This article was taken from the May 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Joss Whedon used to be a cult icon. The writer and director created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dollhouse -- shows that introduced us to kick-ass female protagonists and subverted genres, but ultimately appealed to niche audiences. Then came Avengers Assemble. When Marvel Studios gave Whedon the keys to its comic-book kingdom in 2010, the result was not only a mainstream smash of Hulk-like proportions (at £1.5 billion, it’s the third highest-grossing film ever) but proved that franchise tie-ins need not be derivative dross. Now he’s back with sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron, which gives us a bigger baddie and an even bigger roster of heroes. "I am desperate to do a story about just one person, I can’t tell you," says Whedon, 50. Here he talks to WIRED about conflict, sequels and life after Marvel.
WIRED: You originally weren’t going to work on Avengers: Age of Ultron. What made you come back?Joss Whedon: Ultron himself -- because he’s the least robot-y robot ever. He’s just so idiosyncratic and temperamental. I’m fascinated by the Avengers -- their tensions, their secrets, their failures. It’s never the action scenes, it’s always the personal moments that made me go, "Oh shit, I have to do this."
**There’s going to be some conflict between certain characters. Do you enjoy this?**Conflict comes from the same place as humour, which is people having different perspectives and surprising each other. I put the team together -- so what next? Tear them apart. But at the same time, the real joy is when you can split an audience on which character they’re actually crying for.
**Guardians of The Galaxy director James Gunn said he had trouble fitting Avengers 3 bad guy Thanos into his film, and Edgar Wright left Ant-Man due to conflicts in tone. Do you feel confined inside the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe?**There’s a certain level of frustration. For example, we know Captain America and Thor will survive, as they’ve got sequels already announced. Obviously, they need to have a big battle, but for me the stakes are always going to be internal. Thor may survive, but is he going to be able to look himself in the eye afterwards? Is he going to be able to be part of the team? That’s one of the reasons that the Scarlet Witch is so handy-dandy, because she gets all up in their business -- and then we get to see a part of them that we’ve never seen.
**You’ve said you don’t like the ending to Empire Strikes Back, because it ends on a cliffhanger. In a Hollywood that keeps splitting big films into two parts, how do you make a franchise film stand alone?**I always only make a movie for people who have never seen any other movie -- let alone Avengers, let alone Marvel. You want people to come in and get it. That doesn’t mean you explain everything, because part of getting it is, "Oh, those guys are friends, I’ll catch up." What you do is you make sure you wrap up everything you needed to wrap up. You make sure that you’ve asked all the questions. And then you make the point of the movie that things change and they go on. You don’t want to feel like “episode two” of anything. That’s a bad feeling.
**You’re also producing the TV series Marvel’s Agents of Shield and you’ve done a couple of indie films since Avengers Assemble.**I haven’t been this tired since I had three shows on the air. For the first time ever the pressure kind of got to me. The external pressure -- the numbers and the expectations. It’s like they hand you another bottle and say, "Can we get some more lightning?" The only way you get through that is to put your head down and work and work.
**A running theme in your work is about standing up to authority. You were bullied as a child. Do you still feel like the little guy?**You always feel like the little guy. You grow up short, you’re always short -- that’s who you are. There’s a particular short-person perspective which makes you think everybody is scary and you’re smarter than everybody else. Obviously, I’m generalising...
**You’re not particularly short.**I sprouted when I was about 16, but it was too late. The damage was done! Because of certain family members and generally the way people responded to me -- because I was a bit strange -- I felt always like I had my gloves up. It affects everything I do. The common theme through all my work is helplessness, people gaining power and people dealing with power.
**When you’re not working on big-budget Marvel projects, you’ve been making more personal films. What are the challenges of these smaller projects and new platforms?**The challenges aren’t so much about the platform. The problems you encounter on a huge production and a modest production are all similar -- it’s people’s schedules, it’s budgets. You know what a friend of mine says about budgets? They always give you just enough money not to make the movie.
**Most of your work -- Buffy, Firefly, Avengers -- focuses on ensembles. There’s a quote from when you were writing the Astonishing X-Men comics: that in comic books everyone eventually gets their splash page. They get to stand out as an individual.**I feel like my philosophy is that in all our lives we should have a splash page. One of the reasons why I loved reading Frank Miller in the late 80s and early 90s is that he always situated his stories around the schmuck next to the hero, like Commissioner Gordon.
**The previous film was visually very arresting -- how can you top that?**We shot it very differently to the first one. We ran multiple cameras, we ran a lot of long lenses – I think it may be the prettiest thing I’ve ever made. [Cinematographer] Ben Davis killed it. But what was fun was it actually allowed us to get some of the most comic-book frames that I’ve ever shot. There are frames in this movie where I’m like: if you like [comic-book artist] George Perez, this is that. If you like Bryan Hitch, we’ve got that.
**Your Marvel contract is up in June, and you’ve said you’re not going to do Avengers 3. What’s next? Would you return to do another Marvel film?**I wanted to make sure that when I finished I would have no idea what to do next, because I haven’t created from that state in a long time. I don’t know what will take hold or what medium it will be. As far as another Marvel project? I don’t think there’s a better studio. I’ve never had a better working experience.
**Some fans are already calling for you to direct 2018’s Captain Marvel. It feels like any project with a female lead or that’s set in space, you’re automatically linked to.**Yeah! Not even on the list for Black Panther -- what up, guys? Let’s face it, that’s an obsession of mine. But whatever I do next will have to be something of my own. It’s been too long since I’ve created my own little universe.
Avengers: Age of Ultron is out April 23
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
