Hey! I read a lot of your meta essays and while I don't agree with every little thing I really really love how you got to the conclusions you did. So as a Massive Shipper On Deck for the science bros I'm just as disappointed in the AoU OOC-ness as you are. I read in one of your essays that you believed Natasha and Bruce's characterisations were bad and I was wondering what you thought of it without the shipper mindset? I'm so disappointed Tony went from looking to Bruce for help in IM3 to this.

Oh boy, this is a big can of worms for you to open. Bruce Banner is one of my favourite Marvel characters, so I’ll start with him and how Hulk-smash his characterisation made me:

First off, him agreeing to go along with the development of this AI without taking all reasonable precautions and agreeing to keep it from the rest of the Avengers made me twitch. According to the MCU-verse (Norton!Hulk is MCU, since General Ross from that film is showing up in Civil War), Bruce was turned into the Hulk by experimentation that went wrong, because protocols weren’t followed.

Bruce would not ever let a science experiment go ahead so sloppily, knowing what it did to him. He would never lie about it and hide it from members of his team, who he is meant to trust. Most of all, he would not just roll over and take it when Tony says so, because we’ve seen he’s pushed back at Tony more than once before. He clearly thinks it’s a bad idea, and I don’t believe Bruce Banner, victim of extremely bad ideas designed to save the world, would EVER EVER stand by and let it just happen because Tony says so.

Then we have Bruce’s whole arc in the first Avengers film, where we see how screwed up he is by everything that happened to him: he doesn’t trust the military or anyone like them because of what they did to him (see turning him into the hulk/being hunted and chased for his life across South America, and even tracked down to India) but through the course of the Avengers, comes to see that the Hulk is a useful weapon that can be unleashed.

Instead, he is taken back several steps to the hand-wringing, uneasy version who hides at the edge of the battlefield until needed. Where is my Bruce who walks the hell up to a giant flying alien beastie and punches it in the face? Where is the man who smiled and said “I’m always angry”. No, thank you. Do not undo the fine character development that was there.

Then we have how he treats his team mates. Quite aside from being cowed by Tony re. the experiment, where’s the Bruce who sassed everyone? Where’s the Bruce who is snarky and dry and eyerolls at them all like he did while they hunted the tesseract? And most importantly, where is the man who worries about his friends? Where is the man who, when Natasha tells him her deepest ad most heart-wrenching secrets, does nothing. Says nothing. Does not even react to it or offer her some kind of emotional support?

Nat has seen him at his worst. She has been attacked by him and she reassured him that they were okay afterwards (see Avengers 1). And when she offers her most private secrets, he just stares at her. (I could go into a rant about Betty here, since she has been casually erased from the MCU, but then this would turn into a novel) I get that he’s coping with horrendous and awful stuff, but seriously, when someone you’re meant to care about is clearly having a hard time to, you could at least say “I’m sorry”.

We also have his confrontation with Wanda. By this point, I’m pretty sure they’re all meant to know what the Maximoff kids have been through and what they have lost. And yet he says to a teenage girl that he would strangle her. Bruce Banner. The man who hates to hurt people. The man who - if you include comic backstory - was an abused and traumatised child. Would strangle a clearly-traumatised and grieving angry child, especially when she’s trying to make things right. Yep. So in character.



And lastly on the Bruce front, the gun. Bruce Banner carrying a gun. Bruce, as set up in these films is incredibly bad with weaponry. He avoids it for the most part. He knows he’s far more dangerous than any gun. That whole scene with the cage could have been improved so much (if we’re going with a shipper perspective here), if he had arrived to help her, and she just shakes her head and says “I want you, but I need the Hulk”. It would have been much more impressive to see him rip the bars open to get her out.

Now as for Natasha, it’s pretty much her Mommy-Natasha thing that is her arc through the whole film: she’s the one who does the lullaby for the Hulk, she’s the one who gets broody over Clint’s kids, she’s the one who had a graduation ceremony that sterilised her, and she’s the one moping on her own in the dark over baby photos in her second-last scene.

If this had been foreshadowed anywhere in the previous films, okay, fine. Nat wants to be a mother, but can’t be biologically. Fair enough. However, the last time we saw Nat, she was with Steve and she had just blown every one of her covers open, and pretty much bared her true self to the world for the first time.

For the first time in her life, she had a chance to go and do what she wanted to do and be who she wanted to be, and it would have been fantastic to see her learning to be herself for the first time. More dork Natasha with her smiley emoticons, and casual clothes, showing up to fight with the Avengers “because you boys need all the help you can get”.

Instead, her arc in Ultron keeps coming back to one of two things: romance with Bruce or babies. Sure, she fights from time to time and does have some pretty shiny combat moments, but still, Bruce or babies. She’s supposed to be best friends with Clint and/or Steve at this point, but we don’t get more than a couple of moments with them as parts of a group, because hey! Romance and babies. And don’t even start me on the fact that her major interaction with Fury, her mentor, friend and ally, comes down to “dude, did you matchmake me with greeny?”

She deserved so much more from this film. They both did.