James Spader's Mo-Cap Outfit In Avengers 2 Actually Gave Him A Distance From Humanity
In case you didn’t already know, Joss Whedon and the folks at Marvel Studios didn’t make James Spader wear a robot costume on the set of the Avengers: Age of Ultron. Instead, his character, the titular robotic menace, will be brought to life with the magic of performance capture, which means that Spader spent most of his time filming in grey pajamas covered in little ping pong balls. But just because he didn’t actually look like an evil robot on set doesn’t mean that his appearance didn’t help him further get into character.
It was director Joss Whedon who dropped this bit of cool performance info on us while we were visiting the set of The Avengers: Age of Ultron this past summer with a small group of other film journalists. Discussing the inner workings of a character like Ultron and how he will be adapted from the comic book page to the big screen, the filmmaker noted that there is an importance distance that Ultron feels between himself and humanity, and that the performance capture process actually did something to enhance what James Spader was doing – but literally distancing the actor from humanity. He told a story of the Sex Lies and Videotape’s stars first day on set, which involved doing a scene with Scarlett Johansson while wearing a stupid amount of equipment:
Working under these high-tech conditions isn’t always the easiest transition for an actor – particularly a veteran one like James Spader. For example, Sir Ian McKellen was very vocal about how much he disliked all of the technology being used on The Hobbit when he first got to set. This wasn’t an issue on the set of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, however, as Joss Whedon remarked that Spader was game for everything the production threw at him and he handled it like a pro. Said Whedon,
We’ll be able to see James Spader’s Ultron come to life – with a complete lack of strings – when The Avengers 2 hits theaters on May 1, 2015.
CINEMABLEND NEWSLETTER
Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News
Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.