Thursday, 20 August 2015

First Reaction: Ant Man

Tuesday, 4 August 2015

Top Ten Villains Round 2 #4: Ultron

 SPOILERS!!
 
Yeah I wasn't kidding when I said that I'd have to defend this being over thanos but I stand by my choice here.
 
As I have said before This is my list. I'm aware that Thanos is more powerful and a bigger villain for the avengers (though that is debatable) but I just like Ultron more but I'll get more into that after I introduce you.
 
Henry Pym Or Ant Man ( or like twenty other names for that matter ) Created Ultron years ago and then things got kind of confusing. Ultron made him forget he made him and then Ultron wore a red cloak and made tony stark's butler evil but not really. Ultron has a weird past is my point.
 
 One of his past lives was also a hot water heater.
 
After that it's your basic AI created to protect the world decides it's easier if humans just kinda go away forever. It's fairly cliché now but back when he was created in 1968 it wasn't nearly as big of a cliché first and foremost and second he may have been one of the bigger influences to bring this idea to the mainstream. Much like Cybermen; Ultron is a huge influence on science fiction at least in my opinion.
 
But There are three main stories I want to quickly go over. Age of ultron,Rage of Ultron and Well....Age of ultron....the movie.
 
The Comic Book Age of Ultron is itself a pretty good read though slightly offput by one too many time shenanigans and would have been solved WAY earlier if wolverine wasn't a bloodthirsty dumbass but I digress.
 
There is one point I do want to take away from this comic though. Ultron Took over the world. That's the plot. Ultron Wins at the beginning of the book and is only really reversed by again time travel shenanigans. Now I don't know how many times or who else may have done something similar but from my admittedly minor knowledge of comics this is the only time I can think where an enemy wins and again only is reversed by time travel hoo haa. Well one other but I'll get to that later.
 
Well okay I'm sure that's happened lots of times in comics I mean I'm sure more psychotic stuff then that's happened.Need I say more then twin clones of hitler?
 
OF COURSE! Don't you know anything about obvious references to people who know more about comics then I do!?
 
The second again is rage of ultron. A more recent comic where Ultron is tricked and glued to a rocket and sent to Jupiter's moon titan. And we never saw him again.
 
Oh.....Right.
 
Yeah He took over the moon's tech systems or whatever was left after Number 5 had his fun. He then Decided he wanted to head back to earth since Ant-Man still owes him five bucks. Also the whole sending him to space thing. Also Evil.
 
I won't spoil the story but His dialogue as well as again Bringing an enormous moon and an even bigger army to earth is dedication to a whole new level and you tell me looking up and seeing that Jack o' lantern Grin coming from a moon that is barreling down on you in pretty damn impressive.
 
 And third we have the more recent movie Avengers: Age of Ultron.
 
 
It's no secret that the marvel cinematic universe while just has some great movies, could never really get the hang of the villains. I mean loki in the thor films was pretty damn good at times but he kinda borked it when it came to the avengers movie being more of a joke. Red skull was very well acted by Hugo Weaving and could be very threatening at times but he never really did THAT much really. Then the first age of ultron trailer hit and in the first twenty seconds with one sentence I was sold.

"I'm gonna show you something beautiful....everyone screaming...for mercy."

And Immediately I was intrigued and by god he was amazing in that movie. The movie itself was damn good. Had problems but still damn good and one of the biggest reasons being Ultron. James Spader did an incredible job of making both a very funny and threatening villain. Being made by Stark and not Hank Pym this time around he's got much more of a sense of humor but is still great with his threatening....er..ness. One particular scene where he claws a man's hand off and immediately starts to apologize. I honestly wasn't sure if this was meant for laughs, to be intimidating or both.
 
There is one point I want to get across with this villain you don't need to be the most powerful thing in existence to be a great villain. Granted I say this like ultron is weak he's gone toe to toe with the AVENGERS Dozens of times. My point is the power of a god isn't everything. Sometimes it's the mind as we'll see with the next villain....as come to think of it are the other two.