Film Trailer | Avengers: Age of Ultron

There is a great disparity between the posters and the trailers for Avengers: Age of Ultron.

In the build-up to today’s big reveal Marvel had released a number of bland and lazy character posters featuring each of our principal heroes in a standard hero pose set against a boring backdrop filled with Ultron drones. There’s also a one-sheet with all the Avengers that’s spent far too many hours in Adobe Photoshop:

Thankfully the trailers for Avengers: Age of Ultron have been anything but bland and lazy, and the third and supposedly (but probably not) final clip that was unveiled earlier today is no different.

One of the many great things about the first team-up was the bevy of squeal-tastic moments, and if this new footage is anything to go by Marvel’s latest will transport audiences to geek heaven once more. Out of the three trailers, this one gives us our biggest helping of action by far and it’s great to see the Avengers actually doing battle as a team in the same locations.

There’s a few other interesting titbits of note here; Natasha and Bruce seem to have gotten closer (Hulktasha, anyone?), we get our first very brief look at Paul Bettany’s Vision – and I love that Marvel is keeping this guy under wraps thus far – and we see a little more of Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in action. There’s also a telling piece of dialogue spoken by Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark – “there’s no way we all get through this” – which heightens the notion that our current Avengers roster won’t be intact by film’s end. My prediction: this is Scarlet Johansson’s last appearance in the Marvel cinematic universe (but I hope I’m wrong!).

Some have already said that Marvel are showing too much of their hand in regards to what could be some of the film’s best moments, but I’m inclined to disagree. For one thing, one of the trailers for the first Avengers movie ended with that circular shot, and you can bet I re-watched it a few times before seeing the film. That in no way quelled my reaction when I saw it on the big screen for the first time, and I’m willing to bet the same will be true for Avengers: Age of Ultron.

The other valid concern centres over fears that the final battle will be Avengers vs. an army of minions AGAIN, no doubt featuring the explosions and city-wide destruction inherent in the final act of many a Marvel movie. While this could justifiably be critiqued as repetitive, the carnage is almost always accompanied by big character moments. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it comes down to the friendship between Bucky and Steve Rogers. In Guardians of the Galaxy, it comes down to five disparate characters having to unite to win the day. For me, this goes a long way to alleviating that particular nit-pick.

All in all, it’s a fantastic and bombastic trailer. Consider my appetite whetted.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is released in UK cinemas on April 23.