Avengers: Age of Ultron's Heroes Are "Facing Serious Burnout"

While spoilers released yesterday hinted at a storyline in Avengers: Age of Ultron that saw Tony [...]

By Russ Burlingame

While spoilers released yesterday hinted at a storyline in Avengers: Age of Ultron that saw Tony Stark trying to automate elements of the Avengers initiative to make things easier on the superhero community, it didn't really come across as exhaustion and desperation that fueled it -- so much as just Stark's boundless curiosity, ingenuity and ego.

But according to the cover story in this week's Comic-Con special of Entertainment Weekly, Captain America and company are "facing serious burnout" following the invasion of New York and their successive solo adventures. "Nobody wants to be a hero," shouts the headline, and reporter Anthony Breznican suggests as much to franchise star Robert Downey, Jr., asking whether the creation of a standing "Iron Legion" of Iron Man drones marks an oppotunity for Stark and the others to abdicate responsibility for their roles as superheroes.

What you said about abdication is apt, but I think it's also about recognizing limitations," Downey responded. "The downside of self-sacrifice is that if you make it back, you've been out there on the spit and you've been turned a couple times and you feel a little burned and traumatized. So to me, Iron Man was like a returning veteran going back to the nuts and bolts of what was righteous about who he was. He was never a guy who didn't get his hands dirty. He was a tinkerer. He's a mechanic."

Of course, as we noted yesterday, the whole "let's kick back and let robots fight the bad guys" thing doesn't actually work out...so what does that mean for an exhausted Avengers? And could it be part of why they eagerly accept the help of Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and the Vision?

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