Thanks to the Mind Stone and its raw, untold power, Paul Bettany’s J.A.R.V.I.S. transformed into the Vision during the course of Avengers: Age of Ultron and became something different. Something more…
Since that mystical evolution, J.A.R.V.I.S. 2.0 Vision has grown into one of the MCU’s most important characters, and his close relationship with Wanda Maximoff (AKA Scarlet Witch) will undoubtedly bring a touch of romance and heart to the otherwise apocalyptic Avengers: Infinity War.
However that may be, it seems Bettany’s Avenger almost looked completely different for his MCU debut back in 2015. Via Entertainment Weekly, Marvel Studios mainstay Ryan Meinerding has debuted a series of concept art that shows alternate designs for Vision, Gamora, Nebula, Captain America and Mantis, the curious ally who joined the Guardians of the Galaxy in time for their second cosmic adventure.
When it comes to Vision, in particular, Meinerding confirmed that during the creation of Age of Ultron, Joss Whedon pushed for a human-esque color scheme:
Director Joss [Whedon] really wanted Vision to stay human-colored. He really wanted him to look like Paul Bettany with the bit of styling on him, and when we did versions of that, it seemed hard to make that look cool and interesting.
He continued:
In my opinion, it’s much, much more difficult to find the first version of the character — more or less because the tone of those movies are still being worked out. We have to do a bunch of versions just to get in the ballpark of what the visuals are gonna be and what the tone of the movie is gonna be.
If you haven’t done so already, we’d strongly recommend giving Ryan Meinerding’s Instagram a follow. This is, after all, a concept artist who has been rendering all sorts of Marvel-themed goodness since the early days of the MCU – Meinerding’s work can be traced back to the first Iron Man movie from 2008 – and his personal feed is often a treasure trove of artwork and superhero trivia.
Besides, with Marvel still holding fire on that second (and perhaps final?) trailer for Avengers: Infinity War, we’ll take any MCU content that we can find.
