Over the last week, we’ve gotten a chance to see a bunch of great deleted scenes From Marvel’s Avengers. Now, Joss Whedon is sitting down with Vulture to not only talk about why he changed the movie’s opening, but what he thinks about everything else he’s got in the pipeline with Marvel.
First up, in the original opening to the film, Cobie Smulders (Agent Maria Hill)is sitting before a tribunal that is discussing the events of the film in the past tense. It is actually a pretty powerful opening, but here’s why Whedon changed it up:
“Two factors. One: The movie was three hours long. Two: Audiences didn’t respond to it as well in the movie as I think they would as a DVD extra. Most of them didn’t know who this character was or what the context was, and they were like, Uhhh, I don’t know why I’m supposed to be personally involved in this character I don’t know. The rollout to the Avengers getting to Loki was so gradual that people were getting restless. I thought Cobie nailed it, and the reason I thought it was necessary is because I was trying to make a war movie and I wanted to give context that something bad had happened in the past. In a war movie, you don’t know who’s going to live or die, but you do know that this war happened and that [the characters] are going to be in a dire circumstance, and I wanted to create that atmosphere. I was able to get what I needed without doing that. It was tough. I hated cutting it.”
Next, Whedon’s new contract has him working with Marvel through 2015. It not only has him writing and Directing The Avengers 2, but it also gives him the power to stick his nose into any other Marvel film or TV project that he sees fit. Here’s what he had to say about that:
“It was part of what made it attractive to me. I loved the idea of being a consigliere. Every writer loves the idea of being able to go in and fix a problem and then leave without obligation. It’s fun! I also love these characters and the Marvel universe, and I grew up reading the books, and I’ve been going back and reading the old books and realizing that they shaped my storytelling way more than I give them credit for. Now I’m starting up a TV show, which is something I really wanted to do, but I thought it wasn’t going to be a part of my life for the next several years. It’s like a tapas menus of projects that excite me, in addition to the Avengers sequel, which I’m excited for because I’m incredibly excited about the next story that I’m going to tell. For me, it’s a huge win.”
Finally, it was recently reported that Whedon would be helping plot out and would possibly even be directing the first episode of the new Marvel TV series based around S.H.I.E.L.D. Here are his thoughts on how the show came to be:
“The important thing to me is that we know what the show is. We love what it is. It came together very organically, so when we went in to pitch [to Marvel], it wasn’t like, We’re trying to find this because you want a TV show, it was, Check this out. And that’s a good way to walk in a room.”
TO read the complete interview, head over to Vulture