Joss Whedon Dishes On 'The Vision' & James Spader's Titular AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Villain
The Age of Ultron writer/director now characterizes Paul Bettany as the Vision, and what makes him different from the others, while also elaborating on the sequel's villain, played by James Spader.
Later during the interview, Joss Whedon explained why he resisted the urge to return to the original comics while scripting Age of Ultron. "I didn't got back to them at all," he said. "You know, he was an angry robot. Angry all the time! That's one of the things that drew me to him - this guy's angry! Angry for like 50 years! You know, they reinvented him in Ultimates and stuff. At one point he was a beautiful woman... I'm not doing that one! I loved him when I read the comics as a kid, because of the scope and the sci-fi and what the team was going through, but I never looked to Ultron himself in the comics for why I love Ultron. I had an idea that I sort of extrapolated from that, so in that way he sort of a new guy. "But he's been a tricky one to nail down. Not because the voice eluded me, but just in terms of 'How much of his agenda is he revealing? How much of his agenda does he even understand?' And then of course there's the inevitable over-explaining that we do in these things, where you're watching and you're like 'Okay, he said it enough, people know!'" Whedon then talked up James Spader, who performed motion-capture and provided the voice for the villainous Ultron. "Everything I've ever given to Spader he's just knocked out of the park," enthuses the filmmaker. "But - and James and I talked about this - every now and then he'll have to do a non sequitur. And James is like 'I have to pull out this emotion from something that's not happening in this scene!' But that's who Ultron is. He's clicking on all these different cylinders. And James really took to it. It means that you can pretty much say anything sometimes! He's very much en scene, but at the same time, if he doesn't have a little bit of free associative lateral now and again, he's not going to be as much fun." What do you think?