After serving as Tony Stark’s loyal and delightfully sarcastic AI assistant for three movies, British actor Paul Bettany was given a chance to shine in this year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, evolving from the resolute Jarvis into an all-powerful being known as the Vision. Upending the dynamic of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Bettany’s deity is poised to make a return for Joe and Anthony Russo’s Captain America: Civil War, and the actor himself recently touched base on the threequel’s almighty scope.
But beneath the superhero pizzazz, Bettany pointed to the timely themes of oppression and global politics, and how such issues will hopefully create a summer film that is much more layered than your standard blockbuster fare.
[zerg]Doing the press rounds for his directorial debut, Shelter, Bettany was naturally quizzed about his part in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by the folks over at Collider. First up, here’s what he had to share about creating a timely feature.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun. I think it’s really interesting, the way that a huge, epic superhero extravaganza is discussing a really interesting question, which is about people unilaterally going into other people’s countries and their intervention there. It’s actually an interesting thing to talk about in a massive forum like that.”
In terms of his character specifically, though, the actor noted that the allegiance of every hero isn’t as binary as the marketing material would have you believe, which is hardly surprising given the capricious nature of the Vision as a character.
“What I love about my character is that there are so many places for him to go. I think he’s very interested in what it means to be human and what love is. The only way one can guarantee one’s loyalty is love. Loyalty is beyond logic, really. Logic doesn’t really provide for loyalty. If your logic changes suddenly and things not make sense, you can alter your allegiance, but love stops you from being able to do that.”
Captain America: Civil War hits on May 6, 2016, and now that the Russo brothers are putting the final touches to the film’s maiden trailer, we can surely expect to get our first glimpse of the superhero showdown sooner rather than later.
