“It's the biggest thing Marvel have ever done!” enthused Paul Bettany in an interview with Radio Times. Bettany gets his first MCU live-action part in the upcoming AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON. Bettany has previously been featured in the Iron Man and Avengers franchises as the voice of Tony Stark's virtual assistant, JARVIS. JARVIS will be connected to Bettany's live-action part as android 'The Vision,' though the link has yet to be revealed.
Bettany sounds really impressed with Samuel L. Jackson's response to the footage presented at Comicon last year. “It was enormous. I remember, we were at Comic-con, and they showed a portion of the footage, and I was just gobsmacked. And I looked down the row and every one of the Avengers was the same...including Samuel Jackson – and his whole modus operandi is ‘I’ve seen everything before, I’m the most chilled out, relaxed man and I’ve seen everything…’ And he was as knocked out as anyone. It’s huge.”
Even outside of the Marvel movies, Paul Bettany has worked on some huge films with some big name stars: Tom Hanks in 'The Da Vinci Code,' Russell Crow in 'A Beautiful Mind' and 'Master & Commander,' and Johnny Depp in his hey-day on 'The Tourist' and afterward on both 'Transcendence' and 'Mortdecai.' So, Bettany clearly knows his way around huge productions and huge stars with huge egos. I think the fact that he is impressed with how Samuel L. Jackson was also 'gobsmacked,' confirms for us how good and how big Avengers: Age of Ultron really will be.
Bettany also commented on his appearance in the film. He doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know, or does he? We haven't seen an photos or footage of The Vision yet. We've seen the android painted in publicity banners, but those aren't always 100% accurate to how the characters will look in the actual movie when it's released. So when Bettany tells us,“I look really different in real life. I’m red and android in the film. So I don’t know, hopefully that’ll help” … this should help to confirm that when we do see The Vision, he will look somewhat how we expect.
These two quotes, much like the second trailer for Age of Ultron, merely confirm what we already knew (or thought we knew). The second trailer showed us bits that came before/after or to the left/right of scenes that been previously released. It didn't really show us very much new (except for the lady in the cavern), but it did confirm our suspicions and feelings based on prior material. And Bettany has done the same for us here.
Hat tip to The Hollywood Reporter and their Heat Vision blog.
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Former Army officer. Former math teacher. Always science fiction and NASA Fan.