UPDATE: Check out the Avengers 2 title treatment and concept art for Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier right here.
The Avengers 2 will serve as the sequel to the 2012 box-office smash hit The Avengers which brought together Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans) as the intergalactic crime-fighting team The Avengers. Today at Comic Con director Joss Whedon announced the film’s official title, The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
As anyone that reads this site regularly knows, I’m not much of a comic reader so I have to head to Wikipedia to learn “Age of Ultron” is “a 10-issue limited series comic book crossover storyline published by Marvel Comics, that involves the return of Ultron and his conquest of the earth.” Ultron being, according to Marvel, “a criminally insane rogue sentient robot dedicated to conquest and the extermination of humanity.”
Sooooo, how I read that is that a robot will be the villain in the next Avengers movie. I’m sure there is more to it, such as the robot’s creator, Henry Pym (who is also the first Ant-Man), who’s also known as the Yellowjacket. In this instance I’ll put my faith in Whedon, presuming he knows what he’s doing, because, well, I think he does.
Of course, with the added information Pym is the first Ant-Man, this could all tie directly into Edgar Wright‘s Ant-Man, which hits theaters in November 2015.
For those of you wondering about Thanos, the character seen in the mid-credits sequence during The Avengers, speculation is that he will appear in Guardians of the Galaxy as /film comments from the Marvel panel at Comic Con saying Djimon Housou, who plays Korath in Guardians, is a close associate of Thanos. This comment could also mean Thanos will become the primary villain in The Avengers 3.
Considering the order of their release, with Guardians arriving August 2014 and Avengers 2 in May 2015, it would make sense to keep them all running into one another to make sure the perceived necessity of seeing them all remains. Hell, if they are all as fun as The Avengers was the first time I saw it (even though I have cooled on it since), I would more than support seeing them in the theater.
Next on the docket is Thor: The Dark World, the sequel to what is, in my opinion, one of the more fun entries in the Avengers franchise to date. It’s the most ridiculous of the bunch and as a result is the easiest to accept at face value… I’m hoping for more of the same this November.
