Joss Whedon helped create the Marvel cinematic universe we know and love, with his loveable team-up flick The Avengers. He was crushed under the pressure of it’s sequel of Age of Ultron and got a lot of critical backlash from reviewers and fans alike, he would eventually delete his Twitter account.
He’s now dusting himself off and now voicing interest in returning to directing Marvel films while speaking with The Wrap, specifically a darker female-driven one.
Asked whether he’d be into directing a female-driven Avengers franchise, Whedon told TheWrap, “Yeah, of course. Although I tend more towards the Jessica Jones-ey kind of stories than the delightful Supergirl stories that my daughter wants.”
Whedon gave full credit to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige for even placing a Captain Marvel movie into development. “Kevin Feige fought a mighty fight to get her on the schedule. So it’s a start. You could say that should be a middle, but it’s a start,” said Whedon, directing his comments at Hollywood as a whole and not Marvel specifically.
This seems a little egotistically, considering we’re now seeing more extremely open to hiring female directors for their feature films. Ava DuVernay was in the mix to direct Black Panther, only to turn it down. Others like Emily Carmichael and Elizabeth Woods are rumored to be meeting with Marvel for Captain Marvel director’s chair. We’re now looking at the studio expecting different creative perspectives of their directors.
Joss taking directing opportunities from up-and-coming male and female feature directors feels selfish to me, Marvel is going out of it’s way to help develop commercial directors. It’s odd that with the fan-base now campaigning equality with the directing lineup at Disney and Marvel Studios, that Joss Whedon has taken upon himself to be this guru of the Marvel heroines. We’ve seen that others are capable if not doing it better than him.
Vulture pointed-out 100 female directors that Hollywood should be considering, given that we don’t really get the female perspective when it comes to the Marvel cinematic universe, it would be nice to see more women writing and directing these movies, Captain Marvel shouldn’t be the only example.
I would like to point out how he tried to force Black Widow into romantic sub-plots and removing her womanhood were the worst things in Age of Ultron, as one of the more interesting aspects of Natasha was that she wasn’t motivated by romance, but that was quickly exploited by Whedon to give her character some sort of arc. Scarlet Witch was arguably a weak character in the film as well, Whedon seemingly loosing his edge with writing female characters.
However, the Russos in two films with The Winter Soldier and Civil War didn’t have to resort to pushing this key female character into the role of love interest. They also gave Wanda a little bit more to do in the film, even if they didn’t transform her like they did with Widow in Winter Soldier.
Having Joss in-charge of a Black Widow film or some team-up project sounds awful to me, considering the self-proclaimed feminist seems to put himself on a pedestal, when there are more hungry directors out there that deserve a shot at a Marvel film. I don’t see Whedon as the dude that created Buffy anymore, he’s the guy that pulled some misogynist moves with Ultron and then pretended like it didn’t happen. Yet, it’s hard to say if that was Joss or the reported sexist Ike Perlmutter being the real problem, at the end of the day Whedon’s name was on the film as it’s director.
Personally, I’d rather see the John Wick guys Chad Stahelski and David Leitch getting shots at directing the Black Widow film, but that’s just me since they deserve to be making larger mainstream action films.
A-Force or other female-driven projects have been teased over the years, with The Wasp and now with Valkyrie being introduced in Thor: Ragnarok could lead to her solo film. Comparing his desire to something more like Jessica Jones suggests that it’s something that wouldn’t be something Marvel Studios would be interested in putting in theatres.
His two examples of female-driven projects were Jessica Jones and Supergirl, this kind of suggests more of a television direction, as that tends to be more of his comfort zone. The darker sensibilities of Jones also suggests more of a mature angle, which screams Netflix to me.
There are plenty of female characters that could end-up getting Netflix series down the road, which might be a better avenue for him. Heroines like She-Hulk or Spider-Woman could easily land series similar to Jessica Jones. Hell, there has been teases that Elektra could get a solo series after the events of The Defenders.
The structure of the writer’s room of a television project would also relieve Whedon of the shouldering the entire project on his own.
He’s also teased an interest in the past of making a Kitty Pryde movie for 20th Century Fox.
SOURCE: THE WRAP