Edgar Wright Says Ultron Was Never Even on His Radar for Ant-Man

Fans could take a good guess that Loki would not be returning as the villain of the next Avengers movie, but they might not have guessed that a villain primarily associated with a superhero who had not yet appeared in the Marvel Cinematic universe would be the pick. So there were a lot of Ant-Man fans worried that the origin of both him and Ultron, his archenemy, would be drastically changed in order to have the latter enter continuity before the former. But according to Edgar Wright, the director of 2015’s Ant-Man movie (set to release after The Avengers: Age of Ultron), Ultron was never in the game plan for him, and he’s been working on the script since 2010.

Ultron, a highly intelligent adamantium robot with a suite of basic superpowers that also includes mind control, harbors an intense hatred for its creator, Hank Pym, otherwise known as Ant-Man. (Or Giant-Man. Or Yellowjacket. Or Wasp.) It does seem like an overhaul to his origin might be necessary to put him in The Avengers before the release of Ant-Man. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing: adaptations are the name of the game, after all, but I can sympathize with Ant-Man fans looking forward to Hank Pym’s particular brand of Ultron angst.

Hank, on the other hand, has merely lost the most likely villain for his film, but according to Edgar Wright, this will not be a problem.

[Ultron] was never in my script. Because even just to sort of set up what Ant-Man does is enough for one movie. It’s why I think “Iron Man” is extremely successful because it keeps it really simple. You have one sort of — the villain comes from the hero’s technology. It’s simple. So I think why that film really works and why, sometimes, superhero films fail — or they have mixed results — because they have to set up a hero and a villain at the same time. And that’s really tough. And sometimes it’s unbalanced.

Wright cites Tim Burton‘s Batman as a film that, while beloved, tells you much more about the villain then about the hero, and I’d agree that that’s a perennial problem with most Batman movies, and one that the current crop of MCU films has mostly escaped (excepting, because come on, Thor). Naturally, he does not say who will be replacing Ultron as the villain of Ant-Man. We’ll just have to wait and see.

(Huffington Post via MTV.)