Ways the Time Spent Developing the Bruce/Natasha romance could have been better spent.......

1. Explaining why Tony rebuilt his suits.

2. Explaining why the Avengers are now working together.

3. Explaining why Steve isn’t still looking for Bucky.

4. Giving Falcon more than a minute of screen time.

5. Developing the father-daughter thing they had going with Fury and Nat.

6. Showing Steve and Tony actually building up a friendship so Civil War will at least have a smidgen of emotional impact.

7. Spending more than a minute on why Tony and Bruce thought Ultron was a good idea (and why they have apparently never seen a sci-fi movie)

8. Having Tony get to talk to the Vision about Jarvis.

9. Vision/Scarlet Witch 

10. A Natasha backstory going into her being forced to kill as a child/losing her identity, anything but “I can’t have babies so I’m a monster!” 

11. Explaining the media reaction to all this. (We hear they want Bruce arrested, but how do the people feel about the Avengers working without Shield? How is the world responding without Shield? 

12. Natasha picking up Mjolnir (don’t tease it and not carry through, Joss). 

13. Basically, any scene showing any continuity with Phase 2. 

14. Who am I kidding? Basically any other scene. A training sequence. 20 minutes of Falcon baking cookies. An explanation of how Hulk’s pants work. An hour of all of them playing with Clint’s kids. Anything would have been better. 

You know Sam doesn’t stint on the chocolate chips.

100% on board with all of these suggestions. So glad the Russo brothers are taking it over from him. Ugh.

Also an explanation as to how Nat and Bruce worked together to learn to trust each other. Where the Lullaby even fucking came from. What made Steve go back to calling Natasha “Romanoff” out of nowhere. NOT GETTING RID OF JARVIS TO MAKE VISION! Actually having a dialogue between Tony and the Twins. Not having Steve bringing the twins to the Tower. More Rhodey. More Fury. More Sam. More Helen. Literally anything but what we got.

In addition to all of the above, I feel like if this:

had actually happened, things would have gone a lot differently too.

The Actual Problem with MCU Clint Barton

I really only have one problem with Age of Ultron. Whether I liked what they did with the ships is my personal opinion, and it’s not Marvel’s responsibility to cater to me. 

What’s wrong is that they decided to give Clint Barton, their least developed Avenger, more characterization and sympathy by adding more underdeveloped characters, not by actually developing him. They rejected sixty years worth of rich comic history, character development and a hilariously nuanced personality to turn him into a cardboard cutout family man so the other Avengers had a point of contrast. 

If, say, Tony had died, the audience would have said, “Not Tony, we love him.”

If Clint had died, the audience would have said “Not Barton, his poor family.” Within the MCU, we’ve been presented with no reason to care about him beyond the mere presence of a family. 

Even though he was in the movie a lot more and had some great lines, we were forced to sympathize with his position, not his personality, which is a real storytelling cheap shot. 

Honestly, as much as I love him and I’m glad for any screen time he gets, if the powers that be didn’t actually want to use Clint Barton as a character, it’s sad that they used him at all. He’s not really an Avenger in this one either, he’s plot fuel just like before. It’s an insult to Marvel’s own character that they won’t use him for real, and it’s an insult to the fans that they think the audience won’t like his actual character because he’s “just that idiot with the bow.” His status as a non-powered “everyman” actually makes him one of the most potentially relatable characters in entire MCU. They don’t think people are capable of liking him for any reason beyond general parental sympathy, and that’s disappointing and insulting on all fronts.

(And don’t tell me it’d be too hard to do. After three movies as not much more than an humorous suit, Agent Coulson was given a few brief scenes of character development in Avengers revolving mostly around trading cards, and everyone loved him so much that he got his own TV show)

(And there’s that little problem of Natasha being only a love interest, and considering the worst part of her horrifically tragic backstory to be her inability to have children. Put that on the list too.)

THANK YOU. I KEEP HEARING PEOPLE SAY THIS IS CLINT’S MOVIE AND HE DOES NOTHING EXCEPT HAVE A FAMILY AND MORE LINES AND I DON’T UNDERSTAND.