Thursday, January 1, 2015

Character Breakdown for Avengers: Age of Ultron

Happy New Year!  2015 will bring us some highly anticipated movies; aside from Avengers 2 and a new Star Wars, we'll also get Ant-Man, Jurassic World, the 7th Fast and Furious movie, the Mad Max reboot; Mad Max Fury Road, the long awaited Entourage movie, Terminator: Genisys, the Poltergeist remake, the Fantastic Four reboot, a new Vacation movie (of the Chevy Chase Vacation movies), Jem and the Holograms movie, the next James Bond film Spectre, the final Hunger Games, and Mission Impossible 5.  That's a lot of big projects to look forward to!  Not to mention the release of Daredevil on Netflix sometime in the coming months... I think March is the last I heard.

Today, in anticipation of increased marketing of Avengers: Age of Ultron, I'm going to write out a character breakdown to explain the new characters we're going to see, and refresh you where we left off with the already established characters.  Let's start with the ones we know already:

Captain America (Chris Evans): When we last saw Cap (in Captain America: The Winter Soldier), he had discovered a plot by Hydra hidden within S.H.I.E.L.D. and along with help from the Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) and Sam Wilson aka The Falcon, took S.H.I.E.L.D. down.  Captain America's whereabouts are currently unknown as he's being hunted by Hydra.

Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.): the 3rd, and possibly final, Iron Man movie showed us that Tony Stark was suffering from some post traumatic stress after the events in the first Avengers movie.  After getting over his PTSD, he took down Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), destroyed all of his Iron Man suits, and finally removed the shrapnel from his chest.  That last part means that he know longer needs that glowing thingy (a miniature Arc Reactor) in his chest.

The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo): The last time we saw the Hulk, or his alter ego Bruce Banner, was at the very end of Iron Man 3.  It's revealed that Tony Stark's narration is actually an attempt at therapy with (probably) the only doctor that he can trust or relate to.  As far as character development, the only facts we know are from the end of the first Avengers movie when Bruce Banner rides off with Tony Stark.  I think we can assume that the 2 geniuses have been collaborating on projects together (quite possibly a project that gives us the main antagonist for Avengers 2, more on that later).

Thor (Chris Hemsworth):  The God of Thunder's last appearance was in Thor: The Dark World.  Here, he fought off a small faction of Dark Elves led by Malekith, whom attempted to unleash the Aether (an Infinity Gem) and destroy the Universe.  At the end we see Thor turn down the throne of Asgard, and send the Aether to be sealed in The Collector's vault.  We can assume that since these events, he has stayed on Asgard.

Black Widow aka Natasha Romanoff (Scarlet Johannson): After the events in Avengers, Natasha continued working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and assisted Captain America in taking down the hidden faction of HYDRA that was secretly controlling them.  Along the way, she released extremely classified files from the S.H.I.E.L.D. database to the world, revealing all of her aliases.  She is currently on the run, presumably with Captain America or Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).

Hawkeye aka Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner):  We can only speculate what Hawkeye has been up to since the alien invasion of NY in the first Avengers.  I assume that since S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fall, he's also been on the run.

So that's where we leave off with established characters.  As with all comic book movies, one the most anticipated aspects are the appearance of new characters.  Avengers: Age of Ultron has several of these new faces, both good and bad.  We have no idea as to what allegiance these characters are loyal yet, but details like that can wait until premier day.  The new characters are:

Ultron (voiced and motion captured by James Spader): The main antagonist, is an artificially intelligent android built (originally) by Dr. Hank Pym (aka Ant-Man aka Yellow Jacket aka Giant Man, yep all of them) as a peacekeeping robot who slowly gains higher intelligence and finally takes over his own programming.  Still following that original programming, Ultron determines that the only way to save mankind is to destroy mankind and keep historical records of them to honor their existence.  His intelligence grows at a very rapid pace, and after each time he's destroyed his intelligence finds a way to survive and create a new body stronger than the last.  He can never be beaten the same way twice.  In the film version, the origin of Ultron still remains unclear, but rumors state that he's created by Tony Stark or Bruce Banner.  It's possible that his original creator, Hank Pym, will still have a hand in his origin but we won't know until the movie is released or more clues are given.  **The clues could possible be found in upcoming episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or the miniseries Agent Carter on ABC**

Quicksilver aka Pietro Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson): We first meet Quicksilver and his sister, the Scarlet Witch, in the teaser scene at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  They are both imprisoned by a high ranking member of HYDRA Baron Strucker.  Quicksilver is the fastest man in the Marvel Universe, capable of running faster than the speed of sound.  In the comics, Quicksilver was originally a bad guy who reformed and joined the Avengers and later the X-Men.  As of right now, we know very little of Quicksilver's role in Avengers 2.

The Scarlet Witch aka Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen):  Also found imprisoned by HYDRA, but no other details are known.  She has the ability to manipulate Chaos Magic which includes the ability to manipulate reality.  In the comic books, her power set varies between appearances.  At times she is only capable of casting "spells" or hexes within a short range, while other times she's able to completely rewrite reality.  I have no idea what she will be capable of in Avengers, but the inclusion of her character create a whole list of possibilities.

Vision (Paul Bettany):  The red faced guy you see in the promo art for Avengers: Age of Ultron is a new type of android called a "synthezoid" created by Ultron to defeat the Avengers.  In the comics, the Avengers are able to convince Vision to turn against Ultron and join the Avengers. At this point details are sketchy and the movie version will probably have it's own origin story, but a little comic book background can't hurt.

Baron Wolfgang von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann):  One of the leaders of HYDRA and a major enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D.  He's a former member of the Nazi party and fought alongside The Red Skull during World War II.  He is a highly intelligent man in peak physical condition.  He does not possess any superhuman abilities, but has had Hydra develop serums to retard the aging process and maintain his physical conditioning.  Again, the movie version of Strucker may differ from the comics, but they also might not have the time to go into the detail you'll find here.

There you have it, a breakdown of characters new and old!  Andy Serkis (who played Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Kong in King Kong) has also been cast, but there has not been any announcement of whom he will be playing.  Rumors say it could be yet another villain, or at least a character that turns into a villain, more on this when I know more plot details.

I can't wait for this movie, I think it's going to absolutely awesome!!!  AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON OPENS MAY 1ST 2015!!!

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