Marvel Mondays: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Hello again, fellow Marvel lovers! It's officially Infinity War month!!! While the anticipation grows and grows, we still have some work to do as far as covering the previous movies; so let's not waste any time. For today's blog, I'll be breaking down only one movie instead of two. In earlier posts, you could see that this was on the schedule, so let me go ahead and explain why. This week I'm talking about Avengers: Age of Ultron. To me, this is one of the most important movies in the MCU that pertains to Infinity War because we're introduced to characters like Vision, Scarlet Witch, Ulysses Klaue, and Quicksilver, it begins the rift between Iron Man and Captain America, but most importantly, shows us that Thanos is going to get off of the sidelines and get to work himself with the Infinity Gauntlet. So let's talk Avengers: Age of Ultron!

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Released May 1st, 2015, Age of Ultron is the sequel to the culmination of Phase 1 of the MCU, The Avengers. It essentially picks up a couple of years after The Avengers, with the Avengers searching for Loki's scepter in Sokovia. It tells the story of the team having to come together to defeat an artificial intelligence being who's obsessed with human, and the Avengers, extinction, that was brought to life by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. The being, called Ultron, enlists the help of two super powered twins, Wanda and Pietra Maximoff, to wreck havoc on the Avengers sending them into hiding at Hawkeye's safe house. However, the group comes together, with the help of the twins and Vision, to defeat Ultron and save the city of Sokovia. There's always the worry of the sequel underperforming after such a groundbreaking movie like The Avengers, but Age of Ultron was exactly the opposite, bringing in a huge $1.45 billion during it's box office run.

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Shortly after the blockbuster release of The Avengers, Marvel CEO Kevin Feige said there was plans for an Avengers sequel, with director Joss Whedon potentially coming back to direct the sequel as well. Now, while essentially every character was obligated to appear given their contract status, Robert Downey Jr's contract with Marvel had been completed after the release of Iron Man 3. This created a little bit of a problem as Downey was arguably the face of the Avengers, not Chris Evans' Captain America. However, RDJ and Disney renegotiated terms and came to an agreement that would keep Downey as Tony Stark. Then became the ordeal of finding the other cast; it was relatively easy bringing back the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Samuel L Jackson, Cobie Smulders, Don Cheadle and Jeremy Renner since their contracts had not yet expired. Whedon and Feige both said that, originally, Captain Marvel made her MCU debut in Age of Ultron; however, it was ultimately decided to wait until she could debut in her own movie, set to release in 2019. For the characters of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Whedon would cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen respectively. What's interesting about these two characters is that originally, they were mutants in the X-Men universe; however, Fox owned the rights to the word mutant, but not all of the characters in the X-Men universe, hence how Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are able to appear in the MCU. However, Whedon would have the job of explaining how they got their powers without calling them mutants, and for that he turned to villain Baron Wolgang Von Strucker who would experiment on the characters and give them their powers. Paul Bettany would finally make his own screen debut as J.A.R.V.I.S. turned Vision.

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Now, let's talk easter eggs, and this film is littered with them! From the beginning in Von Strucker's warehouse, we see tons of equipment and tech from the Chitauri invasion of New York in The Avengers, including the big whale looking creatures and Loki's scepter at the heart of it, powering it all. During the celebration at Avengers Tower, Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers are talking when Steve asks Sam about the missing person case he was working on. They're obviously talking about Bucky Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier. During the scene with people lifting Mjolnir, Cap moves it a little; now people are speculating that Cap may actually have the Soul Stone inside of him, which is why he would be worthy enough to move the hammer, I guess we'll just have to see. There's also two references about Black Panther in here when Bruce and Tony are talking about Vibranium, Bruce says it's located in a place called Wakanda...and brutally mispronounces the name. We also get our first look at arms dealer Ulysses Klaue, played by Andy Serkis, who was a villain in Black Panther as well. This is also the first time we see the Hulkbuster armor that is so prominent in the Infinity War trailers. We are also introduced to the thought of Vision and Scarlet Witch falling in love as she looks into his mind twice and is impressed both times, and he rescues her twice. We see the potential of this romance blossoms in Infinity War as their romance is a focal point in one of the trailers. When Cap tells Quicksilver this is what S.H.I.E.L.D is supposed to be, he's clearly taking a jab at the events that happened in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And finally, at the end of the film, we see Cap and Black Widow with the "New Avengers" consisting of War Machine, Vision, Falcon, and Scarlet Witch; however, there's two members of the New Avengers who aren't pictured: Dr. Strange and Spider-man. It can be assumed that during Infinity War, we'll see these new Avengers teaming up at some point.

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The post credit scene of Age of Ultron is arguably one of the biggest of the MCU to date. Since The Avengers, we've known the "big bad" of the MCU has been Thanos; however, he hasn't really appeared to be doing much himself. He sent Loki to do his work in The Avengers and relied on Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy. But, in the post credit scene, he says "fine then, I'll do it myself" as he unlocks the Infinity Gauntlet. Now there's a couple of routes you could go about interpreting this: you could say he was talking about eliminating the Avengers himself, or you could say he was talking about collecting the Infinity Stones himself, as we see Thor say how the Mind Stone located in Loki's scepter is an Infinity Stone. Personally, I think he's talking about both things and knows in order to collect the Infinity Stones, he'll have to take out the Avengers. We know from the Infinity War trailers that Thanos already has the Power and Space Stones, and it can be assumed that one of the themes of Infinity War is Thanos tracking down the other four Stones. However, we now know that one of the Stones is actually in Vision's forehead, as the Mind Stone is supposedly giving him life. We'll just have to see the android makes it out of the first film alive...

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All in all, I love Age of Ultron. I understand how some people don't like it as much as The Avengers, and I agree, it's not as good as The Avengers, but it's not bad either. It's still in my top 5 of the MCU coming in at number 5 actually. I just really enjoy the everything in the film, whether it be introducing new characters, bringing back old characters, the comedy, and most of all, the action, Age of Ultron just does it all for me. It's sad knowing that we'll probably never see the Avengers work so smooth together again as this is the foundation that Captain America: Civil War will build on with Tony and Steve Rogers already disagreeing on certain things. If you haven't seen this, one, you were probably a little confused in Civil War, and two, you need to see this before Infinity War!!!

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Kevin Scott is a contributing writer for The Mouse Knows Best Podcast. He is self proclaimed Disney addict and oftentimes annoys his family with how much he talks Disney. He enjoys walking around all Disney Parks and taking as many pictures as he can in one day. When he isn't at Walt Disney World, he is working to get back or re-watching Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars movie. His spirit animal is a mix between Simba and Kylo Ren with a dash of Tony Stark. You can find him on Twitter @doubleoh_kevin and on Instagram @waltdisneyduo.