Avengers' Vision Almost Had a Very Different MCU Look

The superheroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe tend to have appearances that have basis in their comic book counterparts. The Vision nearly had a drastically different look derived from a classic Marvel Comics run.

Marvel Studios Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding revealed a piece of concept art for the Vision that was created for the character's debut in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, taking cues from the West Coast Avengers run in which the synthezoid's look was particularly bleached.

It’s so interesting to me that often it’s my unused designs that get more love than the final approved designs on my Instagram. What’s that about guys? Why do you all love the might-have-beens so much? 😆 So a few weeks ago I did an interview with @entertainmentweekly talking about our design process at Marvel and some of these unused designs. These images were exclusive to Entertainment Weekly. The link to the article is at the top of the page. It’s very exciting as this article is actually in print too! #marvelstudios #captainamerica #conceptart #conceptdesign #costumedesign #vision #entertainmentweekly #infinitywar

A post shared by Ryan Meinerding (@ryan_meinerding_art) on Mar 13, 2018 at 9:21am PDT

In the comics, the Vision adopts an all-white appearance after Immortus' cronies captured and disassembled him. Creator Hank Pym reassembled him, but he he adopted the pale look with a different style of cape afterward. Vision would maintain this appearance throughout the '80s.

While this was the only major redesign for the Avenging Android since his creation, Marvel Studios had a different reasoning for adopting this design in the character's cinematic debut.

"[Age of Ultron director] Joss [Whedon] really wanted Vision to stay human-colored," Meinerding said. "He really wanted him to look like Paul Bettany with the bit of styling on him, and when we did versions of that, it seemed hard to make that look cool and interesting."

Of course, that color scheme changed to the more conventional red, green, and yellow for the character's final appearance. That West Coast-inspired white and gold look could still pop up in the future.

The characters change from film to film, and the drastic loss of something important — like, say, an Infinity Stone — could have a huge affect on the Vision.

"We're just always trying to make it better," Meinerding said. "It's as simple as that. It's looking at what we have and figuring out different ways and creative solutions for trying to improve it."

The Vision will appear next in Avengers: Infinity War, premiering in theaters on April 27th.

Black Panther is now in theaters. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6th, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.

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