When Joss Whedon made his surprise appearance at San Diego Comic Con to announce that the title of the upcoming Avengers sequel would be Avengers: Age of Ultron, many fans automatically assumed this meant an introduction for Ant-Man before Edgar Wright’s film. Hell, given her history with the team it might even imply a spot in the movie for the Wasp. Unfortunately, this is not to be.
Speaking to Marvel.com (via ComicBookMovie), Whedon explained that the film would be taking some liberties.
We’re doing our own version of the origin story for Ultron. In the origin story, there was Hank Pym, so a lot of people assumed that he will be in the mix. He’s not. We’re basically taking the things from the comics for the movies that we need and can use. A lot of stuff has to fall by the wayside.
That’s understandable. It’s how adaptations work. So what will this new origin be? It looks like Ultron will likely have ties to Tony Stark.
We’re crafting our own version of it where his origin comes more directly from The Avengers we already know about. It’s a little bit darker than the other film because Ultron is in the house. There’s a science fiction theme that wasn’t there in the other one.
The phrase “Ultron is in the house” certainly carries with it an implication. Ultron is JARVIS, right? Or is that too obvious?
He goes to say:
Ultron is definitely something that evolves, so we’re going to get together a couple of different iterations. Nothing can be translated exactly as it was from the comics; particularly Ultron.
Perhaps one of the iterations they’re borrowing from is the Next Avengers DTV movie, which is another example of Tony Stark creating Ultron instead of Hank Pym. One version they’re not going to be borrowing from, however, is the recent comics storyline whose title the film shares.
Well, because there was a book called ‘Age of Ultron’ quite recently, a lot of people have assumed that is what we’re doing, but that is not the case.
Just because the story will, by necessity, prominently feature Tony Stark, don’t expect the other characters to be ignored. In fact, the one Avenger who got kind of left out last time is getting some special focus this time around.
It’s very much a global Avengers film. A lot of the movie has to do with their place not just in America, but the world. Part of the fun for me, definitely this time around, is writing Hawkeye. He did get possessed pretty early by a bad guy and had to walk around all scowly for most of the movie so now it’s nice to actually have the character there and see him interact with the other guys.
One can only hope Whedon’s been reading Matt Fraction’s fantastic Hawkeye comic and adds a bit of Hawkguy to the film. Maybe a bit of screentime for Pizza Dog?
But does all this mean there’s no chance at all for Ant-Man and the Wasp? Not necessarily. With Age of Ultron hitting theatres a mere six months before Ant-Man, an end-credits tease would make perfect sense.
