Ultron is probably going to be a mentally ill robot with mommy/daddy issues, just like God intended.
With Captain America: The Winter Soldier an enormous hit, people are beginning to wonder when the Marvel Backlash is going to start. My money is on “not soon, unless Guardians is a terrible movie.” But assuming Guardians of the Galaxy ends up being as awesome as we hope it is, another decent candidate for official start of the Marvel backlash is Avengers: Age of Ultron.
The sequel/attempt to capture lightning in a bottle a second time, currently under production, is a big operation. It has the 7 of the 8 core characters from the first film (Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain America and Nick Fury), is adding James Rhodes/Iron Patriot, Vision, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, there’s a good chance it’ll also include Anthony Mackie as Falcon, not to mention supporting characters like Pepper Potts and Maria Hill, and that’s not even getting into the fact that Baron Strucker appears early in the film before Ultron takes over as the main villain. That’s… a lot to cram into two and a half hours.
Fortunately, most of the characters above have already appeared in several films, which means we can at least count on the audience to know why Tony Stark or Thor act the way they do. Not so Ultron, who is not only one of the less well-known villains from the comics, but is also being seen for the first time in Avengers 2. (Loki, on the other hand, was also the deuteragonist of Thor.) To ground a film overstuffed with characters around a relative unknown character, director Joss Whedon and his cowriters are going to have to get things exactly right. Fortunately, at least judging what said in an interview with Empire magazine, he’s got the matter well in hand.
I’m having a blast with Ultron. He’s not a creature of logic – he’s a robot who’s genuinely disturbed. We’re finding out what makes him menacing and at the same time endearing and funny and strange and unexpected, and everything a robot never is.
This is… genuinely awesome. Ultron is a weird character to try and turn into a compelling villain. He’s basically an obsessive stalker with a serious Oedipal complex who is also something like a living computer virus. His schemes, already crazy when he debuted in the 60s, get gradually more and more over-complex and insane until he eventually takes over the world while somehow living in the future. It is batshit insanity in the best possible way.
Whedon seems to get how absurd (in an awesome way) the character is, and that’s a great sign, especially since Ultron is being portrayed by the great James Spader. So what say you, commenters? Does Whedon’s comment sound like the right track? And while we’re at it, how do you feel about Ultron generally? Sound off in the forums.
Source: Empire Magazine, via Badass Digest.
