When it was announced on Saturday that the Avengers sequel will be called Avengers: Age Of Ultron, many wondered if that meant Henry Pym, aka Ant-Man, would pop up in the movie, being introduced in that film before he gets his own Edgar Wright adventure later the same year.
The reason for that is that in the comics, Pym created the villainous Ultron, an artificial intelligence determined to wipe out humanity.
However now Joss Whedon has cleared things up, saying we probably won’t meet Ant-Man until his own film, and Ultron will get a brand new origin story. Whedon told MovieWeb, “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.”
He added, “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.”
That’s led to speculation that Tony Stark inadvertently creates Ultron, perhaps as an accidental offshoot of his technological advances – or perhaps Jarvis (Paul Bettany) gets corrupted and turns evil. There’s also speculation that with Vin Diesel hinting that he’s joining the Marvel family, he will voice the villain.
Whedon also says the film will be told on an even bigger scale. “It’s very much a global Avengers film,” he says. “A lot of the movie has to do with their place not just in America, but the world. Part of the fun for me, definitely this time around, is writing Hawkeye. He did get possessed pretty early by a bad guy and had to walk around all scowly for most of the movie so now it’s nice to actually have the character there and see him interact with the other guys.”
The entire Marvel Comic-Con panel has also popped up online, including info on Thor 2, Captain America 2, Avengers 2 and Guardians Of The Galaxy – as well as Loki making an appearance in front of the pitiful humans in San Diego. You can watch that below.