The second outing for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, has upped the ante for the crew, who this time will find themselves up against one of Tony Stark’s own creations, Ultron. This morning brought word on the vast changes Joss Whedon has in store for the sentient ‘bot, and what fans can expect. Now, we’ve learned that the superhero sequel is set to boast what Whedon himself has dubbed “a pre-credit Bondian blow-out.”
“The opening location is really stunning,” he told Empire Magazine. “There was a moment where there were soldiers and different kinds of people fighting them, and these guys in winter camo come up on a castle in one of those mountain resort elevators that goes side-to-side and looks like a gumball machine, and I was looking at the Italian Alps and the mist and the castle, and this weird thing rises up, full of soldiers in winter camo, and everybody was like… [sings the Bond theme].”
As if there was any doubt over the scope and scale – there it is, all confirmed. Still, the following comments opened up an interesting area for debate. Where the first Avengers explored just how much fun it would be to completely decimate New York City, could it be that Whedon was planning to scale down the explosions the second time around?
For a lynchpin title like Ultron, which is the penultimate movie in the Marvel’s phase two, you’d hardly imagine its director would compare it to seminal New York gangster flick, The Godfather But, he did. Dubbing the Francis Ford Coppola movie a “huge touchstone” in terms of influence, Whedon went on to say:
“You get everything you got from the first Godfather movie in a very different movie, in a movie that structurally couldn’t be more different, and thematically and in intent and in mood, and yet nobody ever goes, ‘It wasn’t Godfathery enough,’” he explained.
Sadly, without Don Corleone, Avengers: Age Of Ultron will head in cinemas on April 23rd in the U.K., and May 1st in the U.S.