‘Age of Ultron’: Taking Out 1 Useless Character Wouldn’t Have Changed the Movie At All
It really is no secret many Marvel Cinematic Universe fans disliked Avengers: Age of Ultron from 2014. Occasional complex reasons exist to why, including simply not liking the AI character of Ultron in the first place.
Since Ultron exhibited the worst traits of Tony Stark‘s personality, he became a bit of an annoying villain for some. Then again, other fans stand up for the film as only being slightly flawed.
One thing for sure is the use of Pietro Maximoff (aka Quicksilver) seemed like a wasted opportunity in a few eyes. A number of fans note if Pietro had never appeared in the film, it probably would not have improved Age of Ultron significantly.
Looking back at Pietro Maximoff
Maybe not every fan considered Quicksilver a useless character. As the brother of Wanda Maximoff, Pietro came off as a bit impetuous for a while due to thinking faster than the average person.
However, he eventually became a key Avengers ally, particularly in attempting to bring down Ultron. Despite siding with Ultron at first to bring down Tony Stark, Pietro turned to The Avengers side when realizing what Ultron wanted to do in destroying all humans.
In the end, Pietro ended up sacrificing his own life to save the life of Hawkeye when in the middle of an Ultron battle. Rather than be an epic send-off, it came up a little short compared to Stark’s sacrificial death years later.
Why this occurred was likely due to Pietro not having enough character development, if also not gaining enough audience sympathy. Also, the response by Wanda to Pietro’s death (tearing out Ultron’s heart) made Age of Ultron seem more disjointed than the usual MCU feature.
Fans on Reddit are split on ‘Age of Ultron’ opinion
As one fan on Reddit recently noted: “Just the whole use on Pietro in that movie was horrible. Looking back on it that was my only big beef with Age of Ultron.”
A while back, another thread was started on Reddit asking why fans dunk on Age of Ultron so much. Fans piped in saying it was not really as bad as others try to make it. The problem was that even with a few minor story flaws, it makes it considerably lesser than all the other entries in the franchise.
Maybe others would say this raises the bar far too high for the MCU, albeit each ensuing film definitely continuing to. A good argument can also be made the director makes all the difference.
Joss Whedon was the director of Age of Ultron, ultimately paving the way toward his exit. More than a few critics think Whedon took the MCU in the wrong direction with this movie, including letting himself down, per Deadline, and going horn to horn with Marvel on creative differences.
Had Pietro Maximoff been eliminated, would it have made a difference?
Even though fan opinion of Pietro’s death seeming unnecessary, the real beef is often with Ultron himself. It was just bizarre to see an AI villain taking on Tony Stark’s own worst traits.
Others think this deviated too much from the comic book version of Ultron where he was more like a Terminator figure. Having Ultron similar to Stark made him akin to an evil human brother rather than just a robotic figure.
These creative divides over what the Marvel Comics did and what the movies do is maybe not a fair argument for the quality of the film. Most of its problem is the expectation of all MCU films since it was made.
There was nothing wrong with Pietro as a character by any means. Perhaps his timing was bad in dying in a slightly lesser MCU movie rather than waiting to die more gallantly during The Snap in Infinity War.
