AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON — Description of How Quicksilver's Super Speed Was Shot

When we see Iron Man or Thor fly we aren't thinking about Superman, and that's mostly because of how they fly. Superman defies gravity and goes from a hover to mach one in milliseconds. Thor swings Mjölnir around and then throws it into the sky. Iron Man uses repulsers in his hands and feet for stability and additional repulsers fold out of his back to go supersonic.

We've already seen Quicksilver's display of speed in X-Men: Days of Future Past, he's faster than bullets and seems to have limitless speed. On the CW's The Flash TV series, Barry Allen is mostly a blur only seen entering and exiting super-speed, and when he goes really fast he can travel through time.

We won't really know what Quicksilver's own distinct style of super-speed in Avengers: Age of Ultron will be like until we see the movie, but, thanks to Buzzfeed, we know a little bit about how they have shot a few action set pieces.

Minor Spoilers Ahead

Joss Whedon filmed Elizabeth Olsen dispatching Ultrons from several angles, including one using an ultra-high-speed camera. That shot would later be combined with one of Aaron Taylor-Johnson running through the same frame at regular speed, to re-create how the world looks to Quicksilver when he’s operating at his top velocity. The filming strategy proved especially taxing for Olsen, who had to maintain Wanda’s stable bearing even amid utter bedlam — every quiver in her face was amplified enormously in slow motion. “There’s live cars on fire and gunshots and all those things,” Olsen said. “I have such a bad nervous system that … I have to know exactly when there’s gonna be a loud noise or a spark or else I’ll jump or twitch or something.”

For his part, Taylor-Johnson also struggled at first to nail the deceptively simple act of how Quicksilver would look while running on camera. The obvious option — shooting Taylor-Johnson running on a treadmill in front of a green screen — proved to be a non-starter. “There was no real life to it,” said Taylor-Johnson. “It looked really dull.” Instead, the production started shooting Taylor-Johnson outdoors, as he sprinted over natural terrain. “The more dynamic or the messier my arms were or the wider my legs were, [and] the more I changed up the wave and the rhythm of the running, the better,” he said. “It feels more emotional and expressive. It’s a lot more fun that way.”

So at least one sequence will be slow-motion with a mix of emotionally and expressive running. We recently posted a featurette that shows a bit more of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch displaying their powers. I feel really sorry for The Flash movie in 2018 which will be the fourth speedster seen on screens both big and small.