While fans have been fawning over Captain America and Iron Man, Bruce Banner has made the most on screen progress towards seducing every single, adult Avenger.
okay but like… why is “age of ultron” called “age of ultron”????? it’s wasn’t really an “age”, it happened over the course of like three days. it was more like a long weekend. it was the long weekend of ultron
There’s been some talk of Natasha not being the same as she was in Captain America: the Winter Soldier. That’s perfectly true, good eye. She’s not. The events of that film changed her. The Natasha we get in AoU is a year older and a year wiser and has a home, but she’s not a different character — she’s the character that CA:TWS created.
Check out this conversation:
Steve: It was not my first kiss since 1945. I’m ninety-five, I’m not dead. Natasha: Nobody special, though? Steve: Believe it or not, it’s kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience. Natasha: Well, that’s alright, you just make something up. Steve: What, like you? Natasha: I don’t know. The truth is a matter of circumstances, it’s not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I. Steve: That’s a tough way to live. Natasha: It’s a good way not to die, though. Steve: You know, it’s kind of hard to trust someone when you don’t know who that someone really is. Natasha: Yeah. Who do you want me to be?
Here, Natasha is in an odd place. She wants there to be someone special for Steve. She thinks he deserves it. For herself, she makes do. She meets people and pretends and that’s enough. Here, she agrees that it’s hard to trust her, but what can she do? It’s a good way not to die.
Once SHIELD falls and HYDRA is revealed, her axis is completely thrown of kilter. She wants Steve to trust her. She’s sad that Fury doesn’t, not as much as Maria. She’s not ready for the world to see her as she really is, whoever could be, but she’s willing to do what it takes to make things right.
At the end of CA:TWS, this is where we leave her:
Steve: Not going with him? [Fury] Natasha: No. Steve: Not staying here? Natasha: I blew all my covers, I gotta go figure out a new one. Steve: That might take a while. Natasha: I’m counting on it.
Natasha isn’t single-mindedly in pursuit of wiping the red out of her ledger. If she were, she would have gone with Fury and continued fighting the fight. Instead, we see her taking some time for herself. Now, there could definitely be some ass-kicking involved, but I really get the vibe that she’s about to kick back for a bit and figure her stuff out.
Between CA:TWS and AoU, she’s lost her center but found a home with the Avengers. She’s decided to try to be herself and that is awkward when you’ve been disseminating for so long.
In Bruce, she finds the reversal of the first conversation with Steve. Bruce (and the rest of the world) knows who she is, past and present, and he trusts her. Bruce, creator of Hulks and survivor of childhood abuse, has shared life experience.
Now, I’m a ‘shipper, so obviously I want them to be more, if not end game. But, even if brucenat never reunites, even if Bruce was the absolute wrong person for her to try it out on, this step that everyone is maligning so much is crucial to her character development.
Natasha wants for herself real love and she takes active steps to obtain it. It’s the logical next step to her character growth in CA:TWS.
Brucenat may not be your thing, totally fine, but it isn’t superfluous to Natasha’s character arc.
Okay. So I see a couple arguments against Natasha’s characterization over and over again. One is: “How did she go from ‘love is for children’ to ‘I adore you’???” The answer is character development and the key is Captain America: The Winter Solider. I talk about that at length here (x).
The argument that really leaves me confused is the one that says Natasha in TWS is a feminist ideal and the Natasha in AoU is The Worst. It just completely baffles me. Because Natasha in TWS in is a hell of a lot closer to Natasha in AoU than she is in The Avengers.
I personally think Natasha is great and multidimensional the way she’s portrayed in TWS. But you can EASILY make the same reductive, bullshit feminine = antifeminist arguments about TWS.
Love is for children? Let’s spend the entire movie finding Cap a date because if anyone cares about dates it’s the Lady Avenger, amirite???
Sick of seeing female characters reduced to their sexuality? Here comes Black Widow driving up in a sexy car making flirty faces at a man she’s never met. Why? To make Cap look cool in front of his new bro.
Don’t want Black Widow turned into a love interest? We’ll cut the original plot that had her jumping in bed with Cap, okay, but here’s a bonus fanservice kiss that contributes nothing to the plot or her character development. *giggles*
Hate that Natasha is captured and/or used to give Bruce a hero moment (laugh) when he blasts open her cage? How about knocked unconscious and carried out of the flames by Cap like the picture of a damsel in goddamn distress.
Worried that Natasha needs her feelings validated by Bruce in the farm bedroom scene? Let’s have Natasha, who yesterday said she couldn’t care less if people trusted her as long as that kept her alive, seek validation from a man the very next morning. The very next morning, people.
Concerned that Natasha’s pain is being used as fodder for someone else’s noble quest? Look no further than Natasha dumping all her secrets onto the internet to demonstrate that, once again, Captain America was right about everything.
Oh, are you worried that Natasha is walking away from the mission? At the end of TWS she walks away from Fury and Cap to go take a goddamn vacation, with HYDRA full on the loose.
Oh, what’s that? You don’t think my characterization of those events are fair? No shit!
All that said. I think Natasha’s character in The Winter Soldier is great. I also think her character in Age of Ultron is great.
Do I think her character in either one was perfect? No. I don’t want perfect characters.
Do I think her character in either one was perfect from a representation standpoint? No. Tropes for female characters are thorny and triggering in a lot of different ways.
But. What I am saying is that the argument that Natasha’s character is completely unproblematic in TWS and the Russos will save her from the evil Joss is completely ridiculous.
The Love is for Children Natasha? Yeah. Joss wrote her. I am not a Joss apologist. I liked Buffy, but I also didn’t a lot, too, especially as I got older. He is flawed, but so is everyone else. Particularly other men — I don’t hear anyone calling for female writers to save Black Widow from antifeminism. No. I hear calls for two more men to save her.
Think of it this why, the more money it makes the more money they’ll have to make better movies.
No, because I’m sick of movies being an “investment” to better stuff, and they’re still making Spider-Man White Peter Parker, and they’re not retcon-diversifying their movie leads, and they bumped back Black Panther, and they’ll probably ignore the Inhumans from their TV show in favor of some other ones (probably men), and they still haven’t put Black Widow in group shots on merchandise, and there’s still no Black Widow toy, there’s still no Black Widow movie, and what SHOULD HAVE BEEN Black Widow 2 trashed her character in a horrific way by abandoning all of the momentum that had been built up for her throughout the past few movies, so if they’d actually done that and given her a decent plotline they would have had a good, socially progressive movie AND made money, because I guarantee it wouldn’t have made the movie bomb, and it would have certainly passed a billion dollars within this week, possibly even earlier.
I’ve given the “wait and see” thing to them, but I gave it to them years ago, and I want them to pay up.
A ‘decent plotline’ and ‘a socially progressive movie’. Like a movie with five very distinct female characters, main characters with distinct motivations and arcs too, that’s not even counting the the cameos and references? (In comparison Avengers had, like 2, and the Winter Solider, everyone’s latest shill, had ¾, the same number as Thor: The Dark World.) A movie where every five minutes I was going, “Hey, that’s me, that’s me, that’s who I want to be when I grow up, that’s my aunt, that’s my mother, that’s my sister, that’s my cousin.” A movie where Black Widow’s entire plot was about how despite everything she’s went through and how tempting it can be to just run away, she’s ultimately a hero first and foremost? A movie that allowed her to have fears and doubts and self hatred and have those be writ large and still have her as a cool, controlled, strong woman who was both physically a badass, mentally one of the most resilient characters there, and emotionally both a ruthless pragmatist and genuinely kind person. Where she got a love interest who’s entire purpose was to serve as a foil for her and a potential way out and who then got pushed off a cliff because of Natasha’s bone deep Avenger-dom?A movie that not only touched on infertility but allowed it to be something complicated and upsetting that people of both genders were allowed to be upset about without it dominating their storylines. (Seriously, it got a couple of minutes and was just as much Bruce’s problem as Nat’s.)
Age of Ultron had some issues- Maximoffs, you’re fantastic but there were so many missed opportunities in you- but it was a movie that made me feel entertained and catered to. Other people are going to have other opinions but the fact of the matter is that it was a movie that people enjoyed and were emotionally affected by, seeing as it did, you know, pass the billion dollar mark, it’s clear that people did like it and in many cases went to resee it. It’s certainly made back it’s budget and served it’s purpose. People whined about all the other Marvel movies, people are going to whine about this one, but I’d say it’s a success both monetarily and character wise.
It’s a solid and enjoyable popcorn flick which makes up for it’s quick pace and flighty plot with some rock solid character work and delightful effects.
Iron Man: two rich dudes in suits cause collateral damage
The Incredible Hulk: man is discouraged from treating his anger issues
Iron Man 2: industrialist frustrates Congress
Captain America: man uses performance enhancing drugs to beat up a burn victim
Thor: family argument nearly causes genocide
The Avengers: hostile immigrants cause property damage
Iron Man 3: man with PTSD has an unpleasant Christmas
The Dark World: two brothers go on a road trip and things turn violent
The Winter Soldier: thousands lose jobs as government agency is forcibly shut down
Guardians of the Galaxy: a small animal and a houseplant kill people
Daredevil: blind guy fights an autistic man
Age of Ultron: Pinocchio is an asshole
Some Wanda Maximoff. Probably going to try to add Pietro later.
A Middleground 