This evening at the New York Comic Con’s panel for Marvel Studios The Avengers, studio chief Kevin Feige unveiled a newly completed scene from the movie featuring Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner and a meeting he has with an unexpected visitor. Spoilers ahead.
The scene starts with a young Indian girl racing through a market place until she reaches a house. Going inside she finds Bruce Banner (Ruffalo) who is tending to a sick person. She implores Banner to follow her home where her own father is sick. Reluctant at first, Banner follows her to the outskirts of town and a small shack. He follows the girl inside just in time to see her duck out a window. He realizes that he has been suckered and has probably walked into a trap of some kind.
Before he can react further, Black Widow (Scarlett Johanson) steps out from the shadows. The two verbally spar for a moment. Black Widow says that it has been two years since Banner has had an “incident” and explains that SHIELD had been keeping tabs on Banner all this time, watching him and “even help keep some interested parties off your scent.” She states that the world is facing “a possible global catestrophe” and SHIELD needs his help in tracking down an object called the Tesseract, the powerful cube-like object we saw this past summer in Thor. The object emits gamma radiation and Banner is the leading authority on gamma radiation.
Banner seems reluctant and suspicious at first (“What does Fury want me to do? Swallow it?”) but he agrees to help. That’s when Black Widow orders the SHIELD troopers that she said weren’t surrounding the house to stand down from their position of surrounding the house.
The scene was a pretty good balance of tension, undercut with a few moments of comedy – hallmarks of the film’s writer/director Joss Whedon. Interestingly, Banner continually referred to his Hulk alter-ego as “the Other Guy,” and Ruffalo brought an air of real menace to Banner in the scene.
Following the scene was a montage of footage from the film. Much of it has been seen before the post-credits tag on Captain America: The First Avenger, but among the new shots were a view of Stark Tower in Manhattan and some additional action sequences. It ends with Chris Evan’s Captain America asking Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, “Is everything a joke to you?” In typical fashion, Stark quips back “Funny things are.”
We’ll be back with more from the Avengers panel.
