Joss Whedon discussed some of the push and pull with Marvel Studios, and how he was hoping to get Spider-Man and Captain Marvel in there.
NewsThis article contains spoilers for Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Despite having the second biggest opening weekend in history, Avengers: Age of Ultronappears to be having a rough week. One of the key criticisms leveled at the movie is that it spends an awful lot of time setting up future Marvel movies, and perhaps not enough time dealing with being its own film. It's something that pops up quite often in discussions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it's a little surprising to hear that Joss Whedon, who surely should have earned a little extra credit with the studio, was worn down by it.
Explaining that some of the stuff in the film's middle act had a rocky road with the studio, namely the introspective moments on the farm. "With the cave, it really turned into: they pointed a gun at the farm's head and said, 'Give us the cave, or we'll take out the farm,'" although he did clarify it was done "in a civilized way."
Still, you can tell there's some tension there. "I respect these guys, they're artists, but that's when it got really, really unpleasant."
In other words, those scenes that felt rather crammed in to set up Thor: Ragnarok kind of were. If this is the kind of stuff that Joss Whedon is able to talk about openly that annoyed him, imagine what Edgar Wright was going through on Ant-Man.
Oh, and on top of everything else, the director's sudden absence from Twitter is now being scrutinized, despite the fact that he has vanished from the social network before, and was never really a prolific user anyway. It's being speculated that angry reactions to Avengers: Age of Ultron chased him off, but it's just as likely, if not more so, that the guy is just exhausted.
If you've got the time, the entire interview with Empireis worth a listen, and he spills a few fun details about other things we almost saw.
