Back
when Days of Future Past came out and
I flailed nerdishly over X-Men’s Quicksilver, I talked about the franchise
overlap with the character being fair game for both X-Men and The
Avengers. This was before Age of Ultron, so I had yet to see
Marvel’s Quicksilver, but I was already looking forward to comparing the two
version of the speedster. (Note: to avoid confusion, this is the last time
I’ll use the name Quicksilver. Since
X-Men Americanized his name, I’ll be referring to the X-Men version as Peter
and the Avengers version as Pietro.)
Both
iterations of the character are awesome, but in fairly different ways. Everything about Peter says “larger than
life”: the silver hair and goggles, which
weirdly kind of work even though they shouldn’t, his ridiculously huge stash of
pilfered loot in his room, the quick cuts and comic beats, Evan Peters’s snappy
line delivery, and his show-stopping speed scenes in Days of Future Past and Apocalypse. He’s fast, funny, and fun, whipping through Days of Future Past like a whirlwind,
and it’s not just his powers.
Temperament-wise, he’s like a ping pong ball, always eager to leap ahead
to the next thing; you get the sense that he’d go well and truly crazy if
forced to wait around.
Pietro
shares a number of Peter’s traits besides the speed, enough to recognize them
as the same character. Like Peter, he
can be cocky (more than a bit of showoff,) a smart-aleck, and easily
distracted. Pietro is different less in
character than in the tone of the portrayal itself. While Peter is a definite “character,” Pietro
feels more like a person, like (powers aside) I could easily meet someone like
him in real life. This is partly through
the more low-key expression of his humor and partly through his more
well-rounded depiction. Pietro is a young
guy with superpowers and can act like it, but he’s also known serious
loss. When he tells Ultron about the
deaths of his parents and the days he and Wanda spent trapped in the wreckage
of their home waiting to die, you can see the angry and pain driving him. The different sides of him coexist in a way
that feels consistent. (By contrast,
when Peter gets a more serious side plot in Apocalypse,
it makes him feel… not like Peter. The
different sides of him are too
jarring for me, and his subdued scenes just make me wonder when entertaining
Peter is coming back.)
So
that’s the major difference in tone. The
biggest difference in terms of character is probably where their focus
lies. Peter is pretty self-absorbed,
though not in a particularly bad way.
It’s just that he’s all about instant gratification. When Charles, Wolverine, and Hank ask him to
help them with their mission, his first question is, “What’s in it for
me?” Like I said, this isn’t a
condemnation of him – for a teenager a.k.a. walking id (running, in his case,)
it’s perfectly believable. By contrast,
Pietro is always, always a package
deal with Wanda. He usually defers to
his twin and looks out for her above all else.
Of course, much of this is down to the blindingly obvious fact that
Wanda is in Age of Ultron but not the
X-Men films; Peter can’t be expected
to consider the needs of someone who isn’t there. However, plot-driven or not, it still changes
the character in a big way. Pietro sees
things outside of himself that Peter really doesn’t.
