Why Marvel's Avengers: Age Of Ultron Has A Thanks To Studio Ghibli In Its Credits

"Avengers: Age of Ultron" climaxes with the Marvelous heroes fighting the titular tin man and his army of duplicates in fictional European nation Sokovia. Ultron has built a giant engine beneath a Sokovian city to lift it off the ground, intending to slam it back onto the Earth and cause a mass extinction event. "When the dust settles, the only thing living in this world will be metal."

This scheme is not inspired by a Marvel comic, but rather another film about a robot army and floating city: Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky," the first film made by Studio Ghibli. (Though "Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind" brought Ghibli's soon-to-be founders together.) "Castle In The Sky," set in a Wales-like fantasy world, follows orphans Pazu and Sheeta as they search for Laputa, a long-lost advanced civilization.

Laputa is like Atlantis if it soared above the clouds instead of collapsing beneath the waves. The Laputian people are mostly gone, leaving behind only their city and robot creations. The evil Colonel Muska (voiced by Mark Hamill in Disney's English dub) wants to turn these robots into a conquering army. One of the robots appears in "Age of Ultron" as a barely-there Easter Egg; when Ultron makes his debut to the Avengers at Stark Tower, its arm is visible at the right edge of the frame.

The film's credits mention that "Laputa robot appears courtesy of Studio Ghibli." Anime News Network claims that "Whedon is a big fan of Studio Ghibli," and he must be considering the shadow that "Castle in the Sky" casts over his movie.

Whedon's most cited influences are William Shakespeare and American superhero comics. (Buffy the Vampire Slayer's main inspiration is Kitty Pryde from the X-Men, plus her surname is "Summers" like Cyclops.) But is "Age of Ultron" the only time Joss Whedon has homaged anime in this work?

Fran Kuzui, director of the 1992 "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" film, is a fan of "Sailor Moon." A "magical girl" manga/anime first created in 1991 by Naoko Takeuchi, that series follows Usagi Tsukino, a blonde schoolgirl who discovers it is her destiny to protect the Earth from evil forces. Sounds a lot like a certain Slayer, doesn't it? According to the 2015 book "Joss Whedon: The Biography" by Amy Pascale, Kuzui brought in "Sailor Moon" influence when making the "Buffy" film and Whedon "loved the idea." (Whedon has disowned the "Buffy" movie and approached the TV show as a chance to do it right, so I don't know if this influence carried over beyond the concepts being innately similar.)

It's also long been rumored that Whedon's short-lived Space Western "Firefly" was inspired by anime shows "Cowboy Bebop" and "Outlaw Star." In particular, River Tam's (Summer Glau) introduction in the "Firefly" pilot is quite similar to the debut of gynoid Melfina in "Outlaw Star" (both are naked women frozen in fetal positions inside boxes.) The influence of John Ford's Westerns on "Firefly" has been well-documented (Nathan Fillion's Mal Reynolds is a dead ringer for John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers") but the anime influence remains more speculative. At least with "Avengers: Age of Ultron," the homage is explicitly acknowledged in the fine print.