Man movie that came out after Avengers, which means Stark would have already peaked at what S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted to do with the Tesseract and Loki’s Scepter.  Future movies would tell fans each houses an Infinity Stone.  Given that Age of Ultron showed that Hydra, which was a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. during the time of Avengers, wanted to use the Scepter to create artificial intelligence, it’s not too farfetched that Stark could have glimpsed it and been interested in it.  A big premise of Iron Man 3 was Stark dealing with the trauma from Avengers.  That led him to create all kinds of suits.  There could have been an interest from him to go even beyond that. He could have been interested in creating another AI to join Jarvis.  In Age of Ultron, both he and Bruce Banner were already aware of the Ultron program.  Paranoid but concerned about the status of the world, Stark could have already been tinkering with another AI to fill in the gaps for the Ultron program.  But since his house does get blown up in the film, that halts his progress.  A perfect end credit scene for the movie, instead of the lackluster one fans ended up getting, is a scene of Stark back at Avengers Tower talking to Jarvis and tell Jarvis something along the lines of ‘lets get back to work.  Where were we with the Ultron Program?’. 

Another spot where a seed for Ultron could have been planted is in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  This was the movie where it was revealed that HYDRA was inside S.H.I.E.L.D. for nearly seventy years.  One of the main components behind their rule, was Zola’s mind being persevered through computers.  In that form he created the algorithm to find threats to HYDRA.  But Captain America, Falcon, Black Widow, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, and what was left of S.H.I.E.L.D. stopped HYDRA from using the algorithm by implanting a set of codes themselves.  This is where Ultron could have been introduced.  Those chips that Captain America and Falcon inserted into the data bases could have been the very early form of Ultron.  Through some superhero science fiction, that data could have gained some type of conscious and seen the harshness of humanity.  It could have seen that humans want other humans dead.  It could have gained the self-proclaimed responsibility to protect humanity.  To make these movies even more connected, the source code that were in those chips could have been created by Stark.  Those codes could have been the raw origin to the Ultron Program that Stark could have been tinkering with in Iron Man 3.  To see if the program does work – and to save his own life from HYDRA – Stark could have given Fury those chips.  But since HYDRA was the main threat, the gestation of Ultron could have been under the radar. And since S.H.I.E.L.D. was disbanded, no one could have seen Ultron brewing, until it was too late.

Avengers: Age of Ultron was a movie that felt a little out of place among the other films.  Part being is because there was no lead up to it compared to the other Avenger movies.  It was a movie that felt like it plopped on the scene.  Which is unfair considering the other Avenger films did.  However, there was some areas where the MCU could have set up the movie but more importantly Ultron.  Ultron is a deserving villain that needed that set up.  Some well placed breadcrumbs in selected movies could have done the movie and Ultron some justice.