Dracula actor Thomas Kretschmann to play the villain in Avengers: Age Of Ultron—the other one

By Sean O'Neal | January 15, 2014 | 6:28pm

Aux Features Film

Much as the question of who will be playing Ant-Man cannot simply be answered with one or two announcements of who will be playing Ant-Man, one cannot assume that the villain of Avengers: Age Of Ultron is Ultron, just because his name is in the title. Age, after all, ain’t nothing but a number demarcating a loosely defined period of time, and The Hollywood Reporter notes that time will be shared by another Avengers villain played by Thomas Kretschmann. The King Kong and Stalingrad actor—who’s perhaps best known for playing Van Helsing on NBC’s Dracula—has signed a multi-movie deal to play Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, the former Nazi officer, HYDRA leader, and producer of the world’s evilest jams and jellies.

Obviously, given his Nazi ties, Strucker is chiefly an antagonist for Captain America, and the THR report notes that he “runs up against” both that character and Nick Fury in the 2015 sequel—whenever they’re not busy dealing with James Spader's massively powerful, slyly dickish robot, that is. Hopefully this news precedes more announcements giving every individual Avenger their own personal archenemy to deal with in their downtime. If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean the world of supervillains.