Thanks to a few
character developments and moments, Mark Ruffalo's portrayal of the Green
Goliath in The Avengers quickly became one of the center figures in Joss
Whedon's Marvel tentpole.
Now, with the sequel
months away, Empire caught up with the actor to talk about what we might expect
from Bruce Banner and the Hulk in Age of Ultron, the on-set performance capture,
and much more.
The actor was first
asked how much the Hulk changed in between films.
I think he’s
definitely matured a little bit since the last one. He’s become more acclimated
to this thing and to being part of the team. I think he feels more a part of
them all. But in this particular take on it, it’s a much more character-driven
version of The Avengers than the first one. It gets a little deeper into each
character. S.H.I.E.L.D. is not happening anymore, so there’s not that much time
spent with the S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff. I feel that every character has their own
cool little thing happening. I had great stuff in the last one but there’s even
more stuff in this one. It’s nice, because I know this character now after
playing him twice…
However not
everything goes according to plan since we know that the Hulk will eventually go
on a rampage and the only one that can deal with him is fellow Science Bros. Tony
Stark in the Hulkbuster armor.
Hulk is the kind of
wild card. He’s the loose cannon of the group. He’s more like an atom bomb. You
could guess where he’s going to go but he could go either way. I think that
there is, obviously, the day when everyone expects it to go wrong and that day
comes. And they’re ready. And Bruce designed the contingency plan. As much as
you feel Bruce has some mastery over it – certainly, with ‘I’m always angry’
and he can turn into it at will – I still feel that there’s some part of him
that doesn’t completely trust it and doesn’t completely trust himself.
There’s a battle
going on between these two opposing egos that live inside him. He’s definitely
worried that the day is going to come when the Hulk gets the best of him, and
maybe won’t release him, maybe won’t give him back. The Hulk knows this too.
There’s a moment in here where he, begrudgingly, decides to go back to Banner.
Who knows where these things will go, but as Bruce is able to impress his will
on the Hulk, going into The Hulk and being inside the Hulk when he’s raging,
The Hulk’s will is also growing and able to impress upon Bruce. That makes for
some wild things. We’re laying the groundwork for that here. It’ll be
interesting to see if that ends up being what would be the next Hulk movie.
A new Hulk
standalone?
Who knows, really?
That’s such an amorphous thing. Nobody has talked to me about that yet. It
seems people want it, but it’s tough. They’ve already done two of ‘em, and
they’ve only done two Thors, they had a nice run on Iron Man. I feel like they
have their plates full. There’s probably other people they’re keen on doing but
I think people have shown that they’re ready to see another one.
Ruffalo
also spoke about the virtues of doing the performance capture on set opposite
his fellow actors, and not in a studio by himself.
(Nodding) I do it on
location now. I’ll bring a sound system with me and when I breathe, it has this
mass and it has this sound and it fills the set, and that informs my movement.
It helps everybody else with the reactions - all of a sudden this creature is
present. Even the sound helps you. When I’m at Andy’s place, we tweak the sound
until it sounds like we want it to sound and the whole character just comes
alive. Oh man, it’s so exciting. There’s a lot more of my participation in that
this time. Where this is going to be by the time they’re ready to do another
Hulk movie, it’s so exciting. We can do such great stuff. It’ll be seamless
between that character and Banner and you’ll have the feeling that you’re
literally watching another person.
Finally
the actor reveals what he believes drives the Hulk into doing what he does.
There are a lot of
apes and gorillas and cats in Hulk. I was using a lot of that stuff in the
first one. This one has that. Rage is one emotion. It’s hard to give it much
geography when it’s just rage all the time. I’m finding other primal things in
him this time that I wouldn’t have thought to bring into it. The script also
opens it up to that. He is like another person. He’s an aspect of Banner that
the volume is so pumped up on. It’s very primal. It’s almost like the
pre-consciousness of Banner. It’s very base in its needs and I see there’s
lust, there are the essential parts of a person there. But when you think of us
in our prehistoric beginnings, we were food, procreation, domination. Although
he’s like a different person, there is this weird communication back and forth
between the two of them. I’m starting to sense that now. I’m interested in this
place where they bleed into each other.
Opening on May 1, 2015, Avengers: Age of Ultron stars Robert Downey Jr.,
Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner,
James Spader, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron
Taylor-Johnson, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Andy
Serkis, and Samuel L. Jackson.
Source - Empire
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