At Comicon in San Diego yesterday, Tzar of all Nerds Joss Whedon announced the title and villain of his next Avengers movie.
After an in-character speech by Tom Hiddelston as Loki (who is not appearing in Avengers 2) in which the disgraced Asgardian demanded the crowd kneel to him and join his army, things were about to wrap up when Joss took the stage in Hall H (Comicon's most important Hall of all) and said, "I have something to add..."
As he dodged the arcing ropes of Geek Jizz fired his way, ol' Whedabix showed a video in which the camera panned over a metallic surface. Could've been Captain America's shield. Couldn've been Thor's hammer. Could've been Iron Man's iron face. Could've been... whatever Black Widow has. Some guns. But it wasn't those. What it turned out to be was the face of the big bad for Avengers 2.
Ultron.
Yes Ultron, the malevolent artificial intelligence android created by Hank Pym (AKA Ant-Man, as in Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish's upcoming movie Ant-Man) who goes well evil and decides to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth, which is what all artificial intelligences do the second you switch them on.
After revealing the man smile/grimace of Ultron, the crowd were shown the title of the movie, which thankfully is not Avengers 2. It's the much cooler AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON.
The Age of Ultron, for those in the know, is a recently finished comic book saga in which Ultron has been able to defeat the Avengers and reduce the United States to burning ash and horror. How closely they'll be following that story is yet to be seen, if they follow it at all. Joss might have just liked the title.
It'd be tough to do exactly, considering important characters in the comic version such as Wolverine and the Fantastic Four are owned by different studios, but I bet they make it work. I'd like to see the alternate Age of Ultron timeline depicted on screen, because it was bad ass indeed. The AoU Tony Stark for example would be very interesting to behold.
Talk of how Thanos, the ridge-chinned fellow from the Avengers post-credits scene, fits into all this has been defrayed for now. The current theory is that he will be somewhat involved in AoU and then hit big as the Final Boss for Avengers 3: Back in the Habit.
Avengers: Age of Ultron is due for release in the summer of 2015, which is plenty of time to get Ant-Man out so we can become more acquianted with the accidental creator of the robot who destroys the world.
UPDATE: Age of Ultron will feature the origins of Ultron will not feature his creator, Hank Pym. The worry is that introducing a new super genius science guy will somehow overshadow Tony Stark, which just won't do. Also the film won't be an adaptation of the comic book story due to the reasons we said before. Shame.
UPDATE: Age of Ultron will feature the origins of Ultron will not feature his creator, Hank Pym. The worry is that introducing a new super genius science guy will somehow overshadow Tony Stark, which just won't do. Also the film won't be an adaptation of the comic book story due to the reasons we said before. Shame.
Words by Gazz Wood
