I’m definitely more of an action/sci-fi girl than a musical/drama girl, so it’s no surprise that I love the Avenger movies. It’s also no surprise that sitting down with Joss Whedon during our Avenger press trip was pretty awesome for me. He’s the creator of Firefly (one of the coolest TV series EVER) and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., writer and director of both Avengers movies, among many other things. Here’s some of the stuff we talked about, don’t worry there are no spoilers!
Talk to us about the that iconic shot of the Avengers jumping in slow motion.
“That was the last shot we got finished, ‘cause it’s over a minute long. I wanted to create some frames that were just unabashedly comic book frames that would speak to our love of the thing and that one took longer to create than anything else.”
You can see that epic jump scene about half way through this trailer:
It was really important to Joss that they jump back with everyone back together instead of having to get everyone back together first.
“…instead just go boom, we’re back. This is what you love. Are you having fun? Good. Now we’re going to tear it apart.”
You have so many amazing characters with all these great stories. Was it really hard to make sure everyone got enough screen time? How did you balance that?
“You know, it’s hard. What’s important is making everybody integral to this story and not just have it sort of be a roll call where it’s like and I’m also in the film. Making sure that the twins’ story was part of Ultron’s story and obviously and making sure that their perspective on the Avengers had something to do with Ultron’s, so that there was always a reason for everyone to be together.”
In the movie, we saw the introduction of the Hulkbuster and one of the most epic Avenger versus Avenger battles, I think we’ve ever seen. Was there any difficulties filming that?
“There is some slight enormous difficulties in the fact that neither of those people exist….we had the thing mapped out very carefully…You shoot all of this stuff sort of with the faith that this will work physically and then the hard work comes up at ILM where they’re dialing in this action you’ve described.”
Was the party scene all scripted or were the actors ad libbing at all?
“There’s a little, they’re throwing stuff out. They definitely, you know with Robert in a situation like that, I’ll usually give him like, you know, five or six options just to see what tickles his fancy and he’ll sort of run through them. Most of it is scripted but I like to leave a little room for those guys. First of all, they’re all funny, articulate people who really know their characters and second of all, it sort of helps the flow particularly in something like that. You don’t want to feel camera moves or dialogue. You just want to feel like you stayed at the party.”
The party scene is one of my favorites. It’s fun to see how superheroes relax after a long day of saving the planet. 😉 You can see a small part of it in this clip.
Avengers: Age of Ultron Opens in theaters May 1st
Don’t miss all of my Avengers: Age of Ultron Interviews:
- Thor & Captain America Interview
- Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver Interview
- Hawkeye & Maria Hill Interview
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