You may have heard of a little Marvel announcement at Comic Con, which came in the form of the title and villain debut for our second Avengers film. It was a refreshing turn of events as Marvel 
wasn’t necessarily expected to drop this particular load and, even better, this wasn’t news that had been haphazardly carved up by “scoops” over the last few weeks. This was as big of news as they could, and it was completely left-field. I miss the days when that could happen.
The title was revealed by a teasers that showed Iron Man’s helmet being beaten and banged in closeup, until a pullback reveal of a Ultron’s helmet. The star of a recent big (and not particularly well-liked) comic book arc, Ultron is one of the biggie Avengers villain. He’s an almost catch-all villain when it comes to powers, but essentially he’s an indestructible robot with superhuman speed, strength, intelligence that can also put people into comas and remotely control machines. And apparently now he may well be a corrupted version of JARVIS!
Fun fact: the first mention in the Marvel U to “adamantium” was in reference to Ultron, not Wolverine!
In any event, after the big announcment Joss Whedon took to Marvel’s youtube channel to clarify a thing or two…
“A lot of people—because we called it Age of Ultron and there was a book, Age of Ultron just recently—assumed that was the storyline we are doing, which is not the case. We’re doing our own version of the origin story of Ultron. The other thing is, in the origin story, there was Hank Pym. So a lot of people assumed that he was going to be in the mix, but he’s not. Because 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. Ultron was their chief villain. He’s been the Avengers villain for so long. I was amazed anybody was surprised that it was going to be him in the movie. We are crafting our own version of it where his origin comes more directly from the Avengers we already know about.”
So that means Ant-Man (filming in Atlanta!) will be properly introduced in his own post-Avengers 2 film, with only a cameo at best in any earlier film.
Whedon also goes on to say the second film will be a bit different tonally, with some increase in international scope…
“It’s a little bit darker than the other film because Ultron is in the house. There’s a science fiction element that I think is a bit stronger than the other film… It is very much a global Avengers film. A lot of the movie has to do with their place, not just in America, but in the world.”
Those are some pretty meaty updates on a sequel to one of the biggest films of all time, and that’s just a chunk of what Comic Con had on offer over the weekend. Check back for some more highlights and brilliant commentary around here…
(via Collider)