2. Ultron in Avengers: The Age of Ultron (2015)

Tony Stark and Bruce Banner created Ultron to keep the peace and take the pressure off the Avengers, but his high intelligence leads him to a grim conclusion: the humans he was designed to help are fated to destroy themselves, so they’d be better off being completely wiped out. There is no undoing millions of years of evolution into who they are today: a people who can be extremely cruel to one another, even to the point of starting deadly global wars. Ultron reaches this decision after scouring through the entire Internet. This is a big mistake. If you spend too much time on the darkest corners of the web, of course you’ll become depressed and want to pull the plug. Playing Ultron, James Spader brings his signature snarky coolness to the character—especially when he delivers philosophical rants or quips like, “The most versatile material on the planet, and they used it to make a frisbee.” Ultron may have started out with the best of intentions, but he proves what can happen to AI if their black-and-white thinking allows them to see only the dark side of things.