For me, the greatest thing about having
Joss Whedon working on Marvel films is that he isn't just a great director he's also a brillaint screenwriter. If he happens to notice that a scene, or a piece of dialogue, isn't quite working he can dash into his trailer and pound out whatever is necessary to make it work. It is that ability to work on the fly that makes the multi-talented Whedon the most powerful superhero Marvel Studios has in their stable. With that being said, it must be incredibly difficult for Whedon to not feel the pressure from fans to outdo
The Avengers, which grossed
$1.5 billion at the worldwide box office in 2012.
Q: What was your head like going into this movie and what did you set out to do differently?
Joss Whedon: The first one was raggedy. I was a raggedy man when I made that film. It did take a lot out of me. Going in this time, I was like, I just had to sort of recalibrate my entire existence and, throw myself into it more wholeheartedly and say, 'Okay, let's actually make it harder and I’m gonna just invest myself in every part of it: In every production meeting, every location scout, and every question about a prop that I’d like to avoid. I might even work harder on the script. There's nothing that I'm not going to be a part of. I’m gonna give myself up to it - like a Christian to a lion.
Q: When did you first start coming up with ideas for the sequel, and were your first ideas the one’s you’re actually making?
Whedon: Before I took the first job, I said, 'Well, I don’t know if I’m right for this, or if I want it, or you want me, but in the second one, the villain has to be Ultron, and he has to create the Vision.' And then it took me three years before I could tell Paul [Bettany] that I’d had that conversation, but after that, I stopped. I was like, that would be cool if you have Ultron, and you have Vision and Paul played him. And Scarlet Witch and Pietro, definitely. They’re from my era, they’re very different, their powers are different, it’s not all punching, it gives a different palette, so we can do more interesting things. It’s fun; those things were all those were absolutes. But then I didn’t actually want to make the film necessarily. I was ragged from the first one, and so I just turned off my brain. I was like, 'Do not think of cool ideas for the next one. Just get through this.' I thought, 'Is this something that makes sense in my life; do I have anything to say?' And so my agent called - I was in London - and he called me and said, 'There’s a deal that’s worth talking about - time to start to think about whether there’s a movie.' And I’m going, 'All right,' and I went to a pub, and sat down with my notebook, and about forty-five minutes later, my notebook was filled. And I texted my agent and said, 'Yup, and I have so many things to say.' And I was kind of surprised. It took me unawares. It was very beautiful.
If you're a fan of The Hulk, like I am, The Avengers was the first film to finally get the green goliath right. If you asked most people which character stole the show, the majority would say The Hulk. Who deserves the credit? You could start with the talented artists at ILM, who finally delivered a digital version of the big green rage monster that was as impressive as Gollum in Peter Jackson's Middle Earth films. Then there's Mark Ruffalo, who took over as Banner when Marvel decided not to invite Ed Norton ("The Incredible Hulk") back to reprise the role. Ruffalo added a depth and sensitivity to the character that hadn't yet been realized in previous films. It didn't hurt that Ruffalo had Joss Whedon providing him with plenty of fun and thoughtful dialogue. I don't know about you guys and gals, but I am most excited to see what Whedon has in store for The Hulk in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Q: Can you talk about the success of the Hulk in the first film. Did you want to preserve him for the world of the Avengers?
Whedon: Well, I wasn’t the one who said don’t make a Hulk film or anything like that. It was [Marvel head] Kevin [Feige] that said to me, 'We think right now it’s good to have somebody who we can only see in the Avengers.' Everybody loves Mark. He’s phenomenal. But the fact that, you know, there hasn’t been a Hulk since that Hulk...it doesn’t suck. I mean, my job is hard enough, you know. Cap’s had a movie, Thor’s had a movie. Everyone’s gone through big changes, Iron Man had a movie. So, you know, I have to juggle everybody’s perception of that while still making a movie that you can see having not seen any except the first Avengers, or not even that.
Q: You talked in the past about how the Hulk is probably one of the harder characters to adapt into a live-action film. I’m curious exactly how are you handling him taking on a bigger role in this film? I mean we know that Bruce Banner has his hands in the creation of Ultron. So I was curious if you can talk about the expansion of the Hulk character and will we hear him talk more this time around?
Whedon: His monologue about his childhood is very poignant and lacks pronouns. No. You know, the talking thing is something that I sort of -- I pitch it and I take it away. It's moment to moment. Done wrong, it could kill ya. So, I'm pretty leery about that. But Banner has a significant role, and the Hulk, you know, we really held back on him for a long while in the first one. That said, there's something terrible coming that you'll love. And you know, just what makes the Hulk so hard to write is that you're pretending he's a werewolf when he's a superhero. You want it vice versa. You want to see him, Banner doesn't want to see him, but you don't want Banner to be that guy who gets in the way of you seeing him. So the question is, 'How has he progressed? How can we ring changes on what the Hulk does?' And that's not just in the screenplay. That's moment to moment, because you know that even when they are putting in post mix and temp mix, they have a library of two roars. 'Aaarrgh! Uuurrgh!' What if he wasn't roaring? I'm angry, and I'm not roaring. I'm being very polite to reporters, but I'm filled with rage.
Marvel Studios presents Avengers: Age of Ultron, the epic follow-up to the biggest Super Hero movie of all time. When Tony Stark tries to jumpstart a dormant peacekeeping program, things go awry and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye, are put to the ultimate test as the fate of the planet hangs in the balance. As the villainous Ultron emerges, it is up to The Avengers to stop him from enacting his terrible plans, and soon uneasy alliances and unexpected action pave the way for an epic and unique global adventure.
Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron stars Robert Downey Jr., who returns as Iron Man, along with Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Mark Ruffalo as The Hulk. Together with Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, and with the additional support of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Cobie Smulders as Agent Maria Hill, the team must reassemble to defeat James Spader as Ultron, a terrifying technological villain hell-bent on human extinction. Along the way, they confront two mysterious and powerful newcomers, Wanda Maximoff, played by Elizabeth Olsen, and Pietro Maximoff, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and meet an old friend in a new form when Paul Bettany becomes Vision.
Written and directed by Joss Whedon and produced by Kevin Feige, Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron is based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series The Avengers, first published in 1963. Get set for an action-packed thrill ride when The Avengers return in Marvel’s Avengers:Age of Ultron on May 1, 2015.