Joss Whedon once said that making The Avengers: Age of Ultron “broke him a little bit,” so it’s probably not a surprise that he stepped away from working with Marvel after finishing the film. Now Whedon has opened up about his break with Marvel, how he deals with criticism (spoiler: not well), and other topics in a one-hour Q&A with Oxford Union.
When asked if he’ll have any involvement with Marvel from now on, Whedon revealed he’s made a clean break and explained why he had to do it. Here’s his explanation from the 10:25 mark of the video below, as transcribed by Cosmic Book News (with corrections by us).
Will you have any involvement in the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe?
Whedon: “No. You know I was their sort of consigliere for a while… We do not discuss our thing… [audience laughter] But, I sort of had my finger in all of the films in the second phase, but then I just had to concentrate only on Ultron, and sort of know when it was done I was just going to stop. So I made a completely clean break, not because we had a falling out, just because I was like, ‘I can’t.’ If I was still there going, ‘Well, here are my thoughts on this film,’ I’d be there every day. I wouldn’t do anything else because there are a lot of films, and it is a lot of fun. It’s very seductive. When you can put your little fairy dust on things and just improve them slightly, and they actually listen to you.”
We have to wonder how many companies have been able to keep talented people working for them for not enough money just by actually listening to them.
Another part of the interview which interests us came about 56 minutes in, when Whedon talks about dealing with (or not necessarily dealing with) harsh criticisms of The Avengers: Age of Ultron. As transcribed by Cosmic Book News:
“Ultron has been the most complicated response I’ve gotten, and the way I deal with it is becoming fetal for about eight months. [audience laughter] I f*cking have no spine or self-identity or anything, and it’s horrifying. It sucks, but I’ll be okay… later.”
Quick, somebody print up t-shirts that say, “I have no spine or self-identity or anything, and it’s horrifying.” — Joss Whedon.
If this seems like a bit of history repeating, that may be due to Whedon also quitting Twitter, although he said the reason had nothing to do with haters or with anti-feminist conspiracy theories, but rather because Twitter had become too distracting. (No word on if he was in the fetal position when he said that.)
Here’s the whole Q&A if you’ve got an hour to kill.
(Via Cosmic Book News)
