8 Moments That Made You Hate The Marvel Cinematic Universe

2. Black Widow Falls In Love With Bruce Banner, Just 'Cause - Avengers: Age Of Ultron

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has never been particularly good at establishing that thing we call "romance." We're often told that characters are into one another, but you wouldn't always know it from the chemistry they share with on-screen. Thor and Jane have so little chemistry, for instance, that it's almost as if their actors were forced to record their shared scenes on different sound stages. Marvel fans have had to put up with these unsatisfactory romances for years now, but the most irksome moment occurred towards the beginning of Avengers: Age of Ultron, when Black Widow suddenly revealed that she like not Hawkeye, not Captain America, but Bruce "The Hulk" Banner. Not only did this moment not ring true at all (previous Marvel films looked like they were trying to set up Black Widow with Hawkeye and then Captain America), it just happens totally out of nowhere - Black Widow has a sudden, unexplained affection for Banner just because Age of Ultron needed to have a romance. But the studio could have at least gone down the Hawkeye or Captain America routes; at least those kind of made sense. Watching Black Widow and the Hulk acting like kindred spirits plainly felt like an annoying, ham-fisted inclusion - the kind that made you wonder who up in Marvel H.Q. was calling the shots when this ill-judged decision was made. There was no lead-up or backstory; we weren't told why Black Widow had fallen for Banner. In terms of arbitrary romance plots, this one really felt akin to "the last straw." Another case of Marvel skipping on the details...