Age of Ultron

[ratcreature]

I enjoyed it a lot.

There were a lot of fight scenes, and I liked that we've seen that the Avengers integrated their fighting styles some as a team, like Steve and Thor combining the shield and hammer for effects, or Natasha and the Hulk working together. I also liked the Bruce/Natasha romance bit, and found that still worked with the Natasha & Clint friendship. I suppose a lot of people would have liked have seen Clint's character expanded more in line with current comics rather than with a happy family with a wife and children on a farm, but I can see this version, that he keeps his family hidden and safe. But then I'm not an avid Clint/Natasha shipper.

I liked that there were at least nods to others characters beyond the core group, e.g. that we saw Sam as Falcon (and that the Steve's search for Bucky got a mention), Rhodey as War Machine and Erik Selvig helping out Thor. I also appreciated that Jarvis managed to recover. I'm not really familiar with the Ultron storyline from the comics or the origin for Vision, except really vague osmosis, but the MCU version mostly worked for me.

I mean, Thor's part in it left me vaguely confused and I didn't really get his vision (maybe on rewatch or with reading recaps things become clearer). But I appreciated that the plot wasn't Tony becoming megalomaniac and creating a creepy AI that gets out of control or such, but the gem in the scepter already being a kind of mind, and Tony and Bruce being both curious to utilize and understand it with Jarvis' help (admittedly with some possibly creepy "Ultron" plan in mind). I hope that Jarvis still exists outside of what became Vision. Whether that was the case wasn't entirely clear to me. Like whether he copied himself into the organic body to overwhelm Ultron, and didn't fully move into it becoming only Vision.

Comments

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

Just saw it! I really liked that moment that you noted, of Thor and Steve using hammer and shield. It was great they learned from the first movie.

I got the sense Jarvis had fully transformed into Vision. That made me sad. :(

[ratcreature]

Most people seem to have interpreted it as Jarvis being subsumed into Vision. I guess I don't get why as an AI he wouldn't (or couldn't) copy himself instead of making it a suicide mission. I mean, I can understand why normally for personality integrity and maybe for the analogy to (and perhaps even for experiencing the risks of) organic intelligence he keeps just one version of himself, rather than syncing multiple backups, but if he is on some inorganic servers, and knows that moving into that body to defeat Ultron will end him as Jarvis, why not be in both places? Unless he saw it as some sort of evolution of himself like Ultron did, but considering that the body wasn't an empty vessel for him that doesn't quite fit.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

I interpreted it as: Ultron shatters Jarvis in the first strike, and probably infiltrates networks to the extent that he destroys most or all available backups (I mean, that's a bit of a hard sell, why not backups that are protected from the network, but...). Then there are scattered remnants of Jarvis, which end up working against Ultron and then getting funnelled into Vision.

Or maybe it was just that, having been Vision, he couldn't make himself small enough to be Jarvis again.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I think once he became Vision, adapting to organic hardware and fighting Ultron, both changed his code enough that from that the prior Jarvis couldn't be restored. Your explanation that the scattered pieces already aren't quite Jarvis anymore (in the sense of being one person) and only become one again with the opportunity and in the process of becoming Vision makes sense though. Then at least it is taking a chance for survival in a changed way rather than a suicide missionmission and there is no single entity that could copy itself and be whole without becoming something else.

The absence of non-networked backups I can sort of understand. I mean, I assume that Tony made some comic book tech for Jarvis to become an AI in the first place and he is that hardware like we are our brains, and the hardware has to be flexible and constantly adapting like our brains are with neuroplasticity and you can't easily download those to some harddisk, no matter how large.

So for a full backup you need either equivalent hardware, not necessarily identical, but reproducing the function of each previous component, kind of like scientists understanding brains by simulating each neuron in a computer, or a full map telling you what exactly the state of all components at the time of backup was, and then that would be a roadmap to recreating Jarvis in that state, but it couldn't be done fast. I assume that kind of resurrection can happen once Tony rebuilds hardware but Jarvis would have his own kind of amnesia because he misses time and experiences.