Joss Whedon Remains Undecided About ‘Avengers 2′

[sonak]

Captain Craig wrote:

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Who do you think directed the action? Who gave the characters their voice?
Whedon was the largest part of what made the film work and this thread is the first time I've seen anyone give opinion to the contrary.

er, the characters had all previously been in other movies that ranged from decent to very good, so Whedon was hardly "giving them their voice," he was building on previously successful work. And yeah, the action was competently done, but again previous Marvel movies had great action too.

I don't see what Whedon brought to "Avengers" uniquely that hadn't been there before.

Both "Iron Man" movies were funnier than "Avengers," so it was hardly his unique ability to write clever dialogue.

[Captain Craig]

Timby wrote:

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Whedon's direction was terrible. The Avengers succeeded in spite of him, not because of him. That film had the most perfunctory, dull and, quite frankly, boring action I've seen in a summer blockbuster in quite some time, with everything framed in a method that actually nullifies any sensation of physicality whatsoever. It's basically the textbook definition of "not visceral in the slightest." Whedon's a halfway-decent writer, but he's just terrible as a director. His action scenes in The Avengers exist solely to have dudes make comic book poses: It's action as empty, meaningless time-filling material, essentially Whedon playing with action figures.

Honestly, it's identical to how the film presents wiretapping, torture, terrorism, genocide, so on and so forth. It's "political." Wiretapping is shrugged off as no big deal. Torture is reduced to just a word.

So, yeah, I'd be very happy if a different director were to tackle the next installment.

We saw different films.


Whedon did do some modifications to the Captain America script, so he had a part in that.

Whedon is responsible for the voices in this film. The praise for Natasha's role, how Banner and Stark interacted, how Steve felt more emotional, less stoic...everything relating to people's descriptions of the characters is on him.

Replacing him is asking for a copy, why have a copy when the original can be had.

[DWF]

The Avengers movie was much like Star Wars and ID4 a summer popcorn action/acventure movie held together by the chemistry of the characters and the acotrs but not much sustance to it. If Joss is truely waffling it's more a creative problem than anything else I think, Kevin Feige had a laundry list of things I'm sure the had to be in the Avengers movie inclduing Coulson's death.

[Captain Craig]

^^^
Coulson's death was easy for Whedon to add, if not necessary. Frankly it's a Whedon thing, no one stays happy forever. He's killed plenty of characters that always felt necessary.

[RoJoHen]

Captain Craig wrote:

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^^^
Coulson's death was easy for Whedon to add, if not necessary. Frankly it's a Whedon thing, no one stays happy forever. He's killed plenty of characters that always felt necessary.

Yeah. With Whedon, the moment a character feels happy or fulfilled, you can pretty much expect them to die and/or be turned into a demon.

[DWF]

Captain Craig wrote:

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^^^
Coulson's death was easy for Whedon to add, if not necessary. Frankly it's a Whedon thing, no one stays happy forever. He's killed plenty of characters that always felt necessary.

Yeah it was easy I guess, but he talk about doing alot of rewriting of the scipt at a local Starbucks while they were filming in Cleveland.

[nightwind1]

Timby wrote:

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Whedon's direction was terrible. The Avengers succeeded in spite of him, not because of him. That film had the most perfunctory, dull and, quite frankly, boring action I've seen in a summer blockbuster in quite some time, with everything framed in a method that actually nullifies any sensation of physicality whatsoever. It's basically the textbook definition of "not visceral in the slightest." Whedon's a halfway-decent writer, but he's just terrible as a director. His action scenes in The Avengers exist solely to have dudes make comic book poses: It's action as empty, meaningless time-filling material, essentially Whedon playing with action figures.

Honestly, it's identical to how the film presents wiretapping, torture, terrorism, genocide, so on and so forth. It's "political." Wiretapping is shrugged off as no big deal. Torture is reduced to just a word.

So, yeah, I'd be very happy if a different director were to tackle the next installment.

Obviously, you have just returned from the Mirror Universe, where you saw THEIR version of "The Avengers".

Try watching OUR universe's version next.

[Christopher]

Captain Craig wrote:

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^^^
Coulson's death was easy for Whedon to add, if not necessary. Frankly it's a Whedon thing, no one stays happy forever. He's killed plenty of characters that always felt necessary.

Killing characters is "a Whedon thing," yes, but not in this case; the decision to kill off Coulson was made before Whedon even came aboard. I think I even read somewhere that he resisted doing it because he knew people would go, "Oh, there Whedon goes killing off our favorites again."

[ManOnTheWave]

I think the Avengers made money because it was the movie that had been teased since the end of Iron Man, which was also quite successful. I think it was good because of Whedon. Whether he does Avengers II or not, I just hope he gets the chance to write and direct more and bigger movies.

[Christopher]

ManOnTheWave wrote:

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I think the Avengers made money because it was the movie that had been teased since the end of Iron Man, which was also quite successful. I think it was good because of Whedon.

Quite right. It makes no sense to attribute the movie's success solely to the advance hype and the preceding films. Those things created high expectations for the movie, but if it hadn't actually been good enough to match or exceed those expectations, then the result would've been extreme disappointment and fan outrage. Remember how fans reacted to Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand -- which weren't really bad films per se, but were significant steps down from their extremely well-received antecedents, and so they fared poorly. So advance hype alone isn't enough to guarantee success. Just the opposite -- it makes success harder, because there's a higher bar to clear. The Avengers faced as high a bar of expectations as has ever been set for a superhero movie to date (not counting The Dark Knight Rises, which isn't out yet as of this writing), and it cleared that bar easily. So hell yes, it succeeded because it's a good movie in its own right, and that's largely because of Joss Whedon.

[DWF]

Christopher wrote:

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Quite right. It makes no sense to attribute the movie's success solely to the advance hype and the preceding films. Those things created high expectations for the movie, but if it hadn't actually been good enough to match or exceed those expectations, then the result would've been extreme disappointment and fan outrage. Remember how fans reacted to Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand -- which weren't really bad films per se, but were significant steps down from their extremely well-received antecedents, and so they fared poorly. So advance hype alone isn't enough to guarantee success. Just the opposite -- it makes success harder, because there's a higher bar to clear. The Avengers faced as high a bar of expectations as has ever been set for a superhero movie to date (not counting The Dark Knight Rises, which isn't out yet as of this writing), and it cleared that bar easily. So hell yes, it succeeded because it's a good movie in its own right, and that's largely because of Joss Whedon.

There were massive expectations for the first Superman movie, the 1989 Batman movie and Raimi's first Spider-Man movies, but none of them had the benefit of inflated ticket priices thanks to 3D and IMAX showings. And little of the hype for the Avengers movie said anything Joss Whedon directing the movie.

There's a large number of things that led to the seccess of the Avengers movie, I can't say Joss's direction was all that extraordinary.

[Mr. Adventure]

Poor Whedon, he's the sole reason Serenity didn't work and he had no part in the success of the Avengers, or so I've heard.

[stj]

It's hard to guess these things, but it seems to me that a part of The Avengers' success came from having that many superheroes on screen in one movie and they all did stuff and the stuff was big. When NYC was threatened, stuff was smashing everywhere.

As for the contributions of Joss Whedon Quimself, his script I though mediocre. I didn't buy into the Black Widow myself. And everything Fury did was downright stupid. Thor wasn't handled properly. Tom Hiddleston managed to make Loki interesting in Thor, but with Whedon's script, he was just a greasy haired asshole who made stupid speeches and got bitchslapped for his pains. The discovery that Banner was lying in every scene before the climactic battle I suppose is surprising. Writing the new Banner who is always angry and is in total control of the Hulk is going to be a challenge and it's not at all obvious Whedon is up to it.

As to the direction, the big climactic action scene flowed from one superhero to the other, which goes directly to the big selling point of Avengers being the sheer spectacle of all those superheroes. For the rest? No, it wasn't very visceral. You didn't have any real idea of why anything was happening. The so-called villains in particular were just aimlessly fighting. For my part, it was the scale that was interesting.

I doubt I'll purchase The Avengers, despite the nostalgia value. And if they hire someone else for directing the sequel it won't lower my expectations a bit. They're already lowered because sequels are rarely as good as the originals.

[DWF]

Mr. Adventure wrote:

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Poor Whedon, he's the sole reason Serenity didn't work and he had no part in the success of the Avengers, or so I've heard.

It was supposedly poor marketing that blame for Serenity's failure, yet somehow the hype for the Avengers gets no credit, that's what's interesting.

[Wereghost]

Dream wrote:

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I REALLY hope Whedon returns for the sequel. Nothing sounds better to me than the words "Joss Whedon's Avengers trilogy".

How important do you consider getting Whedon back for the sequel to be? Do you think Whedon was an important reason for how huge Avengers turned out or do you consider him a director for hire?

I think that he needs to write or co-write the sequel in order to keep things consistent, including the quality of the scripts - he's possibly the best there is at what he does best. A change of director might benefit the franchise, though. Would love to see Guillermo del Toro do it, but his work on other projects (particularly the Hulk TV show) might preclude any involvement. Drew Goddard, maybe?