#ALLOW ME TO TELL YOU THE STORY OF HOW THIS SCENE BREAKS MY HEART #up until this shift clint and tony are snarking back - clint doesn’t let it show that he’s worried; like sure he’s frustrated #and he’s angry as hell and stuff but he’s not worried - not really anyway; like he’s just mocking tony for being naive #but the very moment that tony DARES to mention the wife and kids; clint who had been pretty passive and speaking around what tony wanted #clint gets up from where he’d just sat down to ignore tony (lalalala) and turn his back on him to HITTING THE GLASS WALLS with his palms#because that’s the only thing he can do - tap the walls instead of hitting tony square in the jaw. because what tony just did? #not only is he trying to guilt trip clint into admitting he was on the wrong side but he just MENTIONED the KIDS and laura in front of ROSS #and clint just loses it - he snaps completely #i’m absolutely ready to bet that if that glass wall hadnt been there he would have tried to hit tony square in the face #i’m ready to bet that it is what would have happened #just look at the anger that is oozing off clint when tony turns his back on him to move on - clint is ready to punch something or someone #in the second one look at clint’s face when he realizes that tony just played the “you have a family don’t you feel bad about them” #card on him - he just snaps. it’s a 180’ turn from where he was half a second ago and i praise and praise and will keep on praising#jeremy’s acting here because how can you convey such an emotion in such a short time? how can he do that? the utter shift in emotions? #clint goes from passive and ‘fucking jerk tony’ to ‘i’m going to kill him if i get my hands on him’ in a split second and #that’s all thanks to jeremy’s beautiful acting here #i’m gonna go cry in a corner now thank you
Quoting my own tags here because this needs its own gifset, and while making this set I realized that Tony, as soon as he says the ‘you have a family’ line sees that he’s just poked at a potential bomb and he leaves. Clint is still getting up at this point, but Tony is on his way away - he’s just poked Clint with a very big and bad stick, and he turns his back on Clint, as if it’s on his own terms that this conversation is ending. Half a second before, Clint had just sat down on his bed, ready to probably lie down and ignore Tony, but then Tony brings up Clint’s family - and that provokes a reaction from Clint.
But, instead of waiting for the consequences of that hair pulling he just did, he leaves Clint there to scream at him - and Clint hits the glass. He hits it so hard because it’s the only thing he CAN do to get back at Tony, and instead of ignoring it, because no, Tony wanted to play, Tony gets to play, he yells out to the others to out what just transpired. Maybe Scott, Wanda and Sam weren’t listening, but now they are.
I can just speak again and again about the acting, the way the scene was played out - Clint is so damn angry to be in that cell. I’m sure that if it had happened in one of those normal cells where the prisoner is just chained to the table (Fisk style in Daredevil), he would have tried to hit Tony in the face again. He would have tried to hit him or spit on him, or something - because Clint gave up his everything to come join this damn conflict. I’m convinced he did it mostly for Wanda, whom they locked up in this damn prison with a straight jacket and a collar, and I’m sure as hell that Clint is pissed about that too.
The second gif is my favorite - because you can literally see Clint thinking all that he is thinking in that very split second he goes from ignoring Tony to wanting to punch him in the face.
Robert and Jeremy did an incredible job on this scene. It would not have been the same without the raw emotion that Jeremy just managed to ooze with the small gestures, the facial expression, much of which reminds me of Jem Coughlin he played in the Town, but it works so DAMN well against Robert’s cold and dispassionate portrayal of Tony here. If they’d both been emotional messes, the scene wouldn’t have worked the same way, and I love them, the directors, and all the other people involved for making this scene so incredibly emotional and raw.
