With both Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron under his belt, not to mention acting as a creative consultant on the company’s intermittent standalone features, Joss Whedon has reflected on his time working in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it’s a case of been there, done that, worn the t-shirt.
Speaking at a recent Q&A session held at the Oxford Union (via Cosmic Book News), the director confirmed he has no plans to direct another Marvel movie for the foreseeable future, all the while touching base on the issue of resurrecting Agent Coulson.
[zerg]First up, Whedon’s involvement in the MCU appears to be all but finished at this point. When asked whether he’ll have any involvement in Marvel’s Phase Three, he replied:
“No. You know I was their sort of conciliary 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 slighty, and they actually listen to you… I was a script doctor for a long time, and the part where they listen to you was very rare; so it was very important for my own self to go “we can still be friends,” but…”
As for the hot-button topic of Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), who was brought back from the dead to topline Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Whedon admitted he has no regrets about the creative decision because, put simply, Coulson is “so bad ass.”
“You know who loved hearing that was Clark Gregg [audience laughter]. He was super thrilled. I do think that there is an element for somebody who consumes all the Marvel product that it might take the punch out, but generally I feel like the SHIELD audience and The Avengers audiences are not actually the same group, necessarily. No, I don’t regret bringing back Phil Coulson because he’s Clark Gregg, and he’s so bad ass.”
The next film from Marvel, Captain America: Civil War, will grace theaters on May 6, 2016.