With Avengers: Age Of Ultron arriving next summer, casual fans have been wondering, who is Ultron? And the more hardcore comic fans who know Ultron was created by Hank Pym, aka the as-yet-unknown Ant-Man, they're probably wondering, who is THIS Ultron? As it turns out, the answer is both more and less complicated than you'd think. And it all revolves around Hollywood's latest favorite pet cause: drones.
We are getting into major spoilers here for The Avengers: Age of Ultron, so back away if you don't want it spoiled.
Entertainment Weekly has pulled the lid off the secrecy surrounding Avengers: Age Of Ultron to illustrate how the latest creation from Tony Stark has become the Avengers' worst enemy. What any good follow-up does is re-examine the moral complexity of the previous film – it's what the new onscreen DC universe is banking on in the wake of Man Of Steel. This time Stark has retired as Iron Man for the most part, leaving the dirty work to the "Iron Legion" from the end of Iron Man 3. Those machines return in the new film, led by Ultron, Stark's new creation played by James Spader.
Stark has gifted Ultron with some of his traits, but apparently none of his humanity, because Ultron surveys all around him and learns that the world is full of great suffering and tragedy, and to remove that, he'll need to eliminate the cause: humanity. But the Avengers can't just punch this problem out of existence: Ultron can disassemble and reassemble anywhere into any machine.
The article describes that Ultron, in his initial attack, ruins the party that was described by early reports where the Avengers socially mingle in the former Stark Tower. More character details emerge in these descriptions of the party: my favorite would be the chit-chat between Captain America and Maria Hill, both survivors of the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Is there something brewing between Steve and Maria? #LOVEMATCH.
The unmanned drone issue has already been a part of recent movies like Robocop and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and it will earn a closer examination in Andrew Niccol's The Good Kill . In these movies, the unmanned drones are viewed as a bad idea, a tool of the villains even though they're being used by America in military operations today. But the tragedy is these movies don't give us that many reasons to think drones aren't the coolest things ever: they're efficient video-game creations in Robocop, and are presented as Tony Stark's salvation in the Iron Man movies. Age Of Ultron sounds like it will definitely come down on the anti-drone side, but is anyone really going to deny that Ultron is going to look super-cool?
The rest of the details regarding the character of Ultron is just a click away, including the revelation that when the Age Of Ultron title was revealed at Comic Con, both Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson had no idea who Ultron really was. Which sort of makes sense: when you're that beautiful, it's hard to shame you for not reading comic books. Avengers: Age Of Ultron blows up all over your face next May 1st.
