Joss Whedon Talks Avengers: Age of Ultron
Exclusive on-set interview with the writer-director
When Joss Whedon was announced as writer-director of the first Avengers film, it was seen as another left-field directorial choice from Marvel. After all, he hadn’t directed a film since 2005’s Serenity. But Whedon’s quick wit, brilliant screenplay and way with an ensemble case won the day, and $1.5billion grosser later, he was back in the director’s chair on Avengers: Age of Ultron. Suddenly the man who was a huge gamble had become a safe pair of hands.
Empire caught up with Whedon on set at Shepperton back in April, and found that, even though he was exhausted just a few weeks in, he was engaging company, full of streams of consciousness, rhetorical questions, funny voices and sharp, perceptive points on the future of the Avengers.
The following is material that we didn’t run in the magazine. To read the full set visit, and more quotes from the director and his team, pick up the new issue of Empire, which is on sale now.
How do you feel?
What did Peter Jackson feel like at the end of Return of the King? OK, for realsies, I get pretty tired last week when they all showed up. I’ve got all the Avengers and Sam, and your focus is absolute on everyone. It has to be. You are the only thing that matters. And it went well, and everybody was great and everybody was working hard and everybody was fun and they knew all their words and all the good stuff, but at the end of Friday I was like, I can neither move or speak. Saturday , I was like, I have to write… zzz
So you’re still writing?
The writing is never done because I haven’t finished it. It’s not like it was good enough yet. It’s not like anybody’s going, ‘Well, let’s try something else.’ We all know I haven’t gotten there yet, but I’m close. The story’s there, the structure’s there, everybody basically knows what they’re going through, but there’s still some scenes that absolutely need to be much better. This happened on the first one because I came in so late and it happened on this one because I’m an idiot. I am a stupid. And so I have that to deal with, but it’s good because it makes me feel guilty about how late the script is when someone says, ‘What am I reacting to?’ and I say, ‘Something I wrote on another page that you haven’t seen yet, oops! It’s ok, I’m totally on top of this. I’m the leader of the whole movie!’
But it just makes you work harder when you feel bad about not having worked harder. The thing with this is, it’s different. The thing I haven’t told you about, because I open with some complaining because it’s me, is the part where I’m having the best imaginable time. It’s feeding me in a way that it didn’t ever on the first one, and partially that’s because I didn’t allow it to. There was a whole process where I had to understand that if I’m going to make these films, I have to not feel guilty about it, I have to give myself up to the process, I have to work as hard as I humanly can, and that;s what I am doing and I’m having a wonderful time. The movie reflects better than anything I’ve ever made, and so visually there’s so much going on in terms of styles and templates and genres and locations, and ideas.
Everyday it’s like a different movie, which is really fun because you don’t get that stuck feeling. And because there’s a lot of location work you get a lot of interesting challenges. On stage, it’s easy for things to get more sterile. There’s a large amount of trust with the troupe, and they were great the first time but they were taking it on faith! They were like, ‘OK, he seems to know where he’s going, so we’re going there.’ And Thor hadn’t come out, Cap hadn’t come out, and there was a certain amount of tension in the group within themselves, but this time I feel like there’s an ease and I’m trying very hard not to let that ease translate to ‘Don’t worry, we get this, we’re definitely going to win.’
The only reason you come to do this again after the kind of splash we made is because you think you can make a better movie. But what’s exciting to me is that I’ve been able to attack it really like a terrier, like a pitbull, like a crossbreed between a terrier and a pitbull, a Perrier, I guess you could say.
So you’re starting with the Avengers already assembled?
My instinct was, ‘Let’s just come out of the gate saying there is an Avengers.’ So we can have more time to pick at them and tear them apart and hurt them and ultimately destroy them. I’ve been working on a lot of Ultron scenes, so I’m very anti-Avengers now.
What are your models for this movie?
I know I reference Godfather Part II a lot. ‘Don’t reference the greatest movie ever made because that’s Icarus, you moron!’ But at the same time it is a huge touchstone for me because you get everything you got from the first Godfather movie in a very different movie, in a movie that structurally couldn’t be more different, and thematically and in intent and in mood, and yet nobody ever goes, ‘It wasn’t Godfathery enough.’ I need to give people an exciting ride about heroic people, and that’s certainly part of why I signed on, but at the same time a richer, deeper, darker movie is not a bad thing.
But it’s not Godfather Part II in its structure. No flashbacks.
We see the early days, young Nick Fury in Sicily… I don’t know what the hell he’s doing in Sicily. ‘I can’t wait to see this 3D technology, all these amazing bifocals, and the things I can do with both of my eyes…’ It’s very poignant actually.
But you’re starting with a pre-credits sequence, which is very James Bond.
There is a pre-credit Bondian blow-out. The James Bond theme has come up more than a few times, mainly because the locations are so beautiful and in particular the opening location is really stunning. There was a moment where there were soldiers and different kinds of people fighting them, and these guys in winter camo come up on a castle in one of those mountain resort elevators that goes side-to-side and looks like a gumball machine, and I was looking at the Italian Alps and the mist and the castle, and this weird thing rises up, full of soldiers in winter camo, and everybody was like …[sings the Bond theme].
When did you know you wanted Ultron as the villain for this movie?
Before I took the first movie. For me what was interesting is that he is this angry, and I hired the smoothest talker in Hollywood to play him. I did it on purpose. I needed a guy who can give you the Morpheus but the can just LOSE HIS SHIT. Spader’s really good at that and he’s really good at finding the darkness, but also the comedy. The comedy is always a huge thing for me. Tom Hiddleston is hilarious. Hiddleston can turn on a dime, which is my favourite thing. he can be absolutely apocalyptic and then, ‘Um, point of order?’ Ultron has the same thing. He is very different, obviously, in his rhythms and his concepts, but for me it’s a guy who’s that angry and who hates the Avengers that much and is a also a robot and is therefore going to have every issue that a robot’s going to have with humanity anyway… there’s a lot to play there. For me, he’s an iconic figure.
Did you play around with his powers, and what he’s capable of?
Yeah, I did. The powers in comic books – they’re always like, ‘And then I can reverse the polarity of your ions!’ – well, we have to ground things a lot more. With Ultron, we have to make him slightly less omnipotent because he’d win. Bottom line. Also, having weaknesses and needs and foibles and alliances and actually caring what people think of him, all these things, are what make him a character and not just a tidal wave. A movie about a tidal wave can be great, but it’s different than a conflict between one side and the other.
When Ultron speaks, he has a point. He is really not on top of the fact that the point he’s making has nothing to do with the fact that he’s banoonoos. And that he hates the Avengers for bringing him into this world, and he can’t really articulate that or even understand how much he hates humanity. He thinks he all that. That guy is very fun to write. He combines all the iconic stuff. The powers the has are slight different – he can control certain things, he’s not just firing repulsors.
And you also have Quicksiver and Scarlet Witch.
They have an origin but it’s largely described. They’re already good to go by the time we’re up and running. You don’t want to fall into Spider-Man 3 territory – and I say that as a guy who actually thinks pretty well of that movie, there’s some great stuff in that movie – but there comes a point where you’re overloaded with frontstory, backstory, origin story and it becomes very hard to juggle. My instinct is always, ‘Don’t put in more, work with what you have.’
But I insisted on putting in more in this movie because I felt I needed more villains. I needed someone for Ultron to talk to, and I need more trouble for the Avengers. As powerful as Ultron is, if he builds more Ultrons, they’re Ultrons. There’s no reason for him to ever talk to them because they’re him. ‘I need you to – I KNOW! I AM TOTALLY YOU! I DID IT EARLIER! I know that because I am also me.’ That’s not a good conversation. Actually, it sounded pretty good there. I think I’m onto something.
You’ve retconned Ultron’s origin. In the comics, Hank Pym – Ant-Man – creates Ultron. Here, it’s Tony and, to a lesser extent, Bruce.
Of all the heat I’ve ever taken, not having Hank Pym was one of the bigger things. But the fact of the matter was, Edgar had him first and by virtue of what Edgar was doing, there was no way for me to use him in this. I also thought it was a bridge too far. Ultron needs to be the brainchild of the Avengers, and in the world of the Avengers and the MCU, Tony Stark is that guy. Banner has elements of that guy – we don’t really think of him as being irresponsible as Tony Stark, but the motherfucker tested gamma radiation on himself, with really terrible, way-worse-than-Tony-Stark results.
I didn’t make much sense to introduce a third scientist, a third sciencetician, to do that. It was hard for me, because I grew up on the comics, to dump that, but at the end of the day, it’s a more interesting relationship between Tony and Ultron if Tony was once like, ‘You know what would be a really great idea?’ They’re doing what they always do – which is jump in headfirst, and then go, ‘Sorry world!’ But you have to make it their responsibility without just making it their fault.
Avengers: Age of Ultron is out on April 23 in the UK, and May 1 in North American
Original article at Empire Online
