7. Supposedly Smart Characters Acting Really, Really Dumb
Earths Mightiest Heroes are defeated Ultrons drones have killed a great many superheroes and the remaining few have been forced to cower beneath the ruins of Central Park. So whats the next move for our heroes? Fight back! But how? Their opening gambit is to send two of their toughest heroes into the lions den in a vague attempt to disrupt something Luke Cage and She-Hulk head into the heart of Ultron city, the massive structure dwarfing Manhattan, under the subterfuge that Luke Cage is bartering with Ultron by offering up She-Hulk. Once they are face to face, their non-plan goes, they will somehow run free and do irreversible damage internally so that externally the drones will all somehow be defeated and the rest of the heroes will have a chance at overcoming Ultron. Um what? No-one in this plan has any idea what Cage or She-Hulk should be aiming for or how long they'll be able to get before being subdued (which turns out to be not very far). And, considering the dwindling number of superheroes, the survivors really shouldn't be throwing away two of their biggest guns on what is essentially a suicide mission. They should've just headed to the Savage Land, like they do anyway, with Cage and She-Hulk as, when they get there, they find out what Cage discovers anyway - that Ultron is using Vision as a conduit from the future. After this plan fails, the heroes fly en masse to the Savage Land to regroup. Why hasnt Ultron taken over the Savage Land? Why give the heroes a safe haven to recuperate? No idea. Youd think Ultron would be smart enough to leave no stone unturned in order to completely dominate the world. Its here in the Savage Land that the heroes decide to time travel to defeat Ultron using one of Doctor Dooms Time Platforms. Captain America and Nick Fury, two of Marvels greatest tacticians, decide to lead a small group of heroes into the future where Ultron is holed up and fight him there. Except that makes no sense if they cant defeat him in the present, what makes them think they could defeat him in the future? Do they honestly believe Ultron will be alone in the future? Because he's not - there are thousands of deadly Ultron heads flying about for his protection. Cap, Fury, etc. have no extra edge going into this encounter and even possess fewer numbers, so what makes them think this non-plan of charging toward Ultron in a naive attempt at destroying him is at all feasible? And yet Cap and Fury dont think of any of this at all and head straight to their deaths. Serves them right, the idiots! Meanwhile its the least cerebral member of the Marvel Universe, Wolverine, who comes up with the smartest play if time travel is on the table, why not travel BACK in time, kill Hank Pym (Ultrons creator) and thus avoid the end of the world by erasing the robot that caused it? Which is of course what he does. Wolverine outsmarted Ultron! Why didnt Ultron see this? The only reason I can see why none of the surviving Avengers suggest travelling back in time to kill Hank Pym is because there's a flashback scene in issue #5 between Tony Stark, Reed Richards, and Hank Pym as they gather around an unconscious Vision and talk about how much they love him - if Hank were killed in the past, he'd never create Ultron but then Vision wouldn't exist either as Vision was built by Ultron. Frankly, it's a lousy reason. So we have Ultron, Cap, and Nick Fury all acting out of character in order to facilitate the bungling plot smart characters acting really, really dumb.