As Marvel steps up the publicity for Avengers: Age of Ultron with a series of character posters [check them out here], Yahoo! Movies caught up with Joss Whedon, during which the director discussed the scope of the hotly-anticipated sequel and its “unhinged” final act as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes take on the villainous AI and his army of Ultron bots.
“Avengers: Age of Ultron got larger than the first film,” states Whedon. “I didn’t mean for it to get larger, but the climax that I pitched was completely unhinged and nobody said no, so that’s that… To me, adventure film is the best way to put it. Then science fiction, action, western, war, woman’s picture, horror movie … I’m not kidding; every single one of those things is in there.”
“You know they’re going to fight Ultron,” he continues. “You know Ultron has a tendency to build hundreds of Ultrons. So that’s going to lead you in a certain direction, but the hard work of the thing is making sure everyone feels serviced and integrated. So, in the beginning it’s fun. You’re thinking, ‘What would be fun, what would be cool?’ The whole movie is a process of changing everything and keeping everything the same. You want to hit all the things that made people love the first movie, but you also want to make something new or why are you here? I don’t want to make The Avengers again – I did that one time. With the ending it was important for me that we felt a progression. We didn’t just feel, ‘well, no problem, we cleaned that up!’ because that’s an episode of television. That’s not a film. This film, there’s more at stake and we take that seriously.”
Avengers: Age of Ultron is set for release in the UK on April 23rd and North America on May 1st, with Joss Whedon directing a cast that includes Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (The Incredible Hulk), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Don Cheadle (War Machine), Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Paul Bettany (JARVIS / The Vision), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Quicksilver), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch), Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Anthony Mackie (Falcon), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), James Spader (Ultron), Stellen Skarsgard (Erik Selvig), Thomas Kretschmann (Baron Strucker), Josh Brolin (Thanos), Claudia Kim (Dr. Cho) and Andy Serkis (Uylsses Klaw).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszH_jfuJoo8HCG1-lGjvfH2F&feature=player_embedded&v=SMekjOsexHs