Revealed: The villain and title for the sequel to 'Avengers'
This year's Comic Con has had quite a few surprises. One of them obviously was Warner Bros' big announcement of a Batman-Superman collaboration in the Man of Steel sequel. The other big surprise was the unveiling of the new Avengers title – Avengers: Age of Ultron, and more importantly its antagonist.
The new Avengers logo
Contrary to popular perception, the villain in the Avengers sequel is not Thanos. But a lesser known, albeit more formidable foe who goes by the name of Ultron. Ultron is essentially a highly sophisticated robot and first made an appearance in The Avengers #55 published in August 1968. Ultron was created as an artificial intelligence by one of The Avengers using their own brain pattern as a template, but as Ultron developed, he evolved his own goals and ideals, and decided that they didn’t align with either his “father’s” or his comrades in The Avengers.
Ultron as depicted in the comics
Speaking to Comic Book Movie, this is what the film's director Joss Whedon had to say:
“Well, because there was a book called ‘Age of Ultron’ quite recently, a lot of people have assumed that is what we’re doing, but that is not the case. We’re doing our own version of the origin story for Ultron. In the origin story, there was Hank Pym, so a lot of people assumed that he will be in the mix. He’s not. We’re basically taking the things from the comics for the movies that we need and can use. A lot of stuff has to fall by the wayside.”
Whedon then goes on to say:
“We’re crafting our own version of it where his origin comes more directly from The Avengers we already know about. It’s a little bit darker than the other film because Ultron is in the house. There’s a science fiction theme that wasn’t there in the other one. Ultron is definitely something that evolves, so we’re going to get together a couple of different iterations. Nothing can be translated exactly as it was from the comics; particularly Ultron.”
Pretty exciting stuff. Avengers Age of Ultron releases 1 May 2015 and stars Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson.
Are you looking forward to Avengers: Age of Ultron?
Video: Joss Whedon on Marvel LIVE! at San Diego Comic-Con