We're just about six months away from the release of Marvel's highly anticipated Avengers: Age of Ultron . Director Joss Whedon returned to helm the sequel with an idea that he had before he even began production on The Avengers. IGN had the opportunity to travel the London earlier this year to visit the set of the sequel. While there, we were able to sit down with Whedon with a few other journalists to talk about returning to this world and what we can expect from the birth of Ultron.

45 Minutes in a Pub Convinced Whedon to Return for Ultron

“ Before I took the first job, I said in the second one, the villain has to be Ultron, and he has to create the Vision.

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Creating the Characters Who Inspired the Sequel: The Vision and Ultron

“ There's a lot of people, whether they're trying to do good or bad, who think they have the next big idea. And the next big idea is usually a very bad one.

The first one was raggedy. I was a raggedy man when I made that film. It did take a lot out of me. Going in this time, I was like, I just had to sort of recalibrate my entire existence and, throw myself into it more wholeheartedly and say, 'Okay, let's actually make it harder and I’m gonna just invest myself in every part of it: In every production meeting, every location scout, and every question about a prop that I’d like to avoid. I might even work harder on the script. There's nothing that I'm not going to be a part of. I’m gonna give myself up to it - like a Christian to a lion.'Before I took the first job, I said, 'Well, I don’t know if I’m right for this, or if I want it, or you want me, but in the second one, the villain has to be Ultron, and he has to create the Vision.' And then it took me three years before I could tell Paul [Bettany] that I’d had that conversation, but after that, I stopped. I was like, that would be cool if you have Ultron, and you have Vision and Paul played him. And Scarlet Witch and Pietro, definitely. They’re from my era, they’re very different, their powers are different, it’s not all punching, it gives a different palette, so we can do more interesting things. It’s fun; those things were all those were absolutes. But then I didn’t actually want to make the film necessarily. I was ragged from the first one, and so I just turned off my brain. I was like, 'Do not think of cool ideas for the next one. Just get through this.' I thought, 'Is this something that makes sense in my life; do I have anything to say?' And so my agent called - I was in London - and he called me and said, 'There’s a deal that’s worth talking about - time to start to think about whether there’s a movie.' And I’m going, 'All right,' and I went to a pub, and sat down with my notebook, and about forty-five minutes later, my notebook was filled. And I texted my agent and said, 'Yup, and I have so many things to say.' And I was kind of surprised. It took me unawares. It was very beautiful.A lot of them, a lot of them. And there’s some that you’re like, 'This is it; this is the heart of the story.' And then it doesn’t work. But generally speaking it’s character stuff, really. It’s definitely not plot stuff because that’s the stuff that you can pull out of yourself with agony. The character stuff is: Can these people connect? Can we tear them the part and bring them together? Can we have this insight into the character? That's the stuff that makes me wanna make a film, not like, 'Oh, and then there’s a cool plot twist.' Though I have to sort of have a mind for that.

Whedon: No, we make them as close as we can. The stunt guy - we make allowances for the shape of his face and padding and things that we’re putting on him. But they’re not meant to look different. One of the guys draws something unbelievably beautiful, and we try to create that in real life, and it takes a long time. The first tests were very Violet Beauregarde [from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]. And it

really took a long time to get to a place where we felt like - even though we will work on him in post- that he walks on, and we go, 'Oh, it’s a Vision - my God.'Yeah, I wanted Paul to play this part since before I wanted to make Avengers movies. He’s just got, let’s face it, it’s about cheek bones, people.You know, in the Marvel universe, there's a lot of Frankensteins. We have Steve Rogers himself, one of the better-looking Frankensteins of our era. And yeah, there's an element to that. There's a lot of people, whether they're trying to do good or bad, who think they have the next big idea. And the next big idea is usually a very bad one.Continue on for more on Ultron, Hulk, and the Age of Miracles...