We’re now only about four months or so away from the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the sequel to the 2012 movie which earned $1.5 billion at the box office and received almost unanimous critical acclaim.

The movie will add a number of new Avengers to the roster, with Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and The Vision the three biggest additions. Talking to a number of journalists on the set of the movie, director Joss Whedon had this to say about nailing the look of the fan-favourite android known as The Vision!

“What usually happens is, one of the guys, Ryan Meinderding or one of the guys on his staff 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 Beaurogarde. It really took a long time to get to a place where we felt like… even though we will work on him in post… he walks on and we go, “Oh, it’s The Vision! My God!'” That reaction is a result of The Vision being brought to life practically rather than fully with motion capture and special effects like Ultron.

“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 Ultron and he has to create the Vision, and then, that has to be Paul Bettany.” (laughter) It took me three years before I could tell Paul that I’d had that conversation, but after that, I stopped. I was like, “That would be cool if there’s you have Ultron and you have Vision and Paul played him.”

Quicksilver (who you may remember from X-Men: Days of Future Past) and Scarlet Witch are X-Men characters – whose film rights are owned by Fox – Marvel Studios are also allowed to use, and Whedon revealed that he’snot letting the speedster’s debut in Bryan Singer’s movie impact his approach.

He also shed some light on why he chose to include these characters in Avengers: Age of Ultron and how they may have received their powers in the mutant-less Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Strucker’s been doing experiments, and he’s got the scepter, and he’s been using alien tech to do them. Scarlet Witch and Pietro…They’re from my era, they’re very different, their powers are different, it’s not all punching, it gives a different palettes, we can do more interesting things, it’s fun; those things were absolutes.”

One of the biggest stars of The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble as it was known here) was The Hulk, and it’s surprising that he hasn’t received his own movie since 2012 and wasn’t given one in Phase 3. Whedon had this to say about Marvel’s decision not to give The Hulk a movie and how that impacts the sequel.

“Well, I wasn’t the one who said, “Don’t make a Hulk film” or anything like that. Kevin said to me, “We think right now it’s good to have somebody that you can only have in the Avengers.” There may be rights issues, I have no idea. Everybody loves Mark. He’s phenomenal, but the fact there hasn’t been a Hulk since that Hulk doesn’t suck. My job is hard enough, you know. Cap’s had a movie, Thor’s had a movie. Everyone’s gone through big changes, Iron Man’s had a movie, so I have to juggle everybody’s perception of that while still making a movie that you can see having not seen any except the first Avengers or not even that.”