Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man Footage

During the Marvel Studios presentation at Comic-Con on Saturday night, producer Kevin Feige and most of the cast (absent a pregnant Scarlett Johansson and an injured director Joss Whedon) were on hand to premiere footage from The Avengers: Age of Ultron. The rest of the panel discussion was unnecessary fluff (substance-free moderator Chris Hardwick seemed to just keeping asking people how they liked Comic-Con) but the footage more than made up for it: this looks like it’s going to be a bigger, darker, more epic and more jaw-dropping film than the first, with real stakes for the team.

They only showed the footage once so it’s hard to absorb every detail on just the one viewing, but here’s a basic breakdown of what we saw:

- First shot is the skyline of New York, followed by the scene inside Avengers Tower, where Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Thor, Jim Rhodes and Maria Hill are hanging out, having drinks and joking around. 

- When the idea that no one can lift Thor’s hammer is called a “circus sideshow,” the dare is on: all the men try to lift Mjolnir to no avail, although Steve budges it just enough to make Thor concerned. But he regroups by saying, “You’re all not worthy.”

- Suddenly there is a loud electronic whine and a voice repeats Thor’s line. Ultron shambles into view – made of what looks like spare parts and the battered remains of a busted Iron man suit. “You’re all murderers and liars,” he intones. “The only path to peace…is your extinction.” Ultron Legionnaire robots explode out of the walls around him.

- The rest of the footage moved considerably quicker after that. As we hear Ultron say, “I had a vision…the whole world screaming for mercy and tangled in strings,” we see shots of mass devastation around the world, hundreds of people running and yelling in terror, and a shot of Ultron surveying it all, while the song “I’ve Got No Strings” plays eerily in the background. And then we see:

- A very fast shot of Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) running through a crowd of people;

- Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) on a bus, with magic in her hands, and later kneeling on a pile of rubble, screaming;

- The Avengers all standing on the deck of the Quinjet, looking like they had their asses kicked;

- Bruce Banner sitting on the deck, trembling, a look of shock and fright on his face;

- Captain America on wheels and on foot, bursting into one place with guns blazing;

- Thor smashing a tank with Mjolnir;

- Quick shots of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Andy Serkis (as a human being!)

- The centerpiece: Tony Stark, in Iron Man armor already, slots himself into the massive Hulkbuster suit. The Hulk throws a car at him and then punches him through the car;

- Thor grabs Tony by the throat and lifts him into the air;

- Black Widow leaps out of the bottom of the Quinjet on her motorcycle. We later see her touching hands with the Hulk, apparently trying to calm him down;

- Tony says at one point, “This is the end of the path I started us on,” to which the Widow replies, “Nothing lasts forever.”

- There are lots more action, and then finally we see a rebuilt and gleaming Ultron, red eyes blazing, who says, “No strings on me.”

Cut to the title, but then there’s one more shot: a shocked and distraught Tony looking down at Cap’s smashed shield, the bodies of the other Avengers motionless around him on some desolate, rocky surface (many have widely interpreted that this is an illusion shown to Tony by Scarlet Witch).

And that’s it. Marvel has not said when this footage will be available to the rest of the public, only that it will be sometime later this year (I find it hard to believe, however, that a teaser of some kind won’t be attached to either the front or the back of Guardians of the Galaxy).

As for the Ant-Man footage shown earlier in the panel, that looked and felt more like pre-vis, polished and tweaked to look finished, but it still had the intended effect. It starts with the camera tracking through Hank Pym’s empty lab, filled with test tubes and machines and an ant colony in a tank. We hear Pym (Michael Douglas) in voiceover, trying to convince Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) to take on a “small job.” When Lang complains that he’s “not a superhero,”’ Pym replies, “Superheroes? What a goddamn joke…you’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”

Cut to Lang in the Ant-Man suit, miniaturized and running across a rooftop, while Pym is telling him remotely to use the suit to activate the “transport.” Lang seems to be having problems and can’t get a flying ant to do his bidding. So he jumps off the roof – and lands on the ant, which whisks him away as alarms and lights begin going off in the building.

It was fun, adventurous and certainly had a lighter feel than the very heavy Avengersfootage. A friend told me it reminded him a little of Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man in tone, and that sounds about right to me.

And that’s it for this year’s Comic-Con Marvel footage! What are your thoughts?

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