Joss Whedon has admitted The Avengers could have been a better movie, and said he hopes to make improvements for the forthcoming sequel to last year’s critically-acclaimed box office smash.
Whedon’s film based on Marvel Comics’ greatest superhero team currently stands as the third-highest-grossing film of all time after taking more than $1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion) at the global box office, off the back of strong reviews. But the creator of cult TV shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly said he could still spot the flaws.
“When I think of a great film, I think of something that’s either structured so perfectly like The Matrix or made so lovingly like The Godfather Part II,” he told the new issue of Entertainment Weekly. “There was haphazardness in the way it comes together not just the people, but the scenes. I don’t think you’d look at it and go, ‘This is a model of perfect structure.’ You’d go, ‘This is working.’
“I like it. I’m proud of it and I like its imperfections. The thing I cared most about making a summer movie like the ones from my childhoodis the thing that I pulled off.”
Whedon will next shoot Avengers sequel Age of Ultron, in which superheroes Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Hulk will take on the titular robotic villain. The writer-director said he already knew how to make the film a better movie.
“I want to be clearer about how I engage the audience, and where I take them,” he said. “I want more control visually, more time to prep it. Not that I didn’t dictate every shot I did. But there’s only so much you can do when you’re making a summer film when the ball is already rolling as fast as it was when I got in. Why do it again if you can’t do it better?”
The Avengers: Age of Ultron is due out in 2015. In the meantime Whedon’s Marvel Comics TV show, Agents of Shield, debuts on Channel 4 tonight. The first episode, which the film-maker wrote himself, became the most watched show on network ABC in four years when it debuted in the US earlier this week with 12.2 million viewers.
