There’s an interesting interview with The Avengers writer/director Joss Whedon over at the New York Times where he makes a comment about the film industry saying, “Nobody’s interested in making a living. They only want to make a fortune. Where are the prestige pics? Where are the ’70s, where are people taking chances?”
The immediate response to this is to say, “Uh, Joss, you just made The Avengers… a franchise essentially know for its lack of risk-taking.” A fact he’s fully aware of.
Ironically enough, after I just posted a clip from the film in which it displays how self-aware Whedon’s script is, he is just as self-aware realizing he makes the above comment while “making a giant, tentpole, franchise, action, summer movie.” To this he says with what the “Times” refers to as mock defensiveness, “That doesn’t make me a hypocrite, it just gives me layers.” I’m not so sure.
Whedon has largely been hailed as a strong screenwriter, known for his wit and excellent dialogue. He was part of the Toy Story screenwriting team and created the hit television franchises “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” and co-wrote this weekend’s upcoming horror deconstruction The Cabin in the Woods.
Whedon’s last film, Serenity, I believe to be one of the most overlooked films in the last ten years and have high hopes for The Avengers, but with what Marvel has put in place when it comes to stories that would rather appeal to the widest audience then take some risks I have my concerns, even if Whedon seems to be one person that could change all that.
When discussing his cancelled TV show “Dollhouse” and the studio’s interference with that project, and the lengthy shelving of Cabin in the Woods due to issues at MGM, Whedon adds in a “Times” profile, “You have to believe in your work to the point where you can get your heart broken or you wouldn’t have the energy to do these things.” I wonder what kind of balance he found making The Avengers when it comes to what he wanted and what he got.
Whedon doesn’t shy from saying The Avengers has traditional story elements, but still hopes he’s delivered in terms of scale and emotion while also throwing in what appears to be a jab at the Transformers franchise:
Believe me, there are tropes in this movie that will appear as nothing else. I referred to the Tesseract more than a few times as “the MacGufferact.” The invasion at the end, that was stipulated. And all I could think was, Great, I know where I’m going. My whole thing was, make sure that none of this feels like a checkmark. But more than once, we watched the trailer for some movie and went, “Oh, are their aliens better than ours? Are they too similar?” Panic, panic, panic. At the end of the day, it’s like, Was there a story about human beings threaded through all of that? The superhero team movie is going to have a certain structure, but no cars turn into anything else except piles of rubble. Cars magically transform into burning cars. That part I’m happy about.
The Avengers hits theaters on May 4, hopefully Whedon has delivered.
You can read the full interview here.
