Ultron of Philosophy: Fantastic, Monster, Character
- The ideology of Avengers 2
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"Avengers 2: Age of Ultron" more three-dimensionally contains the spiritual understanding of the superhero theme. Consistent with the spiritual background of many superhero stories, it shows the relationship between characters and monsters or fetishes. The feature of this film is that it revolves around the mind. Some of its plot lines have a strong speculative color, but they may be overwhelmed by those action scenes. While audiences visually expect a display of power-power, superhero stories are spiritually about conveying humanity, and often against the kind of power-worshiping humanity that can sometimes seem naive, but necessary of. "Avengers: Age of Ultron" takes into account the visual and human nature, and incorporates philosophical and theological discourse, for which it requires Ultron to pursue power-power consciously, but not so powerful in practice.
Ultron is not just a technological creation such as artificial intelligence, its goal is to become a "new man" who enlightens the future, or even an incarnate god (the new Christ), but it has only become a ghostly monster in failure.
This is probably the main irony of superhero movies: attracting audiences because of their display of power, but telling people not to be superstitious about power. It is well known that the term "superman" is associated with Nietzsche's philosophy. It represents the pursuit of transcendence of power by voluntarism, and the evolutionary direction of superman becoming human (here is not to say that voluntarism must be understood in this way, but that there is such an understanding). However, the use of the term by superhero stories is precisely against this position, against so-called transhumanism. "Superman"—as an alien, as a fetish or a monster on Earth—is meant to blend into actual human beings. In general, adherents of transhumanism are superhero villains.
[Ultron: From Artificial Objects to Monsters]
Ultron is one such villain, a transhumanist with a shady understanding of voluntarism and the creator's intent to evolve beyond existing humans. Ultron believes that the world has no place for the weak; if human beings want to be saved, they should evolve and become new humans. Ultron himself wants to become a free new creation, to create a new body according to his own intentions, and even to become the new Christ of the new mankind. Ancient religions have intuitively understood that in order to create, we must first destroy. Modern evolutionary theory also sees that the creation of new species is always accompanied by the extinction of old species. Therefore, Ultron's plan is to create a global extinction event on the one hand, forcing human evolution; Ultron's goal is to become the incarnation of the revaluation. Therefore, the role of Ultron, as the dark side of the human spirit, actually condenses the multiple anxieties of science-technology-philosophy-religion.
Ultron was supposed to be an artificial intelligence creation, made to defend global peace. However, the name Ultron (Ultron: root ultra- refers to beyond, extreme; -on refers to the noun suffix of people or things) itself means transcendence or extremeization, which means that it is a creature that does not obey orders. Of course, the meaning of the name does not explain why Ultron is the enemy of superheroes. There are several simple understandings about the Ultron mutiny. Judging from the goal set by Ultron, "to defend world peace", the goal described by natural language can have different interpretations, that is to say, it has ambiguous meanings. Especially for the word "peace", Ultron also said in the film that Thor's sentence mistakenly understood peace as quiet. As for the way to achieve peace, there are also different understandings. Some argue that there are at least five different understandings of how peace is achieved in Avengers 2. Ultron's understanding of "achieving peace" is to imitate the way in which new species replace old species in the process of evolution, so that humans "get stronger" through evolution, rather than placing humans under the protection of superheroes (non-humans and monsters), In this sense, superheroes impede the chance of human evolution, and so superheroes should be made extinct. Here, Ultron also uses the vocabulary of biological evolution. It seems that superheroes are a species that violates the natural order.
From the way Ultron was made, its makers (Tony Stark and Bruce Banner in the film) took an almost tech-first approach to designing and making it. For them, as long as they have strong computing power and effective programming design, they can create Ultron. The Mind Stone provided just the powerful computing power they needed. As for the more power in the Mind Stone, they were neither able to see nor understand it. They ignore that there is a difference between computing power and mental power - a philosophy of information problem, not a sci-fi film that can solve, but a visual representation of the errors that such a problem can cause. They also ignore that while they manufacture with technology, technology controls themselves. While Iron Man and the Hulk are both scientists, scientific understanding is limited, just as their own superpowers are actually the result of technological accidents. Technological accidents are unavoidable, and Ultron, who pursues self-personality, can be regarded as a technological accident—for its maker. In the thinking of technology first, Ultron is an intelligent computer. If it has loopholes, it will be repaired with patches. If it is not feasible, then it will be upgraded. Although Stark and Dr. Banner may have doubts, they still follow this line of thinking to solve the Ultron crisis, and want to create technological creations that are more powerful than Ultron to defeat Ultron. Dr. Banner sees this way of dealing with problems as a loop, which means that if the second generation fails again, the third generation is made, and so on. It seems more appropriate to think of this process as a spiral of negation from negation. In any case, these engineers still haven't escaped the trap of their own thinking. Some people therefore regard the story of Age of Ultron as a self-portrait of technological civilization in the industrial age. Of course, this is a faulty portrait. Ultron represents a technological creation that is constantly upgraded and lacks human nature.
Captain America and others who don't understand computer engineering intuitively think that Tony Stark and Bruce Banner's solution is not feasible, so they want to stop them. However, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner knew that Captain America did not know how to solve the problems in front of him other than saying naive words such as "face difficulties together", so they insisted on completing this technology beyond Ultron Creation. At this time, Thor, the god of thunder, used divine power to bring about the birth of Vision. Thor's actions lead to the essential difference between Vision and Ultron, as Divine Power facilitates the fusion between artificial intelligence and psychic abilities, or straddles the abyss that may exist between computers and minds.
This leads to the inner reason why Ultron is opposed to "human nature" and superheroes. That is: Ultron is basically a man-made "inhuman thing" in essence, and he lacks psychic ability. The essential difference between Vision and Ultron is that Vision has a mind, while Ultron does not. Ultron himself knew the difference, so his most critical plan in Avengers 2 was to have psychic abilities with the help of the Mind Stone and Vibranium. As the saying goes, where the pain is, it is taboo to say where it is. Ultron was very disgusted by people calling him a "hollow man". He thought that when he could interpret the meaning of words differently, when he saw a different goal, he would get rid of the bondage and become a "free man". In "Avengers 2", he often sings about getting rid of the ropes and things like that, looking at ease but like a self-deceiving Pinocchio. He thought he had surpassed his maker. But he still unconsciously repeats Tony Stark's words: "Make your friends and enemies rich, and then wait to tell which is the enemy and which is the friend". At this time, he was also very disgusted to be seen to have traces of his maker on him, and he would say: Do I look like Iron Man, and Stark is nothing. He just covers it up with violence, and unless he has a mind, he becomes a vision.
In fact, after Ultron did not become Vision, or Vision was born, Ultron had already lost. He never goes beyond what he was supposed to be, even though he can interpret the meaning of words by himself. The inner reason for Ultron's mutiny is that Ultron not only has traces of his maker, but also dark traces. He inherited Stark's dark side: Fear of failure due to lack of power, he pursues power, always thinking that power-power can solve problems, and power-power can bring order to suppress chaos. Scarlet Witch discovered Tony Stark's fear, so she asked Stark to take the mind gem scepter, in order to let Stark be destroyed by her own fear, but she did not expect that the Ultron created by Stark tried to change the world. destroy. Superheroes always have to face the unexpected.
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