Mad Scientist: Tony Stark

Stark's Sanity

In the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony Stark is depicted as a mad scientist while he attempts to create sentient life capable to "make peace in our time." Stark is recognized as a super genius in the Marvel Universe, and more well known to the audience and the Avenger team as Iron Man. At first glance, it is obvious that Stark comes from wealth judging on his well-dressed style, his numerous technological toys that surround him such as his Iron Man suit, and also his very arrogant attitude. Making his fortune from Stark Industries by capitalizing off of military technology and weaponry during times of war, Stark can accomplish anything he puts his mind towards. In the movie, we see Stark's morals and selfishness manifest as his attempt of creating life goes drastically wrong.

The Starkmeister in his Iron Suit

Tony Stark

In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Stark and the team attempt to recover Loki's scepter, containing one of the six infinity stones, from Strucker, a diabolical head of HYDRA. Strucker uses the scepter as an alien energy source to power military weapons as well as empowering humans, making them into an  "Enhanced." As Stark makes his way into the military base in search of the scepter, he encounters one of the enhanced subjects of Strucker who is later named the Scarlet Witch. On opposite sides of the battle at the moment, the witch puts Stark under a spell causing him to see a formidable future before him. Stark views the death of his team as an end result of the war on Alien and Human life. With Stark being the only one alive in the vision, he kneels down to Captain America, whom with his last words whispers "Why didn't you do more?" The soft words spoken by the Captain instills an immense fear with Stark, later driving him to further himself as a part of the team while also sourcing his obsession of the creation of Ultron.

Recovering the scepter was a huge win for the Avengers as it holds unlimited energy that predates the universe itself. After the extraction of the scepter, Stark becomes intrigued with the knowledge and technologies the infinity stone holds, convincing Dr. Bruce Banner to assist Stark with collecting data from the artifact. Doing more research on the stone leads Stark to realize that his previous idea of Project: Ultron could become a reality. Project: Ultron is Stark's idea of one day creating a "Global Peace Keeping Initiative" that may one day help protect Earth along side the Avengers.

Loki's Scepter

Continuing the research towards making Project: Ultron become actuality, the scientists find a possible key towards the creation. While Stark and Banner are attending to a party with the other Avengers, Ultron begins to take life. In the first scene of Ultron, we see a very grotesque form designed by alteration of the robots Stark normally creates for his own disposal. With oil leaking, parts scattered about behind as Ultron walks towards the team. It is in this scene of the movie that the audience first hears the motive of Ultron's self-assembly. Ultron exclaims the same idea as stark from the beginning, to "make peace in our time."

While Ultron believes that he is going to be making a difference in the world by making peace, the audience finds that his reciprocated view from Stark is taken to the extreme. For example, Ultron later questions, "How is humanity saved if it is not allowed to evolve?" In conclusion, Ultron attempts to cause the extinction of human kind, paving the way for what he believes is the new evolution of humans, robotic technologies.

Ultron being a butt head

Across the process of creating Ultron, Captain America and the rest of the Avengers are commanding Stark and Banner to stop because the moral view of creating life is not connected between the team mates. Stark and Banner's view about technological advancement, and the extremely positive possibilities of life to come from it, blind the scientists of the negative possibilities. For example, the Scarlet Witch questions, "Ultron can't tell the difference between saving the world, and destroying it. Where do you think he got that?" Stark's thirst for helping man-kind was carried over to Ultron. However, Stark's morals were not transferred.

Stark feels anxious about his creation as Ultron decides to continue his plan towards human extinction. This was not what Stark had envisioned when he believed sentient life would be only useful. Stark and Banner devise a plan to take the biological body Ultron, and his captive Dr. Cho have created in hopes to transfer Ultron's consciousness to a more capable body, and place Jarvis inside as a counter measure towards Ultron.

In the end, Stark realizes that even though he had the capabilities to fabricate a form of life that was theoretically controllable, he only created worse problems, causing hundreds of lives to be lost. Stark learns if he wishes to successfully change the world with technology, it can not be achieved by creating a being with the potential to overpower him.