Did you know Avengers: Age of Ultron had its 10th birthday last week? The occasion got overshadowed by the release of Thunderbolts*—sorry, New Avengers—but it’s now a decade old, and Marvel’s got an anniversary video to celebrate.
The five-minute compilation runs through a handful of the film’s key moments, including the team trying to lift Thor’s hammer, Thor birthing the Vision, and Tony using the Hulkbuster armor to bring down a mind-controlled Banner. It isn’t so much a highlight reel as it is a collection of fairly popular scenes meant to show the Avengers at the friendliest, messiest, and mightiest. Great, but it might also remind about the weird space this movie has occupied in the years since its release.
Back when Age of Ultron first released on May 1, 2015, it was regarded as a solid, albeit disappointing sequel to the original Avengers. By the time the credits rolled, folks left the theater feeling something was off, and it became the first real blow to Marvel’s fairly solid track record up to that point. Thor: The Dark World had Loki to use as a shield, but Ultron lacked the “wow” factor that ended up diminishing the appeal of another group outing for these characters. Save for maybe Hawkeye, it didn’t really do anyone here any favors, and the best thing you could say about it was how it served as a jumping off point for more interesting MCU developments down the line: without it, would Captain America: Civil War just a year later feel like a more proper (and frankly better) Avengers movie? Does Thor: Ragnarok exist if Ultron doesn’t take the god out of the film for an Infinity Stones-focused detour that felt wildly out of place at the time?
Outside its own franchise, Ultron helped lay the foundation for writer/director Joss Whedon’s creative future and subsequent ousting following abuse allegations from Buffy star Charisma Carpenter. Much of that can be laid at Whedon pairing Black Widow with Banner and revealing she’d had a forced hysterectomy during her upbringing in the Red Room, the former further exacerbated by Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner calling her a slut in an interview. The goodwill Whedon had previously earned through his handling of women in his prior work gradually came crashing down after the Avengers sequel, and the film’s mixed reception led to his time at Marvel being functionally over. Ultron lit the match, and the fire truly started when he directed the 2017 cut of Justice League. Its release and later details of his alleged on-set conduct blew up his career and after exiting The Nevers, which he created for HBO Max in 2021, there’s been no real word of him since.
So yeah, Age of Ultron, weird movie to watch, talk about, and generally exist as a piece of media. WandaVision, Hawkye, and Ultron’s return in the Vision’s own upcoming series ensure it won’t be completely forgotten, but of the various Avengers and Phase Two movies, it’s maybe the most “great, but this really could’ve just been an email” of the bunch. Maybe it’s improved with age, but that require listening to going through the smarmy quips again, and I think we’re all good on that front.
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