- AVENEGERS (Joss Whedon Speaks)
Whedon and director Drew Goddard premiered their new horror
film The Cabin in the Woods at the SXSW Film Festival. Whedon serves as co-writer and producer on
the pic which is garnering intense positive buzz, and members of the press got
the chance to talk to Whedon about the genre bending film during the
festival. As expected, questions didn’t
exactly stick only to Cabin in the Woods, and Whedon talked quite a bit about
The Avengers and The Avengers 2 over the course of the weekend.
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| Black Widow |
“My first cut was three hours long and it’s now down to 2
hours and 15 minutes, and I’m extremely proud of that. I had always intended to
go over two, under two and a half. There was no way a movie with this many
great actors and this much epic scope was gonna clock in under two and not feel
a little anemic, somebody wasn’t gonna get their moment if that happened.
But at the same time, I get very angry that romantic
comedies run over two hours long, it’s like ‘Guys, that’s not okay.’ More isn’t
more. I don’t want anything in the movie that shouldn’t be.”
Given that he’s shaved 45 minutes off his initial cut,
there’s quite a bit on the editing room floor. Whedon talked a bit about what
kind of stuff he removed from the movie:
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| Iron Man |
“There’s a lot of me that got cut out, but I think part of
the process in a situation like this is you make the movie, you make your
movie, then you remove yourself out of the equation. At some point you stop
looking beyond The Avengers movie at your own stuff, you don’t look at that
horizon you look at this movie and you go, ‘You know what, The Avengers are
more important than I am so these things that I’m obsessed with aren’t
necessarily moving the story forward, and therefore they are baggage.’ You can
do that in a TV show, you can bring your baggage and sort of lay it out because
you have a season to do it, but in a movie you actually have to remove yourself
from the equation a bit and when I was finally able to do that, I saw a much
clearer road to how to get the best experience for the audience.”
For those hoping to see Whedon’s three hour version as a
director’s cut, don’t hold your breath:
“No [there won’t be a director’s cut on the DVD]. I… believe
very strongly in putting the director’s cut into the theaters. I believe that
the director’s cut is the best movie for the studio and the best version of the
movie for the audience. I’ve never really been in a situation where I had to
pull the beating heart out of something that I did.
I think people get to see a lot of extraordinary extras
because I did shoot a bunch of stuff that I love, but the movie is the movie I
want it to be.”
He then wet on to point out that The Avengers will have some
Easter Eggs on the Marvel universe itself:
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| FIn Fang Foom? Midgard Serpent? Space Ship? |
“There are a couple of mentions of things; we were
preserving the continuity and I threw in one or two things where I’m like,
‘Well this is something one of them would say because it’s part of the Marvel
universe even if it’s not a part of this movie necessarily.’ I had such a job
just making the thing coherent that I didn’t have time to play a lot of games,
and I’m not really a fan of that. I do think fanboys will see more in certain
bits than everybody else, but ultimately I want them all to have the same
experience.”
As for the music, Whedon said there won’t be many popular
songs in the film. He revealed that there’s a scene in Tony Stark’s place that
needed music and he suggested a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Cause We’ve Ended as
Lovers” by Jeff Beck, but the studio said the song was too expensive.
Nevertheless, Whedon seems happy with composer Alan Silvestri’s score:
“The score is very old-fashioned, which is why Alan was
letter perfect for this movie because he can give you the heightened emotion,
the [Hans] Zimmer school of ‘I’m just feeling a lot right now!’ but he can also
be extraordinarily cue and character specific, which I love.”
Regarding the film’s plot, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) appears to
be the main villain but judging from the trailers, we can deduct that he’s got
a bit of help. Rumors have swirled that the film includes the alien character
races of the Kree or the Skrulls but Whedon flat-out denied their involvement
when speaking with EW:
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| Loki is Badass |
“I will say only this: It is not the Kree or the Skrulls…
Those two aliens are Marvel mainstays and have enormous backstories. They have
a big life of their own that just could not be contained in a film where I
already had seven movie stars… The Skrulls — they can shape change. That’s a
whole thing. I’ve already got Loki. He’s got magic. Once you got magic along
with your Iron Man and your Black Widow — it’s a real juggling act.”
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| Fan Made: Loke Strikes Back Poster |
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