Marvel comic book geek 'dopers...Age of Ultron questions (here be SPOILERS!)

Cafe Society
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My apologies to all if these questions have been asked already about the movie, but I saw it last night and I have a bunch of question wrt what I saw in the movie as well as how this all works in the overall MCU. There are going to be some open spoilers in my OP and no doubt in the replies, assuming there are any, so if you don’t want to see them, here would be a great place to back out of the thread and go read something else…you’ve been warned.
First off, I read the series of comic books this was based off of years ago, so my memory of them is pretty vague at this point. I seem to recall that in the comic books the personality of Ultron was based on Hank Pym, the guy who created the Ant Man suit (I understand there is an Ant Man movie coming out at some time). I guess that’s changed, though, but I was confused by exactly who was the personality imprinted. It SEEMED it was Tony Stark, Iron Man, but also an AI from the Tesseract, but that Stark’s personality was imprinted after he was modified by the Scarlet Witch…is that correct?

Why didn’t Ultron use the Vibranium he stole to create his own Vibranium body? I understand the arc (sort of) that lead to the Vision, but why didn’t he create his own body of the stuff in the movie…I thought he did do this in the comics and it seems like it would be a logical choice for him, making him practically invulnerable. Also, why is the MCU using ‘Vibranium’ instead of Adamantium? Does Marvel not have the rights to the name or something? Seems kind of odd, unless I’m misremembering.

Why did they kill off Quicksilver?? I don’t remember THAT happening in the AoU comics at all and it seemed kind of weird, though I guess it makes the universe where it seems the superheroes really have no risk a bit less certain. I also don’t know why they had the Hulk kind of slink off in the end, though I assume it’s to set up for a stand alone story AND maybe for whatever they are going to do with the civil war story arc that I presume is coming up next.

Maybe I’m misremembering part of this, but I don’t recall the mind stone going INTO the Vision…and it seems like that means Thanos will have to rip the Vision apart to put together the Infinity Gauntlet, which I presume he’ll be doing when they get around to the story arc where he tries to destroy the universe and kicks the ass of all of the various superheroes.

At any rate, those were the questions I had last night coming back from the movie. Feel free to post other questions…hopefully someone will respond. :stuck_out_tongue: I thought the movie was good, fwiw, though I think I was a bit let down (probably because I was seriously hyped for it and was busting at the seams to go). It seems odd to finally see a lot of this stuff on the big screen, but without some of the characters who, I assume, other companies besides Marvel has the rights too (X-Men, Spiderman, etc).

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Adamantium is associated with the X-Men franchise. 20th Century Fox has the cinematic rights.

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Vibranium and Adamantium are different - Vibraniumis an extraterrestrial metal, Adamantiumis an alloy.

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Vision was supposed to be Ultron. So he did create a vibranium body for himself - he just never got to upload himself into it, remember?

Quicksilver probably got killed off to clean up the fact that the character belongs to several studios.

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I believe Quicks was killed to show that the war really does have consequences since, up until now, every dead character has later become alive again (Coulson, Fury, Loki, etc).

Also, from a story standpoint, it was a swerve against killing Hawkeye. Keep in mind that these movies are made 60/40, 60% to the people who aren’t comic fans, 40% to the people who are. Killing a likable character and having an impact death in a movie is just good business for those 60%ers

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In no particular order…

I believe killing off Quicksilver was just a plot device to make Wanda’s conversion to the good side more believable. Since they fudged both characters origins to make this work, I’m not sure what they’re intending. Also QS appears to be in the upcoming X-Men.

Yes I’m pretty sure Ultron (movie version) was imprinted with Tony and the alien A/I. That he also went on to make the exact same mistake which accounts for Vision is kind of what I’m hanging my hat on.

Adamantium and Vibranium are different metals with slightly similar though different properties and both have been cannon in MCU since ever.

I don’t remember why Vision has that carat on his forehead.

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In the comic books, Hank Pym was one of the original Avengers. He was a genius scientist but he had ethical problems. At one point, he was being fired from the Avengers so he built Ultron. His plan was that Ultron would threaten the Avengers, he would defeat Ultron, and the Avengers would be so impressed they’d keep him on the team.

My understanding is that the Mindstone (which wasn’t the Tesseract) was the source of Ultron’s intelligence. Tony Stark trying to download the intelligence from the Mindstone into a robot boy and program it with the mission of protecting Earth. But the Mindstone intelligence was powerful enough that it was able to work around Stark’s instructions and reprogram itself to kill humanity instead.

He did. Ultron mind controlled Helen Cho and had her build him a better body with the vibranium he stole. His plan was then to download his personality into the new vibranium body. But he was interrupted before he could do that. Stark got a hold of the vibranium body and downloaded Jarvis into it instead and this became the Vision.

Vibranium and adamantium are both fictitious elelments that have been established in Marvel comic. But vibranium is associated with Captain America while adamantium is associated with Wolverine. So the studio apparently decided to stick with the metal they had already established in the movie world.

The joke I’ve heard is that the two studios settled it like a custody fight. Fox got custody of Quicksilver and Marvel got custody of the Scarlet Witch.

But this is comic books. If they change their minds, they can always bring him back from the dead.

Apparently Marvel can’t do a standalone Hulk movie. They own the rights to use the Hulk in Avengers movies but not the rights to use the Hulk in stand alone movies. So apparently they were just clearing the decks of most of the original characters so they could focus on the new Avengers line-up with Captain America and the Black Widow as holdovers.

And in the real world, there were probably financial reasons involved. I’m guessing Cheadle, Mackie, Olsen, and Bettany are getting paid less than they were paying Downey, Hemsworth, Ruffalo, and Renner.

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Thanks for the reply, all…that helped a bunch to clear some of my confusion!

[QUOTE=silenus]
Vision was supposed to be Ultron. So he did create a vibranium body for himself - he just never got to upload himself into it, remember?
[/QUOTE]

I had honestly forgotten that part. But now I recall in the tractor trailer truck thingy he was trying to upload himself and wasn’t able too.

Little Nemo, that explains a ton…thanks for the comprehensive post! Same for everyone else…it helps a bunch seeing the connections I missed. As I said, I haven’t read the comic in years now, and while I’ve seen the movies I haven’t followed them that closely (and only seen them all once) so I’m half remembering stuff from both the comics and from the movies…which means a lot of it is a confusing mess in my own head.

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I remember that adamantium was introduced in an Avengers comic – Thor was able to just barely dent the slab of adamantium with his hammer (which suffered no damage, implying that Odin-enchanted Uru metal was actually stronger than this material just introduced by the puny humans).

This was in the late 1960s. Current Marvel continuity may have retconned the event, though. Don’t follow comisc nowadays…

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This isn’t correct. Marvel’s already done a stand-alone Hulk film: 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, the one with Ed Norton. The only thing stopping them from doing another one now is the disappointing box office of the previous two Hulk films.

Right now, the only Marvel properties that Marvel does not own the film rights to are Fantastic Four, X-Men and all related mutant properties, and Spider-Man, who’s being licensed back to Marvel by Sony for use in future MCU movies.

Also, technically, Man-Thing, but I don’t think anyone cares.

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Why kill Quicksilver? Joss has to kill SOMEBODY. So who’s it gonna be? Hawkeye is the obvious target–he’s a solid 2nd tier character, and you can’t kill the top tier guys, everyone knows that Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, or Captain America “dying” would just be a fakeout and they’d be brought back to life ASAP. Hawkeye you could plausibly kill. And so the “one more mission, then I retire…” Except that’s TOO obvious, and so Joss kills Quicksilver.

He’s an obvious target for meta-story reasons. He’s a mutant tied to the Xmen (Magneto is his father) and the Avengers. And due to Fox owning the Xmen (see http://screenrant.com/marvel-comics-movies-characters-carl-6766/), there’s not as much they can do with him. Notice he’s never called a mutant in the Avengers movies, and notice that there was a version of Quicksilver in the last Xmen movie.

As for the Hulk heading off by himself, well, that’s the Hulk. The Hulk was actually only a member of the Avengers for two issues back in the 60s. Hulk has to walk away, until he can find a way to control the raging spirit that dwells within him. They should have shown Mark Ruffalo hitchhiking his way across the country.

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Nitpick: that was SALVATION-1, who promptly wiped the floor with Cap and Iron Man and Thor; Pym’s creation of Ultron (who was juuust smart enough to rebuild himself into something a bit smarter, and was then smart enough to rebuild himself into something a bit smarter, and so on, and so on) was a completely separate bad idea.

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Avengers: infinity war is the culmination of everything they have built up since the MCU started, there is no way in hell that Downey, Hemsworth, Ruffalo and Renner are not front and center in both movies. The new Avenger lineup might be what we get for Civil War, but that is going to feature Downey also.

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I question the logic, here. Why would Marvel care that he’s also in the X-Men movies? And how does him not being a mutant limit the character in any way that doesn’t also apply to his sister, who they didn’t kill?

FTR, I also don’t think he’s going to stay dead. I can think of three or four ways they could bring him back just using stuff that’s already an established part of the MCU.

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I’ve read in several places that Marvel’s current contract means that Universal owns the solo Hulk pics. The 2008 Hulk movie does list Universal as the production company so I’m guessing its true that they can’t make more. It didn’t make shitloads of money like the other films, but still well enough to make a profit.

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Yes, they have the means but… not a need.
I think he’s dead dead, because when would they need to bring him back?
Although I do expect to see him appear to her in dreams or visions when required in Avengers 3 and 4.

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I suspect for the same reason the Evan Peters version didn’t hang around for the latter part of Days of Future Past - once you introduce a character with these abilities, you have to come with a reason not to have him resolve everything in a millisecond.

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Universal probably owns the rights to the Hulk movies they produced, but I don’t think they own them any more. This 2006 article about Marvel getting Hulk rights back seems to indicate that they got them free and clear - and that’s before the Norton Hulk film was in production. (The article talks about a potential “Hulk 2” starring David Duchovny.)

Also, this (slightly outdated) chart indicates that the only thing Universal has a piece of these days is Namor.

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“They” who? The Avengers, or Marvel Studios?

Marvel studios will bring him back if they A) think they can make more good movies with the character, and/or B) think they can make more money with the character.

As for an in-universe reason, they’ll have a “need” to bring him back as soon as the writers give them one. It could be anything from “Project Tahiti” from Agents of SHIELD, which was specifically implemented in case an Avenger died, to Scarlet Witch having a(nother) mental breakdown and resurrecting him with her conveniently ill-defined reality warping powers, to Hydra, or AIM, or some similar sciency group of bad guys stealing his corpse for evil science purposes and bringing him back as their own pocket villain.

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There’s a much easier fix for that, which is invoked in pretty much every superhero story about a speedster, ever: don’t spend too much time thinking about the implications of his powers, and hope the audience doesn’t, either.