At this point, calling Joss Whedon's relationship with Marvel "rocky" would be an understatement. The director recently revealed that he didn't get along well with the "Marvel movie guys," due to disagreements over the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show and the resurrection of Agent Coulson.
Whedon went into even more details about his relationship with Marvel in a recent interview with the Empire Film Podcast (via SuperHeroHype), describing the two parties butting heads more than a few times while making Avengers: Age of Ultron.
SPOILERS BELOW!
One of the big disagreements involved the dream sequences seen throughout the film, inflicted on the team by Scarlet Witch. The dreams were not an executive favorite.
"The dreams, the farmhouse, these were things I fought to keep," Whedon said. "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. I respect these guys, they're artists — but that's when it got really, really unpleasant."
Disney wanted to remove Thor's cave scene entirely. Eventually, Whedon and Marvel came to a deal, but the outcome clearly wasn't something that thrilled Whedon.
"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]' ... I do feel they threw out the baby with the pond water."
Whedon also went on to describe how scenes with Tom Hiddleston's Loki were cut from the film, and it doesn't sound like it was his choice to do so.
"He's so important to the mythos, and they're like, ‘We can't get Tom. We can't make a deal," Whedon said. "‘You can have Idris!' I was like, ‘Oh, I love Idris! This is great!'
"And then I talked to Tom and said... ‘I would never pressure you, but I really feel like it would be great if you could do this, and he was like, ‘Sure.'
"And they're like, ‘But we already have Idris!' And again, I had no problem there. Everybody's in! We had Loki in the second part of [Thor's] dream and [Marvel] was like, ‘Well that doesn't work and we don't want to introduce Loki this late.'"
And what about the "New Avengers" team at the end of the film? Whedon wanted to have Spider-Man and Captain Marvel make an appearance — but the deals didn't get made in time.
"I wanted all those people, but I said, ‘It would be great if we could add a few more [characters], if we could have a Captain Marvel there, now that you've made a deal,' and they talked about it," Whedon said.
"And I was like, ‘And Spider-Man, we could do that too' — cause Sony had approached us during the first movie about a little integration. So I would have put both of [those characters] in, but neither of the deals were made."
Instead, audiences got the New Avengers team of Captain America, Black Widow, War Machine, The Vision, Falcon and Scarlet Witch.
Whedon recently deleted his Twitter account — possibly over the verbal harassment and threats from fans upset over Black Widow's portrayal in Age of Ultron. He had more than a million followers at the time.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
