We know that Avengers: Age of Ultron is going to be grim and harrowing as the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes battle their most sinister foe to date, but it’s not all doom and gloom and danger. There are moments of levity, as you can see in this clip where the gang plays a rousing game of "Lift Thor’s Hammer."
This clip is a solid illustration of what makes the Avengers movies so much fun and so engaging. Of course there are massive action set pieces, tons of adventure, and sprawling storylines, but it’s really the characters and their chemistry that truly sell the films. Audiences go back time and again because we like these people, we connect with them, and together, they have a fantastic chemistry and are a blast to watch on screen. If we didn’t like them, we wouldn’t give a crap if an artificially intelligent rogue program tries to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
What you get here in this moment is a kind of calm before the storm, where these characters you know and love just hang out, have a few drinks, and do the random shit that friends do when they get together. Granted, most of us don’t associate with demigods, billionaires, assassins, or super soldiers, but the same general principles apply. (Don’t we all know someone who got drunk and played with a hammer?) They’re having fun, a point driven home the jaunty, jazzy drum score that sounds like something out of Birdman.
If this clip looks familiar to you, that’s because it is. This is a different version (not extended, just different) of footage we saw for the first time at the beginning of an extended trailer a few months back. This clip has some new bits inserted, most notably a little more with Hawkeye, and Bruce Banner in a lighthearted moment of self-mockery. There’s also some left out, however, most conspicuously a funny piece with Black Widow, where she passes up her turn, leaving the boys to play with their toys.
Having watched this, now I’m curious to see how it plays out in the actual movie. The first time we saw this scene was six months ago, and we’ve heard that director Joss Whedon’s original cut was much longer than the theatrical version, so it’s possible this new look has been trimmed down. Check out the original below and see how things go from lighthearted to deadly serious in a matter of seconds.
Every day we’re getting more and more from Avengers: Age of Ultron, and we’ve still got more than two weeks before it finally hits theaters on May 1. By that time we may have seen the whole damn thing.
