Marvel's presence at SDCC indicated they had some big presentations fir their forthcoming movie projects. But would it eclipse DC's Superman/Batman news? Marvel actually had several panels, bringing out almost the entire casts of Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men: Days of Future Past and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
But the most interesting information was saved for the end of Saturday's presentations when Joss Whedon came out to give more details about the next Avengers movie. It will be entitled Avengers: Age of Ultron and looks to be partly-inspired by the limited series comics that ran through the early part of 2013 and featured Hank Pym's creation 'Ultron' as an artificial intelligence that pretty much destroyed the planet and needed the survivors to travel back through time to change not only the outcome of the decisive battle but perhaps his original creation many years previously.
It is almost guaranteed that the film will differ significantly from the original story for several obvious reasons. A major hook of the comic was the time-travel aspect and Marvel may be wary of using a similar thread that appears in the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past which comes from Twentieth Century Fox. Equally, the main 'hero' of the comic was Wolverine, workimg with the Avengers.. the very character who we now know IS the character sent back through time in Days of Future Past. So either it will be a different time-travelling character in the Avengers film or the time-travel aspect may be put aside for a more simple good-guys-vs-robot angle.
The Days of Future Past panel confirmed that Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage WILL be playing Trask, the man who originally created the mutant-hunting Sentinels which have caused so much trouble for Marvel's heroes over the years. Singer has also revealed that there are scenes between the past and future future versions of key characters and that the time-travel aspect WILL change the existing films' timeline (and thus likely to help clear up some of the debris left from The Last Stand?). Singer later tweeted the below image of his gathered cast...
On the other hand - and at the other end of the action genre - The Winter Soldier presentation gave us footage that included our hero taking out an elevator full of bad guys and seemingly reflecting the more earthy political/spy tone that has been talked about for the sequel.
