In a victory for Tumblr, who’s been using clips from A Knight’s Tale to illustrate what might happen if JARVIS was given physical form for a while now, and a victory for fans of the Scarlet Witch and her most frequent canonical romance, Paul Bettany is confirmed to be appearing in Avengers 2: Age of Ultron as the Vision.
In the Iron Man movies and beyond, Bettany has always been the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just a Rather Very Intelligent System), the artificial intelligence that runs Tony Stark’s house and suits. The “character”‘s comic book counterpart, Edwin Jarvis, is a beloved mere mortal butler who serves in many ways as the “Alfred” of the Avengers, if I may liken him to his more visible DC Comics counterpart. Deadline confirms that he has signed on to play the Vision, the world’s mightiest android, in Age of Ultron, indicating strongly that JARVIS will be making something of a transformation in the film.
There are two aspects of the Vision that are relevant to what we know about AoU: first, his origin. The Vision was first created by Ultron as a superintelligent weapon to use against the Avengers. However, in their first encounter with him, the Avengers persuaded the Vision to rebel against Ultron and become a superhero. (Then there was a bunch of stuff with, like, the original Human Torch being split in two and Wonder Man’s soul memories or some junk, but basically, that’s what you need to know.) From this casting announcement it seems safe to assume that among the dastardly deeds of Ultron, whatever his origin winds up being in the new film, will be endowing JARVIS with a physical form and pitting him against the Avengers. In fact, I’d bet money that JARVIS’ first form will be a Vision-colored yellow, green, and red Iron Man suit.
The Vision’s history is also connected to the Scarlet Witch. The two have had the sort of off again on again relationship that is the closest thing comics have to a canonical steady relationship. They’ve been married, had kids, had the memory of their kids wiped from their brains, been killed, resurrected, lost their personalities to supernatural hard drive failure, you name it. They still tie some weird branches of the Marvel family tree together, where there are some kids who have Magneto for a grandfather on one side, and Ultron on the other. Since Scarlet Witch will also be making her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Age of Ultron, it would be reasonable for us to see sparks fly between the two.
Well, time permitting. And we thought The Avengers was packed with characters.
(via Deadline.)
