After the Comic-Con International in San Diego announcement yesterday that the next Avengers film will be called Avengers: Age of Ultron, many assumed that it would be based on the recent critically panned Age of Ultron miniseries from Marvel. However, in an interview with ComicBookMovie, writer/director Joss Whedon has been quick to correct this.
“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.”
Over at io9.com (by way of CBR), Wheon adds:
“We don’t have to have him. It works very simply — this is Marvel cinema, not Marvel comics. One thing [Marvel Studios head] Kevin Feige has a genius for is knowing what to hold onto and what to let go of. You can invoke the feeling you had and play with the characters you love and remain true to the needs of the film. […]You’ll have to wait and and see, but you don’t need a Pym to create an Ultron.”
This will come as a relief to those who weren’t overwhelmed with the recent mini-series. In our review for the final issue, we noted that it was “often unwieldy series, one that lurched from scene to scene only pausing to pat itself on the head in self-satisfaction”. We can speculate at this point that one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s top brains – either Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) or Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) – will invent the Ultron intelligence. Given the ending of Iron Man 3, it’s entirely possible that Tony Stark has something new to work on other than being Iron Man full time.
Dropping some more hints about the film to CBM, Whedon added the focus of the film would be more international:
“It’s very much a global Avengers film. 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.”
