In a section of the vast space apart from the ramp area, we would watch Jeremy Renner in action as Hawkeye taking on roughly a dozen stuntmen in motion capture sensor suits playing the mysterious non-Skrull aliens who would act as the world threat the Avengers are facing. While we had some idea what Hawkeye’s costume would look like this was the first time we’d see it live and in person, and though he was wearing a leather vest, he was mostly wearing spandex underneath rather than it being all leather, which would not be very comfortable in this heat and humidity.
The stuntmen approached him, climbing over the abandoned burned-out cars, a couple of the cars still on fire, and we watched Hawkeye launch a couple imaginary arrows (which we assumed would be added using CG) at enemies further away, then using his bow to strike some of the nearby adversaries. This stuff was being filmed by 2nd Unit director John Mahaffie and while we would watch most of it on monitors, we had a chance to get much closer as well, which allowed us to see the destruction surrounding Hawkeye up close. His skirmish with the aliens was stiring up so much dust around him that in between each take, a technician had to run out with a monitor to make sure the air was still breathable due to all the fake dust in the air.
Saving The Best for Last?
“I had a very clear conception of what I wanted Bruce Banner to be and part of that was Mark Ruffalo,” Whedon said as introduction to the latest actor to play the Hulk’s alter-ego. “I wanted somebody who just opens himself to an audience, who just takes you along everywhere he goes. I felt that the performances in the other movies were very internal and the movies themselves lead to that, because they were all about Bruce Banner and the TV show was ‘I have a problem and I help other people and I live with that problem,’ so that’s sort of the way I wanted to approach it.”
“Mark and I spent a lot of time in the very beginning talking about rage, how it feels, how it manifests, what causes it, what it feels like afterwards, just the nuts and bolts of the emotion itself,” Whedon said about their direction on the Hulk. “In terms of the character it was very clear that we wanted to just have somebody who had gotten past where he was in those movies, so that when you meet him he is somebody who has internalized what went on in those movies to the extent that he’s someone you like and are interested in. If you’ve seen those movies, this would be a natural next step. If you haven’t, you’ll get the guy and you’ll get why he’s a good guy.”
Before we get to Ruffalo himself, here’s the full interview with Joss:
Mark Ruffalo was in a playfully boisterous mood when we spoke to him, more than happy to answer all our questions regardless of how much he might be giving away. “I think Banner’s aging and living with this thing since now it’s been two years since his last one,” he said about where we pick up with his character. “We’re kind of going for this world-weariness of accepting and trying to get to the point where he can live with it, and maybe master it. Come to peace with it. There’s this nice kind of ironic ryness to Banner. He’s not sulking and miserable. We had talked about it being a throwback to Bill Bixby, which was the Banner that I grew up on basically. He had kind of a charm about it him, and this world-weariness. He was on the run, but he was still able to flirt sometimes and smile sometimes, and occasionally he’d crack a joke. When you have a movie where there’s so many characters you end up getting about 10 minutes screen time with your particular character, so in the screen time that we have we’re trying to bring out this charm in him, and maybe this idea that he wants to be a superhero. He looks at Stark and he’s like, ‘That’s the dude who did what I was intending to do. He’s the model. He made it work.’ So Banner and Stark have a very cool relationship in the movie.”
We learned the Hulk would be realized by Industrial Light & Magic, similar to the Ang Lee movie, but unlike previous movies, Ruffalo would be doing the performance capture for the Hulk rather than having it done by a stunt actor (or by Lee himself, as was the case with that first movie).
“Believe it or not, I looked at a lot of gorillas, just because they have this kind of lumbering to them that then becomes explosive. I liked that,” he said about his reference for the motion capture. “Plus when you do the motion capture, and you put the suit on and go into a room where they have monitors all around, and you step in front of the camera and there’s the Hulk, it’s literally like putting the costume on. Every move I make the Hulk makes; a very rudimentary version of him. And all of a sudden you get a look at that, and that, the way it is moving like that, is an honest sense of that character. And all of a sudden the image of the Hulk starts telling you how to move. He doesn’t move quickly; he has this kind of lumbering thing, and his shoulders are a little rolled over.”
Ruffalo also confirmed that we would hear the Hulk talk in the movie, although he wouldn’t confirm whether “Hulk Smash!” might be part of his vocabulary.
And you can read our full interview with Ruffalo below:
And that’s it for our two-day trip into the Marvel Movie Universe and our look into what to expect from Marvel’s The Avengers which is released in all formats humanly possible on Friday, May 4.
