Joss Whedon seems to be part of the furniture at Comic-Con, and while he didn’t have a movie to promote, he was in San Diego nonetheless this weekend, sitting down for an hour-long Q&A in Hall H. And the writer/director didn’t disappoint.
Whedon mostly fielded softballs from the crowd, except for one query in particular from a fan asking, in essence, how to get his own independent films made. This prompted a reply from Whedon that was quite candid about the state of the studio system which, in his view, is one where they are trying to pre-fabricate success.
“It’s gotten to a state where movie studios are pretty relentless about trying to have an in before they start production. That’s not the case for all films, but it is the case for a ton of them, especially the big-budget ones,” Whedon said (via Vulture). “Part of the problem is there’s a dialogue going on between audiences and studios that is devolving, because they keep finding a lower common denominator. This doesn’t mean the films are bad — it just means that the ways in which they’re approaching what they’re going to make have become kind of ossified. At the same time, audiences are more likely to turn out for something that they already know or like. The problem is that there isn’t really a willingness by a lot of people to go into something that they don’t already know… it’s something that needs to be addressed.”
“You used to go to the movies and have no idea what you were going to see. I am actually old enough to have done this, to have gone to the local theater because something was playing,” he added. “…We don’t do that anymore. We keep making it harder to. I have trouble watching movies after I’ve seen the trailer, because I’ve seen the movie.”
It’s hard to argue the points that Whedon is making, especially during a weekend when Warner Bros. spent two hours showing extended trailers for everything they’ve got under the sun, while also spilling even more footage and promos for “Suicide Squad,” which opens in two weeks. We’re in an era of first-weekend-or-bust moviemaking, and as Whedon suggests, it creates an environment where there can be no surprises.
However, the flipside to that coin is that if you want to work in Hollywood, you might be making those very same kinds of big-budget movies Whedon is talking about, and he should know as the director of “The Avengers” and “The Avengers: Age Of Ultron.” And while he’s been open about the pressures of working on the latter, he also says if Marvel asked him back to direct a Black Widow movie, it’d be a no brainer.
“If somebody pointed to me and said, ‘You want to make a Black Widow movie?’ the answer would be ‘Duh.’ For two reasons: I think that character really is very interesting and very earthbound and so it’s the kind of action that I got to do less of with somebody like Thor or The Vision. When you get into your Superman territory it’s harder to maintain that sort of gritty action that the Russo Brothers do so beautifully. And she’s got that kind of thing… and really do a spy thriller, really do a good, paranoid sort of John Le Carré on crack sort of thing,” he told IGN. “Also, Scarlett Johansson is just delightful. She works really hard, but she just spends most of her time cracking me up, so it would be a fun shoot.”
Cue the fanboy petitions, and certainly, Whedon would be a bit of a slamdunk choice if/when a Black Widow movie were to happen (Marvel’s Kevin Feige has said a solo movie for the character is something they’re committed to doing).
But until that happens, Whedon is busy penning his next movie, which he has been keeping under wraps, except to say this spring that writing the script has made him cry. But he let loose a few more secrets in Hall H.
“The film I’m working on right now, I could credit 100 different things for how it’s evolving. I’ll say this much about it: it’s historical fiction, it’s different than anything I’ve done before and for the first time I’m writing without a studio, a rating, a budget, or anything in mind,” he said (via Collider) “I’m writing purely on a level that I never have. When I finish the script, which should be a couple months, I believe all the studios will get together for a bidding-war/intervention because it is not — it’s very disturbing. It’s been a very exciting experience. I’m doing a ton of historical research, but I realized ‘Oh, this reminds me of Eli Roth’s Aftershock.’ So, really don’t know where it’s going to go.”
Well, that’s certainly interesting, and unexpected. Is Whedon pivoting to something we haven’t seen from him before? In any event, it certainly looks like he’s pushing his own creative envelope which is exciting stuff.
Check out the trailer for “Aftershock” below and let us know what you think of Whedon’s view of the movie world in the comments section.