Scarlet Witch is introverted, that’s why she is’nt funny or does much in the way of interaction. I like the fact there’s a character who is not a social animal on the team. I relate to her feelings of isolation.

@ Alex:

Well, she is a monster of sorts, or at least she used to be. As I said, in “Agent Carter” they show the Evil Ballet School, and the things those girls had to endure and do themselves are horrifying, and her later career is probably matching. So yes, she’s a monster on a redemption mission (but not due to the missing parts, of course).

@ Victoria:

This is interesting. I have yet to watch Agent Carter. It’s on my list along with Agents of Shield and Vikings. But the fact it popped up there makes me wonder if this wasn’t something that Marvel world-builders mandated, rather than something Whedon chose for Natasha.

I mean, we know that that maintaining continuity between all the MCU properties is now a huge part of the Marvel/Disney industrial complex, so chances are anyone coming on board to make one of their movies has to work off a continuity checklist of things that must end up in the film in order to maintain coherence with the rest of MCU…

@ Victoria:
She actually referred to herself as a monster, not just “damaged goods”. Up to that point, I was only annoyed by her plot line. After that I had to actively forget it in order to enjoy the rest of the movie.

But I did very much enjoy the rest of the movie, even if I swore way too loudly when Cap didn’t say ‘Assemble’ at the end.

@ Luke Maciak:

BTW, they showed a lot more of the Evil Ballet school in “Agent Carter” and it was quite creepy.

@ Karthik:

I think Movie Bob mentioned that Black Widow worked so well in Winter Soldier because Cap is a character you need to juxtapose against someone else. On his own, he would be pretty boring because he is already perfect. He is the perfect patriot, perfect human, perfect friend, all around super nice guy, and he works really hard to grok the twenty first century so that he does not offend anyone with some bad habits he might have picked up in the old days. There is really not much you can do with him. But put him next to someone who is more morally ambiguous, and you can have a redemption story arc for that character very easily, as Cap is the perfect person to bring out the good in them.

@ Victoria:

I stand by Lindsay’s assessment of Ultron. He is not as smart as he thing he is. Hell, he is not even half as smart as he is arrogant. With his ability to browse the internet at the speed of light and inject himself into robotic bodies, he could do literally anything. But he focuses on destroying the world, because he read one too many “edgy” essays in /r/philosophy.

I can’t find the tweets right now, but I have seen people describe him as RMRA (Robot Men’s Rights Activist) in that he literally follows the MRA MO. Instead of trying to do something constructive he is reactionary, vindictive and seeks to discredit and destroy everything he considers a threat to his vision of a perfect world.

Well, Natasha is Russian, so it’s quite realistic to consider a woman ‘damaged goods’ if she’s not capable of having children or doesn’t want to (not that I am saying that it justifies the fact that Whedon didn’t do anything good with the character).

Black Widow gets… Well, Beauty & The Beast subplot with some Black Swan flashbacks

This is a brilliant description.

I enjoyed this movie much less than the first one. Loki was there to take focus away from the plot holes, but in Ultron there was no such deterrent. Also, it showed how easy it would be to hijack a band of super beings and turn them into enemies of the state.

Ultron didn’t feel like a good enough villain though. If you are a super smart awakened AI, why would you mess with people at all? They are like dolphins to you.

The shared universe, continuity driven narrative is cool and novel, and works great in single hero features like Iron Man 3 and The Winter Soldier. But the meetup movie took a hit.

Age of Ultron really seemed to be missing an hour of footage… and at this point, I actually wish it was a standalone movie. Then we wouldn’t have needed forced appearances from War Machine (who spoke wholly in quips this time), Thor’s entirely out of place magic pond dip and irrelevant vision, and a bunch of other fluff that doesn’t help the movie in any way. And then Ultron’s and Vision’s creation, sentience and “adolescence” needn’t have been crammed into ten minutes. The twins would have some more character development (especially around their heel-face turn), and Natasha’s and Bruce’s relationship could have developed over the movie instead of being already established.

There’s also stuff I thought did not fit with the continuity: It’s out of character for Bruce Banner to go along with a dangerous science experiment with Stark (twice), considering he is one. Natasha went from being terrified of the hulk to singing him lullabies. Cap and Stark departed on surprisingly friendly terms at the end given the drift Tony’s Ultron project created between their already disparate ideologies.

Incidentally, Black Widow had an actual arc (about trust) and was competent all the way through in The Winter Soldier. I thought that movie really nailed it in all respects, except for the Winter Soldier himself.