Those of you that heard Joss Whedon’s comments while promoting Avengers: Age Of Ultron will be well aware that production on the blockbuster left the filmmaker at the end of his tether.
The writer and director, who has overseen The Avengers and Avengers: Age Of Ultron as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, suggested that he was done working with the studio following his ordeal making Age Of Ultron, at least for a few years.
And now Joss Whedon has explained his status with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, confirming during a recent question and answer session at Oxford Union that he no longer has any involvement with the studio – confirming that he doesn’t work as the “showrunner” for Marvel any longer.
Whedon stated, via Comic Book, “I’ve gone off the reservation for a while. It was five years I was working on either Avengers or S.H.I.E.L.D. That was an enormous gift they gave me; they handed me several hundreds of millions of dollars and said, ‘Do what you do,’ which is very rare and I was very lucky.”
The filmmaker continued, “At the same time, it’s important for me not just to have my own thing and do something smaller, but also to create a new challenge for myself because I will start to repeat myself.”
But what does that mean exactly? Well, when asked to explain what “off the reservation” means, Joss Whedon clarified, “No, you know, I was their sort of consigliere for a while… but I sort of had my finger in all of the films in the second phase but then I just had to concentrate only on Ultron and sort of know that when it was done, I was just going to stop, so I made a completely clean break.”
It’s not surprising that Joss Whedon has decided to take a break away from Marvel. That’s because Whedon, who previously created Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly and also wrote and directed The Cabin In The Woods , admitted shortly after filming was complete on Avengers: Age Of Ultron that he was a little bit broken.
During an interview with The L.A. Times ‘ Hero Complex Whedon said about his time working on Age Of Ultron , “It’s weird because the first one was very, very, very, hard. This one was much harder. It a little bit broke me.”
In another interview with SFX magazine, via The Hollywood Reporter , Joss Whedon admitted that he was exhausted working on the blockbuster. Whedon was quoted as remarking, “I haven’t worked this hard since I had three shows on the air,” before calling Age Of Ultron the film his “hardest juggling act.”
He didn’t stop there though, because Joss Whedon then added, “Shoot me in the face! It is a nightmare. I long for the simple movies like Serenity! This is the hardest juggling act I have ever, ever tried to pull off.”
The problems didn’t stop during the film’s shoot, because Joss Whedon’s first edit of Avengers: Age Of Ultron ran in at over three hours long, but was ultimately reduced to two-and-a-half hours. However, Whedon insists that he doesn’t feel the need to provide a director’s cut of Age Of Ultron , even though it did change drastically from his original vision.
During his appearance at Nerd HQ 2015 , Whedon remarked, “Ultron may have some transitions that I’m not 100% on board with. It’s also one of the most ridiculously personal things I’ve ever put on screen. The fact that Marvel gave me that opportunity and supported it, I’m very happy and very proud of everybody that worked on it. I don’t feel the need to go in and fix. I feel like, there she is.”
[Image via Getty Images/ Kevin Winter ]
