- THE AVENGERS
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| Joss Whedon talks Avengers |
The guys over at MovieTalk were able to get Joss Whedon out
of his busy schedule and get him to shed some light on the Avengers that will
be releasing on May 4th in USA and April 27th in South
Africa next year.
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| Avengers Assembled |
JW: Well, first
of all, because they've played parts and because in some way we were creating a
new vision of the part, I sat down with every one of them to talk about my
ideas and their desires before I wrote the script, and that's very useful too.
So they knew from the ground-up that they were collaborating
on it. And the things that didn't make sense to them or didn't work to them,
they were like, "Well, I don't want to stress that part of my character.
We have done that before." All of that stuff I could honor.
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| Tony & Bruce |
And then it's a question of making them heard, and then
ultimately making them understand that there are things you are not going to
budge on that are your vision. And once they know they are part of it, but you
actually have a vision, and you are not just trying to tell them what they want
to hear -- that it's all working towards one purpose, one story, one idea --
then I feel, yeah, you are doing fine.
MT: I have heard
from people who have worked with him before that Robert Downey Jr. likes to
keep things sort of fresh and fast. How did your two methods of working fit
into each others'?
JW: Well, we have
very different methods. But working as a showrunner, working as a script
doctor, working in sitcoms -- a lot of my work has been coming up with stuff on
the fly. Like fixing as we go,
improvising, being open to a new idea. So Robert and I would spend -- we worked
specifically towards both of our processes, so that we would beat out a scene
so that he was very comfortable with where it was going or what was being said
and very aware of where it would fit in the whole. And I would give him stuff
to say, and by and large, he would say it.
But then there were always pockets where we had some wiggle
room for him to play, or ask for options, and if he said, "Can we do
something else here?" I could give him four or five options by the time he
had his makeup on. Because that's actually fun for me, that frantic scramble.
We would try different things. He is very collaborative. He
loves notes. He loves to be guided and worked with. He is not trying to
steamroller over me. He is really trying to create it side-by-side with me. So
it ended up being a really healthy and delightful collaboration.
MT: Now, you said
you talked to everybody sort of about their character, was there sort of an
aspect or facet of Tony Stark that Robert brought up that you hadn't considered
before?
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| Captain America, Hawkeye & Black Widow |
JW:I think the
conversations were largely about "Where is Tony now?" Like, "Who
is he now? Where is he [going] from 'Iron Man 2' towards 'Iron Man 3'?" He
is such a well-delineated character, so it was really a question of, "What
do we want to stress and what do we want to say? We have said that, we have
done that, so let's not go there."
He felt a sort of isolated man who is -- even though there
is an element of that, just because that's sort of what any team movie is
about. He didn't want to be the sort of just, "I am totally wrapped up in
one thing and I am not thinking about everybody else." He didn't want to
be the tortured lonely man, which I totally get. And it was easy to make him as
delightful and gregarious as he can be and still go, well, there is a piece
missing and it's the piece that makes him an Avenger.
MT:I was really
impressed by Chris Evans in "Captain America" because his performance
was so different than what you usually see from him. There was no snark, no
sarcastic edge to him. How did you have to adapt your sort of writing style to
fit that sort of straightforward character?
JW:I love a
straightforward character. I am the guy who loves Cyclops on the 'X-
Men', because he is square. [Captain America] is a little
square, and he is aware that he is a little square, and he is aware that the
world is a beat ahead of him, or in his case, 70 beats. I think that's very
disarming and very charming. I relate to that guy. I also don't know who the
popular singers are right now, so he is actually really easy for me to write.
There were some lines where [Chris] would be like,
"Okay, now I just sound like an idiot." And in context, I was like,
"Yeah, actually, now that it's all laid out that is a bit much." But
he is very aware of his dignity, but at the same time understood why I wanted
to find the humor in somebody who was so out of touch.
MT: You have Mark
Ruffalo stepping in for the first time playing the character of Bruce Banner.
So did you feel more freedom to kind of create your own take on the character?
JW: Yeah, he and
I did the most character work of anyone, because we really were starting fresh,
but we were starting with something that had been embodied several times.
And both of us agreed upfront that the template for who we
wanted this guy to be in his life was Bill Bixby, the TV [show character] who
was busy helping other people. That was more interesting to us than the Banner
in the first two movies who was always fixated on curing himself. We spent a
lot of time talking about what makes us Hulk out, the nature of anger, how it
feels.
We even fought some. I mean literally we actually got some
pads out and did some tussling. Just to talk about the physicality, and also
the physicality of somebody who has to control this thing, and the way he moves
in space and the way he relates to the people and the objects around him. It
was extremely fun. What we found was that he could be very bumbling and kind of
awkward, but at the same time very graceful and in this almost transcendent
control of himself.
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| Nick Fury in Action |
MT: Personally, I
am excited for the movie just to see the character of Nick Fury come into his
own, because we have just gotten these little glimpses of his function in this
world. Did you want to keep that edge of mystery to him, or explore who he is
underneath the patch?
JW: Well, he is
not going to be talking about his childhood, and you do want to keep a certain
mystery. Also -- and this is something that I was very pleased that Marvel
actually mandated -- they were very interested in keeping him, not just in the
sort of a mystery of how the organization operates, but a real moral gray area
where you really have to decide, "Is Nick Fury the most manipulative guy
in the world? Is he a good guy? Is he completely Machiavellian or is it a bit
of both?" And that was really fun to tweak.
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| Loki & Thor |
I felt that in the other movies, they had been cameos and he
had been called upon to come in and be Sam Jackson and bluster a little bit.
And I told Sam upfront that my big agenda was to see the weight on someone who
is supposed to be in control of the most powerful beings on the planet. The
weight on somebody who has to run the organization and the gravity of it. Not
that we don't have any fun with Nick, but he definitely -- it's, I feel like a
much more textured performance and at times really moving.
MT: I imagine the
other hard part about that is balancing a God and who can create lightning, and
a guy with a bow and arrow, and giving them both the action that brings out the
best in them.
JW: Yeah. Well, I
feel like we pulled that off. At the end of the day, the guy with the bow and
arrow is a lot easier to write gags for than the God. But we created a
situation where everybody can be useful, and everybody can be in jeopardy, and
they really can act as a team, even though -- as we have known from the first
issue of 'The Avengers' comic -- there's no reason for these people to be on
the same team.
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