With Avengers: Age of Ultron arriving in theaters in barely two months, the time seemed right for writer/director Joss Whedon to actually share some actual information about the movie and its plot, don’t you think? Now that we’re getting down to the wire, wouldn’t that be a nice, friendly gesture?
Fortunately, Whedon agrees with us, and decided to reveal some news about the film’s new villains: Ultron, Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch.
Related: Andy Serkis’s Role in ‘Age of Ultron’ Finally Revealed
“The powers in comic books – they’re always like, ‘And then I can reverse the polarity of your ions!’ – well, we have to ground things a lot more,” Joss Whedon tells Empire in a new interview about the film. “With Ultron, we have to make him slightly less omnipotent because he’d win. Bottom line. Also, having weaknesses and needs and foibles and alliances and actually caring what people think of him, all these things, are what make him a character and not just a tidal wave. A movie about a tidal wave can be great, but it’s different than a conflict between one side and the other.”
“When Ultron speaks, he has a point. He is really not on top of the fact that the point he’s making has nothing to do with the fact that he’s banoonoos. And that he hates the Avengers for bringing him into this world, and he can’t really articulate that or even understand how much he hates humanity. He thinks he all that. That guy is very fun to write. He combines all the iconic stuff. The powers he has are slightly different – he can control certain things, he’s not just firing repulsers.”
Related: The 14 Biggest Clues in the ‘Age of Ultron’ Trailer
That’s all well and good, but what about Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch, being played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen? The last time we saw them was in the mid-credits teaser in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, at the hands of Baron Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann). Will we learn more of their origins?
“They have an origin but it’s largely described,” Whedon adds. “They’re already good to go by the time we’re up and running. You don’t want to fall into Spider-Man 3 territory – and I say that as a guy who actually thinks pretty well of that movie, there’s some great stuff in that movie – but there comes a point where you’re overloaded with frontstory, backstory, origin story and it becomes very hard to juggle. My instinct is always, ‘Don’t put in more, work with what you have.’”
“But I insisted on putting in more in this movie because I felt I needed more villains. I needed someone for Ultron to talk to, and I need more trouble for the Avengers. As powerful as Ultron is, if he builds more Ultrons, they’re Ultrons. There’s no reason for him to ever to talk to them because they’re him. ‘I need you to – I KNOW! I AM TOTALLY YOU! I DID IT EARLIER! I know that because I am also me.’ That’s not a good conversation. Actually, it sounded pretty good there. I think I’m onto something.”
We’re glad to hear that Whedon has learned some valuable lessons from Spider-Man 3 – a film which, like Whedon, we actually really like here at CraveOnline – but we’re still worried that Avengers: Age of Ultron may be so full of characters, good and evil, that some of them will get the shaft. You know, kinda like Hawkeye did in the first Avengers movie.
Avengers: Age of Ultron arrives in theaters on May 1, 2015.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
