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No matter how different they get, every story about a robot can be boiled down into just a few choice categories. At least, that's the opinion of actor Paul Bettany, and in his defense, he's portrayed one of the most popular robots of this current century.

Ever since 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron (or technically even 2008's Iron Man, if you count Bettany's voice as Tony Stark's AI JARVIS), Bettany has been the legendary Vision, the sentient mechanical man who rounds out the Avengers. Bettany is set to reprise the titular role in the upcoming Disney+ series VisionQuest, and now, he's sharing which category of techno-tale it fits into.

Bettany said as much during an interview in the new issue of Empire Magazine. Speaking about his upcoming Marvel TV series, which will complete the trilogy of shows begun by WandaVision all the way back in 2021, the much beloved ex-Avenger pointed out that stories like this one tend to fall into two classic categories.

"There's only a few things you can really do with robots," said Bettany, "One is Pinocchio: 'I'm a real boy now.' And one is Frankenstein: 'Who am I, what am I for?' We've done, 'I'm a real boy now.' I was more interested in that sort of esoteric question: 'Who am I, and what am I for? What is my purpose?' I think that is fertile ground."

Based on Marvel Comics, VisionQuest will see Vision interacting with the artificial AI intelligence that technically created him - that is, James Spader's Ultron - and to Bettany's point, the idea of creation wrestling with creator is right out of Mary Shelley's genre-creating 1818 story. But is Bettany right in saying that there are really so few robot stories?

Because if so, I'm still scratching my head about where WALL-E fits into all that.

VisionQuest premieres on Disney+ October 14.

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• All the upcoming MCU movies, TV series, and specials on the horizon
• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst