Burdened With Glorious Purpose

Age of Ultron is the forgotten middle act of the Avengers saga

It’s not hyperbole to say that Age of Ultron was pretty disappointing at release. Fans were expecting more of the energetic whimsy we saw in The Avengers. Instead, we got… this.

That stigma has clung to the film like a bad cologne – most fans rank it in the bottom third of MCU films. Which is a tragedy, really, as it contains some of the MCU’s best moments. And it perfectly tees up the Infinity War/Endgame double-header.

Age of Ultron is quietly the most important movie in the entire MCU saga.

It’s an easy movie to lose sight of. Squeezed between two better team-ups – the eternally-fresh Avengers and the kinetic, better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be proto-Avengers Civil War – Age of Ultron shoulders the burden of establishing the Infinity Saga (as Marvel Studios has rebranded the first 22 movie arc).

Much in the same way that setting up the Avengers sacrificed some of Iron Man 2's mojo, the Infinity Stone business fragments Age of Ultron’s narrative. But amid the broken pieces, Age of Ultron is quietly the most important movie in the entire MCU saga.

In a typical 3 act structure, the second act deepens the stakes and propels the story toward the conclusion. It is the pivot around which the entire story turns. This concept also applies to movie trilogies and longer interconnected films.

The best example is The Empire Strikes Back; Empire establishes new players, doubles down on the galactic conflict, and enriches A New Hope by reframing the entire narrative with five simple words.

With Civil War thrown in and the two-part Infinity War/Endgame combo, the Avengers films follow a 5 act structure. Which is partly why Age of Ultron feels so forgotten: it’s in the wrong place for maximum narrative impact. Civil War occupies that crucial middle seat, and while it plays a critical role in fragmenting the Avengers so they can be beat, all the Infinity Saga story beats occur in Age of Ultron. Consider:

• Tony’s vision of the team beaten and his friends all dead.
• The film places the Infinity Stones front and center (awkwardly or no).
• It establishes that the happy-go-lucky vibe from the end of the Avengers is a brief, passing moment. The team’s default position is one of strong dissenting opinions and inner conflict, which pays out in Civil War.
• Tony correctly identifies that the Avengers concept has a shelf life, which is pretty radical considering how new the team is. He even uses the term ‘end game’:

Tony Stark: Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We’re standing three hundred feet below it. We’re the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live long day, but, that up there? That’s…that’s the end game. How were you guys planning on beating that?

• Lastly, Age of Ultron lays the seeds for it’s own little “I am your father” moment. Continuing from the previous quote:

Steve Rogers: Together.

Tony Stark: We’ll lose.

Steve Rogers: Then we’ll do that together, too.

When Tony returns home in Endgame, anemic and barely alive, he throws this exact moment back in Steve’s face. Everything Tony predicted back in Age of Ultron came to pass, only Cap wasn’t there like he promised. Not only did they lose, they weren’t together.

Like most, I had largely disregarded Age of Ultron as inferior to the majority of the MCU. It had its moments, sure, but the whole thing never really felt satisfying. I recently rewatched it for the first time since seeing Endgame, and I was a little blown away at how well the two films line up. Even Clint’s family, which felt at the time like a way to give a bland character a more interesting dynamic, is paid off in Endgame.

All of this was something of a revelation. It wasn’t that I didn’t remember these moments happened. But Endgame caused me to look at them with fresh eyes, ones wizened by knowledge of the end.

More than anything, though, it made me more fully appreciate Tony. Thanks to his cutting cynicism and inflated ego, Tony is often openly antagonistic, even to his friends. That has been a constant part of Tony’s personality since the very beginning.

Tony Stark: The Avengers initiative was scrapped, I thought. And I didn’t even qualify.

Pepper Potts: I didn’t know that either.

Tony Stark: Apparently I’m volatile, self-obsessed, and don’t play well with others.

But underneath all the arrogance and wit lies a single truth: Tony was right.

Inciting change is never popular, but it is necessary. Tony saw that, even if the rest of the team couldn’t. Which makes you wonder how Infinity War would’ve gone if they hadn’t accidentally created Ultron as a murderbot.

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