Iron Man: Ranking All Of Robert Downey Jr.'s MCU Performances From Worst To Best

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a conflicted film, which makes it all the more fitting that it sees a conflicted performance from Downey.

On the one hand, Downey gives an absolutely incredible, emotionally-charged performance as a Tony Stark who is "cursed with knowledge" at the beginning of the film after seeing a vision of all of his friends dying after another alien invasion. The way Downey plays up Tony's survivors guilt (which has been a core part of his character since the first Iron Man) and is able to so brilliantly play up Tony's fractured psyche is incredible and some of the best work he's ever done in the franchise.

On the other hand, there's the rest of his performance here. All of that guilt and fractured psyche mentioned leads to Stark creating Ultron, a villain hell-bent on destroying the world, the very thing Stark was trying to prevent. But instead of this furthering Stark's guilt or him even really showing remorse about it, Downey's performance pretty much just reverts back to standard shenanigans in the third act.

It's odd and certainly not all of the blame falls on Downey's shoulders, he can only do so much with the scripts he's given. But the end result is a conflicted performance that simultaneously feels revolutionary for the character and dead-set on keeping him the same.