According to Andy Serkis, Ulysses Klaue won't be armless in Marvel Studios' Black Panther. Fans will remember that during Avengers: Age of Ultron, the villain made an appearance during the sequence in South Africa. He was in possession of vibranium that both the Avengers and Ultron were after, and he lost his left arm after he called Ultron "one of Stark's." Since Ultron isn't exactly the most mentally stable of villains, he reacted by cutting Klaue's arm off in one swoop.
We got a glimpse of Serkis playing the villain in Black Panther in the recent trailer. He was taunting both Everett Ross, played by Martin Freeman, and T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) during an interrogation scene at the beginning of the trailer. We even saw him shooting people in a disguise at one point, showing that he's not afraid to get violent. Since Serkis is a dedicated actor, it's clear we can expect an excellent performance from him in Black Panther.
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We managed to catch up with Serkis at San Diego Comic-Con and discussed whether his character would stay faithful to the comics when it comes to being armless and how supervillains get around that. While he wouldn't give too much away, he did tease that director/co-writer Ryan Coogler and Marvel Studios are respectful of the comic books and the characters' history.
Screen Rant: You know, there’s a lot of buzz about The Black Panther, which we’re huge fans of by the way, phenomenal character. Will we see it based more in Klaw’s comic roots with prosthetics and so forth, maybe kind of like an arm or so?
SERKIS: Oh well, obviously I can’t give away too much but, let’s say that yeah, Ulysses Klaue is not armless this time.
SR: They respect the comic books huh?
SERKIS: Exactly.
The comic book version of Klaue was the son of a Nazi war criminal who worked for Baron Strucker, so that could be a potential connection to previous films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And while Klaue loses his arm in different circumstances in the comics, he replaces it with a prosthetic that allows him to emit a sonic blast. As he and AIM developed the technology, it even saw him become entirely made of sound. Although that might be a little too far fetched for the MCU right now.
So it wouldn't be surprising if toward the back half of Black Panther we saw Ulysses equip himself with some kind of Wakandan stolen tech, or even build the prosthetic himself to attack T'Challa. And since there looks to be plenty of Black Panther villains for T'Challa to face in the film, it's likely that Klaue might not be on his own when turning his eye toward Wakanda.
