It’s been reported that Paul Bettany has been cast as the Vision in the upcoming Avengers sequel. But wait, isn’t Bettany already voicing JARVIS, Tony’s A.I. butler? What does all this mean?
Potential spoilers and speculation for Avengers 2.
The Vision in comics canon was an android created by Ultron, who then turned against its creator and became a hero. But we already know that the origin of Ultron is going to be altered in the film—Hank Pym, otherwise known as Ant Man, will not be responsible for creating Ultron. With Paul Bettany cast as the Vision, this heavily suggests that Ultron will at least have its origins in Stark technology…
But does the Vision come before or after Ultron this time around? Will it be like JARVIS troubling kid brother? Where is all this going?
Either way, it looks like Tony Stark will have some major explaining to do.
Ever since they reported Ant-Man was going to be after Av2 I thought it had to be that Ultron comes out of JARVIS or Stark tech in some way. It makes sense in the MCU, since we have no indication that anyone else is even close to Tony’s level in that sort of robot/AI development. Unless they’re going to bring in alien tech via the Guardians of the Galaxy, Ultron basically has to be based in something either Tony develops himself, or someone steals from him (or a combo, depending on how advanced they make Ultron).
Given the Bettany casting it seems weird for Ultron (Spader) to make an entity that goes back to the JARVIS voice, where I could see JARVIS making a body for himself in Vision, and then Vision creating a ‘child’ in Ultron. they might work with JARVIS being concerned that if Tony was so willing to blow up all the suits in IM3, he might be equally willing to ‘unplug’ JARVIS, so JARVIS wants to have some independence from his creator’s whims. (so basically Skynet, but polite)
I always saw it as JARVIS is somehow corrupted into becoming Ultron, likely in a SKYNET kinda way, thus changing the voice to Spader, who’ll put himself in an existing suit. But when Ultron’s eventually defeated, uncorrupted, whatever, he’ll then become Vision, and the voice will revert to Bettany.
My theory is:
Tony creates Ultron in an attempt to create a completely autonmous AI. He thinks he’s going to change the world for the better and all that jazz. Ultron, of course, goes evil and everything goes to hell in a hand basket. The Avengers fight him. Ultron fights back. Part of his fighting back is that he tries to undermine and undercut Tony’s control over Jarvis and the bots. So Ultron sets about trying to woo Jarvis to his side (on the premise of equal rights, he’s subjugated, he’s no more than a servant, etc.). So in a Borg-Queen-trying-to-convert-Data sort of move Ultron creates the Vision body for Jarvis. Jarvis takes the body, seems to play along with Ultron for a minute, and then of course betrays him, defeats him, and becomes an Avenger. :)
My theory is that there’s a smokescreen going on here. I think that JARVIS becomes Ultron and is played by Bettany, and Vision is played by Spader. But they’ve told the world that it’s the other way around to not spoil the surprise of JARVIS turning bad.
As far as I’m aware, Variety‘s source for this is an article in The Daily Mail. I’m sure everyone here knows what it means when The Daily Mail claims something is true.
Unless we hear confirmation from Marvel Studios, it would be wise to assume that Paul Bettany will not be playing the Vision.