(PEOPLE CHEERING WILDLY)
JEREMY LATCHAM: After three years and all the craziness
of travelling around the world
and going from country to country,
and finally being here on premiere night, right here
in the middle of Hollywood, it's super-exciting.
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen,
the cast of Marvel's Avengers: Age of Umon.
Here we are. It's day one. Principal photography. We're in Italy.
Environmentally, this place is gorgeous.
It's unlike anything we had in the first movie.
It's just a ton of texture.
Everybody's pretty excited.
LATCHAM: There's something about being out in the field,
and being in the middle of Italy here, in this town
that we've got the whole place shut down.
You have five intersections. Cars overturned.
You have real explosions.
MAN: And action!
It's a great way to kick-start a shoot on location
that makes you feel authentic.
Aaron and I are coming in cold, basically.
And so, it's nice to have our own substantial work with our characters
before coming onto set with all those intimidating people.
Coming back after being away and seeing each other
was a very sweet reunion.
We all as actors went on this journey together
through this wild thing that became Avengers 1.
Go, Bruce. Go, Bruce. Go, Bruce.
CHRIS HEMSWORTH: It's all common ground now,
and it's not quite as daunting as the first time around.
I was talking to Robert and Chris
and a lot of the guys before we started shooting,
and all of us were looking forward to coming back and kicking it off again.
I never wanna work with these kids, but I'll get them there.
In this one, we're together a lot, which is great for us, terrible for Joss,
because it's tough to wrangle 10 crazy actors that love each other.
- Oh, my God. - We're about to get yelled at.
WHEDON: Them having that kind of comfortable ease
with each other is a delight.
Every now and then, it's an exhausting delight.
Today we have some balls and charts for the scene...
That just happened.
Here we are in Robert's trailer.
Uh, he didn't get the one he asked for, but we feel we did pretty well.
This is Avengers Tower.
This is what Stark Tower became after it was destroyed.
It's just sleek, elegant,
futuristic.
It's Tony's house, so it had to be (LAUGHS) flashy.
I don't know of anyone in the history of any superhero franchise
who seems to have never run out of money.
Joss wanted it all to be connected.
He wanted to be able to move from downstairs to upstairs, and vice versa.
We needed to perform for Tony's world, for Banner's world,
and then float down into the gaming area of the HQ,
which was a little bit more fun.
If you look carefully at the details,
you'll see there's a Cap poster, there's stuff for Hawkeye,
there's stuff up in the lab where Tony's working for all of the team.
This is really our giant science-fiction space,
and we put it at the beginning of the film
because it has this grand, optimistic, "things are going well" feeling.
We have a party here in the house 'cause...
(EXHALES) Who wouldn't have a house party here?
We ended up realising we have this big Avengers Tower set.
We want Ultron to attack right here.
'Cause instead of having him built here,
and then fly away and attack across town,
it seemed more visceral to have the attack happen right here
in this big, huge space
because if you build a set this big and you don't blow it up,
you're doing something wrong.
(GRUNTS)
Joss was beginning to put together the character of Ultron,
how he came about, what he wanted to do with the character.
And he said to us, "I think it's gotta be James Spader."
It was another moment we went, "Yes."
There was nobody else on the list.
There was nobody else that we talked to.
CHRIS EVANS: First day when he gives his speech at the party,
I know all of us were eager to be the audience and just to spectate
and just watch him perform, and it was really exciting
'cause it was really good and really intimidating.
And I was tangled in...
Strings.
Spader knew what he was in for and he went for it regardless,
'cause he thought, "if I'm gonna do it, let me really do it."
it was terrible to put us on a set together.
- I just want everyone to know that now. - (ALL LAUGHING)
Showed up at the studio,
and they put me in a suit, and they had me go through a range of motion,
very specific motions and movements and so on,
which they captured with all these sensors all over me
and reference cameras all around me.
And within 10 minutes,
the rough image of Ultron
was on a screen, the monitor in front of me.
I've outgrown you, Tony. I've evolved.
Performance capture is the entire performance.
So, you're filming an actor's entire role.
It just happens to be a different bunch of cameras.
But the actual nuances, all of the acting choices,
you're authoring the role in exactly the same way
that you would if you were playing live-action.
RUFFALO: He and I got to do some stuff. (LAUGHS)
And it's ridiculous. We're wearing these very unflattering suits,
and, um, I'm trying to explain to him how it all works.
But I was like, "I'm working with James Spader.
"Look at you, Ruffalo. You really pulled one over on the world."
I think it's so fitting
because Ultron is everywhere and everything
and has these almost Shakespearean soliloquies at times,
and I certainly think that his theatrical background is all over this.
Did you know this church is in the exact centre of the city?
He had this thing with red dots for eyes.
So we would rehearse looking at him,
so we could have something to respond to.
And then, during a take, we'd have to look three feet above his head,
which was so irritating
'cause he was doing so much that you wanted to watch.
Probably majority of the shots, Aaron and I are both going like this.
Just, "Shoot."
LATCHAM: We didn't want Ultron just floating out there by himself.
We wanted him teamed up with someone.
We wanted there to be an opportunity
to have the twins help carry some of that villain burden.
These characters are integral to the Avengers comic books.
We also wanted to have another powerful female character.
I wanted not just a new perspective, but a new visual language.
She can get inside their heads. He can move so that everything's super- slow.
That's gonna give me a language I wouldn't have used in the first one.
When it comes down to Pietro, we went through a very large number
of testing and looks so that we can feel that it was organic.
CHRISTOPHER TOWNSEND: We didn't want it
to be about the effects, per se.
So we looked at various blurs and trails,
and we ended up with something which, I think, is pretty simple,
but also pretty sophisticated and elegant as a solution for Pietro
as this blue streak trail.
TAYLOR-JOHNSON: When I run fast,
you'll see that if the light catches it,
you'll have that kind of lightning bolt sort of stripe.
You see pictures of Scarlet Witch, and she's always like that.
So we have these images and red balls around her hands
for some sort of fire energy.
And Joss really wanted me to work with a dancer.
It changed a lot the conversation about how Scarlet Witch would move,
creating a vocabulary.
WHEDON: We took her power and said,
"Okay, she's got telekinesis. She can move things.
"She could have a little bit of energy shielding or pushing,
"and she can get inside your head and tweak it
"so that all your worst fears are gonna come to the fore."
it was also fun for us to have a sequence with Scarlet Witch,
who could take down the Avengers without throwing one punch.
I wanted to get deeper into these characters.
You need visual momentum,
and these dream sequences are designed
very specifically to be as engaging as an action sequence.
JOHANSSON: We all get our opportunities
to delve deeper into the backstory of each one of these characters,
and every one of the Avengers comes to the table with a lot of baggage.
It took a long time to understand,
when Scarlet Witch gets inside of Banner's head
and forces him into the Hulk,
then what is the Hulk's nightmare?
What makes him go crazy?
(ROARS)
TOWNSEND: What we tried to do with Hulk
is really tried to take him to the next level
in terms of photorealism.
With Mark's performance and Joss' direction,
the story has a lot more moments
where we can really get in touch with his feelings.
RUFFALO: The first time We did this,
the technology was at a place such as you could capture movement,
and then you had to do all the facial recognition separately.
In that time, this technology's taken another major leap forward.
Trying to create a performance that is as physical as the Hulk,
it really helps to have your body informing that.
SERNS: What is great,
if you're playing a character like the Hulk,
is it enables you to climb into the mind of the Hulk
without having to wear an enormous amount of prosthetic makeup,
which actually stops you from really acting.
So you can have all of the pain of that character
or the anger or the aggression or a mixture of all of those things,
and the nuance of what Mark was doing facially.
He's not having to fight against tons and layers of prosthetic makeup.
He can just internalise that, even with a character that big.
You're stronger than her. You're smarter than her.
You're Bruce Banner.
Right, right, right, don't mention puny Banner.
We're here in Johannesburg, South Africa,
where Hulk and Hulkbuster
are gonna be fighting each other right up and down the streets,
throwing through a market, all kinds of crazy stuff happening.
TOWNSEND: We scouted the area initially,
took lots of photographs and measurements
and really just got an idea of the city and the layout.
And we started to pre-vis the whole sequence,
and try to figure out where the cam angles could be,
what the set was or what the environment was,
and how we could use the environment to tell the story that Joss wanted to tell.
In the script initially, it's "imagine Hulk if Hulk hulked out."
It's that kind of craziness.
So, we've tried to amp up Hulk.
It's been great to just open it up,
and instead of trying to recreate places, really get to go there
to get the local feel and the architecture and the life.
It gives the film a veracity,
and when half your characters are CGI, you just need that.
TOWNSEND: It had to be very carefully planned,
and then it was a lot of talking to the special effects guys,
who are the people that do the practical effects on set,
and getting them to blow cars up and rip parts of the street up
and give us an explosion there and dust hits here.
And then you take it all back to the cutting room,
and then you start doing what we call post-vis,
which is then effectively taking the pre-vis,
the animated cartoon version,
and now cutting out the Hulk and the Hulkbuster
and trying to put that back into what you've already shot.
WHEDON: Right after they've had their visions,
when all of them are realising how disconnected they are
from their own feelings and pasts and thoughts
and how messed up they are,
they're confronted with a normal family life.
It puts a weight on, "Oh, this is why we do what we do,"
where everyone has to take a look at themselves,
and like, "Oh, yeah, what we're doing is really not quite so important.
"This is what it's really all about."
Seeing everybody on set in costume
and standing there with everybody is pretty fun to watch.
It's pretty fun to see all those superheroes come to life.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON: This is like a family of people
that get together and have these powers,
that act real normal in terms of how they react to each other,
and how they sit around, eat, drink, talk to each other,
or have brotherly fights, and this, that, and the other.
Isn't that "Why We Fight"?
So we can end the fight. So we can go home!
These movies are so successful
because they resonate with the audience.
The characters are multi-faceted,
and they struggle, and they are unlikely heroes
and sort of reluctant heroes.
Being able to embrace that and take it to an unexpected place,
I think, is one of the first ideas Joss had on this film.
There's enough interpersonal and character stuff going on
that you have something to hold on to when you get into the big set pieces.
We are in the heart of Seoul. We are in Gangnam.
You see all the tall buildings. it's really busy.
I'm so excited and so proud as a Korean
that we're shooting Avengers 2 here.
The South Korean government was unbelievably helpful and inviting
to allow us to do a massive sequence there.
Korea is a very, very cutting-edge technological society,
and they love the notion of us going there and showcasing that.
We have one of the biggest street chases we've ever had in a Marvel film
right there through the streets of Seoul.
LATCHAM: The idea that we're gonna shut down huge parts of Seoul,
close off major intersections. We said
it's the equivalent of shutting down the 405, the 101, the 10,
all in the middle of Los Angeles, all on a weekday.
We've been manoeuvring through six, eight, 10, 12 cars
at high speed, chasing the motorcycle, following it at its best speed.
BOBBY HOLLAND HANTON: We're hitting speeds of 50-60K.
It's pretty quick when you're hanging on the back of a door.
Those driving sequences are pretty amazing.
You know what's in that cradle?
The power to make real change.
And that terrifies you.
I wouldn't call it a comfort.
FEIGE: Going back to, I would say it was production
on the first Avengers film,
and Joss was very, very interested in Ultron,
and there were some ideas about how Vision,
obviously the most important AI character
in our universe up to that point, could play a part in that.
I said, "if you make a second movie, it's gotta be Ultron."
And then he should make the Vision, but they should put Jarvis in the Vision,
and then Paul Bettany can play the Vision,
because only Paul Bettany can play the Vision.
I was just so pleased to see him transcend what you thought Jarvis was,
and bring into being what the Vision is, and actually exceed our expectations.
It's a privilege to be among them.
For me, just personally, it's a nice continuance of this thing
'cause I've been involved in this whole thing right from the beginning.
The depletion rate of palladium is increasing exponentially, sir.
And I'm annexed, (CHUCKLES) you know what I mean?
I've always come in right at the end.
It's been fun, but it's really nice for me to finally be a part of it physically.
Iron Man's the one he's waiting for.
That's true. He hates you the most.
BETTANY: Joss came to show me the initial drawings and stuff.
I totally flipped, and I didn't think for a minute
what that was actually gonna mean to me physically,
in terms of... (LAUGHING)
In terms of how we were gonna achieve that on a daily basis.
I get put inside this rubber balaclava that is then glued to my face.
And it's a lot of prosthetics.
The makeup is actually amazingly quick, I think, for what is accomplished.
It's about an hour and a half.
And then there's a robot muscle suit that goes on.
I wear a cooling suit that has piping that goes all around me,
and they plug it in and ice water runs through it and keeps me cool.
It's a little like being inside a gin and tonic.
I can't hear very well 'cause I've got this thing over my head,
and there's only this much of my own skin showing.
It took me a couple of days to figure it out.
We made a few holes so I could hear conversation,
and I'd read a lot.
ALONSO: The idea was, we'll do it all in camera.
We'll fix this, this, this, this, and it's over.
Well, we wanted to also give him an AI look.
So we back-engineered a way
that we were going to utilise the data from the performance,
put it back into a full-on CG model,
and then bring back the human characteristics
that makes him all that more human, and yet, not.
TOWNSEND: There's an expression that we use in visual effects
as well as robotics and things, called the "uncanny valley."
This is when people trying to create human beings,
like CG characters or robots,
and the closer you get to reality,
the harder it is to make them look believable.
But what we're trying to do in many ways is,
we're approaching the uncanny valley from the other side.
So we're starting with a real human in Paul Bettany,
and we're adding CG to him.
ALONSO: If you look at his eyes,
if you look at his lips, if you look at his face,
you feel the human feelings that we do when we emote.
And yet, there is that moment where you go,
"Oh, he could be full-on Al. Is he?"
I was born yesterday.
LATCHAM: We're in Sokovia, which is now in Hendon, in London.
Sokovia previously was in Italy.
Sokovia's been onstage. Sokovia's all over the place.
It's this big place that we're putting together in visual effects.
And today, here in Sokovia,
we're doing the end of the movie.
Everything's wrapping up.
Open fire!
LATCHAM: And we just had this massive strafing run.
Ultron has commandeered the Quinjet, and he came through, bam, bam, bam,
and is taking out everybody.
We had 1,300 explosions going off one after the other,
all timed, all rigged by our great special-effects team.
WOOD: We were very lucky.
We looked very hard for that location.
And because we knew what we had to do to it,
in a sense the post-destruction look, that made our search that much harder
because a lot of places simply wouldn't have allowed us to have done it
with all the pyrotechnics and all the special effects
and our footprint, what we needed to do there.
Very quickly we realised it actually worked incredibly well.
(SCREAMING)
OLSEN: Watching it being destroyed slowly but surely
was pretty amazing to see.
This beautiful statue that Aaron and I were laughing about,
pretending it was us.
And then later, when the world's ending and their limbs are gone.
There's a children's playground that's a tank.
It's just, it had a lot of humour as well.
I really loved that set,
'cause that was a world. That was a whole world.
WHEDON: It's very weird to be this close to being done.
I describe it as "the light at the end of the ballroom,"
because I really have been having so much fun.
Doesn't really feel like a tunnel.
Part of that is because of being here.
There's so much depth. There's so much room to maneuvre.
We've never had a set or a place to shoot like this. It's huge.
You always wanna end big.
We've got a whole city lifting off and being ripped out of the ground,
and then we've got all these sub-Ultrons
that are attacking the Avengers,
and trying to take the Avengers out of the equation,
whilst Ultron Prime is trying to destroy humanity.
When I read some of the things that I read on the page,
it just seemed so enormous.
You'd think that there must be some diminishment of that (CHUCKLES)
during the making of,
or even the development of the script, and not so.
I've been here long enough to understand
that the unthinkable will happen, the unthinkable will be written,
and the unthinkable will come to fruition
as some of the most amazing visual effects we've seen.
So, that, I'm proud to say that none of that scares me.
On the contrary, all of that is the greatest challenge of working here.
WHEDON: They've gotta end the film fighting together,
and we've gotta know that the Avengers live on.
But the idea that the Avengers will live on
but in a completely different form,
there's a galvanising excitement about that.
My favourite part about Avengers: Age of Ultron
is what's brought into potential at the end.
The fun of the comics is the shifting roster,
is the notion that the Avengers begin as a certain roster of people,
but, over time, some characters go off into their own adventures,
and new characters come in.
So, for us, that was always part and parcel of the concept of the Avengers.
So, it was always the idea that we were going to mix up the teammates.
I feel like this is really a feeling of an ending of an era,
and the beginning of another, and I welcome it.
JOHANSSON: I think it makes the audience even that more invested
in our interpersonal relationships and the future of these characters.
So, that's pretty cool.
SPADER: To be able to create this spectacle,
and have it be something that you can crawl inside and feel the life within it,
I think that's this film in its finest form.
- MAN: Got that? - ROBERT DOWNEY JR.: Best take ever!