Dumb Things In Avengers: Age Of Ultron Everyone Just Ignored

Director Joss Whedon blew the doors off the superhero movie world with The Avengers, but his follow-up Avengers: Age of Ultron left a few things to be desired.

It wasn't bad, per se, but Age of Ultron was far from the masterpiece of the first Avengers film. From weird plot points to mysterious helicarriers that pop up right when you need them, here are all the dumb things about Avengers: Age of Ultron everyone just ignored.

Before Age of Ultron, the last time we saw Tony Stark was in his solo flick Iron Man 3. That movie made some major changes to the Iron Man lore and actually saw Tony seemingly retire from the superhero game. Stark spends most of the film dealing with post-traumatic stress from the alien invasion in The Avengers and finally finds the hero in himself by the end of Iron Man 3, walking off into the sunset with Pepper Potts while all his suits blow up like fireworks. So, umm, why is Tony flying around in a shiny new suit by the time Age of Ultron rolls around? This question is never actually explained during the running time of Ultron. If anything, this film basically ignored pretty much all the character development and growth we saw in Iron Man 3.

Ultron might get top billing, but Tony Stark is inadvertently the real villain of this movie. He tinkers with technology and magic he doesn't understand and sets the whole thing running on autopilot. Then (surprise!) an evil AI is born from the ultra-powerful Infinity Stone. As you'd expect, Stark has no idea how it works. He sees the thing is putting off some type of computer code, so he tries to turn it into an AI? How does that seem like a good idea? He doesn't consider the thought that the hyper-advanced alien AI might not want to play nice? Then when he's called out by Captain America, he gets defensive and shifts the blame. His intentions to create an AI to protect the world may have been noble, but Stark was wildly irresponsible in that all-important execution phase. He plugs this thing in and starts chugging along, and an evil AI that almost destroys the world is born in a matter of hours. It seems like an unrealistic level of headstrong, even for Stark.

So Ultron is an infinitely advanced AI with a blood lust to take out humanity and the Avengers. But if he wants to cause a whole lot of trouble without hijacking a city and turning it into an asteroid, there are literally a million ways to start dismantling civilization. He escapes into the internet, and though we're told he can't access the nuclear launch codes thanks to Jarvis fighting him off, there are still a lot of other things he could mess with. How about the electrical grid? The water supply? The fuel supply? Traffic lights? Air traffic controllers? Heck, why not hijack every piece of tech used by the Avengers and turn it against them? The list goes on and on. But instead of causing global panic and making toasters kill people, Ultron tries to build a humanoid super-body, quip with weak one-liners, and recruit a team of metahumans to help him fight? That's pretty poor planning for such a smart AI.

This movie was apparently over three hours in its original cut, so Whedon had to do some work in the editing bay to get this beast down to a manageable length. One thing that hit the cutting room floor? A larger subplot that would've explained Thor's weird visions while taking a bath in a cave. In the film, we see Thor take off on a journey to get some intel and have some trippy visions about the Infinity Stones at the Water of Sight. Whedon later revealed that there was a whole lot more to that scene that would've made it make sense, but it was a bit too weird for a mainline Avengers movie. So, it was heavily edited, to the point that it barely made any sense at all. If it doesn't make the movie, it doesn't count, guys.

Adding a speedster to the mix is tricky business, and it's a challenge The CW's Flash series grapples with every week (some weeks more successfully than others). It's something the X-Men movies have also grappled with thanks to the other version of Quicksilver, and that version ran into some of the same issues when joining the Avengers.

Super speed is one of the most useful powers in the superhero tool box, to the point that you can do pretty much anything if you can go fast enough. So adding Quicksilver to the mix was tough because he could've averted pretty much all the problems in this movie. When the Avengers storm the Hydra base in the opening scene? Why didn't Quicksilver just take them all out or evacuate the important research and key players long before Earth's Mightiest Heroes reached the gate? Yes, he was still young in his powers, but at that point what's there to lose in trying? In the fight with Ultron, why couldn't Quicksilver conceivably take out every Ultron-bot on his own by moving fast enough and knocking them out? Obviously, that doesn't make for a very interesting movie, but it's impossible to ignore the impact super speed would have on all these situations. Even Quicksilver's death was suspect—at his speed, those bullets should've been moving in slow motion. It was a touching sacrifice, but totally nonsensical for a dude that fast.

The big party scene early in the run time was one of the best moments in this film, serving as a jovial reminder that this is a big, expansive universe. But where the heck were those second-tier heroes when all the action kicked off? War Machine shows up to the party when Nick Fury arrives at the eleventh hour, but Falcon is still nowhere to be found. It'd be one thing if these characters hadn't showed up early on, but c'mon, they're literally in the movie. How did they not get the call to lend a hand with the fate of the world on the line? This is an Avengers movie, right? Pull out all the stops!

Yes, this was later explained thanks to a tie-in episode on the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but it stands to reason most of the people checking out the superhero movie on opening weekend didn't also watch the show. (Just look at the show's less-than-stellar ratings if you need more proof.) So when Nick Fury flies in to save the day and evacuate all the hostages with a fully functional helicarrier, it's a bit of a head-scratcher. It's basically a deus ex machina that is never actually explained in the film itself. S.H.I.E.L.D. is disbanded and Fury is on the run. Yet here he is, flying a giant helicarrier into a war zone. On the television series, you learn he borrowed it from Coulson's team, but still—it should've been explained in the actual film.

Fans have been clamoring for a straight-up Iron Man vs. Hulk fight ever since the MCU became a thing, and Age of Ultron delivered in spades. When Hulk is tricked by Scarlet Witch into going on a rampage, Iron Man pulls out his Hulkbuster armor to shut him down. The fight is epic, and it turns out the Hulkbuster armor is savvy enough to literally hang with the unstoppable Hulk. So, umm ... why doesn't Iron Man use it more often? Like when they were storming that Hydra base, wouldn't that gear have come in handy? Or during the final battle with Ultron's forces? Why not roll in with a monster-sized Hulkbuster armor to stomp those little Ultron drones into dust? It seems silly to develop something this awesome and only use it for this one contingency, right?