So many of you will have seen the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer by now. If you haven’t and you want to FOR GOODNESS SAKE – GO! NOW!

If you DON’T want to see the trailer and you live in some sort of pre-Internet spoiler-free world…um…OK, good luck and:

**SPOILER ALERT**

I was fortunate enough to be drinking coffee and checking my Twitter feed when the trailer first leaked on DailyMotion. I immediately retweeted @DailySuperhero‘s tweet because I trust those guys to have the real deal, then I watched it.

I actually need to have a double-carriage-return after even SAYING that I watched it because it was THAT exciting. There are numerous videos on YouTube now of the reaction to the trailer and I’d really quite like to see a video of my bouncing on my chair like a giddy child when the HULK-BUSTER ARMOUR came on. I genuinely lost my shit, as did a number of other fine people I know when they first saw it (thanks for the memories, dudes).

Now the trailer as a means of advertising upcoming films has been around for a long time, but I feel that its place as a genuine art form and even phenomenon has only really come about since the advent of high-speed internet and social media. The EXPLOSION of tweets, Facebook posts, blog posts* and forum threadviruses has allowed movie producers and executives to gauge the quality of their trailers immediately. I think the global reaction to the leaked trailer either forced Marvel *cough*Disney*cough*’s hand or did it’s job in convincing them that this teaser was EXACTLY on the money.

I tweeted earlier in the week that I hadn’t been this excited about a trailer since the first glimpse we all had of a dozen or so Jedis kicking some arse in the Episode II teaser back in 2001 (after the sad “love story” crap from the third teaser trailer). In fact, let’s all re-live that Jedi moment (bless the Internet)…

Ah…I know I feel better.

Anyway…what was I saying? Ah yes: arse kicking. How much did James Spader’s narration MAKE the Age of Ultron trailer? I was so looking forward to nightmares narrated by him on Thursday night. Alas, I slept well. But for the period of about the last two days, I’ve been riding a wave of excitement about how completely awesome this movie is going to be and how the fulfillment of many childhood dreams feels.

Like many magnificently energising action movie trailers, the Age of Ultron trailer had enough glimpses of devastation to hint that whatever threat the Earth was under, the Avenger would truly be needed again, showed enough of the unhinged menace of Ultron to make you realise that this big-bad would be more than worthy and gave you THE BLOODY HULK-BUSTER ARMOUR!!!! So fans of drama excited, fans of apocalyptic storylines excited and fangirls & fanboys VERY excited. It was almost the perfect trailer.

The only thing I found as a mark against it was that the scenes of devastation, the ruined, dusty cars and Cap walking between them, the scenes of crowd fleeing and screaming in terror could easily have been lifted from the first Avengers film – the scenes were just so similar (stock footage?). But I can forgive all of that VERY easily for the HULK BUS–

…Oh OK, I’ll shut up now (briefly).

— IEK

* Self reference – I WIN!