The new "Avengers" flick, which opens Friday amid predictions of a Hulk-like smashing of box office records, arrives with an expanded lineup of mayhem fighters: Say hello to troubled twins Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, and Vision, the android with a bit of heart.
Still, the smart money on the biggest breakout star of "Avengers: The Age of Ultron," rests not with new or familiar heroes, but with the title villain – a murderous robot poised to become the movies' most daunting artificial intelligence-fueled foe since the chilling HAL negated the need for theater air conditioning nearly a half-century ago in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Robots have stomped their steely way though movie history in various forms, with early incarnations ranging from the eerie automatons of Fritz Lang's 1927 cinematic landmark "Metropolis" to the more benign Robby of 1956's "Forbidden Planet." Kubrick's classic film, launched a year before the lunar landing, eventually yielded more serious ("Blade Runner") and lighter ("Robocop") A.I. fare, amid a mix of good-guy and bad-guy creations (the "Terminator" series, which returns this summer with Arnold Schwarzenegger, offered both).
The stakes on A.I.'s place in real life and in the pop culture only has heightened with the digital revolution. Movies like 2013’s "Her" and the recently released "Ex Machina" put a very personal spin on robo-human relations (even more so than the great 2010 “robo-sexual marriage” episode of the animated comedy series “Futurama”).
In a recent piece for The New York Times, "Ex Machina" writer and director Alex Garland invoked warnings from the likes of Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak that in the real world robots might ignore Isaac Asimov's Three Laws on not hurting humans. (Though Garland, on the whole, comes off as an A.I. fan, in both life and in the movies.)
Ultron, the product of a Tony Stark experiment gone awry, appears destined to become the most-watched A.I. movie creation of them all. Like the hauntingly dulcet tones of HAL, Ultron's most powerful weapon, judging from previews, may be a memorable voice – courtesy of James Spader, who has proven adept at adding layers of menace to his words, from his goofy turn in "The Office" to his current gig on "The Blacklist."
Defeating Ultron will mean seating more Avengers at the shwarma victory feast. But even a win over metallic-covered evil will leave a bitter aftertaste: The Age of Ultron isn't fading away anytime soon.
U.S. & World
Jere Hester is founding director of the award-winning, multimedia NYCity News Service at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is also the author of "Raising a Beatle Baby: How John, Paul, George and Ringo Helped us Come Together as a Family." Follow him on Twitter.
