Joss Whedon: Ultron Has “A Real Beef” With The Avengers

The moment the first Avengers came out Joss Whedon already zeroed in on Ultron as the next film’s main villain. But what is it about Ultron that intrigued Whedon so much? “You know, he’s really been a mainstay of The Avengers, but for me it’s a robot who’s angry,” Whedon told SFX magazine. “And that was a gateway for me to a robot who’s completely irrational. I wanted to write a robot what we really haven’t seen in this kind of movie, who can basically talk all the logical robot things, but then has hissy fits! He also has a real perspective on who the Avengers are, and a real beef with them.” Like Loki attempted in the first film, Ultron will try to tear The Avengers apart from the inside-out.

Now, if you were expecting Whedon to pull Ultron stories from the comic books you’d be sadly mistaken. “I didn’t go back to them at all,” Whedon professed. He goes on to explain, “I never looked to Ultron himself in the comics for why I love Ultron. I had an idea that I sort of extrapolated from that, so in that way he’s sort of a new guy.”

The Blacklist star James Spader provided the voice for Ultron as well a motion-capture performance. Whedon was quick to shower Spader’s performance with compliments. “Everything I’ve ever given to Spader he’s just knocked out of the park,” Whedon said. “But – and James and I talked about this – every now and then he’ll have to do a non sequitur. And James is like ‘I have to pull out this emotion from something that’s not happening in this scene!’ But that’s who Ultron is. He’s clicking on all these different cylinders. And James really took to it. It means that you can pretty much say anything sometimes! He’s very much en scene, but at the same time, if he doesn’t have a little bit of free associative lateral now and again, he’s not going to be as much fun.”

(via CBM)

Avengers: Age Of Ultron arrives in theaters May 1, 2015.