A
lot has happen since the last time the Earth's Mightiest Heroes banded together
to save Earth. Characters have grown. Relationships have been developed. Old
friends and old foes returned. Institutions have crumbled. So where will
Avengers: Age of Ultron pick up?
- We won't see the
Avengers assemble again (which hopefully also means we'll be spared a silly
alternative UK title). "This movie starts off and the team is together, on
a mission, they're working in tandem, and there are new relationships between
them," explains producer Jeremy Latcham. "Time has passed, so you
pick up right in the middle of an action sequence and start trying to catch up.
"I think that's fun for an audience, to try and figure out, 'Wait, those two are funny together now, there's something going on with them, maybe there's a little tension over there'. You're showing up at a party when it's already a little bit started."
- One of the key new relationships
will be between Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff, who already had a close
shave in The Avengers when the Hulk almost ripped her apart.
"They're an unlikely pair, but there's something about the two of them
that neither can deny," says Whedon, while Ruffalo describes them as
"kindred spirits".
- New recruits
Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen)
initially join forces with James Spader's Ultron against the Avengers, creating
a very different balance of power than solo villain Loki. "Instead of
Ultron giving a lot of speeches so everybody knows what he's thinking, it'd be
nice if he had some allies," Latcham explains.
"The story that Joss put together with these two kids is really sweet and poignant, and you really understand why they would start on this side of the line. It's a great journey that they go on, from being these rough and tumble kids in Eastern Europe who blame the West, and the Avengers for the plight, the power structure of the world that keeps kids like them down. Over the course of it they realise maybe the Avengers are here for good reason."
- But the
brother-sister duo have legitimate beef with one Avenger in particular.
"Our characters have a lot of anger, especially towards Tony Stark, and we
want revenge," says Olsen. "We meet Ultron, and he's someone who
preaches peace and… believes what we believe, which is that the Avengers create
destruction and that Tony Stark's bomb is responsible for killing our
parents."
Unsurprisingly, their alliance with Ultron ends up turning sour, and Olsen reveals that "my character ends up really having to deal with her ignorance. A lot of problems that happen towards the end of the film are her responsibility."
- As trailers have indicated,
there's dissent in the Avengers ranks too. Where the first film saw them begin
divided and gradually come together, Age of Ultron begins with
them united and gradually tears them apart thanks to Ultron, Quicksilver and
Scarlet Witch's divide-and-conquer strategising.
(An aside for Buffy fans – to us, the arc of Ultron sounds not unlike that of season four
two-parter 'The Yoko Factor' and 'Primeval', when Adam sought to distance the
Scoobies from one another before they defeated him by reuniting into one
super-being.)
"The larger threat individually isolates each of us," Chris Hemsworth explains. "It's quite a personal kind of threat, and Thor is potentially seeing the bigger picture here - he has a whole other sort of journey for a while, where he kind of goes 'Hang on, this is part of something else, I think'."
- Much of the Avengers'
problem boils down to their lack of a clear leader post-Winter Soldier.
"SHIELD has fallen apart, so this movie becomes Tony Stark and Steve
Rogers trying to put the Avengers together without a parental unit like Nick
Fury hovering over them," explains Latcham. "What you realise is that
these are guys who work best with rules, and probably do need some adult
supervision."
And as anybody who watched the first film can
guess, Tony and Cap aren't an ideal leadership pairing. "Tony has been
paying for everything, designing stuff, building new toys, he's the benefactor
of the whole thing. But Steve Rogers is very much in charge of operations and
missions, he's the moral compass," Latcham goes on. "But how long can
Tony Stark have someone else be in charge?" In other words, groundwork is
being distinctly laid for the Stark vs Rogers core of Civil War.
- Bruce Banner's
Hulk-life balance has improved over time, "but it's still evolving,"
says Ruffalo. "I think he does feel more comfortable with himself and his
relationship to Hulk, but that confidence definitely gets shaken during the
movie."
The team has found a way to strategically deploy the Hulk, holding him back as a last resort "nuclear option" who doesn't get involved with fights unless absolutely necessary. "He's sort of left behind in waiting as the secret weapon, the nuclear bomb."
- There will be some emotional
follow-through from recent solo films – including Steve's
search for Bucky – but it's a tightrope walk for Whedon. "We
have to honour all of that, and also ignore it, because not only can Steve not
be busy looking for Bucky in this film, but he shouldn't make any kind of
progress on that at all.
"Some people don't see this, they only want
to see the Captain America movies. In comic books, if you do a big crossover
event, back in the old days the solo books would just carry on. Now it's sort
of like if you buy one, you have to buy them all, and I never want to do that.
I don't want to make a movie where you have to have seen the other movies. So
it comes up, because we have to respect what they've all been through, but this
film is a simultaneous side-bar."
For more on the Avengers: Age of Ultron drop by Digital Spy.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment