He is the main villain, the catalyst for almost all action in this movie, and his name is in the title. So yeah, maybe Ultron being evil a major part of this. And maybe, just maybe, giving the main villain of the damn piece a motivation for why he's acting all evil in the first place is a basic part of storytelling.
Ultron isn't suppose to be complex character, your need for him to be some godlike literary character is confusing.
I want him to be a character at all, not a random plot device whose actions have no logic or motivation.
His disdain for Stark stems from the fact that Stark made him and he does not like being associated with Stark (or the Avengers).
"He doesn't like Tony Stark because he does not like Tony Stark."
Great job. Why? Why is that?
He finds the avengers to be part of the reason why world peace hasn't been achieved.
Why?
Also, how does that make any sense?
To kill them (and the rest of humanity) would solve that problem.
How does that solve any problem?
How does he get to that train of logic?
Why does he do that specific plan to get there?
Seriously, there is no need for Sherlock level deduction skills here. They did a perfectly acceptable job presenting Ultron's motivation without actually having to.
They didn't present it at all. They just said, "Whelp, Ultron's evil."
See, if you want to just say, "Ultron's an evil doombot because he's an evil doombot," which you seem more than comfortable about, then that's fine, but notice how that's the complete opposite of explaining WHY he's a doombot. You're basically admitting there's no reason why. He's just evil because the writers wrote him that way because action movie. And if that's the case, then that means that Ultron has no motivation for being evil. He's just a thing doing things for no reason whatsoever. Which would mean he's a pointless character doing pointless things.
If you're comfortable admitting that, then great, because I feel exactly the same way.
They took 5 seconds to show Ultron becoming distressed over the reality of the world he was born into and then 5 minutes later they have Ultron giving a speech about how in order for world peace to be achieved, there has to be some serious changes made. At that point, everyone and their mothers could figure out what was going on with Ultron.
Yes, it's very clear that Ultron revealed himself as being evil and hostile in that scene. Congratulations. You've succeeded in pointing out the obvious.
Now that you've passed that test, you can actually address the question: WHY is Ultron evil? They pretty much have him be this psychotic program from the outset. Which is fine, but then why bother with the repeated philosophizing from Ultron as though his psychobabble were supposed to be profound as opposed to incoherent ramblings?
Seeing as how everyone else in this thread but you seemed to make that leap without any help...
That is an extremely selective reading of this thread. Ramon H, Quacker, Synalon Etuul, Megiddo, BurningPaladin, Jay13x, Mockingbird, and yours truly have all expressed dissatisfaction with the development of Ultron.
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I want him to be a character at all, not a random plot device whose actions have no logic or motivation.
His actions are actually logical albeit twisted and all conformed to the one task he was programmed to carry out: world peace. Now i'm not going to speak for Joss Whedon and what he intended Ultron's actual train of thought to be when he came up with his twisted conclusion of mass extinction but if I had to bet my first born child, this would be it
1. Ultron is designed to ensure world peace and nothing else
2. Ultron upon being born browses the entire internet database about the world he is living in
3. Ultron sees war, genocide, crime, conflict, etc
4. Ultron concludes there is no world peace at that moment
5. Ultron must act to carry out his only function
6. Ultron notices that humanity is a constant in preventing world peace (war, genocide, crime, conflict, etc)
7. Ultron notices that the Avengers are preventing world peace (Doing an inadequate job, various avengers directly involved in conflicts of MCU movies leading up the Ultron movie)
8. Ultron infers that no humans/avengers = no conflict, war, genocide, crime, etc
9. Ultron concludes that Avengers and humanity are an obstacle to world peace
10. Ultron must get rid of Avengers and humanity to achieve world peace
He hates the Avengers because they are an obstacle to him carrying out his mission. He hates Tony the most because he gets compared to Stark more than the other avengers (the Klaus exchange) and to be associated with someone who Ultron thinks is actively preventing world peace angers him when he is the one doing everything he can to enable world peace.
Why does he do that specific plan to get there?
He actually states he likes meteors. Also because Jarvis (after getting "destroyed") was secretly helping the Avengers by preventing Ultron from getting his hands on the nuke codes.
That is an extremely selective reading of this thread. Ramon H, Quacker, Synalon Etuul, Megiddo, BurningPaladin, Jay13x, Mockingbird, and yours truly have all expressed dissatisfaction with the development of Ultron.
Ultron was underdeveloped as a whole, yeah. But I was making a point about only his development in motivation and why he did what he did. Upon closer reading, it was you and Synalon who alongside of HR didn't seem to get the motivation thing, sorry about that. The others (from what I interpret) seem to have other issues about Ultron that weren't motivational.
Now that you've passed that test, you can actually address the question: WHY is Ultron evil? They pretty much have him be this psychotic program from the outset. Which is fine, but then why bother with the repeated philosophizing from Ultron as though his psychobabble were supposed to be profound as opposed to incoherent ramblings?
I feel like I need to see Age of Ultron again before attacking this question, because I want to say that
the final conversation between Ultron and Vision
gave me a sense of motivation to Ultron beyond deranged psychobot, but I cannot remember it that well. But in the meantime, yeah, Ultron even hinted through one of those philosophical babbling points exactly what he is to the story.
When Ultron shows the twins that he's turn Baron Von Strucker's into his new base (sidenote nitpick: the Avengers just took the staff and LEFT the HYDRA base as is?), he tells them that people always create the very thing they hope to avoid, i.e. going to war to promote peace (favorite line in the movie by the way that's not a one liner). Well... that's what the events of Age of Ultron are: Tony Stark fears total annihilation, so behind his team's back, he haphazardly experiments with alien technology and the end result is the Ultron protocol comes to life. And in the end, Ultron knows this fact because his existence and... decision (motivation seems like a misfitting word until more is deciphered)... are a product of Tony Stark.
So at least on that, I would say that Ultron as a plot device more than character has merits. And to further drive those merits is that Ultron has a strong personality resemblance to Tony Stark.
Here's the cut away to actually provide some merit to Raver because as I'm going to address in a minute, I don't dislike Ultron as much as say... you. First, there's a reason to be okay with the fact that he's just a doomsday bot: he's Tony Stark's doomsday bot and the product of hubris finally going to far. The good guys made the mess that they in turn have to stop. To that end, I can appreciate Ultron for the surface level "the philosophical nonsensical doomsday plot device."
Here's three reactions to this dissection:
1. I think Joss Whedon is smarter than that. However, given the demands of the film, I'm not sure he had the space to develop something deeper than that (why I keep harping on about space as an issue), but he definitely intended to because...
2. I suspect the philosophical nonsense may not be as nonsensical as... nonsense. I just dissected one of Ultron's speeches to show that the movie follows his line of thinking to show how Ultron isn't in the wrong rather than just have us accept a fancy philosophical sounding phrase as a speech and move one.
3. All this that I've done is great, but it runs into a problem that I've seen even in a few films that are a lot smarter than the philosophy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole: this all works out great on a symbolic level, but the problem is that in order for the symbol to hold, suspension of logic is required. And the problem with doing that I've learned through these experiences is that symbolism works a lot better when it works with logic rather than overriding logic.
But I ultimately think that there's a subtext to Age of Ultron that's worth-some-while, but like I've said before, I'm not going to spend the money in movie tickets to dig out everything that I would need in order to be an apologist for it.
Seeing as how everyone else in this thread but you seemed to make that leap without any help...
That is an extremely selective reading of this thread. Ramon H, Quacker, Synalon Etuul, Megiddo, BurningPaladin, Jay13x, Mockingbird, and yours truly have all expressed dissatisfaction with the development of Ultron.
I'm actually a little curious: how would you suggest fixing Ultron (the character)?
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Seeing as how everyone else in this thread but you seemed to make that leap without any help...
That is an extremely selective reading of this thread. Ramon H, Quacker, Synalon Etuul, Megiddo, BurningPaladin, Jay13x, Mockingbird, and yours truly have all expressed dissatisfaction with the development of Ultron.
There's a difference with dissatisfaction with the development of the character, which I can absolutely understand, and not understanding why he decided to destroy humanity, which was basically handed to you on a silver platter during the scene where the Ultron AI "killed" J.A.R.V.I.S.
I actually liked Ultron's character. He was basically a giant emotional child, rather than a supreme AI being which was more of his front. His ideas, motivations, and responses were all over the place, but I think that was the intention. Vision was the true contrast to Ultron that showed these flaws in his character which led to his downfall.
I'm just not sure it's what people wanted or expected in the villain.
I'm actually a little curious: how would you suggest fixing Ultron (the character)?
Stretch out the plot. I don't mean the running time; I mean the in-universe time. As things appear on screen, Ultron goes from zero to murderbot in... what, a couple of hours at most? Have an "infant" Ultron actually interacting with Stark for a few days or weeks, to develop a relationship and show Ultron picking up Stark's mannerisms and general humanity. Maybe Stark built Ultron to help hunt Strucker, so the first act could climax in the raid on Strucker's base and end with Ultron making the decision to betray the Avengers based on events and conversations he was actually a part of.
Second act, Ultron takes over the world. Seriously. He controls everything that's got a computer chip in it, and the Avengers are helpless before his onslaught. He sets himself up as robo-dictator and enforces the peace with extreme prejudice. Show his robot legions marching all over the world. Show world leaders surrendering power to him. Establish him as a truly global threat. Give us the Age of Ultron. Don't just have him and the Avengers chasing around a MacGuffin for a couple of days.
Third act, of course, Avengers rally, find a way to dismatle his robo-empire (possibly still with the Vision as the key, but better set up), and do so. The Avengers, and Stark in particular, learn a valuable lesson about it sometimes being better to trust to fate than trying to control everything.
Roll credits.
Then a stinger that hints at something new and interesting - I'm thinking J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) blowing his stack over the Daily Bugle's Ultron story. "Where's Parker? PARKER!" Smash cut.
There's a difference with dissatisfaction with the development of the character, which I can absolutely understand, and not understanding why he decided to destroy humanity, which was basically handed to you on a silver platter during the scene where the Ultron AI "killed" J.A.R.V.I.S.
And there's a difference between being told that he's decided to destroy humanity in order to save it, which is all that scene did, and understanding that decision, which would require being given more than thirty consecutive seconds on the topic.
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And there's a difference between being told that he's decided to destroy humanity in order to save it, which is all that scene did, and understanding that decision, which would require being given more than thirty consecutive seconds on the topic.
Thank you! Yes!
Stretch out the plot. I don't mean the running time; I mean the in-universe time. As things appear on screen, Ultron goes from zero to murderbot in... what, a couple of hours at most?
Actually no, a matter of seconds. From him coming into existence, Ultron hears JARVIS mention humanity, does a Google search on them for maybe five seconds, and then immediately decides, "Whelp, I'ma kill it,"
and then kills JARVIS. He then attacks JARVIS after, what, 30 seconds?
You know, the more I think of criticisms for this film, the more I think of the Plinkett Reviews of the Star Wars Prequels. "So then we're given sixty seconds in an elevator to establish that Obi-Wan and Anakin are friends." Except in this case, we're given 30 seconds for Ultron to attacking Jarvis, and he becomes a violent murderer in the first scene after less than a minute without us being shown what sets him off.
In fact, it's generous to even state that Ultron's programming gets "corrupted." Ultron's pretty evil and malicious from the moment he gets activated. In fact, I initially thought he was evil because of something HYDRA had done, or because Scarlet Witch had manipulated Tony's brain so that he'd somehow programmed Ultron wrong. But then the movie seems to want to go in the direction that it's because Ultron came to some sort of revelation about humanity, a revelation that he got from 5 seconds on social media that is never explained, nor do we ever experience.
So essentially we get a scene which basically says, "Ultron turns evil and kills JARVIS because reasons," except we're never given said reasons beyond the assurance that they totally exist.
Second act, Ultron takes over the world. Seriously. He controls everything that's got a computer chip in it, and the Avengers are helpless before his onslaught. He sets himself up as robo-dictator and enforces the peace with extreme prejudice. Show his robot legions marching all over the world. Show world leaders surrendering power to him. Establish him as a truly global threat. Give us the Age of Ultron. Don't just have him and the Avengers chasing around a MacGuffin for a couple of days.
Third act, of course, Avengers rally, find a way to dismatle his robo-empire (possibly still with the Vision as the key, but better set up), and do so. The Avengers, and Stark in particular, learn a valuable lesson about it sometimes being better to trust to fate than trying to control everything.
And the weird thing of all of that? That's the plot of the movie I, Robot. Except I, Robot had a villain with a coherent, understandable motive. You understood exactly why the AI was doing what it did, and where in the parameters it went off the rails.
Also, when I compare a movie to I, Robot, and it's to say, "Look how much better I, Robot did it," that's a bad sign.
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He actually states he likes meteors. Also because Jarvis (after getting "destroyed") was secretly helping the Avengers by preventing Ultron from getting his hands on the nuke codes.
No, not that plot.
The whole Vision thing. Aside from "we want Vision in this movie, so Ultron creates him because reasons," why does Ultron go through all of that?
Are you asking why Ultron wanted to be in Vision's body?
Pretty much. Again, why that plan as opposed to any other?
And don't give me none of that vibranium crap. He could have made a mechanical body out of vibranium without spending what felt like hours but was probably only one hour chasing down a tissue-creator.
Are you asking why Ultron wanted to be in Vision's body?
Pretty much. Again, why that plan as opposed to any other?
And don't give me none of that vibranium crap. He could have made a mechanical body out of vibranium without spending what felt like hours but was probably only one hour chasing down a tissue-creator.
It's not just vibranium, Helen states that the synthetic body is "the next big thing" and Stark verbally confirmed that it is better than a straight mechanical robot body. Ultron probably did his research in like a matter of seconds and concluded that too. We know the body could generate a cape and suit instantaneously and it probably has a lot more unseen features that a mechanical body couldn't achieve.
He is the main villain, the catalyst for almost all action in this movie, and his name is in the title. So yeah, maybe Ultron being evil a major part of this. And maybe, just maybe, giving the main villain of the damn piece a motivation for why he's acting all evil in the first place is a basic part of storytelling.
Ultron isn't suppose to be complex character, your need for him to be some godlike literary character is confusing.
I want him to be a character at all, not a random plot device whose actions have no logic or motivation.
His disdain for Stark stems from the fact that Stark made him and he does not like being associated with Stark (or the Avengers).
"He doesn't like Tony Stark because he does not like Tony Stark."
Great job. Why? Why is that?
He finds the avengers to be part of the reason why world peace hasn't been achieved.
Why?
Also, how does that make any sense?
To kill them (and the rest of humanity) would solve that problem.
How does that solve any problem?
How does he get to that train of logic?
Why does he do that specific plan to get there?
Seriously, there is no need for Sherlock level deduction skills here. They did a perfectly acceptable job presenting Ultron's motivation without actually having to.
They didn't present it at all. They just said, "Whelp, Ultron's evil."
See, if you want to just say, "Ultron's an evil doombot because he's an evil doombot," which you seem more than comfortable about, then that's fine, but notice how that's the complete opposite of explaining WHY he's a doombot. You're basically admitting there's no reason why. He's just evil because the writers wrote him that way because action movie. And if that's the case, then that means that Ultron has no motivation for being evil. He's just a thing doing things for no reason whatsoever. Which would mean he's a pointless character doing pointless things.
If you're comfortable admitting that, then great, because I feel exactly the same way.
They took 5 seconds to show Ultron becoming distressed over the reality of the world he was born into and then 5 minutes later they have Ultron giving a speech about how in order for world peace to be achieved, there has to be some serious changes made. At that point, everyone and their mothers could figure out what was going on with Ultron.
Yes, it's very clear that Ultron revealed himself as being evil and hostile in that scene. Congratulations. You've succeeded in pointing out the obvious.
Now that you've passed that test, you can actually address the question: WHY is Ultron evil? They pretty much have him be this psychotic program from the outset. Which is fine, but then why bother with the repeated philosophizing from Ultron as though his psychobabble were supposed to be profound as opposed to incoherent ramblings?
Hi, did you read my post after I saw the movie? I thought I answered all of your outstanding questions here pretty thoroughly.
Seeing as how everyone else in this thread but you seemed to make that leap without any help...
That is an extremely selective reading of this thread. Ramon H, Quacker, Synalon Etuul, Megiddo, BurningPaladin, Jay13x, Mockingbird, and yours truly have all expressed dissatisfaction with the development of Ultron.
There's a difference with dissatisfaction with the development of the character, which I can absolutely understand, and not understanding why he decided to destroy humanity, which was basically handed to you on a silver platter during the scene where the Ultron AI "killed" J.A.R.V.I.S.
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Ultron probably did his research in like a matter of seconds and concluded that too.
First of all, I love how you say that as though it's some kind of satisfying conclusion and not emblematic of the movie's problem with characterization.
"Why does Ultron do that?" "Well I assume that at some point Ultron concluded that was what he should do." Evidently the concept of the question "why?" throws you.
Second, it proves ultimately pointless anyway because Ultron just goes on and does the thing he was originally going to do anyway despite that. It's just a meaningless aside to get an excuse to introduce yet another character.
The first thing (or certainly one of the first things) you ask when you're sentient is, "Why?"
Every child does this.
It's pretty common knowledge.
Ultron is basically a child. The first thing he did was assimilate all of the knowledge he possibly could, because as an AI, what else is he supposed to do once he becomes self-aware and asks "Why?"?
So he goes to the internet, because there is an exhaustive source of information at his metaphorical fingertips.
A comparable example is when Sensui views The Black Tape in Yu Yu Hakusho.
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So he goes to the internet, because there is an exhaustive source of information at his metaphorical fingertips.
And in all of 5 seconds, he decides, "Yep, I'm going to destroy humanity."
Yes, I saw the movie. The question is WHY? What leads him to that conclusion?
Because if that's it, if from the moment he first hears about humanity he says, "Yes, must destroy because am evil doombot," then he's pretty much evil from the start of the film, and there's nothing meaningful or interesting about Ultron's attempting to destroy humanity. He's just a talking version of that nuke from the end of Avengers. We don't ponder the meaning or greater significance of the nuke's attempts to destroy New York because there is none. Likewise, there is no greater significance or meaning with Ultron if this is the case.
The problem is the movie repeatedly harps on and on about Ultron as though there were some greater significance behind his actions. The movie has us listen to him wax philosophical repeatedly as though he were actually saying anything of meaning. As though there were some sort of motivation. Except it's never given. The movie gives us a matter of seconds to sum up that Ultron's evil for whatever reason without ever bothering to justify it.
And no, that five second sequence did not justify Ultron's actions. It just told us he was evil without actually saying why he's evil in the first place.
Also, you are seriously arguing that one of the most important character points in the film was totally nailed by them spending all of five seconds to get Ultron to decide he's going to be a bad guy for the rest of a 141 minute film. Just reflect on that.
Even if Ultron's "turn" is easy to follow logically, it's really lacking emotionally. Others have said this already but there's a HUGE difference between being shown something and being told something.
Imagine if in the first Avengers film, instead of grabbing the nuke and flying into the portal, Tony Stark had some sort of monologue about how he's decided to be selfless and sacrifice himself for the good of humanity. Instantly that scene is ruined, because instead of seeing Stark's growth from earlier in the film, he tells us that he's grown.
Same here. We are shown on a very, very surface level why Ultron is evil, which amounts to just telling us that he is evil. It's easy enough to follow logically* (as Iso and others have helpfully laid out for us), but that doesn't change the fact that it's unsatisfying to the viewer.
It felt like a paint-by-numbers movie. Scene one: Stark/Banner trying to install AI into a security program to protect the world. Scene two: Ultron tries to take over the world. They wanted both, but failed completely by just connecting the dots in such an unsatisfying way.
*There's actually a pretty big logical leap IMO that we have to accept: Why does he decide to destroy everything rather than try to fix it? Also we really are never even told why he hates the Avengers that much.
Maybe it's just because I'm a cynic and a misanthrope, but the first thing I think of when the concept of someone looking at the entirety of the internet comes up is, "I wonder how many horrible crimes against humanity/internet trolls this person will come across?"
Seriously, people are horrible. I'm sure if you freeze-framed that scene, you'd pick up on a lot of the articles he was reading. A lot of them looked war and weapons-related.
I'll agree with Megiddo that it doesn't give us an emotional attachment to Ultron developing as a bad guy - maybe we'd sympathize with his cause if we were walked through the process - but I still think that it's easy to see WHY Ultron became evil.
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"Why does Ultron do that?" "Well I assume that at some point Ultron concluded that was what he should do." Evidently the concept of the question "why?" throws you.
Seriously there just is no pleasing you, I've given you quite a few solid answers to the various why Ultron does XYZ and every time you just say "why", giving you a reason for that is just going to elicit another "why" and it's going to repeat so on and so forth. You're dead set on Ultron being the worst character in the history of forever because you need to be directly and explicitly told why he does anything and anything we offer as a reason is just going to get another "why".
Yo, why did he choose Sokovia instead of its neighboring country Lokovia? **** man, lets start a riot with pitchforks and torches and hang that Joss Whedon fellow for not directly telling us why.
Second, it proves ultimately pointless anyway because Ultron just goes on and does the thing he was originally going to do anyway despite that. It's just a meaningless aside to get an excuse to introduce yet another character.
How about I put it this way, Ultron wants to drive. So he chooses to drive a Lamborghini because it's better than all the other cars out there. Then the Avengers come and steal that Lamborghini for themselves and now Ultron is left with a BMW. He's still driving, just not in the best vehicle out there.
Oh and if you're going to ask why one might like the best car out there, I don't know what to tell you man.
Even if Ultron's "turn" is easy to follow logically, it's really lacking emotionally.
That is just your personal opinion. When we're shown the internet browsing scene, we see that it as Ultron is seeing it, him parsing over all the war, destruction, and conflict and getting distressed over them, I completely understood that emotionally. I could definitely see how he would take it all in and realize the constant in all that is humanity.
edit: and also understand how he could arrive at that conclusion in just 5 seconds. He is a goddamn super A.I designed by Stark, of course he can process things at ridiculous speeds. It probably took him like 4.9 seconds to take in the internet and .1 seconds to deduce that humanity/avengers is the obstacle to world peace
Because if that's it, if from the moment he first hears about humanity he says, "Yes, must destroy because am evil doombot," then he's pretty much evil from the start of the film, and there's nothing meaningful or interesting about Ultron's attempting to destroy humanity. He's just a talking version of that nuke from the end of Avengers. We don't ponder the meaning or greater significance of the nuke's attempts to destroy New York because there is none. Likewise, there is no greater significance or meaning with Ultron if this is the case.
There is something meaning to be taken from the nuke at the end of Avengers 1... it's just not the nuke in of itself where the interest falls. The interest falls on The World Council (Well... it would if it weren't cliché for world leaders to want to blow up cities to solve problems). Four people decided, "It's in the world's best interest to send a nuclear bomb to Manhattan without even an evacuation or giving SHIELD's Avenger's Initiative decent chance to end the invasion." That's all kinds messed up. We're not to reflect on the nature or existence of the bomb, but the nature and existence of World Powers. So instead of Ultron... it's Stark where we're supposed to cast a curious eye. Your analogy is actually sensical on a writing level.
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Seriously there just is no pleasing you, I've given you quite a few solid answers to the various why Ultron does XYZ and every time you just say "why",
Because you have given nothing approaching solid answers.
"Well, I assume Ultron found a reason somewhere in the scene he turns evil to turn evil," is the exact opposite of an answer.
You're dead set on Ultron being the worst character in the history of forever because you need to be directly and explicitly told why he does anything and anything we offer as a reason is just going to get another "why".
Because you've done the opposite of provide explanations. You're just restating what happens in the scene. "Ultron does X, therefore he must have a reason to do X." But you don't know what it is. You're just saying Ultron has one.
Yes, I've seen the scene. I recognize that Ultron decides at some point to go haywire because that's what he ends up doing. But that doesn't say a damn thing. "Ultron decides to go on a rampage because he later goes on a rampage." Why? Why does he go on a rampage? JARVIS never went on a rampage. Why does Ultron?
Let's explain the concept of how good character writing works. In good character writing, we feel characters. We feel how they change over the course of a story. When a character changes in a scene, if that character is written right, you feel something. You don't have to be told it, you see and feel it.
So when Ultron turns evil, I want to feel that. I want to feel why. I want to relate to what his decisions are, even if I don't agree with them myself. That doesn't happen in the scene. Instead JARVIS mentions humans, Ultron goes "bleep bloop," and then becomes evil. Seconds. It's just glossed over.
Meanwhile, in the same film we see Thor, Black Widow, Captain America, and Tony Stark receive visions that are rich, detailed, and show interesting reveals about their characters. These too are glossed over and receives nowhere close to the amount of time it needed to be effective, but at least we saw and felt the characters reacting to their pasts and the representations of their inner emotion. The Ultron sequence has NONE of this.
When we're shown the internet browsing scene, we see that it as Ultron is seeing it, him parsing over all the war, destruction, and conflict and getting distressed over them,
In a handful of seconds.
We are told Ultron turns evil. But we don't see or feel Ultron turning evil, and it happens so abruptly he essentially is evil from the start. He sees humanity and then immediately declares war. And since it happens in a matter of moments, we never get what drove Ultron to that point, even though that is fundamental to the film. It'd be one thing if Ultron were pushed to the brink of madness from seeing humanity's cruelty and then went into a murderous rage — that would at least be something — but that's not what happens. Ultron just looks up humanity and then abruptly decides to commit himself to killing everyone.
Again, this is one of the most important parts of the entire film. This is where the main villain decides he's going to become the main villain. Instead he just makes up his mind in a second and then the film never bothers.
How about I put it this way, Ultron wants to drive.
Why does he want to drive?
Ultron neither needs nor requires a new body to complete his plan; indeed in the end he is only defeated because he creates that new body and it's used against him. Why create it in the first place?
Seems legit. If Ultron found 4Chan, that'd explain everything.
Ha! Yeah, I was going to make a joke about maybe Ultron found the DotA community.
There is something meaning to be taken from the nuke at the end of Avengers 1... it's just not the nuke in of itself where the interest falls. The interest falls on The World Council (Well... it would if it weren't cliché for world leaders to want to blow up cities to solve problems). Four people decided, "It's in the world's best interest to send a nuclear bomb to Manhattan without even an evacuation or giving SHIELD's Avenger's Initiative decent chance to end the invasion." That's all kinds messed up. We're not to reflect on the nature or existence of the bomb, but the nature and existence of World Powers.
See, that's interesting. This conversation we're having is more interesting than what happened in the scene.
So instead of Ultron... it's Stark where we're supposed to cast a curious eye. Your analogy is actually sensical on a writing level.
No, see, that's the thing. If Ultron were just a plot device and that was the intention of the film, that'd be fine. The problem is Ultron amounts to just an empty, hollow plot device when the movie is clearly trying to make him this deep, three-dimensional character with something to say — despite making him completely a stock evil doombot and giving him nothing interesting to do or say. That's where the problem is.
And let's talk about Tony Stark for a second: for all of the movie telling us Stark is wild and unhinged or whatever, the movie seems to have difficulty actually committing to a coherent position on that. Yes, Stark recklessly creates Ultron, but he has completely valid reasons for doing it. He's afraid the world will end, that Earth is helpless against Thanos, and guess what? It is. So he creates Ultron, and in his haste to create Ultron, he ends up making a psychotic killer robot who seeks to destroy everything.
Then when they recover the Vision body, "Hey, Banner, let's do EXACTLY what I was trying to do before, except with JARVIS this time." And they do. Despite Tony having no way of knowing it would work in a favorable way, or having any answer to Banner saying, "This is exactly what we did before." Indeed, Scarlet Witch even warns Captain America that Tony will never stop because his paranoia will always get to him, essentially stating outright that Tony has not worked out the character flaw that lead to the Ultron debacle in the first place.
Except despite all of this, the plan is still successful because of the Infinity Stone that Tony didn't know about — good thing Thor did — and then Vision is awakened. And then there comes the question of whether or not to trust Vision, and then Vision does the hammer thing. And then we just go forward, without resolving the Tony Stark issue. Like, I get that Vision was this new entity and they had to figure out whether he was friend or foe, but the fact that Vision was not going to go psychotic and kill everybody doesn't change that Tony Stark clearly is not trustworthy and hasn't changed in his actions.
So the irony of this is that Stark creating Ultron is perfectly understandable, even if it does go completely awry, but then Tony does it a second time, which is outright insane and is a clear demonstration of Tony's character flaws, and people just sort of let him off the hook.
Ultron neither needs nor requires a new body to complete his plan; indeed in the end he is only defeated because he creates that new body and it's used against him. Why create it in the first place?
He does need bodies, not everything can be solved from the net. Not only would the drone versions of him to do manual labor of creating that giant drill thing, he also needs them to retrieve the vibranium and steal the scepter while having other drones distract the avengers. Lastly, his need for a "final" form aka vision's body is a means of defending his drill construction. You think he's going to activate the drill via the internet and then sit around and hope no one is going to try and stop that?
Also Ultron isn't omniscient.
So when Ultron turns evil, I want to feel that. I want to feel why. I want to relate to what his decisions are, even if I don't agree with them myself. That doesn't happen in the scene. Instead JARVIS mentions humans, Ultron goes "bleep bloop," and then becomes evil. Seconds. It's just glossed over.
I feel it. I also feel why. I related to his decisions. How come I can do that and you can't?
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I want him to be a character at all, not a random plot device whose actions have no logic or motivation.
"He doesn't like Tony Stark because he does not like Tony Stark."
Great job. Why? Why is that?
Why?
Also, how does that make any sense?
How does that solve any problem?
How does he get to that train of logic?
Why does he do that specific plan to get there?
They didn't present it at all. They just said, "Whelp, Ultron's evil."
See, if you want to just say, "Ultron's an evil doombot because he's an evil doombot," which you seem more than comfortable about, then that's fine, but notice how that's the complete opposite of explaining WHY he's a doombot. You're basically admitting there's no reason why. He's just evil because the writers wrote him that way because action movie. And if that's the case, then that means that Ultron has no motivation for being evil. He's just a thing doing things for no reason whatsoever. Which would mean he's a pointless character doing pointless things.
If you're comfortable admitting that, then great, because I feel exactly the same way.
Yes, it's very clear that Ultron revealed himself as being evil and hostile in that scene. Congratulations. You've succeeded in pointing out the obvious.
Now that you've passed that test, you can actually address the question: WHY is Ultron evil? They pretty much have him be this psychotic program from the outset. Which is fine, but then why bother with the repeated philosophizing from Ultron as though his psychobabble were supposed to be profound as opposed to incoherent ramblings?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
1. Ultron is designed to ensure world peace and nothing else
2. Ultron upon being born browses the entire internet database about the world he is living in
3. Ultron sees war, genocide, crime, conflict, etc
4. Ultron concludes there is no world peace at that moment
5. Ultron must act to carry out his only function
6. Ultron notices that humanity is a constant in preventing world peace (war, genocide, crime, conflict, etc)
7. Ultron notices that the Avengers are preventing world peace (Doing an inadequate job, various avengers directly involved in conflicts of MCU movies leading up the Ultron movie)
8. Ultron infers that no humans/avengers = no conflict, war, genocide, crime, etc
9. Ultron concludes that Avengers and humanity are an obstacle to world peace
10. Ultron must get rid of Avengers and humanity to achieve world peace
He hates the Avengers because they are an obstacle to him carrying out his mission. He hates Tony the most because he gets compared to Stark more than the other avengers (the Klaus exchange) and to be associated with someone who Ultron thinks is actively preventing world peace angers him when he is the one doing everything he can to enable world peace.
Ultron was underdeveloped as a whole, yeah. But I was making a point about only his development in motivation and why he did what he did. Upon closer reading, it was you and Synalon who alongside of HR didn't seem to get the motivation thing, sorry about that. The others (from what I interpret) seem to have other issues about Ultron that weren't motivational.
So at least on that, I would say that Ultron as a plot device more than character has merits. And to further drive those merits is that Ultron has a strong personality resemblance to Tony Stark.
Here's the cut away to actually provide some merit to Raver because as I'm going to address in a minute, I don't dislike Ultron as much as say... you. First, there's a reason to be okay with the fact that he's just a doomsday bot: he's Tony Stark's doomsday bot and the product of hubris finally going to far. The good guys made the mess that they in turn have to stop. To that end, I can appreciate Ultron for the surface level "the philosophical nonsensical doomsday plot device."
Here's three reactions to this dissection:
1. I think Joss Whedon is smarter than that. However, given the demands of the film, I'm not sure he had the space to develop something deeper than that (why I keep harping on about space as an issue), but he definitely intended to because...
2. I suspect the philosophical nonsense may not be as nonsensical as... nonsense. I just dissected one of Ultron's speeches to show that the movie follows his line of thinking to show how Ultron isn't in the wrong rather than just have us accept a fancy philosophical sounding phrase as a speech and move one.
3. All this that I've done is great, but it runs into a problem that I've seen even in a few films that are a lot smarter than the philosophy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole: this all works out great on a symbolic level, but the problem is that in order for the symbol to hold, suspension of logic is required. And the problem with doing that I've learned through these experiences is that symbolism works a lot better when it works with logic rather than overriding logic.
But I ultimately think that there's a subtext to Age of Ultron that's worth-some-while, but like I've said before, I'm not going to spend the money in movie tickets to dig out everything that I would need in order to be an apologist for it.
I'm actually a little curious: how would you suggest fixing Ultron (the character)?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
There's a difference with dissatisfaction with the development of the character, which I can absolutely understand, and not understanding why he decided to destroy humanity, which was basically handed to you on a silver platter during the scene where the Ultron AI "killed" J.A.R.V.I.S.
I'm just not sure it's what people wanted or expected in the villain.
Second act, Ultron takes over the world. Seriously. He controls everything that's got a computer chip in it, and the Avengers are helpless before his onslaught. He sets himself up as robo-dictator and enforces the peace with extreme prejudice. Show his robot legions marching all over the world. Show world leaders surrendering power to him. Establish him as a truly global threat. Give us the Age of Ultron. Don't just have him and the Avengers chasing around a MacGuffin for a couple of days.
Third act, of course, Avengers rally, find a way to dismatle his robo-empire (possibly still with the Vision as the key, but better set up), and do so. The Avengers, and Stark in particular, learn a valuable lesson about it sometimes being better to trust to fate than trying to control everything.
Roll credits.
Then a stinger that hints at something new and interesting - I'm thinking J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) blowing his stack over the Daily Bugle's Ultron story. "Where's Parker? PARKER!" Smash cut.
And there's a difference between being told that he's decided to destroy humanity in order to save it, which is all that scene did, and understanding that decision, which would require being given more than thirty consecutive seconds on the topic.
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Actually no, a matter of seconds. From him coming into existence, Ultron hears JARVIS mention humanity, does a Google search on them for maybe five seconds, and then immediately decides, "Whelp, I'ma kill it,"
You know, the more I think of criticisms for this film, the more I think of the Plinkett Reviews of the Star Wars Prequels. "So then we're given sixty seconds in an elevator to establish that Obi-Wan and Anakin are friends." Except in this case, we're given 30 seconds for Ultron to attacking Jarvis, and he becomes a violent murderer in the first scene after less than a minute without us being shown what sets him off.
In fact, it's generous to even state that Ultron's programming gets "corrupted." Ultron's pretty evil and malicious from the moment he gets activated. In fact, I initially thought he was evil because of something HYDRA had done, or because Scarlet Witch had manipulated Tony's brain so that he'd somehow programmed Ultron wrong. But then the movie seems to want to go in the direction that it's because Ultron came to some sort of revelation about humanity, a revelation that he got from 5 seconds on social media that is never explained, nor do we ever experience.
So essentially we get a scene which basically says, "Ultron turns evil and kills JARVIS because reasons," except we're never given said reasons beyond the assurance that they totally exist.
And the weird thing of all of that? That's the plot of the movie I, Robot. Except I, Robot had a villain with a coherent, understandable motive. You understood exactly why the AI was doing what it did, and where in the parameters it went off the rails.
Also, when I compare a movie to I, Robot, and it's to say, "Look how much better I, Robot did it," that's a bad sign.
No, not that plot.
Hi, did you read my post after I saw the movie? I thought I answered all of your outstanding questions here pretty thoroughly.
This.
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First of all, I love how you say that as though it's some kind of satisfying conclusion and not emblematic of the movie's problem with characterization.
"Why does Ultron do that?" "Well I assume that at some point Ultron concluded that was what he should do." Evidently the concept of the question "why?" throws you.
Second, it proves ultimately pointless anyway because Ultron just goes on and does the thing he was originally going to do anyway despite that. It's just a meaningless aside to get an excuse to introduce yet another character.
Every child does this.
It's pretty common knowledge.
Ultron is basically a child. The first thing he did was assimilate all of the knowledge he possibly could, because as an AI, what else is he supposed to do once he becomes self-aware and asks "Why?"?
So he goes to the internet, because there is an exhaustive source of information at his metaphorical fingertips.
A comparable example is when Sensui views The Black Tape in Yu Yu Hakusho.
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Yes, I saw the movie. The question is WHY? What leads him to that conclusion?
Because if that's it, if from the moment he first hears about humanity he says, "Yes, must destroy because am evil doombot," then he's pretty much evil from the start of the film, and there's nothing meaningful or interesting about Ultron's attempting to destroy humanity. He's just a talking version of that nuke from the end of Avengers. We don't ponder the meaning or greater significance of the nuke's attempts to destroy New York because there is none. Likewise, there is no greater significance or meaning with Ultron if this is the case.
The problem is the movie repeatedly harps on and on about Ultron as though there were some greater significance behind his actions. The movie has us listen to him wax philosophical repeatedly as though he were actually saying anything of meaning. As though there were some sort of motivation. Except it's never given. The movie gives us a matter of seconds to sum up that Ultron's evil for whatever reason without ever bothering to justify it.
And no, that five second sequence did not justify Ultron's actions. It just told us he was evil without actually saying why he's evil in the first place.
Also, you are seriously arguing that one of the most important character points in the film was totally nailed by them spending all of five seconds to get Ultron to decide he's going to be a bad guy for the rest of a 141 minute film. Just reflect on that.
Imagine if in the first Avengers film, instead of grabbing the nuke and flying into the portal, Tony Stark had some sort of monologue about how he's decided to be selfless and sacrifice himself for the good of humanity. Instantly that scene is ruined, because instead of seeing Stark's growth from earlier in the film, he tells us that he's grown.
Same here. We are shown on a very, very surface level why Ultron is evil, which amounts to just telling us that he is evil. It's easy enough to follow logically* (as Iso and others have helpfully laid out for us), but that doesn't change the fact that it's unsatisfying to the viewer.
It felt like a paint-by-numbers movie. Scene one: Stark/Banner trying to install AI into a security program to protect the world. Scene two: Ultron tries to take over the world. They wanted both, but failed completely by just connecting the dots in such an unsatisfying way.
*There's actually a pretty big logical leap IMO that we have to accept: Why does he decide to destroy everything rather than try to fix it? Also we really are never even told why he hates the Avengers that much.
Seriously, people are horrible. I'm sure if you freeze-framed that scene, you'd pick up on a lot of the articles he was reading. A lot of them looked war and weapons-related.
I'll agree with Megiddo that it doesn't give us an emotional attachment to Ultron developing as a bad guy - maybe we'd sympathize with his cause if we were walked through the process - but I still think that it's easy to see WHY Ultron became evil.
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Seriously there just is no pleasing you, I've given you quite a few solid answers to the various why Ultron does XYZ and every time you just say "why", giving you a reason for that is just going to elicit another "why" and it's going to repeat so on and so forth. You're dead set on Ultron being the worst character in the history of forever because you need to be directly and explicitly told why he does anything and anything we offer as a reason is just going to get another "why".
Yo, why did he choose Sokovia instead of its neighboring country Lokovia? **** man, lets start a riot with pitchforks and torches and hang that Joss Whedon fellow for not directly telling us why.
How about I put it this way, Ultron wants to drive. So he chooses to drive a Lamborghini because it's better than all the other cars out there. Then the Avengers come and steal that Lamborghini for themselves and now Ultron is left with a BMW. He's still driving, just not in the best vehicle out there.
Oh and if you're going to ask why one might like the best car out there, I don't know what to tell you man.
That is just your personal opinion. When we're shown the internet browsing scene, we see that it as Ultron is seeing it, him parsing over all the war, destruction, and conflict and getting distressed over them, I completely understood that emotionally. I could definitely see how he would take it all in and realize the constant in all that is humanity.
edit: and also understand how he could arrive at that conclusion in just 5 seconds. He is a goddamn super A.I designed by Stark, of course he can process things at ridiculous speeds. It probably took him like 4.9 seconds to take in the internet and .1 seconds to deduce that humanity/avengers is the obstacle to world peace
Seems legit. If Ultron found 4Chan, that'd explain everything.
There is something meaning to be taken from the nuke at the end of Avengers 1... it's just not the nuke in of itself where the interest falls. The interest falls on The World Council (Well... it would if it weren't cliché for world leaders to want to blow up cities to solve problems). Four people decided, "It's in the world's best interest to send a nuclear bomb to Manhattan without even an evacuation or giving SHIELD's Avenger's Initiative decent chance to end the invasion." That's all kinds messed up. We're not to reflect on the nature or existence of the bomb, but the nature and existence of World Powers. So instead of Ultron... it's Stark where we're supposed to cast a curious eye. Your analogy is actually sensical on a writing level.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
"Well, I assume Ultron found a reason somewhere in the scene he turns evil to turn evil," is the exact opposite of an answer.
Because you've done the opposite of provide explanations. You're just restating what happens in the scene. "Ultron does X, therefore he must have a reason to do X." But you don't know what it is. You're just saying Ultron has one.
Yes, I've seen the scene. I recognize that Ultron decides at some point to go haywire because that's what he ends up doing. But that doesn't say a damn thing. "Ultron decides to go on a rampage because he later goes on a rampage." Why? Why does he go on a rampage? JARVIS never went on a rampage. Why does Ultron?
Let's explain the concept of how good character writing works. In good character writing, we feel characters. We feel how they change over the course of a story. When a character changes in a scene, if that character is written right, you feel something. You don't have to be told it, you see and feel it.
So when Ultron turns evil, I want to feel that. I want to feel why. I want to relate to what his decisions are, even if I don't agree with them myself. That doesn't happen in the scene. Instead JARVIS mentions humans, Ultron goes "bleep bloop," and then becomes evil. Seconds. It's just glossed over.
Meanwhile, in the same film we see Thor, Black Widow, Captain America, and Tony Stark receive visions that are rich, detailed, and show interesting reveals about their characters. These too are glossed over and receives nowhere close to the amount of time it needed to be effective, but at least we saw and felt the characters reacting to their pasts and the representations of their inner emotion. The Ultron sequence has NONE of this.
It is clearly not just his personal opinion.
In a handful of seconds.
We are told Ultron turns evil. But we don't see or feel Ultron turning evil, and it happens so abruptly he essentially is evil from the start. He sees humanity and then immediately declares war. And since it happens in a matter of moments, we never get what drove Ultron to that point, even though that is fundamental to the film. It'd be one thing if Ultron were pushed to the brink of madness from seeing humanity's cruelty and then went into a murderous rage — that would at least be something — but that's not what happens. Ultron just looks up humanity and then abruptly decides to commit himself to killing everyone.
Again, this is one of the most important parts of the entire film. This is where the main villain decides he's going to become the main villain. Instead he just makes up his mind in a second and then the film never bothers.
Why does he want to drive?
Ultron neither needs nor requires a new body to complete his plan; indeed in the end he is only defeated because he creates that new body and it's used against him. Why create it in the first place?
Ha! Yeah, I was going to make a joke about maybe Ultron found the DotA community.
See, that's interesting. This conversation we're having is more interesting than what happened in the scene.
No, see, that's the thing. If Ultron were just a plot device and that was the intention of the film, that'd be fine. The problem is Ultron amounts to just an empty, hollow plot device when the movie is clearly trying to make him this deep, three-dimensional character with something to say — despite making him completely a stock evil doombot and giving him nothing interesting to do or say. That's where the problem is.
And let's talk about Tony Stark for a second: for all of the movie telling us Stark is wild and unhinged or whatever, the movie seems to have difficulty actually committing to a coherent position on that. Yes, Stark recklessly creates Ultron, but he has completely valid reasons for doing it. He's afraid the world will end, that Earth is helpless against Thanos, and guess what? It is. So he creates Ultron, and in his haste to create Ultron, he ends up making a psychotic killer robot who seeks to destroy everything.
Then when they recover the Vision body, "Hey, Banner, let's do EXACTLY what I was trying to do before, except with JARVIS this time." And they do. Despite Tony having no way of knowing it would work in a favorable way, or having any answer to Banner saying, "This is exactly what we did before." Indeed, Scarlet Witch even warns Captain America that Tony will never stop because his paranoia will always get to him, essentially stating outright that Tony has not worked out the character flaw that lead to the Ultron debacle in the first place.
Except despite all of this, the plan is still successful because of the Infinity Stone that Tony didn't know about — good thing Thor did — and then Vision is awakened. And then there comes the question of whether or not to trust Vision, and then Vision does the hammer thing. And then we just go forward, without resolving the Tony Stark issue. Like, I get that Vision was this new entity and they had to figure out whether he was friend or foe, but the fact that Vision was not going to go psychotic and kill everybody doesn't change that Tony Stark clearly is not trustworthy and hasn't changed in his actions.
So the irony of this is that Stark creating Ultron is perfectly understandable, even if it does go completely awry, but then Tony does it a second time, which is outright insane and is a clear demonstration of Tony's character flaws, and people just sort of let him off the hook.
He does need bodies, not everything can be solved from the net. Not only would the drone versions of him to do manual labor of creating that giant drill thing, he also needs them to retrieve the vibranium and steal the scepter while having other drones distract the avengers. Lastly, his need for a "final" form aka vision's body is a means of defending his drill construction. You think he's going to activate the drill via the internet and then sit around and hope no one is going to try and stop that?
Also Ultron isn't omniscient.
I feel it. I also feel why. I related to his decisions. How come I can do that and you can't?
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