MCU: 10 Fascinating Facts Behind Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015)

2. Ultron IS Joss Whedon

Intriguingly, when Whedon talks about Age Of Ultron being a deeply personal experience, he seems to mostly be talking about the characterisation of Ultron.

He revealed in the wake of the release that he poured himself into the character and the ideas of creation and destruction definitely do resonate with Whedon as a film-maker. He also says there's an even more personal parallel than that:

“Ultron’s pain is very, very real to me. He can’t control the way his pain makes him behave. And I can relate to that.”

That's surprisingly candid and somewhat chilling given accusations levelled against him. But one character Whedon says he could not relate to was Thanos, who he chose to avoid entirely despite setting him up in The Avengers. He helped James Gunn integrate Thanos into the rest of the MCU, but admitted Thanos was "really difficult to write for," which goes some way to explaining why he turned down the chance to make Infinity War:

“They came to me about the movie, and what I said was, ‘I’m tapped out’ … and I think they knew that even if I could give them something, it wasn’t going to be anytime soon."