On the one hand, the latest Avengers movie made me see the utility of Hawkeye (even if I still believe he'd be even better with some damn guns), and of the flying aircraft carrier, although I am kind of wondering (WHY DO THEY STILL HAVE IT!?!?! Imagine if Avengers 1 had taken place in Berlin and they captured a bunch of aliens and were wondering where to put them and the German director of S.C.H.I.L.D. whipped out a concentration camp and said "Oh, hey, we kept this on ice after Captain America foiled Hydra's last attempt to use it for genocide" which is pretty much exactly the backstory of the flying aircraft carrier).

But on the other hand, I couldn't help notice that the film's villain was yet another problem that would have been solved by killing Tony Stark's father the day he finished Captain America's shield. That brings us to something like 5 movies now, for which he is responsible for what the bad guys use to do their dirt. You can't even blame Disney, although the company has a long history of hero(in)es who basically just cancel out the crap for which their own family is responsible, since Spiderman seems to bring out the worst in the Osborne family, the Fantastic Four gave Doom superpowers, and the X-men repeatedly interfere with the lawful government's attempt to end the Magneto problem, which problem Charles helped train & recruit his minions. Old Man Stark dug up the cube Loki used to bring an alien invasion to NY, he founded a weapons company and went into business with two completely untrustworthy psychotics, one of whom he ripped off and left to rot in Russian jail, and the other he left co-running the company with his alcoholic, self-absorbed megalomaniac son, who would have been an even worse human being if not for his association with a variety of darker-skinned men who helped him fight terrorists, set a good example of service and honor and recruited him into the Avengers. Stark I also played some part in the founding of SHIELD, on which I am not too up to date, due to the difficulty of enduring a shrill, entitled, snotty-accented female character in unflattering period garb butting heads with strawman personifications of sexism. And that lovely organization ended up serving as a chrysalis for the New and Improved Hydra that came within a hair of taking over the world and preemptively murdering anyone who might stop them, before being foiled by a guy Tony makes fun of more than anyone else, and his own black sidekick in a flying suit, albeit one much less well armed or protected than Tony's.

Then there was the girl Tony slept with and the guy he stood up to do so, who teamed up to try to assassinate the president, a plot that somehow involved beguiling the upjumped secretary Tony put in charge of distributing all sorts of dangerous technology after which Tony blew up all his suits of armor, instead of oh, IDK, loaning them to Clint or Sam or Natasha or Nick Fury for crapsakes!

And now the Ultron thing, to be followed up the next Avengers movie where I'm given to understand he still has not learned his lesson and is trying to impose a government monopoly on superpowers. Bearing in mind that in the Marvel universe, the ramifications of that policy mean that getting bitten by a badly secured spider in a private lab, or pushing an old man away from a toxic waste accident could randomly cause you to be exempted from the 13th Amendment. Where is the legal line between "suit of armor" and "motor vehicle" the latter of which is one of the most deadly inventions in American history, and how long until government control over the ownership and use of one extends to the latter?

The bad guys are invented by the good guys, who defeat them by recruiting other bad guys (Loki, Quicksilver, Witch, Hulk, Natasha[presumably], Harry Osborne, Silver Surfer, Dr Stanley Tucci, Space Merle) or stealing their stuff (dark stuff, Nazi steroids, cube, scepters, etc), or in the case of roboJarvis, both. The bad guys in turn use the exact same playbook, subverting good guys (Ward, Hawkeye, SHIELD, Solvieg, Winter Soldier) or stealing their stuff (new flying aircraft carriers, Iron Man suits, Asgardian sticks and cubes, robots with firefaces & buttcheeks, Ultrons, Stark Inc, SHIELD). The guy who lost his arm in the African ship and Frank Grillo are almost certainly coming back with biological or cybernetic upgrades, and probably some blue alien or other whom I lost track of in GoG, and lord knows that "Afterlife" hippy commune place is a powderkeg just waiting for a spark in the form of some pissed off kid with dangerous and unpleasant powers who gets tired of soporific platitudes from a serene leader who can't even keep her ex-husband and daughter under control.

Maybe screen writers need to do a little less of whatever Saving the Cat entails, and instead of opting for a symmetrical hero-villain origin, just have some all new bad guys or heroes that don't result from the other. Have some well-intentioned people do horrific experiments on humans that produce a superhero, apologize profusely and shut down their lab, rather than make all the heroes come from evil projects and shake their control. Have villains who are actually capable of coming up with stuff on their own, rather than stealing the hero's stuff and nursing a grudge against the hero's mentor or progenitor who was more ethical or at least more tentative about the implementation stage. IMO, those alternatives make for antagonists who seem more competent, than villains who rely so heavily on flawed brainwashing techniques, or who are only ripping off the good guys' innovations.

I'm pretty sure this is yet another case where, for simplicity's sake, they are jettisoning more complex origins or backstories that appeared in print, regardless of the degradation of the characters. Or, since the source material is comic books, maybe I'm wrong. At least these movies are fun so far.