By Erin Parisien
Hello Schmoeville!
Oh, the goodies just keep coming! Now that Marvel has let go of such a tight grip on the leash, and lifted part of the imbargo on The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, all kinds of interesting tid-bits are popping up on the interwebz… like this interview with The Hulk himself, Mark Ruffalo.
Last summer, the actor sat down with reporters (Thanks Collider!) on the set of Age Of Ultron and discussed his character and the new film.
On the possibility that Banner and Natasha Romanoff are in a relationship at the start of the film:
We don’t have a relationship. What kind of relationship? Did you tell them – Oh yeah, I’ll play along, yeah. There’s a really important relationship between… I was just happy that I was in the movie at all. And any scenes that I got to do with her were a big bonus.
On creating the definitive Hulk on film and what that means:
There’s more of him and I think there’s still – Banner and Hulk have kind of come to a detente [laughs]. We left this last one with this idea that I’m always angry and therefore I have some control over it, but like anger, when you think you have control over it, you absolutely don’t. So there’s still a wrangling going on and there’s a confrontation brewing between the Hulk consciousness and the Banner consciousness that I think we’re starting to head into right now.
On the relationship between Tony and Bruce:
Yeah, you know basically Tony took the orphan Banner into the fold. I was just made aware of where my apartment in the Stark complex is, the Stark Tower, and so I think they’re working – I have a lab now and Banner’s working on a lot of stuff and Tony’s working on his own stuff and they complement each other and so you could tell into this film that they’ve been working together and they’ve got even more of a shorthand together and really know haw to work well together. So that’s been built out quite a lot and it’s fun. It’s cool.
On fighting the Hulkbuster and how they get to that point:
It’s a little bit like Cool Hand Luke that way. “Do you think you could beat me? I’ll beat the crap out of you. Then I beat the crap out of him. It’s kind of like that, but not totally like that. It has a surprise to it, a little twist to it as well.
On developing Banner even more this time around:
Yeah, he’s sort of – I think he’s trying to become more part of a group. I don’t think he’s ever felt like part of a family or part of something, he’s always been this outsider on the run trying to shun humanity. But now I feel like he has the idea that maybe he is a part of something. He’s trying to really be part of something and feels more comfortable I think with the fantasy that he can actually be part of something. But I still think it’s a struggle for him and I never think that he quite has it under control. I think in this version he’s sort of as close to having a normal life as he possibly could, which might include some romance, but is that ever possible for Banner? That’s really the question.
On, so far, not having his own movie to help develop the character:
Well I think the mythology of Banner is kind of known because of the other movies. We’re sort of building off of them, but it’s similar, he’s on the run, he doesn’t want to turn into Hulk and all people want him to do is turn into Hulk. So it’s not as uphill a battle as introducing a completely new character. The nature of these movies is there’s eight of us and I kind of worked it out and I think it’s ten minutes of screen time for each of us if we each – and then if we include the bad guys. So it’s hard to do a lot of character development, but I think this movie goes even more into that than the last movie. So you’re sort of playing catch up, but also I think you want to be ambiguous enough not to cover too much ground so that you have somewhere to go if they ever do want to do another standalone.
On performance capture and working with Andy Serkis:
We’ve done a lot more with the motion capture, and since the face capture and the motion capture can now be put together you’ve just got a lot more latitude as a performer. Andy’s been working on this new frontier of taking motion capture and instead of it just being a placeholder, the actor being basically a placeholder for the CGI, that it becomes more of a collaboration and the actor really can add performance to it. And on the last one we were trying to do that, but it was difficult. Now the technology has taken another step forward. Andy has created a kind of space and this new attitude towards motion capture that kind of honors the actor a bit more than it was in the past. Not that there was dishonor, it’s just this organic process of making those two things work really well together in the context of the production of another movie – a movie that has a first unit going and lot of importance is put on the first unit and now they’re starting to look at motion capture in an equal sort of way. That’s what Andy’s after, that’s what I’m after. So I see the motion capture as this incredible new place for us to go in performance that we never had before, that’s more like kind of puppeteering. You no longer are constricted by the attributes you have as a person – your age, your weight, your size – none of that matters anymore, so there’s this whole exciting place to go that’s kind of unknown.
It’s very much like theater, because it’s all imagination. You don’t have a forest in front of you in the theater, you don’t have a castle, but you have to put that there for yourself. So whatever theater training I had is very very much in tune with this, oddly enough, the oldest form of acting all the sudden meets the newest form of acting and they’re very compatible to each other. It’s very exciting. Andy has really done a lot to make it so the actor is driving.
On The Scarlett Witch using her powers against The Avengers:
That’s a bad trip, man. It’s not…She’s able to bring out…[pauses] the worst in us. There are people in our lives who can do that, and somehow when you’re an actor you tend to gravitate towards those people, but she’s that bad – it’s like Sid and Nancy. She’s everyone’s Nancy.
On which new characters that he thinks audiences will freak out over:
I love the new kids on the block. I love Wanda and Pietro, Quicksilver, they’re cool. They’re really cool and good characters. The Vision is the Vision. He is so dope, and he’s my baby. [Laughs] Yeah, he’s pretty incredible. The idea of him and where he comes from. He’s very independent. It’s a really great character. Yeah, people are going to love the Vision…and Ultron is amazing. He’s amazing. It’s really good.
On how much time he got to spend on set with James Spader:
We have a lot of scenes together as a group, I don’t really – I have a couple one on one things with him, but I love him. He’s great, and he’s going to be…it’s like King Lear. It’s great.
On whether or not he enjoyed watching Paul Bettany get tortured as much as RDJ did:
All I know is that I’m happy that I walk in and I leave the trailer and I can go back an hour later and Paul Bettany’s still in makeup. I’m 46 years old so that makes me feel good…sorry Paul, but you should see him. He’s a specimen when he walks onto that thing. He’s like, the perfect man. He’s the Vision.
On who we’ll see at the house party taking place at The Avengers Tower:
Indoors I have to be Banner, that’s kind of the rule. It’s like leave your shoes at the door, leave your Hulk at the door. They don’t like him being – Hulk still has a little bit of an ADHD kid thing going on.
On whether or not The Hulk has any more lines in this film:
We’re sort of still working it out. He will, we’re just trying to figure out – there’s a couple different places to do it, but he’s not going to have a soliloquy, not yet anyway. We’re working for that. Joss has a couple ideas where to put that.
On the theme of being ‘destroyed by power’ and what that means in regards to Bruce:
I mean the central struggle that he’s having throughout his life probably, but specifically in this, is that he does have that destructive side to him. That’s never going to go away. You can live a fantasy that that might be under control, but ultimately that might just be a fantasy for him. That conflict is always going to be there. There might never be a resolve to that, because that power is really destructive.
On whether or not Banner is still looking for a solution:
I don’t know, I think he – yeah, he wishes he could find it, there’s no doubt about that, but also you start to be a certain age and you have to practice radical acceptance or you just keep banging your head against the same wall, and I think he’s starting to get to that place. How do I live with this? How do I make it work for me? It’s like management. It’s like having a slipped disk.
On whether The Hulk is useful to the team:
Yes, in little doses. He’s like a nuclear bomb. It’s tough to get very tactical with it, so he’s – I think it’s a matter of management and control really at this point, rather than just shutting him down completely. Plus the weird thing about the Banner/Hulk relationship is that the more work they do into it, the more he turns into the Hulk, the more established the Hulk becomes in his identity. So you have these two identities that really want to dominate the other. So it’s not getting easier for one or the other to be the dominate driver.
On whether or not Banner and The Hulk can co-exist:
[Laughs] I don’t know, it’s tough, but they’re going to have to work it out because there’s serious tension there and it’s only growing.
Sigh, Schmoeville, this self-proclaimed Marvel fan-girl is in heaven! All of this wonderful news and information coming at us from left and right… it’s enough to make you swoon! Okay, so maybe that’s just me! Anyway…
I love what Ruffalo has to say about here about his character and the film. While I know that another solo Hulk film is high on just about everyone’s list, I get why the studio is a little trigger shy, and I think that Mark Ruffalo gets it too. I do, however, think that Banner/The Hulk is going to play a big part in the telling of this story. And if nothing else, we get to watch the Hulk smash Tony Stark in the Hulkbuster armor. Please Marvel, just take my money now!
The film stars Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Chris Evans, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Mark Ruffalo and James Spader and is directed by Joss Whedon. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is set for release on May 1, 2015.
So, Schmoeville, what do you think? Did you like this interview? Did you not? Like seriously, how excited are you for this film? Do you want to see another solo Hulk film? Comment below and let’s talk about The Avengers: Age Of Ultron!
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