Very few Marvel Comics in recent history have had as much of an impact as Age of Ultron. The story, released in 2013, was a blast, came out of nowhere, and hit all the right notes when it comes to bringing the heroes to the furthest point of desperation they could possibly be driven to. It was a tough story and involved all the things that Marvel Comics are known for: alternate timelines, alternate futures, tough choices, very human moments and a lukewarm ending to tie it all up. What happens when a story like this is adapted to the big screen? Does it hit the same mark? Do the decades of backstory factor in to the quality of the story? Are the moments earned? Well, the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, released in 2015 will give you the opportunity to answer those questions for yourself. This article will explore the differences between the comic story and the live action movie.
1. The Meaning of the Title
The term “age” can have a different meaning in different conversations. The term “age” in Age of Ultron – the comics, refers to a time period, specifically a future where Ultron resides. The story starts off with the heroes already defeated by Ultron and wondering just how it came to that point. With all of the shenanigans that came along with figuring out just what was happening and how things could possibly be undone, it really became about it being an Age of Ultron, seeing as there was an era where Ultron reigned supreme. The movie turns this concept into something else. Ultron gains sentience but it nowhere near the same kind of threat that he posed in the source material. Part of the reason is that there wasn’t time to flesh Ultron out as a character. He was made for the movie and served his purpose as a villain in that movie alone. It wasn’t necessarily a bad move, but the move definitely did hurt the chances of Ultron being as special as he was in the source material.
2. The Story’s Span
The story’s scope is large and encompasses the entire Marvel Comics universe. Whether there was an ongoing story at the time with a certain character or not, the Age of Ultron caught up with them, and the result was devastating. This is because Ultron, being the evil genius that he is, was attacking from the future. He had established a fortress for himself at some point in the future, and built his army. He then sends his army to the past (our present) to conquer the world and kill as many heroes as he could before they could figure out how to stop him. This prompted the heroes to divide themselves into two groups: one which would go to the future to stop him there, and another which would go to the past to stop him from being created, or stop him before he becomes the threat. The heroes in the future all died, and the ones who went to the past were Wolverine and Invisible Woman. Wolverine killed Hank (the actual creator of Ultron) so that he could never invent the robot. This led to a disastrous present timeline which traumatized Wolverine so much that when he and Invisible Woman did find a solution (put a bug in Ultron to stop him when the right time came), he asked his past self (the one that was about to kill Hank Pym) to kill him. This past version complied, and went with Invisible Woman to the present, which was fixed.
3. Consequences
The most common complaint about the MCU at that time – aside from the humor – was the lack of consequences in the movies. The Age of Ultron story in the source material had some pretty messy consequences as it unfolded, and even after everything ended, there were consequences. Whether those consequences are still considered now or not is a whole different story. In the source material, the consequences are shown to be that we discover just how fragile the timestream has become due to all the time travelling. This isn’t the first story in which there are time travelling shenanigans, and certainly not the most famous one, or even the last one. It was shown that the constant time travelling weakened the timestream and the heroes decided to limit, or even up and stop the use of time travelling in order to avoid cataclysmic events such as this one again…or even the collapse of the timestream. It was explained that what they were doing was constantly folding the timestream and that it would eventually just break or stay stuck. The movie, lacking time travel, had no such consequences. The movie itself just ended with the Avengers moving on with their lives, with new recruits among their ranks. The consequences only came two movies later in Captain America: Civil War, as a response by the Russo Brothers to the constant fan complaints about the lack of consequences in the MCU.
4. Ultron’s Origin
Comicbook movie origin stories are never 100% accurate. There may be some outdated things involved in the origin (Iron Man) or maybe there have been origins done before which are still in recent memory, so the films choose to do something different (Amazing Spider-Man) and others simply gloss over them entirely and only give vague allusions to them which can easily be debunked not just by fans but by the sequels of those movies (Tom Holland’s Spider-Man iteration). On rare occasions, there isn’t even an origin at all (TMNT). Ultron’s origin falls into a different category from the ones listed in this point. It was different simply because they wrote it to be like that. In the source material, Ultron was created by Hank Pym, who was toying with the idea of AI. He based Ultron’s intelligence on his own brainwaves, so, in a sense, Ultron is a machine form of Hank himself. Ultron hypnotized Hank into forgetting that he had made him and eventually returned to wreak havoc, and it took the combined might of the Avengers to stop him. The goal with Ultron’s creation in the movie was for it to be a force of protection of the Earth against greater threats, which was thought up by Tony Stark, not Hank Pym. Not only is the purpose of Ultron’s creation different, but even the creator. The powers are different as well. There are a lot of abilities that Ultron has in the source material which are not displayed in the movie, and the iteration suffers because of it.
5. The Origins of Vision
In the source material, Vision was created by Ultron, as Ultron was trying to start a family of his own. That is a weird tangent of its own that we will not go into right now. The basis of Vision’s creation was similar to Ultron’s, in that Vision’s mind was also based on a human being’s. While Ultron’s was based on Hank Pym, Vision’s was based on one Simon Williams, AKA Wonder Man. This was before he became Wonder Man. In the movie, a different route was taken. The character that would become Vision is Tony Stark’s AI: J.A.R.V.I.S. J.A.R.V.I.S.’s software was attacked and damaged by Ultron. Tony and Bruce managed to install the software into the vibranium body of Ultron’s creation, which he wanted to be his own body, and thus, Vision was born.
6. The Maximoffs
A huge source of conflict between studios (and fans) was the Maximoff twins. At first, they were Magneto’s mutant children in the source material, but then, a few months before the release of Age of Ultron, it was…revealed…that the Maximoffs were never Magneto’s children…or mutants, which is strange because there have been stories which indubitably showed us that they were in fact Magneto’s children and mutants. Either way, the canon says that they aren’t anymore, but it still has to be mentioned in this list because the canon was definitely not changed to fit in with the movie; something that hasn’t been happening in recent years. In the movie, they were teenagers who got involved with HYDRA because they hated Tony Stark and wanted revenge against him, as his weapons were used to destroy their home. They volunteered for experiments that only the two of them survived and got their powers from the experiments. It was in WandaVision that their…true…nature was revealed, and it was shown that they were always superpowered, and that the experiments simply unleashed what was already there. Not only that, but they were a huge part of the focus of the story. In the source material, they were not even in the story, and died off-panel.
7. The Scope
Comments