Sometime before Paul Rudd officially boarded Ant-Man, Kevin Feige sat down with SFX magazine to discuss the future of Marvel's Cinematic Universe that follows Captain America: The Winter Soldier. After dotting on Guardians of the Galaxy (here), he was pressed about the ultimate “Phase Two” film, The Avengers: Age of Ultron. “Joss Whedon had a great idea for the character and how to use him to unify the Avengers again and acquire their services once more,” says Feige when asked why Ultron was chosen as the main villain this time. “He was a favorite. Joss and I were on the production of the first Avengers movie and we started having conversations about Ultron, and how he could come about and how we could adapt his origin to the continuity of the cinematic universe. It literally was just little discussions between takes but thankfully Joss files all that kind of stuff away in his brain. Then when the time arrived, he started outing it, so he went back to that and built a very good story.”
Whether The Avengers: Age of Ultron will have anything in common with the ongoing comic book series of the same name, Kevin Feige reassures that it's only the title. “We didn't want to merely have a '2' after Avengers so we wanted to give it a subtitle,” he says. “We have various things that we were looking at and Age of Ultron - which just happened to be a the name of a comic book series as well - was our favorite.” As for the actor playing the titular artificial intelligence, Kevin Feige says, “I first met James Spader two or three years ago. I thought it would be great to have him in our universe and we finally found the right role with Joss's version of Ultron.”
With Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch joining the ensemble, Feige is asked whether it's possible there could be too many protagonists. “It's always a balance with any movie, not to overwhelm it with too many story elements,” assures the Marvel president of production. “Certainly when it comes to comic book movies, you can fall into the trap of having too many villains and in the case of team-based movies, having too many heroes. But what Joss has in mind to bring those characters into the story happens in a very natural fashion over the course of the story. It's also the tradition of the Avengers to switch up the roster every now and again and to have new characters coming in. It's just part of the fun, but we wouldn't have included them if it had just been a case of 'Oh, we want two new figures, two new costumes.' It very much flows with the story that Joss is creating.” What do you think?
The Avengers: Age of Ultron stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Cobie Smulders, Jeremy Renner, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, with Samuel L. Jackson and James Spader. The anticipated film is set to release on May 1, 2015.
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