Ultron is an artificial intelligence peacekeeping program built by Tony Stark (Iron Man), who had the intention to protect Earth from growing threats. The Avengers, after bearing witness to multiple dangers, both domestic and extraterrestrial, begin to experience critical shifts in their worldview. Tony, for instance, admits that a power greater than Iron Man is needed to armor the world from the terrors and attacks at the cosmic level. Steve Rogers (Captain America) warns his friends that giving up their individual liberties in the name of peacekeeping may ultimately compromise humankind’s goodwill and create irreparable rips in the fabric of humanity.

In Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Earth’s mightiest heroes face off with an A.I. gone wild; Ultron evolves past his original programming and becomes a formidable, violent robot seeking to destroy humans so that his super-sentient army of bots can take over as Earth’s more suitable occupants. With the stakes high, the Avengers begin to notice the glaring differences in their individual perspectives and the ruptures among them set a course for a breakdown of the team. We evaluate Ultron’s plan — is Ultron a global terrorist, or just saving earthlings from their own natural course of destroying one another through warfare, genocide, and terrestrial destruction? The debate, best illustrated by Cap and Tony, is one of control and self-determination. Are our failures and flaws simply proof that despite efforts toward self-betterment, our programming locks us on a definite path? Are humans essentially pre-programmed to destroy one another and thus deserving of extinction? For some, it is the chance to redeem ourselves that matters most, and serves as a powerful motivation to put our free will to the test.