An Interview with Joss Whedon About Avengers: Age of Ultron #AvengersEvent

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to interview the cast of The Avengers – so exciting, right?! But just as exciting was interviewing THE LEGEND that is Joss Whedon! I have to admit that when he walked into the room, I was geeking out inside. This is the man that brought us Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and of course, The Avengers! His latest amazing contribution is Avengers: Age of Ultron and I had the chance to sit down with Joss Whedon along with some other bloggers to get the scoop on his latest movie.

There’s no denying that Joss Whedon has done a lot for pop culture, so he was asked who does he look to or who inspires him to reach further and to reach higher to make this entire universe and fulfilled vision the way he sees it?

Joss told us,

I have a weird relationship with pop culture.  I’ve never really been a part of it until I suddenly was and most of my influences are a little left of center, or very old.  You know, the directors that I look at when I’m thinking about a movie usually are people like Vincent Minnelli or Sam Fuller, or Frank Barseghian. But it’s the people who, not just artists.  It’s just the people in my own life that I see working four times as hard as I ever can and trying to do things they can’t.  Those are the people that they never have.  Those are the people that make me sit down and go, oh wait a minute, I can do better because ultimately, the only person who’s ever really going to inspire me to go further and do better is me. I have to sort of like gear up and I should actually have two chairs because at some point, I always go, okay, you need to work harder, you need to do more, you need to be better.  I’ll tell you who’s inspired me of late, is Lin-Manuel Miranda because seeing Hamilton at the Public Theatre was just such a breathtaking experience. And the amount of work that he did for six years to put that together, I just thought, oh, gotta bring up my game.  There it is.  The bar is higher again.  Dammit.

If you’ve seen the Avengers trailer {or just take a look at the picture below}, you’ve seen the iconic shot of the Avengers jumping in slow motion which is an amazing shot.

Joss shares with us how that shot came to be,

We just caught it by accident, you know.  I hadn’t even said action yet.  They were just clowning around and somebody had a phone, so that was great.  That was the last shot we got finished ‘cause it’s over a minute long. I wanted to create some frames that were just unabashedly comic book frames that would speak to our love of the thing and that one took, you know, longer to create than anything else.

But it was important to me to have that right away, like first up in the movie. Not to say, and now we’ve got to get everybody back together and let’s go find them, now we find Captain America and he’s digging in a trench and now we find…instead just go boom, we’re back.  This is what you love.  Are you having fun?  Good.  Now we’re going to tear it apart.

We know by now that there are SO many amazing characters in the Marvel movies. I think that Avengers: Age of Ultron does a great job of sharing a little bit more about each character.  I asked Joss {yes, I was geeking out again as I asked him a question!} how he balances it out to make sure everyone gets enough screen time.

Joss shared,

It’s, you know, it’s hard.  What’s important is making everybody integral to this story and not just have it sort of be a roll call where it’s like – and I’m also in the film.  You know, making sure that the twins’ story was part of Ultron’s story and obviously making sure that their perspective on the Avengers had something to do with Ultron’s and so that there was always a reason for everyone to be together.

The good thing is they worked so well against each other so when you’re giving somebody their moment, it’s usually with somebody else.  It’s usually playing against somebody else, either arguing with or having fun with or teaming up with and so it creates its own little web, so it’s difficult, but it’s not like you’re telling, it’s not Magnolia where you’re telling all these separate stories that are just vaguely intertwined. They’re doing some of that job for me.  BY the way, if it was Magnolia, it would be the best movie ever made, but I can’t reach for the stars, people.  I’m just a man.

In the movie, we saw the introduction of the Hulkbuster and one of the most epic Avenger vs. Avenger battles I think we’ve ever seen.  Was there any difficulties filming that?

Joss says,

There is some slight enormous difficulties in the fact that neither of those people exist, so with the camera, there’s a lot of –  guys, we’re here.  Now he’s over there.  We had the thing mapped out very carefully, so it was in a way, simpler because they weren’t like, I need another., I need to go again. You shoot all of this stuff sort of with the faith that this will work physically and then the hard work comes, you know, up at ILM where they’re dialing in this action you’ve described in a way that looks human and believable, yet completely over the top. The work they did with those guys and with the Hulk, in particular, who’s not just the Hulk there, but he’s angry even for the Hulk.  He’s unhinged and it’s a different performance than he’s given before and the way they captured that, to me, was breathtaking, but it took a little time.

In our interview with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen yesterday, they shared how they didn’t actually have to go through an audition process for Avengers: Age of Ultron and that Joss knew he wanted them for the roles of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Joss shares more about why he wanted them as those characters,

Yeah, I didn’t want anybody else.  I just wanted them.  Aaron is too pretty to live, but I’ve dealt with the Hemsworth problem, so I can forgive.  He’s somebody that I just saw, even in Kick-Ass where he’s playing kind of a weak character, that he just commands the screen and it was, I think Nowhere Boy, where I just said, oh, this is, this is my guy because he’s an old school movie star.  He’s that commanding and beautiful.

But he also looks like he could be kind of an arrogant dick.  He’s not.  He’s the sweetest puppy I know but he’s great at playing that sort of like, oh, I got this.  You know, that sort of, and that’s Quicksilver to a tee.  Quicksilver is that sort of, he’s always hotheaded, he’s always being a pain for everyone, but is essential and very cool.  And Lizzie, I sat down with Lizzie ‘cause I’d just seen Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene and I hope I got those in the right order, and you know, you spend two minutes with Lizzie and you not only don’t want anybody else for the role, you think maybe she should play all of them.

With so many scenes to shoot, Joss was asked what was the hardest scene to shoot?

I would say probably after the first attack by Ultron.  Everybody’s in the lab kind of trying to figure out what’s going on.  We referred to that as the WTF scene and it was just very difficult for me to put together.  It’s hard to explain why.  There’s something about the way the light in the room, I could not find the focus of where everybody should be and how they should move and Robert had to do something really difficult which was start laughing in the middle of this scene, as sincerely like, become a little unhinged.

And getting there and sort of making that work, that was one that I struggled with.  I struggled every much with the party scene.  The after party scene, we shut down during shooting early one day because I started shooting it and I hated everything I was doing and then I was like what should I do?  What’s wrong?  And then I realized, wait a minute.  Didn’t I just make an entire movie where people sit around and drink?  Wasn’t that Much Ado About Nothing?  Ohhh, and then I called.  I was like give me some, I need cards, I need beers. Anyway, I get all these things and we’ll do it all handheld and we’ll just let them go and as soon as I remembered how to shoot a party, it became a party.

Many of us loved the party scene that he mentioned above, so we asked if it was all scripted or were the actors ad libbing at all. Joss shared,

There’s a little, they’re throwing stuff out.  With Robert in a situation like that, I’ll usually give him like five or six options just to  see what tickles his fancy and he’ll sort of run through them.  Most of it is scripted but I like to leave a little room for those guys.  First of all, they’re all funny, articulate people who really know their characters and second of all it sort of, it helps the flow particularly in something like that.  You want it to, you don’t want to feel camera moves or you know, and dialogue.  You just want to feel like you, you stayed at the party.  I’m glad.

In the movie, we hear Ultron say, “Upon this rock, I shall build my church” and we also hear The Vision say “I am”.  Joss was asked if there was any type of significance to having these forms of artificial intelligence kind of speak those Biblical terms?

Joss said,

Yes.  I mean, it’s not necessarily specific in the sense of we are saying this about this person, this about Ultron – to say he has a bit of a God complex…and that was all James, by the way.  We are talking about new life and we are talking about The Vision in particular is something, you know, sort of more than man and that iconography is deliberate, but it’s open to interpretation.  I’m not saying that they are one thing or another.  I’m saying that our response to them contains some element of that understanding of ourselves and our history.

I mean, it’s a Frankenstein story as much as its anything else and the Frankenstein story is, who made me?  Why am I here?  And I guess I’m kind of pissed about it.  So that iconography rolls into that very naturally, I think.

There’s a few more questions that we asked Joss but because I don’t want to spoil you, I’ll wait to share those until after the movie comes out. Avengers: Age of Ultron is in theaters on May 1st and you won’t want to miss it! I’ll be sharing interviews with the cast over the next few weeks. Until then, check out my interview with Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth and also Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen.

Disclosure: Disney provided an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles including travel, accommodations and activities. All thoughts and opinions are my own.