Posts Tagged ‘Aaron Taylor-Johnson’

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth OlsenI’ve already commented that it was official due to other reputable sources, but now it’s official!official with Marvel itself signing off on the casting.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen have officially joined the Avengers family as the brother-sister duo of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” the highly-anticipated sequel to 2012’s smash-hit “Marvel’s The Avengers”! “Avengers: Age of Ultron” arrives in theaters May 1, 2015.

Taylor-Johnson broke out with his roles as Dave Lizewski in the “Kick-Ass” franchise and with his portrayal of a young John Lennon in “Nowhere Boy,” for which he won an Empire Award for Best Newcomer. Since then, Taylor Johnson has starred in 2012’s critically-acclaimed “Anna Karenina” and director Oliver Stone’s “Savages.”

Since making her big screen debut in 2011 with “Silent House” and “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” for which the actress garnered a number of awards and nominations, Olsen has gone on to star alongside the likes of Robert DeNiro and Sigourney Weaver in “Red Lights,” Josh Brolin and Samuel L. Jackson in director Spike Lee’s “Oldboy.”

Taylor-Johnson and Olsen will share the screen as leads in the highly anticipated “Godzilla” remake scheduled for a May 2014 release.

“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.

In addition to “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” Marvel Studios will release a slate of films based on the Marvel characters including “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” on April 4, 2014; “Guardians of the Galaxy” on August 1, 2014; and “Ant-Man” on July 31, 2015.

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Elle Style Awards, London, Britain - 11 Feb 2013It was pretty much a sure thing, though still classified as ‘rumor’, but the casting for Scarlet Witch seems to have finally been confirmed by the Witch herself.

Elizabeth Olsen Finally Confirms ‘Avengers: Age Of Ultron’ Role via MTV

“Avengers” director Joss Whedon has been very open about his intentions to include brother-sister duo Scarlet and Quicksilver in his upcoming sequel “Age of Ultron,” but confirming who will play the sibling has been a little more difficult to pin down.

“Kick-Ass” star Aaron Taylor-Johnson was first mentioned as a contender for the role of Quicksilver this summer and was finally confirmed for the part last month (via The Wrap). He was said to be joined by his “Godzilla” co-star Elizabeth Olsen, in a report from Bleeding Cool in August, but an official confirmation was harder to come by for Scarlet Witch.

Samuel L. Jackson’s comments to The Wall Street Journal seemed to have confirmed that Olsen would appear with him in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” but now the actress herself has shared her excited about joining the project with MTV News’ Josh Horowitz.

Speaking with MTV News at the junket for “Oldboy,” Olsen joked that Jackson had freed her from refusing to talk about the project by confirming her role. She said that she doesn’t know too much about “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” but that she’s excited to work with Taylor-Johnson again.

“We get to play husband and wife, and we get to play twin brother and sister,” she said. “It’s also fun because even though in ‘Godzilla’ we play husband and wife, we don’t have a lot of scenes together. I just love him. I love his family. I love his kids. I’m so excited…to actually work with each other. I think it’s going to be fun.”

Olsen also mentioned her soon-to-be director, Whedon, who she was quick to compliment. “He’s very smart. He’s too smart. He might be too smart,” she said. “Some people are too smart for their own good, but he’s amazing.”

“Avengers: Age of Ultron” opens in theaters on May 1, 2015.

While I’m not against the casting in and of itself… this basically confirms that the Maximoff twins are being stripped of most of their classic characterizations as Romani/Eastern European and being turned into ‘edgy British’. I understand Marvel!Disney had to tread water lightly since they can’t use ‘Magneto’ or ‘mutant’ in the film, but that doesn’t excuse changing the Maximoff’s nationality as it is wholly separate from their mutant status. The twins where Avengers long before they were ever discovered to be Magneto’s children and being mutants is just an excuse for them to have powers. The filmmakers could literally translate the twins onto the big screen with almost no changes from their comic book form just by saying ‘magic/experimental thingy’ instead of ‘mutant’.

There are only three reasons for them to be doing this:

  1. They don’t think the audience would want to see POC characters.
  2. They don’t want to make the effect to do POC characters correctly (or risk backlash from screwing them up).
  3. They are pissed about the license issue and deciding to completely remake these characters as some kind of thumb-nose to Fox.

None of these reasons are acceptable.

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Aaron Taylor-JohnsonOkay, if ‘sources close to the production’ of Avengers 2 is to be believed as reported by The Wrap, then Whedon and Marvel/Disney are looking to cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Quicksilver. He’s the right age, British, and knows a little bit about being an action super-hero because he plays Dave Lizewski aka Kick Ass.

Kick Ass is of course the title character of the Kick Ass comics owned by Marvel.

A comic written by Mark Millar… who is Fox’s ‘consultant’ for their Marvel/super hero films, although it’s unclear just how much input or direction he has had on Days of Future Past.

It would be even crazier if Kick Ass was a Fox film but it was distributed domestically by Lionsgate, the sequel by Universal.

Now, the casting rumor is coming quite soon after Bryan Singer tweeted his now edited Avengers tweet announcing Quicksilver had already been cast for Days of Future Past, which in turn came only weeks after Whedon confirmed Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will be in Avengers 2.

This could all be a coincidence but when they start to stack up…

While I still give Singer the benefit of the doubt on his using Quicksilver (considering early rumors where that the First Class sequel was going to center more on Magneto it makes sense his son would be included so Quicksilver could have been planned from the very beginning), it makes me wonder if we’ll be seeing a lot more little ‘pokes and prods’. Neither studio want to look like bullies, already Marvel/Disney has egg on its face with the issues surrounding how much they pay their lead actors, so I doubt things will get too heated in any way.

Though I am very much interested to see just how far this Cold War might extend between these two companies… and how many other characters might get dragged into the mix.

As for Aaron, to be honest, I’ve only ever seen him in Kick Ass and from what I’ve seen there… I’ve got no quarrel with this casting choice.

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