10 Coolest Superhero Movie Scenes Ever
6. Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) - Veronica, You Look Like Hell
Mark Ruffalo’s incredible take on the Hulk wouldn’t make it into the Civil War storyline that took over this year’s third Captain America movie. Marvel fans cried foul a little, but only a little: they’d already seen Stark vs. Banner in 2015’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron.
Bugged out by the Scarlet Witch’s mind-bending influence, Dr. Bruce Banner Hulked out and went on a rampage on the streets of Johannesburg. It was left to Iron Man and his specially-designed modular ‘Hulkbuster’ exoskeleton to take his unhinged friend down before too many people were hurt.
As far as spectacle goes, this isn’t just two massive figures punching each other through buildings, the cliched structure that other, lesser superhero flicks would have settled for. The Hulkbuster armour makes Iron Man larger than the Hulk, and he controls the lion’s share of the scrap, as Stark tries to limit collateral damage while both out-fighting and out-thinking his raging opponent using the technology of the suit as well as pummelling power.
The Hulk, of course, gets stronger and tougher the angrier he gets, which means that the longer the fight goes, the less chance Stark has of winning. In the end, it’s the dissipation of the Witch’s whammy that causes the Hulk to calm down sufficiently for Banner, deep inside, to realise the carnage he’s in the process of causing - and that moment of weakness allows Stark to punch his lights out for long enough to allow the transformation back to Banner again.
The odd pathos of that ending segues beautifully into the more downbeat second act of the film, as the team begin to second guess themselves - yet it’s the amusing moments in the big slugfest that resonate for the longest.
Stark is his usual flippant self, talking to Hulk like the monster is a toddler having a tantrum… which he kind of is. Watching the film for the first time in mid-2015, I was reminded of struggling to hold onto, never mind calm, my baby daughter when she descended into one of her epic, red-faced, shrieking strops.