Joss Whedon Discusses Ultron's Powers in AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
Even though we've seen a lot of cool footage from Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, there's still so much that we don't know about the movie. Thanks to Empire and an interview they conducted with Joss Whedon, we have some additional interesting information regarding Ultron's powers and limitations. He also talked a little bit about Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.
Asked if he played with Ultron's powers in the film, he said,
“Yeah, I did. 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. 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’s 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 repulsors.”
This is what I love about Whedon and his work. He actually thinks about stuff like this and pulls out these great little details about characters that a lot of other directors and storytellers don't. He goes the extra mile to takes things to a deeper level.
Whedon then went on to talk about how he handled the origin of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.
“They have an origin but it’s largely described. 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.”
I'm excited for the addition of these two characters. They are really going to add a great dynamic, not just to this movie, but to the Marvel cinematic universe as a whole. I wonder if they'll show up in any of the other, non-Avengers Marvel films. Age of Ultron will be released on May 1st.