As though tonight’s Marvel Panel at San Diego Comic-Con wasn’t exciting enough, with amazing footage screened from Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy (the last being my favorite), the panel ended with Joss Whedon stepping on stage to introduce a video presentation revealing that the title of the highly anticipated sequel to The Avengers will be The Avengers: Age of Ultron. And check out the awesome logo above that was sent out by Marvel’s Agent M on Twitter!
The video started with pieces of red metal clanging together and a voice-over from none other than Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) himself, speaking lines from the first Avengers movie. Then we hear Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the rest of the team speaking as the metal continues to clang loudly and glow bright red. At the end of the video we see that what is being constructed is actually the head of Ultron, with the new title finally being shown over it.
For those unfamiliar with Marvel comics, Ultron is a robot that was introduced back in 1968 and was actually invented by Hank Pym, also known as Ant-Man. Pym was able to make Ultron function by copying his own brain functions, but unfortunately Ultron eventually becomes too intelligent for his own good. The machine eventually not only rebelled against its creator, but also went after Hank’s wife, Janet van Dyne a.k.a. Wasp.
But the title Age of Ultron is actually the name of a 10-issue arc that was just released earlier this year, written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by Bryan Hitch, Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco, Butch Guice, Alex Maleev, David Marquez and Joe Quesada. The story was a major crossover event that not only featured The Avengers, but also characters like Wolverine and The Fantastic Four (who won’t be appearing in the new Marvel Studios movie due to rights issues). It’s hard to say if the movie will actually be borrowing from the comics directly, however. The story begins with Captain America’s shield shattered and the hero hiding out underneath Central Park with a bunch of other heroes, Ultron having taken over the entire world. If it actually is the story that the movie is based on, then we can expect some true craziness to come out of the rest of Phase Two.
UPDATE: Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige had a chat with Empire after the panel and has confirmed that the sequel will only be borrowing the title Age of Ultron from the comics and won't actually be based on them.
How will this impact Thor, Captain America and Guardians? Does this mean that there’s a chance that Ant-Man and Wasp could actually be making their first appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron before Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man, which is set to be released in November 2015, just a few months later? In a way, Marvel Studios’ big reveal this evening actually creates more questions than it answers, but we couldn’t be more excited for what they have in store.
