While Marvel pulled out some awesome surprises during their movie panel on Saturday night, none topped the final announcement of the night from Joss Whedon. The director of ‘The Avengers’ and executive producer of ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ took the stage to premiere a brief teaser for ‘The Avengers 2’, which is now called ‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron’.

After spending time on ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’, ‘Thor: The Dark World’, and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, Kevin Feige shifted the panel’s focus to the crowning jewel of Phase Two by revealing the very surprising subtitle for the next movie featuring Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. SuperHeroHype has a description of the footage shown at the panel:

It begins outside an alien temple. A man approaches. The Avengers footage is super quick, featuring lines from the first Avengers. Slowly, CGI images form of Ultron’s face. Then the title comes up. THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON.

Since this sequel shares it’s title with recent Marvel Comics crossover by Brian Michael Bendis, questions immediately arose from fans everywhere about how close it would resemble ‘Age of Ultron’, which wasn’t really received as well as it could have been. There was also chatter about the involvement of Ultron’s creator, Hank Pym AKA Ant-Man, who is set to make his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Edgar Wright’s Phase Three film. According to Comic Book Movie, Whedon cleared up and quelled those concerns right away:

“Well, because there was a book called ‘Age of Ultron’ quite recently, a lot of people have assumed that is what we’re doing, but that is not the case. We’re doing our own version of the origin story for Ultron. In the origin story, there was Hank Pym, so a lot of people assumed that he will be in the mix. He’s not. We’re basically taking the things from the comics for the movies that we need and can use. A lot of stuff has to fall by the wayside.”

Whoa, hold on. Hank Pym isn’t in the mix for ‘Age of Ultron’? That’s a bit questionable, especially since that’s like one of his big claims to fame in Marvel history besides having a pretty bad temper and relationship issues. If not Pym, then Tony Stark might be the most obvious candidate since he’s already created sentient versions of his armor as seen in ‘Iron Man 3’. Whedon comments on this change by repeating the sentiment that stories tend to change as they move through different mediums:

“We’re crafting our own version of it where his origin comes more directly from The Avengers we already know about. It’s a little bit darker than the other film because Ultron is in the house. There’s a science fiction theme that wasn’t there in the other one. Ultron is definitely something that evolves, so we’re going to get together a couple of different iterations. Nothing can be translated exactly as it was from the comics; particularly Ultron.”

Finally, the godfather of the Marvel Cinematic Universe revealed that his next Marvel movie has a very global feel to it, plus a lot more Hawkeye:

“It’s very much a global Avengers film. A lot of the movie has to do with their place not just in America, but the world. Part of the fun for me, definitely this time around, is writing Hawkeye. He did get possessed pretty early by a bad guy and had to walk around all scowly for most of the movie so now it’s nice to actually have the character there and see him interact with the other guys.”

Considering his noticeable absence in other Phase Two movies (as far as we know), I’m glad to hear that Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton is getting some screen time in the finale film. On the other hand, I’m not so sure that I’m down with Ultron’s creation being transferred to someone else. I’m not really one to be a stickler for canon since I understand that things need to be changed to fit into the cinematic versions of the stories, but this is a pretty big thing to change. Joss is boss, so I trust him and his vision for Marvel Studios, but until I see more details about what’s going on, I’m almost on the fence about it.

What about you, True Believers? What do you think about ‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron’? Are you glad that Joss Whedon isn’t borrowing from the recent comic storyline? What are your thoughts on more Hawkeye? Let us know in the comments.

‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron’ assembles in theaters on May 1, 2015.