SCREENRANT -Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age of Ultron finally gave the team’s marksman, Hawkeye, the spotlight attention he deserved. As one of the few original Avengers without a solo origin story, Clint Barton’s (Jeremy Renner) background and personality can only be explored in team movies, and Ultron took advantage of this where its predecessor did not. Moviegoers were able to learn about his secret family life and why he’s the heart of the team.
And it’s a motivating speech, from the perspective of a non-superpowered soldier in Hawkeye, that helps newcomer Wanda Maximoff a.k.a. Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) step up and fight alongside the Avengers. That relationship, as we learned from chatting with the pair last summer, continues in Captain America: Civil War. With her brother dead, the Avengers are the new family for Wanda, and it’s Clint who helps her feel at home.
In our interview, Renner talks about his new costume and how he’ll be using nonlethal arrows to battle fellow Avengers. And as for Scarlet Witch, we’ll see a whole new power level for the character who’s been developing and training in the year since Age of Ultron. No mind control this time!
Where do we pick up with your characters? [to Renner] At the end of Ultron, you’re chillin’ with your family, hanging at the farmhouse, and [to Olsen] you’re kind of reeling from the death of your brother. So where do we pick up with guys in Civil War?
Elizabeth Olsen: We leave Scarlet Witch without a home, without a family, and she ends up creating a surrogate family within the Avengers and making a decision to be a part of the team. I think a lot of that has to do with what Jeremy’s character – like his attitude towards her and the speech he gives her at the end of the film. So we pick up with her having started a new life, but still trying to figure out what her abilities are and if using them causes greater good or greater damage.
Jeremy Renner: Marvel’s really smart about continuing the storylines of all the different movies from Ultron into this one and blah to blah to blah – it’s pretty seamless. So where we left off in Ultron is definitely picked up in Cap 3 here, pretty smoothly I think.
So are you still wrestling with the fact of do I stay with my family or do I help with the situation – is that still kind of your motivation?
Jeremy Renner: I think that’ll always be there for [Clint] Barton, right? You have real life, and then you have fight life. [Laughs] And that’s the character that I love now – discovering that in him makes him a very sort of accessible Avenger. That’ll always be there, I’m sure. And it certainly plays in this one.
What is the bond like between you two?