Age of Ultron: thinky thoughts

[inkvoices]

Second viewing of Age of Ultron was on Tuesday for thinky thoughts and third viewing was this afternoon for trying to memorize quotes and checking a few things for fic purposes *grins*. So I bring you further, hopefully more coherent, thinking. Be warned: SPOILERS FOR ALL THE THINGS. Also it’s kind of long and detailed, sorry not sorry

Comments

[alphaflyer]

So -- first of all -- WOW. Both for the thoughts, and the synopsis you did for scribble_myname.

Having written a fair bit on some of the character arcs, I'll focus on the "security" theme. The most fascinating thing for me was the interaction with foreign civilians, military and law enforcement to the Avengers' interventions. SO much parallel here to the general resentment of Western/US ideas of global security, even when it IS in the locals' interest. Having the "for your own protection, do X" delivered by robots is actually a spot of political sarcasm at its finest, but alas lost in the mayhem.

Global peace and security is not an end state but a continuum, which requires grassroots cooperation, not dictate. ("Mission accomplished" is, for many reasons, the paradigmatic cry of failure in this regard). Non-acknowledgement of that fact -- coupled with the belief that it is his job to achieve -- is Tony Stark's hubris; its understanding is Nick Fury's personal tragedy (that "trouble" quote). It's the ball you keep rolling up the hill, and

[inkvoices]

I got wordy *grins*. (If only I could get that wordy more often in fics

[alphaflyer]

Oh, oh -- you reminded me of what I thought was the unintentionally funniest line: "Strucker has been handed over to NATO."

Where to begin? That NATO has a detention facility? (Emm ... like ... where, and on whose authority?) That NATO would somehow have/take/accept jurisdiction over what amounts to a civilian arrest in a non-NATO member state? And all that without endless fucking sessions of the Atlantic Council in which the US will piss everyone off by suggesting the decision has already been taken, Canada would have to wait for instructions from Ottawa, France would make epically long and incomprehensible statements about something entirely different, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania make a joint statement on membership expansion, and Turkey and Greece make it all about the potential impact on Cyprus?

Right up there with that wonderful statement in Godzilla, that NATO had taken jurisdiction over Tokyo. No wonder people on this planet are paranoid.

[inkvoices]

Bwahaha, yes, THIS. And then I was like, 'Oh, it's okay, he's dead now anyway.'

[inkvoices]

Wait, wait, wait, so what if they've run through a bunch of security agencies and goverments, handing over HYRDA to various ones, and it doesn't go well, and they just drop Strucker off with this random NATO person who's all why and can't just hand him over to someone in your own country? and the Avengers all um, they don't really like us since Steve dropped three helicariers on Washington, we try not to talk about it. And NATO person is what the hell do I do now? And THEN Coulson kind of casually turns up, shades on. "I'll take him." "Um, no?" "I can knock you out?" "Please?"

Or something ;)