Avengers 2 Baron Strucker Actor Has A Multi-Film Deal

[RossaLincoln]

Avengers 2 Baron Strucker Actor Has A Multi-Film Deal

Don't Worry, true believers, there's going to be plenty of Baron Wolfgang von Strucker to go around.

It's well known by now that Thomas Kretschmann has been signed up for a brief appearance at the beginning of The Avengers: Age of Ultron as Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. As described so far - von Strucker battles The Avengers in the beginning of the film and mainly serves to introduce Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch - the part sounds more like an easter egg for Marvel superfans than a character with lasting impact on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But au contraire im Gegenteil, meine Freunde! It turns out Marvel has big plans for the Baron.

"I have a multi-picture deal which means I will not only appear in the 2nd part," Kretschmann said in an interview with B.Z. Berlin [http://www.bz-berlin.de/aktuell/berlin/darum-mag-er-seine-ex-jetzt-lieber-als-frueher-article1807073.html], "but they're planning with me for a longer period of time. But I don't know details yet, they're keeping their cards close to their chest - top secret!"

This could mean absolutely nothing, of course. Marvel may simply have wanted to lock him down to future pictures just in case. But given the trajectory of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far, it feels quite likely we'll see much more of the character than a cameo in Avengers 2.

In the comics, Baron von Strucker starts out as a high ranking Nazi and the Red Skull's right hand man. After World War II and the apparent death of Red Skull, Strucker escapes postwar justice and, thanks to injections of an age-retarding serum, he serves as leader of the HYDRA organization and as an evil counterpart to Nick Fury throughout several incarnations of Marvel continuity. And just in case the fact that he's evil isn't clear, he favors a monocle, and his weapon of choice is a glove called "the Satan Claw."

This presents the interesting possibility that HYDRA is being developed as a foil for S.H.I.E.L.D. in Marvel Phase 3. Strucker didn't appear in Captain America: The First Avenger, and so far the Marvel films haven't spent much time using the events of that film as anything other than backstory. But characters from that film play a huge part in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (surely we all know by now who the Winter Soldier is, right?). Further, rumors that S.H.I.E.L.D. is disbanded during the events of CA:TWS, not to mention the fact that trailers for the film have already "spoiled" the possibility that Nick Fury dies during the film, should be enough to assume big plans. If The Winter Soldier is around, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that more of Cap's WWII-era enemies are waiting to poke their heads into the modern world.

My guess is that at minimum, von Strucker's agelessness turns out to be the result, like so much in the MCU, of experiments like the one that created Captain America's super soldier serum. I'm also willing to bet that with the MCU clearly leading toward the Infinity Gauntlet storyline as its climax, establishing HYDRA as a credible threat paves the way for the organization to ally with Thanos in some capacity, similar to how Loki did in the first Avengers film. We will see in good time.

What do you think, readers? Let's wildly speculate in comments, shall we?

Via Comic Book Movie [http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/MarvelFreshman/news/?a=95366].

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[Fappy]

Baron Strucker's best scene in any comic was when he got brutally murdered... or, wait, I guess that's Nick Fury's best scene.

Spoiler

Secret Warriors was a cool fucking book.

 

[PuckFuppet]

I always thought Viper would make an interesting character on film.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

What's the lead up for Avengers 2? Before we had Avengers, we had all the establishing films setting up for the movie. Is Age of Ultron going to be an origin story for the robot, or will it be setup in Captain America or some other movie to be released before Avengers 2?

But yeah, Fury doesn't die. He has entire warehouses filled with his Life Model Decoys.

 

[RossaLincoln]

What's the lead up for Avengers 2? Before we had Avengers, we had all the establishing films setting up for the movie. Is Age of Ultron going to be an origin story for the robot, or will it be setup in Captain America or some other movie to be released before Avengers 2?

But yeah, Fury doesn't die. He has entire warehouses filled with his Life Model Decoys.

My thinking: Age of Ultron will indeed establish an origin story for Vision. Since Paul Bettany is portraying Vision, and since he's already the voice of JARVIS, I think they'll be the same character, and probably Ultron will cause havoc with Vision before Vision finally manages to be saved and made an official avenger. I suspect that the events of Avengers 2 will set up a world in which people lose their trust in super heroes considerably, and I think there's going to be at least one element borrowed from the Civil War arc by the time we get to Avengers 3 which everyone expects to involve Thanos.

Incidentally, we have Captain America 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy still to come before Avengers 2. I feel pretty strongly that the theme linking the marvel phase two movies together is the post-invasion society, with everyone aware that super powered individuals exist and how society changes in response to that.

 

[Osaka117]

I want HYDRA to be in the Marvel cinematic universe so bad it hurts. Really I just want it to be more like the Earths Mightiest Heroes cartoon since it was so great. Ironically it was cancelled and replaced with a (shitty) show that more resembled the movies, but soon enough the movies are gonna look more like EMH, especially if HYDRA does become the villains in phase 3.

 

[MovieBob]

Here's the thing: Marvel signs basically everyone to multi-film deals, just in case - it's not necessarily because they plan on using them. By their nature, these threads are designed to be there if they decide they need them. Example: "THE INCREDIBLE HULK" set up the origin of a major villain that doesn't seem super-likely to actually pay off because the film was the "under-performer" of the first phase and they wound up re-working their Hulk again. The important thing is whether any of these are contracts that garauntee the actor's work as opposed to obliging them to appear in future films IF said films are made, and I can near-garauntee you none of these people are getting that first kind.

That said, if he really does have just a glorified cameo in "AVENGERS 2" but they're already putting him on contract solid enough to be made public? That's kind of interesting, since they don't really know that audiences will like this character or want him back yet and the film is still a long way off. What that likely means is that he's already filmmed a scene for another film. "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" had a week of quick last-minute reshoots a month or so back and that's the last Marvel movie that's going to take place on this planet before "AVENGERS 2" so... yeah, do the math: 10 to 1 odds that Von Strucker and maybe Quicksilver & Scarlett Witch show up there - probably at the very end or in a mid-credits scene.

See, in the comics, Strucker has (his own) twin super-powered children as his primary henchmen. Since Marvel/Disney isn't allowed to touch anything Mutant related while Fox is still making "X-MEN" movies, I imagine this will become Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch's new origin story - allowing them to preserve the most interesting part of their characters, i.e. being former villains whose father still is one, without having to keep making winking allusions to characters they can't name.

 

[RossaLincoln]

Here's the thing: Marvel signs basically everyone to multi-film deals, just in case - it's not necessarily because they plan on using them. By their nature, these threads are designed to be there if they decide they need them. Example: "THE INCREDIBLE HULK" set up the origin of a major villain that doesn't seem super-likely to actually pay off because the film was the "under-performer" of the first phase and they wound up re-working their Hulk again. The important thing is whether any of these are contracts that garauntee the actor's work as opposed to obliging them to appear in future films IF said films are made, and I can near-garauntee you none of these people are getting that first kind.

That said, if he really does have just a glorified cameo in "AVENGERS 2" but they're already putting him on contract solid enough to be made public? That's kind of interesting, since they don't really know that audiences will like this character or want him back yet and the film is still a long way off. What that likely means is that he's already filmmed a scene for another film. "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" had a week of quick last-minute reshoots a month or so back and that's the last Marvel movie that's going to take place on this planet before "AVENGERS 2" so... yeah, do the math: 10 to 1 odds that Von Strucker and maybe Quicksilver & Scarlett Witch show up there - probably at the very end or in a mid-credits scene.

See, in the comics, Strucker has (his own) twin super-powered children as his primary henchmen. Since Marvel/Disney isn't allowed to touch anything Mutant related while Fox is still making "X-MEN" movies, I imagine this will become Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch's new origin story - allowing them to preserve the most interesting part of their characters, i.e. being former villains whose father still is one, without having to keep making winking allusions to characters they can't name.

Ding ding ding ding ding.

Which is to say, I think you've just cracked the code.