Where to watch Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Trivia & production notes

• Director Joss Whedon cited The Godfather Part II as his model for balancing accessibility and continuity, aiming to make a film that worked whether viewers had seen the previous MCU films or not.
• Robert Downey Jr. was not initially under contract to return for the sequel because his four-picture deal with Marvel expired after Iron Man 3.
• An early draft of the screenplay featured Captain Marvel, but she was removed before the character had been cast, with visual effects plates of her flying into Avengers Headquarters later repurposed for Wanda Maximoff instead.
• The filmmakers shot visual effects of the Hulk's Quinjet near Saturn at the end of the film to avoid fueling rumors about a Planet Hulk adaptation, which Marvel had no plans for at the time.
• The film's subtitle comes from a comic book miniseries, but the plot was drawn from decades of Avengers story arcs rather than directly adapting that specific comic.
• Ultron's origin was changed so that Hank Pym would not create him, partly because director Edgar Wright had character rights through Ant-Man which was already in development.
• Joss Whedon included Pietro and Wanda Maximoff partly because their powers of superspeed and telekinesis offered visual possibilities that addressed challenges he faced with portraying strong abilities in the first Avengers film.
• James Spader was cast as Ultron in August 2013, while Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson were confirmed to play Wanda and Pietro Maximoff in November.
• Paul Bettany, who had previously only voiced J.A.R.V.I.S. in MCU films, was cast as Vision in early 2014.
• Whedon described managing all the film's characters as harder than anything he had done before, noting that unlike teams like the X-Men, the Avengers are disparate and don't naturally belong together.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Avengers: Age of Ultron, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.