If I recall correctly, Age of Ultron in the comics got fixed up because time-travel. Which we can all hope has absolutely nothing to do with whatever storyline the movie will be using.
Part of it is that of all the mutants out there, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were in the Avengers far more than they were ever in the X-Men. That doesn’t apply to any other character or franchise and every character-defining moment (including their decision to quit the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) happened in Avengers, not X-Books.
They appeared in X-Men 4 (circa 1963) and had maybe 4 appearances across maybe 7 issues (I think X-Men 11 was their final appearance in X-Men). Then they moved to Avengers in issue 16 (circa 1964) and stayed there until roughly issue 200-250 (circa 1980) (with a few breaks here and there) and largely didn’t appear anywhere else.
Contrast that to The Beast (who was the next most frequent X-Men-Avengers character) who appeared in X-Men 1 to 66, then moved to Avengers in ~140 and stayed 'till about 220 or so.
The various FF members weren’t active Avengers for more than maybe 20-30 total issues, and most of those non-consecutive.
Spider-Man and Wolverine were only Avengers since about 2005 and have had literally 3-4 non-Avengers appearances for every time they appeared in Avengers.
Frankly, if their first appearance hadn’t been in X-Men, I doubt that there would be any question that they were Avengers.
Neat. Thanks. Would they really recast Natalie Portman’s role as Thor’s sweetie?
No point when they can be simply on a break or actually broken up in character.
Online scuttlebut has the unidentified brunette as actress Kim Soo-Hyun, supposedly playing a minor character who shot scenes on location in South Korea. No word yet on who her character would be, but perhaps a security person or Stark fangirl.
During those battles, it was only Scarlet Witch who could defeat Ultron, her hexes entering through its mouth opening to get past its indestructible shell and mess with its inner workings, because magic. This may play into the movie, as it looks as if the twins are on Ultron’s side at first, but I’ve read that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch become Avengers by the end.
I remember Machine Man defeating Ultron by reaching down his throat and yanking out his insides.
That’s generally not supposed to happen in the comics (except when it does) because the comic’s shield is an alloy of vibranium, iron, and an unknown “something” that entered the mix while the metallurgist tasked with creating a new armor material fell asleep (for serious). That unknown ingredient is what’s kept anyone from recreating the material since. He did go on to eventually create adamantium while trying, though.
In the movies, the shield is made from straight vibranium, as established in the first Captain America movie. So if Ultron is a super-strong robot actually made from vibranium, which I understand is the case, then it stands to reason that he could break it.
Back when I first read that, I hoped for (a) the eventual crossover, and (b) kryptonite.
I was watching The Avengers again a couple days ago because I wanted to put something on that I didn’t need to necessarily be able to hear over a screaming baby - I hadn’t really paid such close attention before to how amazing Ruffalo is in that. Seriously, it’s like he’s in a whole different movie, and it’s an amazing drama.
So, those nerdier than I, what (if anything) is the relationship between Ultron and Vision, who is also, as I understand it, a sentient/sapient robot associated with the Avengers?
Vision is a “synthetic human” (= android) built by Ultron, in one of many gambits to destroy the Avengers.
Given his lack of presence in the Age of Ultron media so far, they’re apparently trying to keep his reveal in the movie under wraps.
This is probably more than what you wanted to know, but Vision has a super-complicated back story and once I started typing, I got carried away. 
In the first Marvel Comic, there was character called The Human Torch. He was a “Synthetic Man”. (They always made the distinction that he wasn’t just a robot)
Human Torch was one of Marvel’s three big characters (along with Captain America and Sub-Mariner).
In the late '40s, early '50s, they stopped publishing the Human Torch.
In the '60s, Stan Lee created the Fantastic Four and created a new Human Torch (who was a human, non-synthetic).
About 5 years later, a totally useless character (“Quasimodo”) revived the body of original Human Torch to fight the FF.
A little after that, Hank Pym (Ant-Man/Giant Man/Goliath (the ID he was using at the time)/Yellowjacket (as of about 3 issues later) created Ultron. Ultron was a robot*. The idea was to create a robot that could learn. It did. It also had “issues”–like “wanting to kill Hank Pym (and the Avengers)” issues.
It erased Pym’s mind and made him forget that Pym created Ultron. Ultron then built the Vision and sent him to join the Avengers. Vision turned on Ultron and joined the Avengers (Vision was called a “synthazoid” at that point). They accepted Vision as an Avenger and Vision cried with happiness. (this is important for later–he had fully human emotions)
Over the next 4-6 years, weird clues were dropped about Vision. In one issue, Hank Pym had to go fix Vision from the inside and saw something shocking. In another, Vision had a fit of claustrophobia, etc. During this time he and Scarlet Witch also fell in love.
Eventually it was explained that Ultron didn’t actually “build” the Vision from scratch, he repurposed the original Human Torch’s body. The “shocking” thing Hank Pym saw were 1940s parts, the claustrophobia attack was from an incident from the Human Torch’s first appearance, the red-colored skin was Ultron’s little joke about the Human Torch’s coloring, and the Vision/Scarlet Witch thing became a whole lot less weird, given that the Vision was actually a “Synthetic Human” (to quote Marvel Comics #1 (Oct, 1939) “He’s an exact replica of a human being!”…and there were other comments that he can perform any function a human can in other early issues)
Meanwhile, Ultron got a nice personality twist. It wasn’t that he just wanted to murder his daddy (Pym), he also wanted to marry his mommy (The Wasp) and tried to DL her brain into a female robot (Jocasta-geddit? ). Ultron wanted the Vision to be his son. It was very weird but cool.
From his second appearance onward, Ultron was made of Adamantium (the same stuff as Wolverine’s claws). It’s absolutely unbreakable. There were only two ways of dealing with Ultron at that point: 1) a gizmo called a “molecular rearranger” which lets you shape-change metal or 2) Scarlet Witch twiddling her fingers and causing Ultron to break.
Vision and Scarlet Witch eventually married** and after a huge magical battle when chaos was running amok, Scarlet Witch twiddled her fingers and used all that extra magic to help Vision get her pregnant (since her powers back then were simply altering odds, and given that Vision was an exact replica of a human being in every way, it worked for the story). They had twins.
Then enters John “Everything must be like I wrongly imagine it was in 1970” Byrne.
He thought it was teh dum that A) Vision had emotions (despite him crying in his first appearance) and B) that Vision and Scarlet Witch could have kids. So Byrne fucked everything up by saying:
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The kids weren’t really hers, they were pieces of some guy’s soul. How did she find this out? Mephsito (aka, Satan) told her. And since he’s the prince of lies, everyone just accepts what he says.
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The Vision never really had emotions, he only had the emotions of the guy he got the brainwaves from. Then Vision was discected and given the personality of a 1950s “Danger-Will-Robinson-Beware-Of-My-Flailing-Arms” type robot. To ostensibly restore him to what he originally was. Despite him not ever being that as Human Torch or Vision.
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Vision was never the repurposed body of the Human Torch. Despite the fact that we saw it happen when we learned the Vision’s origin (Immortus–master of time, took all the characters back to watch), He was just a robot. He also reintroduced the Original Human Torch to make sure that someone couldn’t just undo what Byrne had done.
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Scarlet Witch’s power isn’t that she twiddles her fingers and alters odds (limited power and easy to explain) but that she does some sort of time-travel/reality altering thing. This has pretty much permanantly broken the character, since the power can’t really be defined and is way too powerful to use.
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Vision and Scarlet Witch were no longer married (either because Vision as such died, and someone new was wandering around in that body or because they got divorced. The writers contradicted themselves on that one). Nobody bothered to actually look for the babies or, y’know…question the story that The Devil told them.
When he got kicked off the book, that was the status quo for about 15 years. Then another writer had someone use a time-gizmo to split the Human Torch’s body into two timelines, and then brought them both back–so one Human Torch body is the guy running around now, the other Human Torch body was repurposed into Vision after all.
Anyway, current status is that
A) The kids are back and about 15/16. The Devil lied. Gosh. Whoda thunk it?
B) Vision has a personality and emotions again (He’s. Not. Talking. Like. Robbie. The. Robot. Any. More.) but is no longer married to Scarlet Witch.
C) A writer I usually enjoy (Brian Bendis) took the dumb “She doesn’t twiddle her fingers and change the odds, she uses time-travel to warp reality” thing and destroyed the Scarlet Witch as a character by making her god. She went nuts (because of the baby thing and huge plot holes the writer hoped we wouldn’t notice) and then (eventually, while nuts) committed genocide. In the X-Books, someone had FINALLY come up with a rationale for why people freak about mutants but not say, the Fantastic Four: Mutants have reached a critical level in the population and within 20 years will be the majority. Despite this fixing the big flaw in the X-books since 1963, the editor and the writer hated it and had Scarlet Witch depower all mutants except the 200 most popular. Tons of them died as a result. Many of them have since gotten better. And they’re trying to rehabilitate the Scarlet Witch as a viable character.
D) Ultron had always done body-mods and upgrades, but the same writer who screwed up Scarlet Witch had the very nifty idea that if you’re moving the same mind from body to body, you’re dealing with an AI and not just a pissed off robot with an Oedipal complex.
And this is the short-version. I didn’t even get into the whole “Wonder-Man”/Grim Reaper thing. Or the fact that Magneto is Scarlet Witch’s daddy, etc. Outside of characters like Cable or Rachel (both from X-Men), Vision’s backstory is one of the most intricate and convoluted in Marvel (and actually, in comic book) history. Which I like. It adds richness to the universe.
But what works for the comics, will NOT work in the movies. For the movies, all of this needs to be ignored. There wasn’t/can’t be a '40s Human Torch–Cap hasn’t mentioned him and the FF franchise would (rightly) sue.
My guess:
Tony creates an AI. I suspect it’ll have some daddy issues (because it’s what makes Ultron cool).
It’ll create Vision (to show Daddy Tony that "Any robot you can build, I can build a cooler one)
Vision will infiltrate the Avengers.
Vision will reject Ultron’s programming and Scarlet Witch will twiddle her fingers and break Ultron.
*The “Evil AI” thing is a very recent invention–I like it, but there was no hint of it originally.
**There’s a secondary plot about Vision’s brain wave patterns coming from a then completely obscure dead one-shot hero, but just ignore that.
For the record, the original Human Torch body has already appeared in the MCU. Or at least so I’ve been told-- Apparently it was on display at one of the Stark Expos back in the 40s.
Wow Fenris!
That was an amazing explanation! Thanks so much for that, you wrote the history in a very readable way and really know your shit
I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter because I’d love to know the history of other characters like that.
Thanks again and kudos to you man
Something else, as I understand it. Neither of these characters are allowed to be called Quicksilver or Scarlet Witch in the Avengers movie. I freely admit that I may be mistaken in this.
From here (interview with Kevin Feige):
…Yeaaaah. Pretty sure you are mistaken. They just can’t be referred to as mutants and their dad being Magneto can’t be referenced–or more accurately Magneto just isn’t their dad in the MCU.
From what I can remember, this is right.
They can’t use word mutants ever or refer to their X-Men heritage in any way, but the rest (names, likeness, powers) is fair game.
Basically the characters are going to have new origins not related to their previously established origins which is pretty rare in comics as we all know
I’m going to have to ask for the Cable/Rachel/Nate Grey/etc. family tree explanation from you now. I think the Cyclops extended family tree probably is the most convoluted comics tree out there. It has everything!
They’re introducing the vision in this movie? Ahh, THAT explains adding Wanda and Pietro. I thought there was a logical reason.
One thing I give props to the creators on the avengers side is that they don’t what the they do on the xmen side. They resist the childish urge to show as many super powered characters as possible, even if they add no value to the story at all. Two of my favorite XMen characters, Storm and Colossus, are both relegated to “just there” status in the movies.
Isn’t an evil robot an evil AI by definition?
From a 2010s perspective, yeah. From a 1967 perspective, no.
Think of that “Lost In Space” robot—it may have been an AI but there was no hint of it and it was never a story point.
Even though Ultron moved it’s consciousness from body-to-body for years, it was always treated as a single consciousness. There could only be one Ultron at a time. There were a few instances of Ultron animating multiple bodies at once, but it was treated as a gimmick. Bendis took the step of having Ultron be able to upload his software to any machine. To have multiple, parallel running Ultrons and so on.