If it’d been up to Joss Whedon, Avengers: Age of Ultron would have been a very different film. For one, we’d have seen Spider-Man and Captain Marvel.
When Avengers: Age of Ultron premiered earlier this month, hardcore fans were scratching their heads at how different the final product seemed compared to the preview clips and interviews that had been released prior to the film’s launch.
As Hypable.com has pointed out: where were the promised female characters? Where was the woman in the cave? Where were Bucky and Loki?
It’s easy to put this all on Joss Whedon, the director, the person who (by all accounts of movie-making) is ultimately in charge. But we’re also talking about a central cog in the Marvel Cinematic Universe machine, and we may never know how much of Avengers: Age of Ultron can truly be attributed to Whedon.
Appearing on the Empire Film Podcast, the two-time Avengers director does offer some insight into the way he collaborated with Marvel to make a movie both parties could put their name on.
Most significantly, Whedon reveals that he fought very hard to get new Marvel players Spider-Man and Captain Marvel into Age of Ultron.
“I would have put both of them [in Ultron], but neither of the deals were made,” Whedon explains; at least for Spider-Man, we know this was due to Marvel still not having finalized their deal with Sony.
Related: Rumor: New Spider-Man movie title will be Spider-Man: The New Avenger
Whedon also talks about the scene with Thor and Erik in the cave, when Thor essentially takes a bath and dreams up the Vision. Whedon didn’t like that part of the movie and wouldn’t have included it at all — but in the end he relented, because it meant he got to keep the Hawkeye-centric farmhouse sequence.
“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,” Whedon says. “I respect these guys, they’re artists, but that’s when it got really, really unpleasant.”
“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.'”
We may never know what Joss Whedon’s original vision for Avengers: Age of Ultron was. But at least we can look forward to an extended cut of the movie and an alternate ending scene when the Blu-ray hits stores later this year.
In related news, Joss Whedon has unfortunately deleted his Twitter profile. Hopefully this means he’ll be focusing on creating new content for the world to enjoy!