Andy Serkis Talks About Bringing Hulk And Ultron To Life In AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
Andy Serkis has a human part in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but also played a key behind-the-scenes role in bringing The Hulk and Ultron to life in his motion-capture Imaginarium. Here, the actor sheds some light on how both of these characters will be portrayed in the movie...
Andy Serkis' The Imaginarium works with visual effects companies on motion capture, and their upcoming projects include huge movies like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Talking in the latest Empire Magazine, the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes star revealed that it was Ultron and The Hulk that the studio worked on in Joss Whedon's upcoming superhero sequel, and shed some light on what exactly went into bringing both characters to life. "We did some work on Ultron. On the development of Ultron before James Spader came on board. In terms of movement styles: was he gonna be human-like? was he gonna be robot-like? So we worked with a bunch of different people, from body-popping experts to dancers, to this guy called Neil who's nearly eight feet tall..." As for Mark Ruffalo, it sounds as if he'll be voicing the Green Goliath this time instead of Lou Ferrigno. "We gave Mark weights, we had voice projections so he could do his Hulk roar. On screen we could have a virtual representation of the low-res avatar of The Hulk, so he could come out and feel that sense of scale."
Motion capture has become a huge part of many movies, and Serkis' amazing work (which came to most people's attention in The Lord of the Rings) has led to many arguing that he should have been nominated for an Oscar for his work as Caesar in the Planet of the Apes movies. However, he's just as happy working behind-the-scenes as he is in front of the camera! "It's a journey I end up going on with the actors. To find out what they want to get out of it, and and what we can do to help them so it's still them authoring the role. Initially when you're asking them to put a grey suit on, they're not very into the idea. But it's usually within the first hour, when they can see the result of them being in that suit [on screen] in real-time, they settle in. And then they've lost themselves in our world. James in particular - he loved every minute of it."