Joss Whedon Talks Writing Avengers, Massive Egos

In a new interview, the director discusses how he had to approach writing The Avengers and why it took a massive ego.

By jerichomccune - May 07, 2012 08:05 PM EST

Filed Under: Avengers

As the success of The Avengers settles in, Joss Whedon is able to speak out more on writing the film and working with the characters.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he discusses his massive ego:

“I think you have to have an insanely massive ego to think you can pull it off,” Whedon said. “I was out of my mind. There was many times when I was writing, when I was filming, that I thought, a grown-up should be doing this!”

Fortunately, Joss had the ego to back his brilliance up and everything turned out fine. I find it interesting that he referred to his thinking as childlike when he was writing. Like Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Instead of thinking about what each character can and should do, it sounds more like he let his imagination run wild and just tried to keep up.

He mentions in the interview that he wrote a lot that didn't make the cut:

“When an idea falls out generally speaking, it’s not because it would work better later,” he admitted. “It’s an alternate to what’s there. So I probably wrote this movie four times, and there’s some stuff I was sorry to let go of. But it’s doubtful that I would recycle it."

Chances are he won't need to recycle. A writer that prolific is sure to be able to come up with new material quickly.

Check out The Hollywood Reporter for the full interview.

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9 Comments

R888 - 5/7/2012, 8:48 PM

well done joss you given us a great comic book film

elcaballerooscuro92 - 5/7/2012, 9:00 PM

i still can't believe penny died

comicNERD1031 - 5/7/2012, 9:54 PM

I was really hoping war machine would show up! How is a US soldier with that fighting machine not in NYC as soon as aliens start popping up?

Himura - 5/8/2012, 1:01 AM

@SaintSpidey67Re
I believe there was an interview that said it wasnt Joss' idea to kill him off, it was something that Marvel wanted in the film in the first place.

breakUbatman - 5/8/2012, 9:26 AM

His death meant nothing to me because he was just thrown in randomly, I never understood the love people gave him.

jerichomccune - 5/8/2012, 10:43 AM

breakUbatman People loved him because he wasn't a superhero. He was a regular guy doing whatever job he was given. That usually involved babysitting, doing very little and occasionally being in incredible jeopardy from things that sound awesome, but aren't much fun to be around when things start breaking. He may have seemed random to you, but for a lot of viewers he served as a window into the Marvel world.

Ha1frican - 5/8/2012, 12:25 PM

@breakUbatman U kidding me? He was the introduction of SHIELD and what tied all the films together. He was in 3 of the 5 pre-Avengers films and was a fan favorite in every one.

breakUbatman - 5/10/2012, 3:01 AM

Nope not kidding he was important to me as Happy Hogan. He may have been the introduction to shield but I thought the tesseract and Stark tied all the films together but whatever.

He was like a Stan Lee cameo - funny but not essential

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