Vision

Finally, after tons of promotional drawings and concept arts, we had our first glimpse of the last new member of the team appearing in Avengers: Age of Ultron. At the very end of the new trailer, a red-faced guy opens his eyes, and that means only one thing: The Vision has arrived. We still know pretty little of him in the movie: he’ll be an android as in the comics, but we don’t know if he’ll be built by Ultron as a henchman or by Tony Stark as a counter to Ultron. We do know, however, that he’ll be the embodiment of Stark’s artificial intelligence J.A.R.V.I.S., and that’s why he’ll be portrayed by Paul Bettany (who voiced J.A.R.V.I.S. in the previous movies). This is but the first glimpse of quite a popular superhero in the Marvel Universe, and waiting to have more, or to learn more of the live action version of the character, let’s see who the original Vision is.

Collecting failure after failure in his personal crusade against his “father” Hank Pym and all the Avengers, the artificial intelligence Ultron decided he would have exacted his vengeance by creating a “son” of his own. He kidnapped the genius roboticist Phineas Horton, and forced him to modify the copy of his original Human Torch android created by Immortus to transform it into a loyal servant to him. Following Ultron’s instructions, Horton modified Torch’s mechanical body and even cells, giving the new android powers the Torch didn’t have, such as density shifting powers. However, Horton secretly didn’t erase the Human Torch’s memory, and when the android was activated for the first time, he had Jim Hammond‘s thoughts and personality. Enraged for Horton’s betrayal, Ultron killed the scientist, only to face an enraged “Human Torch” soon after. Ultron defeated the android, and reprogrammed it using the brain patterns of a deceased adventurer and Avenger, Wonder Man; he then implanted a control crystal so that he could keep his “son” in check. When the synthezoid was ready, Ultron sent him into battle against his enemies, and the Wasp gave him his name, Vision (she claimed he had appeared as a “inhuman vision”). During the battle, the Avengers recognized some trait belonging to their fallen teammate Wonder Man, and convinced the Vision to switch sides and to betray his master and creator Ultron. What neither the Avengers or Vision knew was that even the latter’s betrayal was part of Ultron’s plan: through the control crystal he had implanted in his creation’s mind, Ultron was spying his enemies for all the time Vision was with them, and collected data to bring them down once and for all. When the Avengers discovered a way to manipulate world’s hardest metal, adamantium (the same of Wolverine‘s skeleton), Ultron decided it was time for his prodigal son to come back, and he controlled him into stealing adamantium from his “friends” and to bring it to him, to build a new body for his master. The Vision could do nothing but to obey Ultron, and he provided him with a new, indestructible body in which the evil robot transferred his conscience.

Now virtually invincible, Ultron attacked the Avengers with renovated ferocity, this time with the Vision at his side. Years with the Avengers, however, had deeply modified the synthezoid’s original programming, especially considering that he had grown close to one of his teammates, the mutant witch Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch. Seeing his friends in danger, Vision snapped out of Ultron’s control and rebelled once more, this time for real, and used the phasing powers his “father” himself had given him to defeat his otherwise impenetrable body. Following this battle, Vision fully became an Avenger, and his relation with Wanda deepened to the point they fell in love, and eventually married. After a long honeymoon in the island of Rurutu, Wanda used her hex powers to get pregnant, despite the fact that her husband was actually a mechanical being. She gave birth to twins, William and Thomas, and the Vision became a father against all odds. Vision became the new leader of the Avengers, but he was constantly monitored by the US Army, following an incident during which a malfunction of the control crystal had led him to seize control of the planet’s computers; following this, some paranoid soldiers (actually manipulated by Immortus) kidnapped the synthezoid and dismantled him. While Hank Pym was able to rebuild his body, the reborn Wonder Man refused to have his brain pattern being used again to provide the android his emotions, being supported in this by some other Avengers. The new Vision was an emotionless droid, and his inability to feel anything put his marriage with the Scarlet Witch at risk. The final blow to their relationship came when Master Pandemonium, a deranged sorcerer who worked for the demon Mephisto, kidnapped their children and killed them, stripping from them the part of Mephisto’s soul Wanda had unwillingly used to call them to existence and giving it back to his master. Wanda nearly went mad following the event, and an emotionless husband was of no help: the two separated, serving into different teams of Avengers. From that moment, Vision started a personal odyssey to regain his emotions, and while Wonder Man’s pattern gradually reemerged, the synthozoid was even granted the gift of a new brain pattern, belonging to the deceased son of his friend, the scientist Miles Lipton. Vision was now a step closer to becoming fully human.

The Vision is a synthezoid, an android built with Horton Cells composed not of mechanisms and gears, but of synthetic organs and tissues in everything equal to human beings’ ones, apart from the fact that they’re much stronger and more durable. Vision is a loyal and good-hearted synthetic man, who conquered his own humanity in years of fatigue and suffering: he clings to the emotions he has discovered and learnt to know, with the constant fear of one day losing them. As a synthezoid, his body grants him a variety of powers apart from superhuman physical attributes: he can fly, he can manipulate his body density to become extremely heavy and nearly impenetrable or to phase through solid objects, he can absorb and manipulate solar energy mostly in the form of blasts and beams thanks to his solar jewel, and he’s able to connect his mind to other computers and systems and to control them to a certain extent. He’s also super intelligent, and he can turn himself invisible or project holograms that allow him to “shapeshift”. Always trying to balance his artificial nature with his ambition to become fully human, the Vision is a loyal member of the Avengers, who learnt by rebelling to his father and master Ultron the first step into becoming human: free will.