re: Avenger: AoU Reviews (**MAJOR SPOILERS**)

Here's an article where Joss Whedon explains some of the challenges he faced when shooting AoU. It's long, but I think necessary to post.

Joss Whedon Describes Battles with Marvel Over Avengers: Age of Ultron

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If you thought that scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) in the cave felt tacked on, you have a pal who agrees with you and his name is… Joss Whedon? Yep, apparently the mastermind had other masters to mind at Marvel while making the movie, which he discussed candidly with the Empire Film Podcast (via Heat Vision, The Playlist). Needless to say, spoilers ahead.

“The dreams were not an executive favorite — the dreams, the farmhouse, these were things I fought to keep,” Whedon said of the horrific visions induced by Scarlet Witch and the rural sequence with Hawkeye’s family. “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,’ — in a civilized way. I respect these guys, they’re artists, but that’s when it got really, really unpleasant.”

Ironically, after the scene was shot and integrated into the film, test audiences didn’t respond well to it — as most regular audiences experienced this weekend as well — and Disney execs wanted it excised entirely, with Thor’s absence referenced verbally but not visually.

Whedon admits, “I was so beaten down at that point that I was like, ‘Sure, OK — what movie is this?’ And the editors were like, ‘No. You have to show the [events in the cave]. You can’t just say it… I do feel they threw out the baby with the pond water.”

Marvel demanded a drastically-reduced version of Thor’s cave bath included so as to allude to the Infinity Stones that will play a critical role in the franchise’s future but do not have much bearing on the events of Age of Ultron. Whedon also wanted to include Captain Marvel and Spider-Man, but studio politics prevented that from happening in time, so Captain America has to make do with a new Avengers roster that includes Black Widow, The Falcon, War Machine, The Vision and Scarlet Witch.

“I wanted all those people, but I said, ‘It would be great if we could add a few more [characters], if we could have a Captain Marvel there, now that you’ve made a deal,’ and they talked about it,” Whedon said. “And I was like, ‘And Spider-Man, we could do that too, ’cause Sony had approached us during the first movie about a little integration. So I would have put both of [those characters] in, but neither of the deals were made.”

Later in post-production Marvel told Whedon, “‘We’re making a Captain Marvel movie and we’ve got Spider-Man as a property,’ and I’m like, ‘I’ve already locked my film you f**kers! Thanks for nothing.”

Earlier this week, Whedon also made reference to a scene he shot with Tom Hiddleston as Loki walking Thor through his dream that was excised, saying, “I really wanted to have Loki in it but I understood the decision.” That language makes it sound like it was not his decision to make, which apparently it wasn’t.

“He’s so important to the mythos, and they’re like, ‘We can’t get Tom. We can’t make a deal,” Whedon recounts. “‘You can have Idris!’ I was like, ‘Oh, I love Idris! This is great!’ And then I talked to Tom and said… ‘I would never pressure you, but I really feel like it would be great if you could do this, and he was like, ‘Sure.’ And they’re like, ‘But we already have Idris!’ And again, I had no problem there. Everybody’s in! We had Loki in the second part of [Thor’s] dream and [Marvel] was like, ‘Well that doesn’t work and we don’t want to introduce Loki’ this late.’”

Whedon goes on to describe the scene fully: “We even had a little reference to the fact that he’s taken the throne, which was Tom doing his Anthony Hopkins impression when Thor says, ‘Oh, what would father say?’ Then Tom does his Hopkins impression, and Thor’s like, ‘That is uncanny!’ It’s sort of like his subconscious is telling him that Loki was imitating his father. But he would never make that connection.”

Lest you think poor, beleaguered Joss Whedon did not get his way on anything, he fought the good fight to have Quicksilver die and got his wish in the final cut, although scenes that depicted Aaron Johnson’s speedy Pietro Maximoff as a fast operator with the ladies were lost, possibly due to time constraints.

“It’s disingenuous to make, as I refer to it, a war movie and say there is no price,” Whedon stated. “In this movie we’re saying, ‘prove to me that you guys are heroes.’ And [Quicksilver] is the guy who is the least… the most arrogant, the most annoying — if you watch the DVD extras, an incredible p**sy hound — and Hawkeye genuinely hates him and that’s the guy who saves him. I knew that it would be resonant and it would make everything work and matter more. I said [to Johnson], ‘The only thing that would keep you alive is if the Disney executives say, ‘Idiot, it’s a franchise and we need all these people and you’re not allowed to kill them.’”

Preposterous as it sounds, those scenes WERE shot, though.

“We did actually shoot him in the last scene, in an outfit with his sister,” Whedon admits. “And we did shoot him waking up from his, ‘Ahh! I didn’t really die from these 47 bullet wounds!’ but the intent was always that we were going to earn this and then you have to stand by it.”

Joss also recently abandoned his Twitter account, which some speculate was due to rampant hate Tweets (and moronic death threats) from a sub-movement online of those disgruntled at Black Widow’s portrayal as a “damsel-in-distress” in the movie.

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True. I also figured it was specifically built as a way to stop a rampaging Hulk, hence Hulkbuster. I would assume all the power and weapons in this suit is specific to the Hulk. Thus it may not have been as effective on Ultron because he was not about brute force

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Banner helped him design/build it.

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I'm going to break into your post tonight

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Watched it yesterday, and while I enjoyed it, I have to say Ultron was a disappointment. I was expecting a ruthless mastermind on the level of Heath Ledger's Joker. Turns out he did some outrageously stupid things and wasn't nearly as ruthless and intimidating as I was expecting him to be. On the top of my head:

1) Why did he attack the Avengers the first time? Seems like it would have just been smarter for him to wipe Jarvis out, wipe the system clean, then decimate the Iron Man probes, and finally leave without the Avengers having any idea on what his agenda is or what he may be up to. Just shooting at them without killing any of them just really served to explain his overall plan to them, which he ironically mocks later in the film.

2) Why ally himself with the Scarlet Witch? Sorry, but if you have ulterior motives, allying yourself with a telepath is the dumbest person to do so. It would make sense if Ultron and her interests aligned, but aside from screwing over Stark, they didn't at all. Seems as if he should have worked all of this alone. If the Scarlet Witch was to ally herself with Ultron, don't give her a Captain America origin but a Magneto origin. Make her and her brother tortured by the Russian government into being weapons for them and then making humanity at large pay for it. Maybe after Ultron's final form is abducted, then Ultron goes on a massacre on a major city and she realizes she's no better than the men who tortured her, so she goes to the Avengers. Other than that reason, their alignment makes no sense, and Ultron should have left them out of it. All she did really was get the Avengers more hot on their trail, sabotage getting Vision's body, and getting the Hulk pissed off to sack a South African town, which Ultron could have fricked up just as easily himself.

3) Why didn't he just abduct the Korean chick instead of having her in her high profile lab? Loki did it with his posse, so it seems pretty straightforward on what I mean here.

4) Why didn't he have at least 100 drones with him in South Korea to make sure the Avengers didn't get his prime body? He only brought 3 of them. Surely he could have had some of them hide out in a safe house for a while while they made him a new body.

5) When the Avengers abducted his prime body, why didn't he just go attack the Avengers Tower? He's got thousands of drones, why couldn't he have sent like 500 of them to abduct Vision's body? Seems like that should have been a high priority for him

6) Why didn't he just kill Black Widow, and even dumber, why did he put a telegraph in her cell? Seriously, she's had years of hardcore spy training, and you not only don't kill her, but you put a telegraph in her room? Why the hell would you supply her with that, and then leave her unguarded for Banner to come in and release her?

7) Why didn't he have multiple mechanisms to drop the city on the Earth? All he had was for him directly touching it? Really? If he was a mastermind, he'd have 15 different ways of triggering it. Triggering directly from his head, arming all his drones with the trigger, having it go off automatically once it reached a certain altitude, have different triggers throughout the city, a ticking time clock, etc. Seriously, this is just amateur hour. The Joker had all these things going simply with the boats, nevertheless Ultron who can compute a million things a second.

8) Why lift the rock in a major European city? If he lifted the rock in Siberia or Antartica, how would they have been able to stop him? He would have been 6 hours away before they could have got to him, and by the time it'd be too late. I might slightly excuse this one since he wanted to show theatrics to Stark, but it's still dumb and not calculating like I expected from him.

9) Did he really not back himself up 1000 times over just in case he was defeated? Granted, this one isn't confirmed, but hopefully he really backed himself up to where he's almost undefeatable. Seems that Vision tracked down his last body, but that really shouldn't have been it.

Quote "Joker"

Quote "Ultron"

Uh oh. You just as well get ready.......

I keep thinking more and more about why Scarlet Witch let Tony Stark take the scepter. Why would she do this? She said "I knew it would control him". Did she know that Tony would create an all powerful being? And if she did, did she know that this thing would turn on The Avengers? She had to know, otherwise she wouldn't let him take it. She had to know that this being would be dangerous to the world.

Then she corrupts the Hulk and makes him attack the city. Her goal was for it to attack The Avengers (mainly Tony). In the process the Hulk released havoc on the city. She alone was responsible for a lot of destruction.

Is it smart for the Avengers to allow someone that careless to be apart of their team? I mean, I get that that's the norm for comics. Characters make bad decisions and are forgiven regularly. It just seems kind of weird to see someone responsible for so much shite be let into the group so fast. Am I being too critical?

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Why lift the rock in a major European city?

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Fault lines.

That exact spot was the most likely to cause an ELE.

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Did she know that Tony would create an all powerful being? And if she did, did she know that this thing would turn on The Avengers? She had to know, otherwise she wouldn't let him take it. She had to know that this being would be dangerous to the world.

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You didn't read that massive post of mine you quoted, did you? Or at least, not fully. I made almost this exact statement at the end.


This is more for those who are newer to the thread and just saw the movie.

She reverses its powers later. Which means they are in the same realm. She also can see the visions her powers cause. Which means she can read minds. She knew the scepter for what it was. She knew there was a conscious being in there, which Tony and Banner took for an AI. If it truly were an AI, she wouldn't have been able to read it. She knew what it was, and recognized the hold it had over people motivated by fear, anger, hatred, failure...etc. Hence, she let Stark take it. Knowing he would release it because:

A) he wanted to use the power of the scepter to safeguard the world
B) she knew that it had been leading those working for Hydra to find a way to allow it to create a copy. Whereas they were thinking they were going to copy it, much like Stark thought.

We can determine B from the fact they had started working on an army of robots in the warehouse. They didn't have the AI for Iron Legion style bots, and those weren't IM style suits either.

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My biggest gripe was Thor's pool scene. How did he know their was such a pool, and how did he know that Selvick would know where to find it?

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Did you not here him say that every realm has one?

I am guessing he went to Selvig because he is a genius, and he is the only human outside of Jane and Darcy who he knows outside of Shield/The Avengers. Jane is buys, and why would he trust Darcy on something like that?

Course we all probably missed something on that front because they so heavily edited that part of the movie out.