Tom Hiddleston Explains How The Avengers Filmed Loki’s Hulk Smash Scene

Tom Hiddleston explains how The Avengers filmed Loki’s Hulk smash scene. Hiddleston will be reprising his role as the iconic God of Mischief in the upcoming MCU streaming series, Loki. Although Loki first appeared as Thor’s (secretly adopted) brother in 2011’s Thor, he really took the spotlight as the villain in 2012’s The Avengers, starting a reign of chaos, comedy and morally-grey goodness that fans still love to this day

Loki’s penchant for grandiose and arrogant Shakespearean speeches (like his classic line about being burdened with glorious purpose) was brutally interrupted in the best way by the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) during the finale of The Avengers. After Loki was trapped at the Avengers Tower he declared himself superior to the Hulk, who responded promptly by beating the living daylights out of Loki with the classic Hulk smash maneuver. The scene remains a fan-favorite to this day due to the fact that it was truly the first time Loki’s narcissistic personality was literally beaten down to a pulp.

Hiddleston went into detail about some behind the scenes secrets of classic Loki scenes during an interview with Entertainment Weekly. His explanation on how the classic Loki Hulk smash scene was actually filmed makes the moment’s final film version even funnier. Read Hiddleston’s explanation of how that scene was filmed below.

“I had a piece of wire tied to my ankle and there was a mat on the floor, which was out of shot, and three of the strongest stunt guys holding the wire at the end behind the camera. The experience being yanked out of frame was one I will not forget in a hurry…For about two years after that, I couldn’t go through airports anywhere in the world without somebody kind of going, ‘Hey, Mr. Loki, I love it when you get Hulk smashed.’ It became a bit of a thing in a fun way.”

It’s always interesting to hear behind-the-scenes details on how classic MCU moments were filmed. Hiddleston also noted in the interview that Mark Ruffalo didn’t portray the Hulk with motion-capture during filming of The Avengers, so Hiddleston was the only one being yanked around on-set for that moment. The actual scene and the way it was filmed was hilarious. Canon-wise, the Hulk-smash moment from The Avengers was actually a character defining moment for Loki that led him on a path to heroic sacrifice in 2018’s Avengers: Endgame. 

After all, Loki evolves from a murderous god bent on Earth’s destruction to a morally-grey anti-hero who makes the ultimate sacrifice to protect the people of Asgard and Thor from Thanos, the mad Titan who hired Loki in the first place. If there’s one thing Marvel is superior at, it’s character continuity. And that was never more evident than when Loki prophetically tells Thor, “The sun shall shine on us again brother,” in Endgame before echoing the words Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) told him in The Avengers to Thanos. “We have a Hulk.”

Hiddleston’s God of Mischief will return, still burdened with glorious purpose in the highly anticipated streaming series Loki this June. Loki’s character development over the past ten years in the MCU has been nothing sort of fantastic, so it will be interesting to see how Loki approaches that from a storytelling standpoint. Regardless of plot points yet to be seen, Hiddleston reprising his iconic MCU role will be worth the three year wait.

Source: Entertainment Weekly