Avengers: Age of Ultron is a fun movie. Not perfect, but a lot of fun. However, there’s one key point where they had a chance to not just be fun, but great… and blew it. Spoilers ahead.
Much of the movie centers around Sokovia, some made-up Eastern European republic that HYDRA infiltrates and turns into its base of operations. Essentially, it’s where it’s gutting the aliens from the first movie to try and build laser cannons out of them, and where the opening battle of the movie takes place. It also happens to be where Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are from.
In the opening, Tony calls in “The Iron Legion,” essentially a bunch of androids tasked with polite crowd control, and this is where things get interesting. Tony, it turns out, is not popular in Sokovia. As his proxies get beaned with vegetables, we pan over to some less than flattering graffiti, showing Iron Man clutching AK-47s and his helmet replaced with a dollar sign.
Later on, we find out the people of Sokovia have excellent reason to hate Tony Stark. Wanda relates a pretty harrowing story where their apartment building was shelled, and she and Pietro were trapped in the rubble staring at an artillery shell labelled with its maker’s name, just sitting there, feet from them, while they waited two agonizing days to either be rescued or blown to hell.
Wanna guess who made the munitions in question? It’s a great angle: Tony is haunted not just by what he fears he can’t do, but what he actually did. They even tease it a bit, as Tony recognizes Ulysses Klaw from photos and has to explain to his friends that no, he didn’t sell him anything. We even see an image from the opening of Iron Man, with Tony demonstrating his shiny new missile.
Then, the movie drops it so hard, you can hear the thud. When Ultron kicks in his killer plan, threatening all of Sokovia and by extension the planet, the good citizens are suddenly huge fans of a private, largely American paramilitary force showing up to save the world. You can practically hear self-serious twits groan in pleasure as they mentally compose the opening to a piece about how Marvel is promoting American imperialism.
To be honest, though, the movie ignoring geopolitics doesn’t bother me. There’s a reason Hollywood blockbusters aren’t noted for nuanced discussions of foreign policy, private military contractors or the painful legacy of the international arms market. It’s simply that there’s a hook here, a way to make Tony more complicated while acknowledging the world isn’t a simple place, that would have improved the movie. And for whatever reason, they didn’t take it; the best we get is the implication that Ultron has just a bit of Tony’s self-loathing running around in his skull.
Maybe next time, guys, go for the gold instead of settling for just making more money? Hey, it worked for Batman.