Ultron: The Avenger’s Biggest Cyber-Bully

We live in a world filled with glorious advancements in technology. And if this pandemic is any indicator, we greatly rely on our ability to communicate over the internet in our modern world. But as we’ve seen from numerous outlets there is a dark side to communicating via the internet. We live in a world where the ability to bully and belittle our fellow human beings has grown dangerously high thanks to the anonymity of the internet. And the massive spread of information, once gathered for good, is now making it easier for us to hurt each other and spread lies. And that’s what I want to talk about today. The dangers of our advancing technology, and how one character represents it better than any other.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a complicated movie, one that presented many challenges. As Director Joss Whedon himself has expressed, it wasn’t the movie everyone hoped it would be. But I think it’s the movie we needed. A movie which showed us the dangers of ourselves and how we communicate with each other through a lens of anonymity. While Ultron (James Spader) is physically dangerous to the Avengers, he represents a greater danger in America. He represents our ability to hurt and degrade each other as a way to build ourselves up and expand on our own ego. Ultron is the ultimate version of cyber bullying.

Right from his creation, Ultron is a virus. He displays his ability to use the resources available to himself to rapidly learn information and then uses that info not to better the world around him but rather to exploit flaws in logic which allow him to attack those who disagree with him. His philosophy that humanity is the greatest threat to humanity is a twisting of logic akin to the most dangerous dictators in history and his malicious perseverance of his goal to wipe out humanity is reflective of how we take our disagreements online too far. It’s not enough to prove each other wrong. We have to utterly “Destroy” our opponents. We use sensationalism and click bait headlines to bolster ourselves and attack our peers online, the same way Ultron continues to build himself into what he considers a superior being while calling out the Avengers for flaws in the way they conduct themselves, even when those flaws are reflected in his own personality.

Ultron is a troll, plain and simple. If you read into his dialogue in the movie it is a logic driven series of personal attacks against many of the Avengers, primarily Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). He speaks not as a peer trying to convince Tony his point of view is correct. He speaks to Tony as an inferior who he deems comparatively unintelligent and unable to comprehend the genius Ultron himself exudes. He takes the things Tony and his fellow Avengers stand for and attacks them. He ridicules Tony’s intelligence and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) selfless righteousness and works to convince the Avengers that their greatest strengths are actually major flaws. In watching the way we conduct ourselves on social media, we have numerous times where the argument vanishes and it becomes a string of personal attacks and character assassinations that have no addition to our point. We bully and persecute anyone who even calls us out on our logical fallacies until they believe the they themselves are wrong. Not that their argument is wrong but that they are so worthless they couldn’t be right. We use the technology in our world to break people and display it for all to see.

This speaks to the earliest forms of Tony Stark as we see him in the MCU. Ultron is the dark side of Tony Stark. Or more accurately, he’s what could have happened if Tony Stark hadn’t changed. Ultron has a cynical view of the Avengers and the world they represent. He views them as far beneath him and his ideals. They don’t actually threaten him because they are too worthless to understand what he is trying to build and too weak to actually stop it if they tried. As the movie progresses the Avengers have to come together to prove that Ultron is actually the one who is out of touch and those who support him are actually consumed more by fear than by admiration. And when the curtain is finally pulled back those who supported him also turn from the bully they worked for and aid those they once worked against.

Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) are two sides of the fallout of dealing with a cyber-bully. They represent those young people who have a limited view of the world. They have only experienced it from their oppressed position in Sokovia. And when Ultron offers them a chance to get revenge on someone who, in their view, wronged them, whether justified or not, they jump onboard with Ultron without questioning or asking what they actually believe in. They are caught up by the manipulation of a being who is using their fragile emotional state to coerce them into adding fuel to his already volatile fire. And in the end, there are two way you come out of that. You either get out, survive and change the way you view the world through people who actually convince you to follow what you believe; the way Wanda does. Or you get buried by it, the way Pietro does. And while they both have different ends; they both still suffer from the actions surrounding their time with Ultron. Pietro gives his life, and Wanda loses everything in hers. Neither of them emerges from their time under Ultron’s thumb unscathed.

We see the way that Ultron empowers Wanda to mess with the minds of the Avengers, and the consequences that it has. When Wanda gets inside the heads of the initial Avengers, she traps them in their own doubts and worries. She exploits the weaker parts of them and while it harms most of them only on a personal level, when she gets to the Hulk. It becomes devastating. In this moment we see the Hulk as a being bullied to the point where he can take no more and sends his own internal struggle out into the world. Think about all the people told they are worthless who take their own lives and send ripples through the community around them. Or others who become radicalized by the words they read from cults of personality online that cause them to attack and do physical harm to those around them. People who start online and seemingly anonymous hate groups can radicalize people in order to cause destruction and violence. And those who are weak willed, the way the Hulk is, are manipulated by these vile internet trolls to go out and cause havoc. People are hurting because of what someone said on the internet with malicious intent. And the way Ultron uses Wanda to attack the Hulk is a representation of that.

But the internet is not all bad. And just as things which are designed for good can be used for evil, things designed to harm can be used for good. And that’s what we get from Vision (Paul Bettany). Vision is untainted by the vile parts of the world he occupies, not because he is young and naïve but because he is steadfast in his convictions. He knows the facts as they purely are and does not manipulate them or use them to harm others but uses them to learn and grow. The same way we have the ability to use the internet to come together and learn how to better ourselves, but we don’t. We let our emotions get manipulated by the Ultron’s of the world. But when we use our own objective reasoning and shut out the trolls, the way Vision shuts Ultron out of the networks on earth, we see the bully for what it truly is. A sad, lonely troll surrounded by an army of opinionless bots. But Vision is a free thinker, bolstered by allies, who is able to stand up and declare the truth, not succumb to the attacks of those trying to bully and harm.

So how do we fight a cyber-bully? First, we call them out. We take them for what they are and do not stoop to their level. The Avengers have to rise above the mire of Ultron’s world. They try to play his games and fail. Only when they rise above his level and stand by their own convictions, they are able to start the process of stopping him. Once we’ve called out the bully and risen above them, we work to disprove them, show them how their actions do more harm than good. The Avengers don’t spend the battle of Sokovia simply fighting the bad guy, the do collateral damage repair, the work to protect the people first, and only when the people are clear of danger, do they work to stop Ultron. And not just to incapacitate him, they have to eradicate the bully from the network. And that’s the way we work. It’s not enough to tell off one bully, we have to purge our feeds of them. Because if there is no one to harass, they have no power and end as a callous shell, lacking in power and straining to manipulate those around them. And when Ultron dies off, he dies off alone. Bullies lack power on their own, so they use attacks on those around them to put down, but when no one listens, they are shown for what they are. They are alone, and they ultimately, lack the self-conviction to survive without something to persecute. If we don’t feed the trolls, they starve. So don’t feed them because they don’t have any power without your attention and they don’t deserve it.

Just a quick refresher of my MCU ranking criteria.

Cast and Performances
Story and Plot
Best Fight/Action Scene
Rewatchability
Cleverness of the Stan Lee cameo

Each film will be judged solely by me and then placed against all the other films. And rated on a scale of 10 with a total possible score of 50.

So, here is the quick breakdown of Avengers: Age of Ultron:

Cast and Performances: The cast is spectacular if not a little overstuffed. We get a great comradery between the six original Avengers with Jeremy Renner cementing himself inside of the team as the heart of the Avengers. New additions Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are both stellar with their emotional weight adding a new dynamic to the team. And James Spader’s Ultron is callous, humorous, and vile all at once. Where the movie falls short is its work to include the history of the previous films with Rhodey and Sam Wilson in minimal and mostly unnecessary roles. Likewise Nick Fury feels like a late addition that doesn’t add to the story at all. (7/10)

Story and Plot: The plot is complex and nuanced but rather long. It could have been cut down by a fourth and still likely have worked. And while everything inside the movie feels like a great set piece the movie is big and long and needs to be trimmed. Bigger isn’t always the answer and this plot shows that. (7/10)

Best Fight/Action Scene: The fight in Africa which leads into the conflict between the Hulk and Iron Man’s Hulkbuster armor is interesting and really shows off all of the Avengers as well as our villains, we see how Pietro works, the way Wanda manipulates those around her, Ultron’s quick wit and powerful menace comes across throught. And when the Hulk does get unleashed we see just how dangerous he is and how hard it would be to stop him. (8/10)

Rewatchability: Ultron isn’t the most rewatchable, both because it’s long and because it’s complicated. But there are memorable set pieces and lines which do dictate a rewatch every once in a while. While it’s not a perfect film it is far from the worst entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (7/10)

Cleverness of the Stan Lee Cameo: Stan the Man is a WWII vet who challenges the Avenger’s heartiness by drinking some Asgardian liquor. And when it proves to be too much we get one of Stan’s signature catchphrases: “Excelsior!”  (7/10)

Total: 36/50

Current Ranking:
Avengers
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Guardians of the Galaxy
Captain America: The First Avenger
Iron Man
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Thor
Iron Man 3
The Incredible Hulk
Thor: The Dark World
Iron Man 2

While I used this movie to reflect lightly on the issue, Cyberbullying is a real problem in our world. I hope you can use this as a chance to remember that there are lives behind many profiles on the internet and they deserve the same respect you hope to have as well. Attack ideas, not people. But let’s shake off the hardship of Age of Ultron because the next movie is a tad smaller than this one.

And as always, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated!