Avenger: Age of Ultron pits Earth’s mightiest superheroes against a self-aware, self-teaching, self-replicating artificial intelligence with a mission to wipe out the entire human race

Avengers: Age of Ultron is set for release on May 1 as already announced by Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, in 2D and in IMAX 3D. In the upcoming sequel to 2012's Marvel's The Avengers, earth's mightiest superheroes will be seen pushed to the brink of their limits. As told by director and writer Joss Whedon to Entertainment Weekly, "With the first 'Avengers,' everybody pretty much had the power to punch somebody. And now [in the sequel] we have a woman who can get inside your head and move objects, and a boy who can move faster than anything, and a robot who can replicate and is out of his mind. So all of a sudden, it's a darker, weirder, tougher world that they're living in."

In the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie, the woman who can get inside people's head and move objects with her will is Scarlet Witch (played by Elizabeth Olsen) while the boy who can move faster than anything is her fraternal twin Quicksilver (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The crazy robot who can replicate is the Ultron (played by James Spader) in the movie's title and who ironically was created by Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) himself to help out in restoring peace and order following the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D. as a result of the mayhem witnessed in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Still, in another talk with Empire, Whedon got to further describe his own film version of Marvel's comic book Ultron, saying: "I'm having a blast with Ultron. He's not a creature of logic - he's a robot who's genuinely disturbed. We're finding out what makes him menacing and at the same time endearing and funny and strange and unexpected, and everything a robot never is." Whedon's Ultron, to complete his team of baddies, creates the Vision, a solar-powered synthetic humanoid who can fly, discharge energy beams and alter his body's density. Interestingly, the Vision will be played by Paul Bettany who was the voice actor behind JARVIS, Tony Starks' own AI assistant in Iron Man 3.

Aside from Downey, Spader, Bettany, Olsen and Taylor-Johnson, The Avengers: Age of Ultron returning cast will have Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, Chris Evans as Captain America, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Samuel L. Jackson as Col. Nick Fury. Other members of the cast include Cobie Smulders as agent Maria Hill, Don Cheadle as Col. James Rhodes, Hayley Atwell as agent Peggy Carter, Thomas Kretschmann as Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, Stellan Skarsgard as Erik Selvig, Idries Elba as Heimdall, and Tom Hiddleston as Loki. Of course, as is now customary in Marvel films, Stan Lee is expected to make his usual cameo appearance.