Since we learned that he would not be returning for ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ or the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general for the foreseeable future, Joss Whedon seems like he’s being more candid about his thoughts on various Marvel Studios projects. For instance, he’s been very vocal about the resurrection of Agent Phil Coulson for ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’. He then spoke about how Edgar Wright’s ‘Ant-Man’ script was the best script Marvel ever had. And finally he’s been sharing some of the moments that had been compromised thanks to cuts made to the film. Now, in a new interview, the fan favorite filmmaker goes into some “unpleasantness” that he encountered from the studio executives while making ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron.’
(We’ll be treading on some spoiler territory so don’t read on unless you’ve seen ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’!)
During his appearance on the Empire Film Podcast, Whedon spoke at length about things that he had to leave out of the latest adventure starring Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. At one point, he talked about two heroes that weren’t on the board to play with yet while he was developing the script for ‘Age of Ultron.’ Originally, he wanted Captain Marvel and Spider-Man to be part of the New Avengers line-up that consists of Captain America, Black Widow, Falcon, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, and The Vision. We may never know what he had planned for Carol Danvers and Peter Parker, but it certainly sounds like he wanted to include them pretty badly:
“I wanted all those people. I said it would be great if we could just add a few more. We could have a Captain Marvel there. And Spider-Man, we could do that too, cause Sony had approached us during the first movie about a little integration.
So I would have put both of them in, but neither of the deals were made. And then they were like, ‘We’re making a Captain Marvel movie and we’ve got Spider-Man as a property,’ and I’m like, ‘I’ve already locked my film, you f*ckers! Thanks for nothing.’”
Then, after he outlined a deleted scene featuring Thor being possessed by the Norn during the scene in the cave (that should appear on the home release of the film), Whedon went into some battles that he had to go through just to keep part of that scene plus the time on Hawkeye’s farm in the final cut:
“The dreams were not an executive favorite. The dreams, the farmhouse, these were things I fought [for]. With the cave, they pointed a gun at the farm’s head and ‘Give us the cave’. They got the farm. In a civilized way – I respect these guys, but that’s when it got really unpleasant. There was a point when there was going to be no cave, and Thor was going to leave and come back and say, ‘I figured some stuff out.’ And at that point I was so beaten down, I was like, ‘Sure, okay… what movie is this?’ The editors were like, ‘No no, you have to show the thing, you just can’t say it.’ I was like, ‘Okay, thank you, we can figure this out!’ You can tell it was beaten down, but it was hard won.”
I understand that the higher ups at Marvel probably wanted to preserve the more comical portrayal of Thor in ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’, but the final product gave us one of many plot holes in the film. Hopefully it gets put back into the extended cut and our lingering questions are answered. But until we find out what makes it back into the movie when it’s released on Blu-Ray and DVD, what do you think about Joss Whedon’s experience with the studio executives? Were you happy with what we ended up getting in theaters last weekend? Or would you have liked to see more of the things that the filmmaker had planned appear in the theatrical cut? Share your thoughts in the comments below.