Each Avengers film has changed Marvel’s Cinematic Universe in major ways, but Age of Ultron might have gone the farthest in rewriting the status quo. Sure, Infinity War and Endgame gave us the Blip, but that phenomenon has largely been wasted in the projects that followed. With Ultron, we got the Vision (Paul Bettany), the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), the devastation of Sokovia, and Wakandan vibranium, all of which drastically shaped the next MCU Phase.
But one of Age of Ultron’s strongest ideas was never really explored after the fact — and I’m not talking about the awkward romance between Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). That remains one of the worst ideas ever attempted in the Marvel Universe. Instead, the true strength of Ultron lies in its platonic relationships: it’s really the only Avengers film that actually lets the Avengers be friends.
In the MCU, the Avengers are very much defined by their dysfunction. They’re a mismatched nest of competing egos and suppressed traumas, and the only time they seem to get along is when they’re fighting some world-ending threat. It’s so easy to splinter the team in Captain America: Civil War because the seeds were basically planted from day one. Few of the Avengers were ever really friends, and fewer still were ever on the same page about the “right” way to save the world. That’s on full display in Ultron. But just before Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) latest brainchild evolved into the omniscient murderbot Ultron (voiced by James Spader), the Avengers were closer to becoming friends — hell, even family — than they’d ever be.
In the three years between the Avengers’ first on-screen team-up and Age of Ultron, the Marvel fandom created a world unto itself. Speculative fiction and fan art followed the Avengers on a different kind of mission: building a strong team bond. That premise set the stage for a wave of sitcom-inspired shenanigans — the Avengers all lived together in Stark Tower, training, fighting, and sharing their feelings in a more intimate setting. The “Avengers Tower” era was (and may still be) a defining moment for the fandom. It represents a simpler time for those who came of age as the MCU matured — and compared to the version of the Avengers we’ve gotten in live-action, it also represents a missed opportunity.
We don’t quite get to this level of camaraderie in Age of Ultron, but the 2015 film, directed by Joss Whedon, did give us a glimmer of the team that could have been. Ultron reintroduces the Avengers with more style and cohesion: they’re a team with inside jokes, with an intimate understanding of their respective roles and their relationship with their team members. They’re also more efficient than we’ve ever seen them, as Whedon demonstrates with a bombastic opening number.
Ultron kicks off with a clandestine mission in Sokovia, where the Avengers retrieve one of the six Infinity Stones from Loki’s old scepter. Though they fail to capture Wanda Maximoff and her speedster brother Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the team is eliminating the remnants of HYDRA (remember them?) one by one. Their success in Sokovia is enough to merit a celebration back at Stark Tower, offering fans our best look at the Avengers in their downtime. Ultron capitalizes on the chemistry of its cast to create a natural, easy rapport, all while bringing us up to speed on what our heroes have been up to.
Unfortunately, all this domestic bliss is short-lived. Ultron comes online just as the team’s festivities are coming to an end, and the fact that Tony and Bruce had a hand in his creation is the first crack in the Avengers’ newly-settled foundation. The film that follows is chock-full of bickering and grandstanding; it’s not until Vision (Paul Bettany) enters the picture that the team gets back on the same page and reunites to take Ultron down. That strained dynamic admittedly gives the film a propulsive kind of tension, but in hindsight, it would have been nice to see the Avengers click on a deeper level.
The team never recaptures the magic we see in Ultron’s first act. Ten years on, it’s one of the franchise’s more subtle missteps, especially knowing the Avengers are still disbanded in the MCU. No one’s saying the heroes need to host slumber parties or exchange BFF bracelets (though that would be fun to see). But Ultron had the right idea exploring the emotional bonds between its cast members, and it’s a shame we haven’t really gotten that with any super team since.
