Mark Ruffalo was excited to reprise his role of The Hulk but he was equally as excited to be on set with his fellow Avengers actors and experience again the camaraderie that had formed among all of them. “We all as actors went on this journey together, through this wild thing that became The Avengers and this successful thing and then everyone going off and having all these other successes that spun out of it, and there’s a lot of goodwill between us. So coming back after being away and seeing each other was a very sweet reunion and working together was a lot of fun. There’s a lot of goofing around and a lot of playfulness and digging in when it’s time to dig in on it, so I think that some of the best, most exciting stuff is when they are all together.”
Ruffalo notes that there has been a definite deepening of the characters in Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. He offers, “We covered a lot of ground of establishing who these guys were in the first one, so we dug down much deeper into who they are when they’re relaxed and when they’re familiar with each other. They let down their guards; they're vulnerable.”
Of all the Avengers, Ruffalo’s Banner has the strongest relationship with Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr. Ruffalo explains, “There are a lot of mutually beneficial qualities that they get from each other. One of them is science and their understanding of science and what Banner’s specialty is could be really well augmented with what Tony's up to. Banner was a renegade at one point and he was crazy enough as a scientist to actually try his experiment on himself. He had shrunk into himself from the bad experience of it. Tony’s the same thing but the successful version of what Banner wanted to be. He did all this stuff to himself but actually really benefitted from it. In a weird way Banner has a tempering effect on Tony and Tony has a livening affect on Banner. They’re sort of coming into a nice balance in this and they work really well together.”
In the movie, Banner and Stark team up to create a peacekeeper for all of humankind, but their experiment goes disastrously awry. “It was a big leap to go where they do because they are basically creating life; that’s where these guys have finally come to,” says Ruffalo. “They're fooling around in the realm of the gods now and human beings don't do very well when they enter that sacred space, so they, of course, reap the hubris of such a profound act.”
On another note, he adds, “What makes this movie work is that is that we don’t know if the Avengers are going to make it. They have a lot going against them and it’s really their shadow in a weird way that they’re fighting against. Ultron is like the negative manifestation of all of their worst attributes.”
In the movie, Ruffalo’s character, Bruce Banner, attempts to deal with his anger issues in some new ways. As Ruffalo explains, “He meditates; he does deep breathing. A lot of it is his feeling of wellbeing within the group. He’s never quite felt so at home and part of a group before and he really buys the idea that he has made a leap and especially the work that is happening with him and Black Widow; this sort of taming of Hulk and being able to use her as a partner in this. They’re experimenting with how to control Hulk but he’s in a great place in his life and because of that he feels more able to join the world. He feels more part of something. There’s always that there's this thing somewhere beneath the surface, but I think he’s starting to feel like he’s getting a hold of it.”
Comparing Marvels Avengers: Age of Ultron to the The Avengers, Ruffalo offers, “Avengers: Age of Ultron is much broader in scope, just visually where we're going-South Korea, Africa, Italy, England, New York; we’re all over the place. We’re inside, we’re outside, we’re in the desert, we’re in the forest, so it has a much more sweeping visual scheme, but also the story breaks free from straight drama into fantasy, into dreams, into nightmares, which gives you even more latitude to explore visually story-wise. I think that what Joss Whedon is going for as far as storytelling is this epic battle against perceptions of good and evil and misperceptions of good and evil. Those kinds of things are really culturally significant ideas for today. There’s love, there’s betrayal, there’s familial love, there’s loss, there’s doubt and there’s redemption.”
