15 Ways The MCU Improved Marvel Mythology
6. Ultron As A Character
Ultron has always been an integral Avengers villain and one of their most iconic foes in the comics. A physical manifestation of their combined hubris, the artificial intelligence designed to safeguard the world in their absence has nearly overthrown the team more than once.
However, despite being so crucial and symbolic in Marvel lore, Ultron himself has never had much of a personality. He is scheming, manipulative, and logical, but these are programmed traits that, unlike the Vision, do not reflect a deeper character. That, along with his origin, was drastically changed and updated in the MCU. Created now by a paranoid Iron Man and an anxious Bruce Banner, the MCU's Ultron was a charismatic sociopath.
In his mission to create peace, Ultron took on more human traits. While he was still a strategist who hid his long-term plans of global annihilation behind his smaller machinations, he was also vindictive, petty, and had a flair for the dramatic. It helped that he was voiced by James Spader, an actor who can play up a character's specific eccentricities like no other.
All in all, the MCU Ultron felt like more of a threat than the comics version because, by virtue of being a character rather than an archetype, he seemed more like a dangerously powerful nihilist than an out of control robot.