With the ABC special
Assembling a Universe, nothing made waves as much as the concept art for
Avengers: Age of Ultron—particularly the one featuring the Hulkbuster armor locking up with the big green giant himself.
Immediately, fans began to speculate about this sequence in the film and what it means. Two main theories have sprouted:
1) The Hulk is in the midst of a bout of destruction and it's up to Tony Stark's brand new armor to put a stop to him before he hurts anyone else.
2) Ultron has taken control over Stark's armor and the roles are reversed: Hulk is our hero and he's merely fighting off the enemy.
I, however, present to you an argument that neither of those are true and that things are much less exciting than they're made out to be.
Let's cut right to the chase. My theory is that
this is merely a training sequence.
Tony Stark in the comics is no stranger to working with S.H.I.E.L.D. and although we may not be heading toward any kind of Civil War scenario, the movies have never shied away from casually referencing elements of different storylines in a much lesser capacity. Stark may very well have created the Hulkbuster armor for the government as a means to prepare for the worst case scenario.
Perhaps the Council we've seen in
The Avengers are more worried about Hulk than anyone else and they'll only allow him on the team if they have a backup insurance plan set up just to be sure that if Banner loses control, they aren't screwed.
Why would Banner be up for this? Because after the events in New York, he's not only more trusting of Nick Fury, but he's also clearly gotten closer to Tony Stark and they've become friends, as evidenced by the post-credits sequence in
Iron Man 3. Banner's struggled with his other side and understands fully that if things got out of hand, he would be dangerous. After all, he's tried committing suicide, remember? So why wouldn't he trust someone that stood by him in the darkest hour to set up a contingency plan to put him down if need be?
This could very well just be a sequence at the beginning of the movie to show that our core team has been interacting not only with each other, but with S.H.I.E.L.D., to advance their tools and be ready for anything else that might come their way. Ultron can even be an extension of that, with Stark trying to argue that himself in the Hulkbuster armor is more reliable than the alternative A.I.-driven program they've been developing with him.
The first two theories have about equal weight to them as anything else at this point, since it is all speculation, but I wouldn't rule out this merely being a simple scene of "let's test out the new toys and have some fun to start the movie off", working in a cameo that fans have been waiting for. If you think it will be a huge action set piece, you may be disappointed.
What do you guys think? Is it one of the first two theories, this one, or something entirely different? Leave a comment below!