That new and extended Avengers 2 TV spot that dropped online Thursday was pretty spectacular. Leave it to Marvel to hold their best cards until the final hours. But low and behold, there’s another variation to this preview that shows another, though small piece of footage that’ll put even more ants in your pants.
The alternate Avengers 2 spot is essentially the same as yesterday’s but with one crucial difference: here we see Iron Man flying in to presumably subdue the Hulk as his Hulkbuster armor assembles around him mid-flight. It looks pretty badass, and after all, Stark does "design everything" and "make everyone look cooler." For him, this means the Hulkbuster.
We’ve seen Stark's bulky armor throw down in the finale battle to Iron Man 3, as he battled Aldrich Killian, but this big guy is much larger and stronger — and, more importantly, it can withstand a few blows from Hulk. It’s unconfirmed what exactly causes Bruce Banner to lose control of the beast within, but based on Hulk’s wild eyes and sickening face, it’s more than possible that Scarlet Witch got inside his head. This new character addition to the Age of Ultron has a vast array of reality-warping abilities, including illusions. She can get inside the heroes’ heads and make them see whatever she wants them to see. This is presumably how we’ll be finding out more about Natasha Romanoff’s past as a ballerina and a Black Widow Training Academy cadette, by the way. For Hulk, though, there’s way more dangerous implications, and Stark is ready to take him down if need be.
The fact that the Hulkbuster armor even exists is also an interesting point of discussion. We already knew that Stark had been toying with other variations on his original Iron Man armor, but it’s clear that the billionaire playboy philanthropist had been predicting Banner’s breakdown for some time. As we heard in the extended clip from the sequel, wherein he and Steve Rogers are bickering over the implications of ending the war before it starts, this fits Stark like a glove. It’s the reason he created Ultron, it’s the reason he created Hulkbuster, and it’s the reason he’ll be backing the government-issued superhero registration bill in Captain America: Civil War. He’s preparing for the worst so he can eventually hang up his armor.
You can watch Iron Man call his Hulkbuster armor into action in the full Avengers 2 spot below.
With Banner still unable to control the Hulk (will he ever?), we’ll have to wait to see how the Avengers will choose to deal with him. Will the rumors be true? Will they shoot him off into space at the end of the film? Or is that a bunch of BS? We’ll find out on May 1.
