The Avengers Interviews: Joss Whedon

Continuing our coverage of IGN's visit to the set of The Avengers, today we've got the full transcript of the interview we participated in with writer-director Joss Whedon. The visiting press happened to be on set on Whedon's birthday, so as he entered the trailer for our chat we all sang happy birthday to him...

We Have Stood on the Bridge of Nick Fury's Helicarrier!

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Joss Whedon: [Looking at the array of voice recorders on the table in front of him.] All of these for me? That's weird that you all got me the same thing for my birthday.

[Everyone laughs and begins singing "Happy Birthday."]

JW: Thank you one and all.

Q: So everyone that we have spoken with has been talking about how great the script is.

JW: And now it's my turn.

Q: Even Downey has said [he's] not tinkering, or maybe not tinkering much.

JW: There's not tinkering and then there's "not tinkering."

[Everyone laughs.]


JW: He'll have to say he had an inflection. Yeah, no, everybody seems to be on board. I'm still working on it. I hope to finish it sometime before the DVD release. [Laughs.] It's been very fluid, but it always is with a movie anyway and especially a movie where the perspective changes nine times every scene. I swore I would never make Serenity again and here I am.

Q: I was going to ask about that actually, because a lot of writers, comic writers, are afraid of The Avengers, because there are so many characters in the books in general … Did you know you could do it from doing Serenity?

JW: You know Serenity had been very hard and I literally said, "I'm never doing this again, a bunch of characters who already know each other and are established, but have to be introduced to new people," and all of that… But I didn't fear it at all; I just regret it very much.

[Everyone laughs.]

JW: You know, I walked in and I was like, "I get why they should be a team. This is exciting!" But then you have to explain it to the audience, too; apparently they matter. It's Vulcan chess -- there's just so many things. There's a ripple effect on everything you do, but as long as you're respectful of everybody's perspective and everybody has a moment where they shine, or hopefully several, and everybody is speaking from who they are, you're not going to fall too hard.

Q: Is there one sequence… You know we saw a lot of [production] art before, but is there one sequence that you're really proud of or really excited to work on?

JW: I'm not sure there's any one particular sequence that I would say, "Well, yeah, nailed that!" For me, honestly my favorite moments are the scenes where I have two of the characters, where I get to pair up two characters you might not expect to see together and see them go at each other whether they are getting along or not. There's always friction and those scenes are probably not why everybody might rush to the theater, but they are the most fun when you really get to explore it with the actors and the space. That's the stuff that I feel the proudest of. The action is not small and some of the gags we've come up with are enormous and delightful and I'm proud of them and excited by them, because I like to live in that world too, but when you are in those quieter moments, that's just when I am in heaven.


Q: Was there a particular scene that you started with? Was there a moment where you said, "I have to write this before I write anything else to show that I can do this."

JW: You know it started out basically with producers Kevin [Feige] and Jeremy [Latcham] telling me, "We know the basic structure of how they come together, what works, what doesn't work, and how we see the climax," which was nice, because [they] gave me a basic skeleton of three acts that I knew I had to hang on and then it was just a question of, "How do I get there? How do I earn that? What moments would cause these people to be in that situation?" I'm very fierce about making sure that everything is motivated, that nothing is by chance or misunderstanding or coincidence or something -- like if people are going to fight or face a conflict or an enemy, it has to be internal, it has to be because of something they believe and something they've done as opposed to, "And now we clock this fight. And now check that box." The whole thing was to avoid that and I had the luxury of having taken the job and then spending two weeks off in Australia just thinking of moments, just thinking of that moment, that scene, "Oh, this is what this person would say." I wrote more Saint Crispin's Day speeches for Captain [America] than you can shake a rattle at, none of which I think are in the film. I wrote monologues for all the characters and long scenes for all of them, bits of which wormed their way back in and many of which fell by the wayside, but all of which informed the characters. I just got to live in that free-floating space for a while. In fact I lived in the free-floating space for so long that I'm still writing the script, so next time I'll think that one through, but yeah, it all comes from, "Wouldn't it be beautiful to hear this from Hawkeye or to hear this from the Black Widow?"

Q: We talked to Scarlett and Jeremy before. She said that you had given them a very early draft and then they were able to come back with some notes that they had and they each spoke with you to adjust some things. … Can you talk to some of the things that they brought to the table that you thought were important to kind of go back to when you were writing your final [script]?

JW: You know this is such a perfect time to make fun of actors, but the fact is going into this project knowing that it had been cast largely before I came onboard with the exception of Jeremy [Renner] and Mark [Ruffalo] and some of the supporting roles, I knew that I had a contract with these people to respect what they had already done and because this is all part of a grander plan and I did have for example those structural elements set, I had this cast set, I knew who these characters were, because I had been reading about them since I was 11… So usually I'll just go and write things and say, "Why don't you say this? I'll hire you to say this." But in this case having a dialogue with them was enormously useful, because they all had their own back stories or questions about their back stories and I could literally sit someone down and say, "What are you looking for in this?" At the beginning [I said,] "I'm an open book, so tell me what it is that you don't want to repeat or you feel like you didn't explore." I would lay out my basic ideas about how I saw their characters. I think my favorite response was Sam Jackson's. I was like, "Is there anything you're particularly looking for?" I told him how I saw Nick Fury and his role in the movie and was like, "Is there anything you're looking for or anything you particularly want to avoid?" He was like, "Hell no. Thank you for asking. I don't want to run."

[Everyone laughs.]


JW: "Don't make me run a lot." Then on set he pointed to the page, like, "It says, 'Fury runs.'" "I know, it's just this one time…"

Q: What's the most iconic moment for you personally in The Avengers comics? Were you able to incorporate that? How were you able to incorporate that into the script?

JW: The truly iconic stuff from the comics isn't really in the film. It's part of the grand Marvel tradition to steal from all of the comics and all of the eras and Ultimates and for me The Avengers exist mostly in my heart because of the Jim Starlin Avengers Annual with Thanos and Warlock and The Thing Two-in-One that followed it. That defined why I love The Avengers more than anything. Obviously that was a long time ago and Moon Dragon is not in the film.

[Everyone laughs.]

JW: But since then I think the most important stuff, Civil War, Ultimates… They've amped up the undercurrent of tension between The Avengers and that makes it really interesting to write, but when it comes to the iconic moments you sort of have to take all of those things and distill them the same way the costumers do and everybody… Distill them and then find your own. I mean, ultimately for me the most iconic moment in the movie is, "assuming they do," when they assemble.