What we learned from Avengers: Age Of Ultron footage

Inevitably, some mild Avengers 2 spoilers lie ahead.

There’s nothing like a nice surprise. As part of a Marvel morning that culminated in us sitting down for a chat with Kevin Feige (the interview will be going live soon), we were treated to a sneak peak at the imminent Guardians Of The Galaxyand a Q&A afterwards about said footage. When the questions came to an end, Feige then told us that we were about to see some in-production footage from the filming of Avengers 2. We opted to stay, rather than leave early, you'll be surprised to hear.

What followed (as you may have already spotted across the vastness of the internet) were a couple of minutes of behind the scenes glimpses into a few aspects of the production. There were shots from a couple of the locations (peppered with statements from Joss Whedon) which included Italy and the UK. Joss Whedon explained that they were keen for the action to be set across the world to give a sense of scale to the proceedings – a very James Bond way to go, which is never a bad thing and takes away from the usual ‘America under invasion’ syndrome that tends to befall alien attack movies.

[related article: First Official Look at Ultron in Avengers 2]

Elsewhere there were plenty of shots of Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye firing off invisible arrows at nothing (with all the CGI clearly missing) alongside Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch, who seemed especially enthused in her sound bite to a be a part of the movie. Her on screen brother, Quicksilver (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) was also seen running about (no surprises there!) but not at super speed and sporting the half uniformed look from the production photos.

[related article: 5 Ultron Stories That Could Inspire Avengers 2]

There were scenes of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner working alongside each other in a laboratory, which for something so mundane was quite exhilarating as their dynamic in the first Avengerswas so gloriously entertaining, so it’s great to have the guarantee they’ll share some science nerd screen time once more. The lab scenes looked to take place in the new Avengers Tower, which was shown a few times and can best be described as a vast, open plan floor which resembled a bigger version of the S.H.I.E.L.D heli-carrier command centre from the first film – all shiny dark blue and black metal. Whedon described the Avengers Tower as being the most impressive set that any of them had worked on to date, as it appeared to be an entirely built stage with the addition of the usual green screen windows.

Captain America was shown whizzing around by himself on a motorbike again, as well as jumping and sliding over cars, as only Cap can with such grace. Curiously I’m sure I spotted what could have been a double in a Captain America uniform, on the bike, but with crazily wild blonde hair – my first thought was stunt double, but quite why they’d have such a hair style and let it be shown could be something, or nothing.

[related article: Avengers 2 - Everything We Know]

Of course the most exciting element of the preview was the pre-visualisation shots of Stark’s Hulkbuster armor, seen going head to head with Hulk (as had been spotted in some early artwork). They had a clash of fists as they both went to hit each other at the same time, outside what looked to be a Coliseum-type of building, with the iconic style of Roman pillars, which again could point towards Italy for the venue of the showdown. If it went inside the coliseum for a gladiatorial style face off, that would really be something.

So there you have it, not much that we hadn’t gleaned from a variety of leaked and official images and statements so far, but very exciting none the less. Roll on 2015…