Home Entertainment It's official! James Spader is Ultron in THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

It's official! James Spader is Ultron in THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

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You can’t see it, but right now, I’m doing my best Harvey Dent impersonation. One half of my face is screwed up in frustration because you see, just a short while ago, I had put the finishing touches on a rather lengthy and in depth article on how I was pretty sure that JARVIS, specifically the actor who voices JARVIS in the Iron Man movies, Paul Bettany, was going to be cast as Ultron. I had pictures, I had videos. I was completely wrong and had to delete the whole thing.

And I had to do that  because – and here’s where the other half of my face comes in, smirking like a fat kid in a pie shop – it’s been revealed that James Spader has actually just been cast as Ultron.

james-spader-ultron

Marvel themselves made the announcement last night, and it’s pretty safe to say that it was quite the surprise. All evidence (which you would have seen if you had read my original story), pointed to the fact that it would be Tony Stark’s experimenting on an autonomous suit of armour controlled by his AI butler JARVIS that would lead to Ultron’s birth. There was even that recently unveiled Avengers deleted scene that showed ol’ JARVIS getting all villainy for a bit.

But in the end, Marvel and writer/director Joss Whedon have instead gone in a completely different direction it seems. A different, but still pretty exciting direction, that is, as the multiple Emmy Award winning James Spader is a fantastic actor with a massively diverse range that allows him to play snarky, menacing and quip with the best of them, which should fit in nicely with Whedon’s writing (and he was Daniel Jackson in Stargate which will always make him awesome in my book). All of that should make for one hell of an adamantium clad, red-eyed would-be robot despot. Though I have to admit that I’ve always pictured Ultron’s voice to be a bit more raspy than Spader’s dulcet tones, but that’s nothing that a little electronic voice modulation couldn’t fix. Also, in Whedon we trust.

Strangely enough though, the official announcement makes no mention of Spader just providing the voice of Ultron. Does that mean that we’re going to see Spader as a live-action Ultron decked out in a robot suit, or will he be motion-capturing for a CG version of the character? Only time will tell.

Here’s that announcement:

James Spader will face off against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes as the villain in Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” the sequel to 2012’s record-breaking “Marvel’s The Avengers.” The Emmy Award-winning actor will play Ultron in the Avengers’ much anticipated return to the big screen from writer/director Joss Whedon. The film comes to theaters on May 1, 2015.

Spader earned three Emmy Awards for his role as Alan Shore on “Boston Legal” and “The Practice,” and will return to television this fall in NBC’s highly anticipated series “The Blacklist.” Most recently Spader was seen in the critically-acclaimed film “Lincoln” directed by Steven Spielberg and has previously worked with a long list of accomplished film directors including David Cronenberg, Curtis Hansen, Sidney Lumet, Mike Nichols, Tim Robbins, Robert Rodriguez, Steven Soderbergh, and Oliver Stone.  David Mamet also directed Spader in the Broadway play Race.

“Avengers: Age of Ultron” will bring the Marvel Universe’s biggest heroes together again to face one of their biggest villains, with “Marvel’s The Avengers” director Joss Whedon returning to write and direct the sequel. “Marvel’s The Avengers” was released in 2012 and went on to earn $1.5 billion worldwide, making it the third-largest grossing movie of all time.

Last Updated: August 30, 2013

2 Comments

  1. ALAN SHORE IS ULTRON!! Now we just need DENNY CRANE 😛

    Reply

  2. Lourens Corleone

    August 30, 2013 at 10:43

    Michael Shanks will always be my true Daniel Jackson.

    Reply

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