3. Envisioning The Vision
One of the biggest casting surprises for The Avengers: Age of Ultron was the late announcement of Paul Bettany taking on the role of the sentient android The Vision. A long standing Avenger, The Vision has since his inception been associated with Ultron, so it would seem to be a no-brainer to have the character appear in Age of Ultron. However, since a movie always needs to streamline stories for the sake of time and efficiency and since Hank Pym is really nowhere to be seen here, the assumption is The Vision's comic book origins will be changed quite heavily. So the question of how you sell an existential, red-faced android who kind of looks like a Christmas tree becomes an important question for Joss Whedon to take on. Now, since Paul Bettany voiced Tony Stark's snarky, British AI best friend JARVIS in three Iron Man films and The Avengers, the money is on The Vision being the logical extension of JARVIS evolving from the artificial world to the real one. Now that sounds great, but considering you already have six core Avengers alongside two new team-members being added on already and Nick god damn Fury, adding yet another new character with a larger, arguably more convoluted origin story can very well do more harm than good. And this concern doesn't just lie with the heroes of the story. Indeed as with any story, introducing the antagonist is just as important.