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Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
Everyone who saw What If leading to a "Multiversal Avengers" plotline, you win a cookie.

I'm surprised MCU Ultron's ultimate goal was just to destroy everything, as opposed to mechanizing everything, like his comics counterpart. I guess he has a different... vision.

I would still prefer if MCU battles (and this counts as MCU) didn't devolve into plain ol' fisticuffin'. You have an android with the Infinity Stones and you have a multiversal Cosmic Being, and you have the boundless arena of hand-drawn animation (as opposed to live-action or expensive CGI), and they still resort to punching each other?
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Haven't seen today's What If yet but I did catch up on the previous ones last night. The Killmonger episode was fine, if not super memorable. Always good to see the Wakanda folks again though. Party Thor episode is just a ton of fun, with too many cameos to count. Odd thing I noticed in the credits is they got original voices for almost everyone on this one, down to Taika Waititi even, but don't have Bree Larson. I guess she was busy?
 

Torzelbaum

????? LV 13 HP 292/ 292
(he, him, his)
Odd thing I noticed in the credits is they got original voices for almost everyone on this one, down to Taika Waititi even, but don't have Bree Larson. I guess she was busy?
Those Nissans aren't going to sell themselves.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I kinda love that the premise here is What If Age of Ultron, But Better?

Both movie and comic!

Ultron was maybe the MCU villain who suffered the most compared to the comics (him or Malekith) so him getting a redemption arc, of a sort, is pretty gratifying. And he was way better at using the Infinity Gauntlet than Thanos was.

Also; replacement VA for Black Widow did a way better job of it than ScarJo. Not gonna lie.
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
It's cool that they played around with what could have been just a framing device for the series. Now I wonder if Jeffrey Wright will show up in live action with a CGI-enlarged head.
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
Loving the redemption of Ultron here as a villain. I don't know that he'd actually be able to one-shot Thanos, but it works for the purposes of the story.

This is only tangentially related, but it reminds me of a bad and overcomplicated theory I came up with at the end of Age of Ultron to explain its odd post-credits scene, where Thanos says "fine, I'll do it myself," as if he somehow expected the events of the movie to result in him gaining one or more Infinity Stones. Why would he think that?

*Broadway musical cue* Well~ I'll tell you~ 🎵

So we know that Thanos gave Loki the scepter containing the Mind Stone, presumably with the thinking that Loki wouldn't realize what he had, and would just hand it back once Earth was conquered. We also know that the scepter housed an advanced and malevolent AI which ended up becoming part (probably most) of Ultron. My idea is that the AI represented Thanos' Plan B in case Loki failed and the scepter fell into human hands. Humans (i.e. Tony) would discover the AI, attempt to harness it and fail, allowing it to upload itself into a body and gain agency, which is what happened. Ultron would believe he's a free agent and do as he pleases, which can reasonably be predicted to mean killing the Avengers. Once he's won, a backdoor program unbeknownst to him would activate, overriding his free will, and he would rendezvous with Thanos to hand over the Mind Stone (and any other Stones he might have discovered while laying waste to Earth), easy as you please.

Don't like that? Here's my other theory: AoU's post-credits scene actually takes place much further in the future, right before the start of Infinity War. The Black Order are down on Xandar trying to retrieve the Power Stone but are having difficulty, so Thanos steps in. "Fine, I'll do it myself." This one probably works better, as it doesn't involve Thanos putting on the Infinity Gauntlet and then... doing nothing for another three years.

Of course, the real answer is that Joss Whedon threw Thanos in at the end of The Avengers as a tease but then had no idea what to actually do with him, so he's just spinning his wheels narratively in AoU. But that's no fun!
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I like theory one, but unless I’m misremembering, the Mind Stone didn’t house an AI, it just took an AI that Tony was developing and upgraded and mutated it into what would be Ultron. Thanos would be as surprised by Ultron as anyone else
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
With respect, I believe you are misremembering. Nobody knew the Mind Stone was inside the scepter until Ultron cracked it open halfway through the movie. Tony was working from the AI inside the blue gem on the scepter.

 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Ultron was easily the most "sci-fi mechanics" complicated part of the MCU, so it's easy to not remember the details 100% accurately.
 

SpoonyBard

Threat Rhyme
(He/Him)
One thing I can't square, though, is how it lines up with the previous episode.

The previous episode ended with The Watcher being shocked at Ultron's arrival in the BroThor timeline. But we see here that Ultron doesn't even start jumping timelines until after confronting The Watcher. It probably doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but if someone were watching the previous episode and went straight to this one it might be a bit confusing.
 

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
I used to love Venom back in the 90s, his blend of campiness and murderousness hit a sweet spot for me. I think the first film did a pretty good job of getting the tone right for me
 

Purple

(She/Her)
I was still reeling from the knowledge that the movie where Spiderman's "dark and edgy" new costume that turned out to be a "badass" Todd McFarlane murder monster gets to be the main character in a movie where Spiderman just does not exist is somehow great, and then I saw the sequel which... continues to be great.

Also I kinda figured all the somehow negative reviews calling it "a baffling LGBT+ tentacle porn romcom" were making mountains out of molehills and over-hyping it, but there is totally a scene where Venom gets into a fight with his boyfriend, storms off to a club, and hops on a stage to give a big impassioned speech that at first feels like they're going for "ha ha the people he's talking to think he's talking metaphorically about queer rights when he's actually literally talking about being a secret shapeshifting space monster" but wait no he actually is talking about finding dudes hot and sometimes liking to be a slinky curvy girl shaped monster... and like, him explicitly being shockingly worldly about romantic relationships is kinda the whole hook to these movies. So no, we are straight up making that subtext text. Nice.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
“Baffling LGBT+ Tentacle Rom Com” is the logical outcome from the first movie, tbh

Anyone who complains wasn’t paying attention.
 

gogglebob

The Goggles Do Nothing
(he/him)
As I learned during my college entrance exams, not everyone has a positive opinion of baffling tentacle porn.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
It was more or less the exact experience I was expecting from the movie since the first trailer dropped; a good 7/10 that tried really hard to copy what worked so well in the first movie, which worked well in some places and fell flat in others.

The subtext is no longer sub. The scene Purple mentioned is only one example.

Movie should have been called “Goo Love Conquers All”
 
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