Still, true to form, like any villain worth his salt, Ultron is simply madly evil. Out of a twisted logic, he proclaims to the Avengers whose sworn mission is to protect earth "I know you're good people. I know you mean well. But you just didn't think it through. There is only one path to peace... your extinction." Sounds familiar; as I recall, there are actually real people in the real world out there who think it's ok to kill in the name of peace. So "everyone creates the things they dread. Men of peace create engines of war (ostensibly to stop war, of course), invaders create avengers" (to stop invasions).
And people create....?? That's a tantalizing question if we think about it. What have we created for all our good intentions? Ironman wanted his invincible creation to be the ultimate savior of the world. It turned out hell-bent on destroying it instead. We humans think we know it all; that was the downfall of man in Eden. And it still is and will be our downfall - our own pride in our own prowess. After all, who would have thought that a wonderful creation like the smart-phone could kill off social intercourse around the dinner-table, since no one has the time or inclination to talk with each other face-to-face anymore? Oh right, don't blame the phone; it's just a thing. Blame people who (mis)use the thing. But there we go again, willing to queue hours to get our hands on the latest 'thing' just hot out of man's oven.
I liked how the Avengers were portrayed as fallible creatures in this movie. They all had unpleasant pasts to deal with. Despite being super-heroes, they had weaknesses and fears. Jokes aside, they had giant fears hidden behind their impenetrable suits, shields, hammers, and arrows. The truth is everyone fears. Even the most powerful AI robot . What an intriguing observation when Vision, the good android perceives of Ultron, "You're afraid.... of death...". Must be a legacy of humanity that somehow got transferred into his metallic brain. Death - the mother of all fears. Everyone of the super-heroes' fears had the element of death in it....death of relationship, death of something inside them, death of meaning, death of hope, love and all that was beautiful, death of life.
Of course, super-heroes (being super-heroes) simply skip over their unresolved fear issues and conveniently move on with a 'feel-good-let's-fight-this-together' mission. Of course, they win; that's why they are super-heroes. Except that there will always be another villain to fight another day. Just like there will always be death to face another day. We can carry on living what we think is a fine and good life. We can be busy doing seemingly right, wonderful things. End of the day, we are just kidding ourselves that that's enough. We can't dismiss death at our whim, no matter how smart, rich, independent or powerful we are. Heck, we can't even postpone meeting it. It's the unseen chain that binds every human down to the reality that we are not in charge, although we can shout about being free to live a full life all we want. That's only half the story. The missing half is that like all super-hero movies that (seem to) go on forever with sequels and prequels, where good always triumphs over bad, so too real ordinary human lives are meant to be extraordinary; in fact they are meant to be eternal, not cut-off by the evil that is death.
The only catch is no super-hero can rescue man from death in reality. Only God can. But He doesn't intrude, He just stands by, ready to love us. I found it poignant that the huge green Hulk is so vulnerable to and driven by his fear that he refuses the love offered by Black Widow, the super-heroine. Isn't that exactly what we do with God, who alone knows who we really are deep down with all our insecurities and hang-up's, and still reaches out to us in love? Like the Hulk rejecting what could have been a redemptive healing love, we reject God because we would rather handle our life our way; could it be we are actually afraid of what would happen if we let God in? So we cleverly excuse, explain, rationalize, deny or hide our fears (and God in the process) such that we are not even conscious of them anymore.
We would rather walk away from the love that could have been, in case it turns out another disappointment, as life is oftentimes apt to be. So like Hulk, we will just make do with a vacation to some island in the sun; we might even send god a post-card if he has an address. If only we knew how much we miss when we refuse to acknowledge the One who alone can break the chain of death and set us truly free to be much more than we can ever try to be, by and of ourselves...
"For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive"- 1 Corinthians 15:22
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