.
“He’s somebody who can juice things up and he’s a real problem for the Avengers. That’s not always easy to find. It’s not like the Vulture is really going to give them a hard time for 20 minutes.”
That’s director Joss Whedon explaining why he feels Ultron is the proper villain for The Avengers 2. This was all announced very dramatically and unexpectedly at Comic Con, complete with a trailer that suggests Ultron’s new origin will be directly connected with Tony Stark and Iron Man in some way (read: JARVIS out for revenge?).
Since then, Whedon has opened up a bit about the new villain, framing his thought process on the choice, if not any hard details on what we’re going to see. Apparently this is something he’s been excited to do from the first moment he joined Marvel’s roster…
“I was pitching Ultron before I took the job on the first movie. I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this, but for the second one, you should totally do Ultron.’ Because he’s been a thorn in their side as much as any other character over the years and particularly back in my history. He was great.”
With Iron Man 3 essentially an epilogue for The Avengers and Marvel’s “Phase One” in general, we’re still largely in the dark about how Phase Two is going to develop. I was personally expecting Thanos to be the big bad in The Avengers 2, with Guardians of the Galaxy setting him up and providing context, much as Thor did with Loki. While not impossible, it seems that’s not case. Either way, the question is, with Ultron being the main baddie, how will the new galactic elements of the MCU tie in to the second team-up film? Is Marvel playing a much longer game, with Thanos and co. slowly developing across Phase 2 and into Phase 3 for, perhaps, an Infinity-scale crisis for the team in Avengers 3? This is especially interesting, since the man behind Ultron’s traditional origin, Hank Pym, will only be introduced after The Avengers 2.
I’m just spitballing here, while this stuff is unspoiled and it’s still fun to do so. Got any theories or hopes of your own?
Source | Total Film