Avengers: Age of Ultron

[Cheap21]

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[DRW50]

Pietro looks 50.

That's just Whedon I guess.

I have a feeling he'll take a hacksaw to Wanda too (who is dressed like she just got out of The Craft - how edgy!!), but it can't be any worse than what the comics did to her.

[Mr. Vixen]

Elisabeth Olsen looks fierce as hell. Love it

[DRW50]

She's an attractive lady, it's just that the character and her background aren't really suited to be Goth Talk.

At least they put her in red.

[Mr. Vixen]

I'm not familiar with the character. I love the comic/sip hero movies but I was never into comic books. So I can't make a judgement on how she "should" look based on that, but I can say that IMO she looks great and I can't wait to see what she brings to the franchise.

[Cheap21]

There's various interpretations of the character and they have chosen to do one which you may not agree with. I think you need to let go of your preconceived notions of what she should be and look at her for who she is. You never know as she/they just might surprise you

I felt a similar type of way with the casting of SJ as Black Widow but she ended up being one of the best thing about the first film. Im very excited to see MO as Scarlet Witch and the glimpse in TWS and now this give me good hope

[DRW50]

She might. With Whedon in charge, it's tough to believe, but who knows. As I said, it can't be any worse than what the comics have done.

[Skin]

There is precedent for goth Wanda, though. I kind of liked, X Men Evolution's version of her. That said this will most likely just be a feel good popcorn film like the last one was.

[quartermainefan]

The Scarlet Witch was a character any soap fan could love. In the very early 70s the writers started using her to tell serialized stories apart from the usual super adventures. I remember first she fell in love with a synthetic man only to find her brother couldn't accept that and refused to talk to her, then the synthetic man who had no emotions fell in love with her but felt he was unworthy of her for the longest time. When he finally realized he could love he got tempted by another woman. Then they got married and had kids, but he developed amnesia and her kids were killed when it turned out they were not really her kids after all but magical illusions used against her. Then the amnesiatic synthetic husband couldn't love her anymore like she wanted.

Then years later it looked like the woman who tried to steal her husband returned with her suddenly not dead kids out for revenge and all grown up. Anytime The Avengers had a big story and they needed a human element to personalize the story, they would always use the Scarlet Witch.

[DRW50]

Well said. I could tell a dozen stories about why I loved the character when I read Marvel comics, but this is for the movie and nobody wants to hear that. I will say the best part of her was the contrast between a woman who was both polite and kind yet also blunt and sarcastic and extremely powerful - so powerful she was very afraid of what she might do or be and it took years before she really began to test her limits.

One of my favorite scenes was when Steve and Tony were arguing and she hexed a chair right between them, then told them, essentially, that no one had time for their macho bullshit, serious things were going on.

[Vee]

I think the Scarlet Witch is a really fascinating character. But I never trusted her as a hero.

This woman literally made up her own children out of magic, convinced herself they were real and then they got wished out of existence. The minute I saw that (and her many other turns to the dark side) I thought she was nuts and that the Avengers were crazy to trust their lives to her, and this was when I was little, like 25 years ago. But she's a fascinating character, because for so many reasons the Witch is always on that knife's edge between self-loathing mutanthood and all her neuroses and pathology, both from her father and from her weird upbringing and her godlike powers. She wants to do right but she often doesn't do it. She is torn between the human man and a machine she truly wants, between being a mutant and one of America's premiere heroes, the abandoned daughter of a terrorist, a black magician, etc etc.

When Brian Michael Bendis posited that Wanda had lost her mind and gone berserk in the 2000s to disassemble the Avengers, I could take issue with the continuity for the story (re: Wanda's memories and such) and the characterizations in his storyline, which Bendis has never bothered much with beyond his own very selective interpretation. But the twist itself? I completely believed it. As a Marvel fan for most of my life, I was amazed it had not happened sooner. Wanda is a time bomb, she always has been.

I am glad they have fixed the character up and brought her back into the fold, but to me she remains very dicey psychologically. Which is really one of the cornerstones of so many classic Marvel heroes. Elizabeth Olsen played this sort of character perfectly in so many of her films, especially Martha Marcy May Marlene, so I think she is a perfect choice for the role. (I also really doubt that is her final outfit; it's just a skirt and a jacket.)

[quartermainefan]

I haven't followed her in over 20 years but when I think of her, I think of stuff like this:

which has been choreographed like your typical soap scene with she watching her man fall for another woman.

and then to keep it soapy the mantrap tried to reel him in

And it is stories like that that is what made Wanda fun years ago, not her crazy powers. They were able to tell all kinds of soap opera stories about her that they could never do with more famous and established characters.

[DRW50]

I never got the point of giving them children in the first place, but there were other ways to get out of it. I don't think she or The Vision (who was dissolved and put into that boring white form because the theme of the Marvel of the late 80s was tearing down and tearing down, even if the result was never as interesting as what had been before) ever recovered as characters. I never bought any of that stuff. The whole, "she's going crazy cause she can't have her babeeez!" material is not for me. I'm not going to act like she was ever this big feminist heroine, but she was not a baby hungry lunatic who had to be protected from herself by everyone around her or else she would go on a killing spree. There are shades of gray which most of the writing never tried to touch, unfortunately.

The Mantis story was such hilariously cheesy soap opera, one where you could see the old romance comics background of many of the writers still with the company at the time. I think she and Mantis got in a catfight at one point.

[Cheap21]

"baby hungry lunatic" LOL...that's a line that would describe her as a soap character of today. Making her a murderer of mass genocide over friggin non-existent magical babies ruined her IMO

[Mr. Vixen]

OMG this is all so juicy! Now I want a damn Scarlet Witch biopic!