The Avengers: Age of Ultron made crazy money on its opening weekend, which surprised no one. Even with the frankly messy and offensive implosion of many of the Avenger actors during the publicity tour, the film was always going to make a ton of money. But some of backlash surprised even me. I kept reading, on site after site, that Marvel wasn’t pushing any Black Widow merchandise. You want an Ironman action figure? Sure. You want Thor? Sure. But Black Widow – the only female Avenger – doesn’t have any merchandise. Once people actually saw the film, there was also a lot of criticism about Black Widow’s characterization throughout the film, that she’s ornamental, that she’s there to serve the men, etc.
Who should be blamed for all of this? I’d blame Kevin Feige and the rest of the Marvel executives before I’d even get to blaming writer/director Joss Whedon. But Whedon has ended up taking a lot of the blame, especially online. Apparently, people were yelling at him on Twitter all weekend and then on Monday, he decided to just delete his Twitter.
Joss Whedon and Twitter have broken up, everybody. But it’s going to be okay. These things happen, and it’s not because of something you did. The Avengers: Age of Ultron filmmaker and this particular form social media just decided they would be happier apart, and it doesn’t mean Whedon or Twitter love you any less.
The conscious uncoupling happened at some point on Monday, following the $191.3 million opening weekend of Age of Ultron, which collected the second-highest grossing three-day debut in history. (After only the $207 million opening of Whedon’s original Avengers in 2012.)
UPDATE: Whedon’s departure did create a wave of speculation on Twitter that he closed his account because of “death threats.” A search of tweets directed at him over the past week definitely turned up some deep ugliness, with some of the abusive users urging him to “die” or “commit suicide” over plot points they didn’t like in the movie. Although these comments are clearly disturbing, there was no unifying complaint or groundswell of attack beyond just the random (but all-too-typical) viciousness of anonymous social media trolls.
The Daily Beast believes – I think correctly – that Whedon hated the fact that so many fans were blaming him for the way Black Widow was handled specifically, and how Marvel didn’t seem to want to put any money in marketing their films to girls. And let’s be fair to Whedon – I really think Age of Ultron got away from him. As in, Marvel corporate took away some of Whedon’s control, and they didn’t listen to him when he was like “we need to do more with Black Widow” and “you guys, this is such a sausage party” and “where’s the Black Widow merch?”
Also – the AV Club had a great write-up about all of the in-fighting between Whedon and Marvel corporate about certain scenes and storylines in Age of Ultron. Go here to read. My takeaway? Whedon just needs a break. That’s why he deleted his Twitter. He just wanted some peace and quiet without all of the Marvel insanity.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Baby.
Poor little baby!
He has many Yes Man around him since too long time so he can’t with the critics ( even totally unjustified)
On his Facebook,he blames the mean fans for his Twitter departure. Bad move !
Being involved in the Marvel machine must be exhausting. Probably just needs a break.
I do like Mark Ruffalo’s responses to some of the comments about Black Widow though 😀
Yeah, there was a really good (and slightly snarky) reply that Ruffalo made to an inane Twitter question along the lines of “Funny, I thought Banner was the love interest that needed saving” which I thought was absolutely true.
yes exactly! I honestly didn’t mind the storyline at all
What I don’t like is the lack of black widow merch, but that’s a Marvel screw up, not his.
I’ll be honest, I thought it was quite sweet, the whole Hulk/Banner thing. I only ever got work wife/work husband vibes from both her with Cap and her with Barton. I REALLY don’t get the whole her being a princess on the sidelines thing either. She gets into a bad situation, makes the most of it, learns valuable Intel about what makes the enemy tick and basically calls in the cavalry.
The Natasha character really suffered from no standalone (probably too late and pointless now). The last time we saw her and Hulk together she’s fleeing in terror, next time she’s singing lullabies? How? Why? It feels like the most interesting character beats were missed. All a bit meh.
There won’t be a Black Widow merchandise because Disney cornered the market on girls who want to be Princesses and doesn’t give a damn about girls who want to be superheros. That’s not my opinion, that’s the story, you can look it up.
Most of the bitching Joss Whedon got on tweeter was from Marvel fanboys who were pissed he left out XYZ of their favorite male superhero. They didn’t seem concerned about Black Widow at all. Whedon’s interviews leading to the premiere was all about how he had to fight the Marvel executives on everything. He likes strong female characters. He was getting unfair abuse on Twitter plus he is so done with the Marvel universe I don’t blame him at all for deleting his account.
JW likes pretty girls with zero muscle tone whose entire story arcs revolve around their romantic entanglements dressed up as “strong female characters”.
Never forget that this is the guy who pushed the “Waif-Fu” bullshit TV trope and allowed ScarJo onto the (first) Avengers set in a visibly gym-phobic condition that would have had any of the male actors immediately fired and recast.
To be fair she looked pretty much the same in Iron Man 2
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Serenity, Toy Store.
A “strong” female character doesn’t have to have 200 Ibs of muscle. Just a strong mind, direction and purpose beyond being there just as a love interest IMO.Joss is but a small handful of male directors who is proud to use the F word. His mom raised him as a feminist
“Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity, we need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who’s confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.”
-Joss Whedon
This! I agree completely, kufrt!
I have also always thought that him using women in fighting sequences is just because he gets off on that, not because he wants to empower them!
But of course, when Buffy came out and there were very few female leading characters in action stories, she was instantly a feminist icon because she was not a guy, instead of because she was a really good strong character. Using weapons and kicking ass does not mean you are a strong character if you have nothing else!
Zoe from Firefly was a terrific character. Strong. So was Inara, actually, even though by profession she was a companion.
Actually, so was Kaylee. River had other issues.
Actually… the women ran Serenity. The men were just kinda there.
Inara’ s only reason of existing was to build sexual tension with Mal (and being saved by him). Kaylee’ s only reason of existing was to pine after Simon. They did nothing for the plot except having scenes regarding their sexuality and the fact that they were women! Everything they did or said regarded their gender and their relationships with men! Zoe was a great character, because while she had a romantic plot, she was not defined by it and it alone! She was a warrior, she was a leader, she also was a wife! To be honest, I think she was so great that she was created by accident!
holy cats!
I’m citing you for excessive use of !!!!!!!
I agree. If you really re-watch Buffy Whedon isn’t the great feminist people seem to think he is. Dollhouse proves it as well, never watched Firefly but I’ve heard similar there too.
He has an interview on Buzzfeed where he says he left to concentrate on writing, call it a distraction, which is true enough.
It makes me happy when people delete their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Don’t know why. It just does.
Me, too. I guess I’m hoping everyone will and we won’t have to live in a society where everyone is obsessed with their own every little thought and facial expression. But he’ll be back. They always come back.
There needs to be an international Delete Your Twitter and Facebook Accounts Day.
They always come back, and the same things always happen. Case in point: Alec Baldwin.
I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to read a constant stream of negativity. Which is why I don’t understand why any celebrity does social media, or if they do, why they actually read what people say to them.
Me neither. Does twitter provide the option of being able to post publicly but not allowing others to post on your tweets? In other words, to just monologue? If I was him, I wouldn’t want others to comment on my tweets. If people pay money to see your work, they obviously like you. No need to see evidence on Twitter or Facebook for that.
The Twitter uproar got way over the top. People killed him over everything, especially the black widow love interest. I don’t blame him.
On the social medias,they overact on all with or without reason
I didn’t really go into Age of Ultron expecting for Black Widow’s character to be any more substantial than it was. The romantic angle between her and Banner was annoying and seemed like a cheap play to appeal to women. I think she was represented reasonably well in the action scenes, but honestly, this is a normal girl (granted, with some serious training) on a team with a Demi God and men with super powers. She and her handguns were never going to take out Ultron, just like Hawkeye and his arrows weren’t.
I’m most curious to see what they do with Scarlet Witch going forward. Her character has special abilities, which makes it more realistic for her to be holding her own with these male super heroes (well, as realistic as movie about super heroes can be).
I don’t even know why Black Widow and Hawkeye are allowed on these Avengers missions frankly. Yes I know, there are reasons, but as you say, those two characters are *humans* who have training and weapons and experience but that’s it. The rest of the Avengers are superhuman. Cap = superstrength and some level of invulnerability, Iron Man = supersuit/superweapons, Hulk = unkillable + undefeatable strength/power, Thor = seems basically unkillable + incredible superweapon, Scarlet Witch = superweapon, Vision = most powerful AI ever with Infinity-level superweapon(s). Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Vision can all fly. Cap, Hulk, and Thor all are extremely resistant to pain/physical damage.
Black Widow and Hawkeye should be wherever Maria Hill and Fury are: in the control room, working comms and doing strategy stuff, maybe handling remote weapons. They shouldn’t actually be *in the fight* hand-to-hand against army or alien robots.
*sorry nerd rant over*
Joss is basically a cranky dude and his PR for this film has basically been to state that constantly chattering actors on set made him cranky, that Marvel producers made him cranky, making films make him cranky, and that Loki will be on the Blu-Ray in some form. Any pushback against all that crankiness would just serve to make him crankier, take his ball, and go home. The director’s commentary on the DVD/Blu-Ray is going to be two solid hours of cranky dude being cranky.
@lilac
you’re funny.
cranky is a good way to describe Joss.
The first Avengers was a great movie but this one is terrible. Bad editing, not very well directed, lazy dialogue, very little character development, cheap action sequences. Worst of all he is talking bad about other movies and why they were not good or why they didn’t work. He seems like a know it all, but when people criticize him he starts whining.
This goses back to the gregarious manner of these Neanderthals we call white men in Hollywood. These so called old white men in hollywood who basically have every control of this spectrum in the movie industry do this to the basis of greed, pride, ignorance and of course lust.
It is just sad, that this ridicule of perverted old men are running things in Hollywood and no one is doing anything about this except kissing each other a**es. And one of head people who’s getting their ass kissed instead of kicked is a lot ( but I will name one) is an example and that is Harvey Weinstein and many more to come.
Hollywood is becoming more and more pathetic as we know it and I think we need more people who have the balls to stand to these people who have their hear up their asses.
*hoping he goes away and makes another Shakespeare movie*
Yes! As You Like It in his kitchen!
Me too. He made the last one as a palate cleanser from the madness of making the first AVENGERS. Go Joss Whedon!!
YES! with Tom Hiddleston and Nathan Fillion please.
Bender and Bilbo are now kicking around in the MCU, chuck them in there as well. Go full pop culture or go home 😉
Captain Hammer!!
Sorry but Bender has no place in my Joss Whedon fantasy Shakespeare project.
yes leave Bender with his Hamlet and the fight for an Olivier with Brannagh, McAvoy Chiwetel Ejiofor Ralf Fiennes -I would also love to see him with Fillion in A Mid Summer night s dream or Twelfth Night as well.Fillion would make a great Malvolio and Tom a great lovesick Orsino
Joss’s Much Ado About Nothing was basically a bunch of friends doing Shakespeare at home, which should be the same as any future Joss Shakespeare project – all actors he has worked with repeatedly and considers friends.
You never forget your first Shakespeare.
You never forget your First Folio.
I will never forget my first or second folio
I’ll never forget my Last Folio.
*gazes up at ceiling with reminiscing smile*
who cares.
Bring back Firefly, Joss!
Man I loved that show 🙂
Regardless if you agree with the backlash or not, and from what I understand it was more then just Black Widow, apparently feminist are responsible for him quitting.
A howtospotafeminist hashtag was trending on Twitter with a lot of Joss Whedon mentioned. It was so gross.
It’s always the woman’s fault, they are blamed for everything and the favourite target on the internet for whiny men.
Yep!
Well, in this case the crazy SJWs who have been hijacking the feminist conversation were a big part of the backlash and death threats. He was warned forever that pandering to, as one celeb called them, the tea party equivalent, was going to backfire on him. And it did.
I’ve seen AoU quite a few times now and every time I see it, I read about this backlash and honestly wonder whether I saw the same movie as some of these reviewers. I hope Joss gets to go lie on a beach somewhere (Tahiti, maybe? I hear it’s a magical place 😝) and just get to chill out with his family.
Me too Kali. I for one was into the Black Widow/Banner subplot because I thought they had chemistry from the Avenger’s film when she was sent to recruit him. And I get why some people might not have been into it but so why so much drama and outrage?
Yep. Studio always wins.
He actually admitted in an interview recently that he had to fight the studio to get certain parts of the story to remain in. So, not surprising he’s had enough now that there’s a Twitter backlash. Calling for death and suicide? Really? GMAFB, it’s a MOVIE. And COMICS, FFS.
In Joss Whedon’s words, it wasn’t the feminists that made him quit Twitter:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8558499/avengers-joss-whedon-quit-twitter-feminists
I don’t blame him. Social media IS a huge distraction. I’ve done the same thing from time to time and never regretted it.
I highly doubt he would outright admit to it. He doesn’t want to get on Anita Sarkeesian’s bad side.
He shouldn’t have quit, but the reasons were good ones. Twitter is a pain and a it really does people the excuse to be nasty and aggressive because they are incognito. It’s driving good people away. We can’t have nice things. 🙁
However, saying that, it has a strong place in society politically and building awareness of the amount of idiots there are out there and provides an easy place to rally around causes.
Remember Scarlett Johansson was also pregnant at the time they were filming. She’d JUST announced it when they were about to start, I think. So it’s possible the storyline was altered a bit to allow her less time filming overall, before she started to show.
No excuse for lack of merch, though. Shame on you, Marvel.
I thought it also .
But My husband and I thought that the 4 female characters had nice revealings .He know how I hate when he is all about the actresses’s breasts but here it’s all I see when I watched Olsen’s character
She has the third most screentime in the movie. Captain America has the most. Her out of nowhere romance with Banner got a lot of scenes in the movie.
Joss Whedon is not a feminist. he is very problematic actually: too much to list it all here, see for yourself:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Joss_Whedon
A guy who writes,directs and produces some movies or TV movies with a kick ass female lead is more feminist than Sofia Coppola ( for example a female director only filming about the female figure)
Um, Charisma Carpenter alleged that Wheadon fired her for getting pregnant, and he declined to refute her allegations. So how exactly is he a feminist at all?
(She always maintained she was fired because her real life pregnancy forced Wheadon to re-do Season 4 of Angel and that he retaliated against her for it. Although she has said that they are now on good terms, that still doesn’t make it okay)
I’m really beginning to hate the word problematic. It’s so overused on Tumblr.
I read some of those rants against Buffy the TV show where the problematic areas seem to have been seasons 6 and 7.
Unfortunately, these various commentators fail to address the fact that Joss wasn’t in charge of seasons 6 and 7. He’d left by then to prep another show. The show runner for seasons 6 and 7 was Marti Noxon, a woman. None of them address the fact that their rants are directed to the wrong person.
Joss is the easy target due to his name, tbh I don’t even think the complaints are so much about someone being ‘wrong’ but because many individuals didn’t like the direction or what was done. They want the too polished perfect version that fulfills the fantasy without any realism at all.
This!
There was problematic material in the early seasons before – I mean Xander was always in the show and he was a classic Nice Guy but somehow ended up a lauded character.
I read about the scenes he fought for, such as more Barton and Barton’s farm, and I honestly could have done without it. I also did not buy Natasha and Bruce. I still feel slightly disgruntled about it days after watching the movie. It is a cinematic universe. I want the movies to make sense together. I want the character relationships to build from one film to the next. I feel like Joss did a few things in this movie just to make his mark – like killing a certain character. However, he shouldn’t be subjected to internet hate and harassment.
Joss brought us TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the greatest female kick ass characters in my lifetime. I’m not mad at Joss.
BW’s character was boring from the first movie. Now we have Scarlett Witch, who’s much better character, who also happens to be superhuman and can actually hang with the other guys. Avengers needs more superhuman females. Bring me Captain Marvel!
+1
+2
I enjoyed the film, although I did have some faults in it. But I overall didn’t have a big problem with Black Widow in the film and actually liked getting to see more of a backstory to her. I have one friend of facebook that was complaining about her “monster” cause to her it was saying that she’s a monster for not being able to have kids, whereas I saw it as that she’s a monster for CHOOSING to go through with sterilization to make her a more effective KILLER. I dont know. I had more of a problem of Black Widow’s and Hulk’s relationship coming out of nowhere than Black Widow herself.
She didn’t choose it. She did NOT have that choice. Those girls do NOT have that choice. It is an obligation, a violation of their body.
It is screwed up that Whedon always find a way to demean his female characters with such sh*tty pblm. And what femenist fire an actress because she is pregnant? Yes. He did that to Charisma Carpenter. She admitted that publicly and he NEVER denied it. Oh i forget, and forced them to lose weight to fit certain stereotypes. Whedon is a joke now. He was good at the times but now they are better more advanced model a man being feminist.
As an attorney, I tell clients not to respond outside court filings to a former employee’s public statements so I would never read anything into someone not denying something like that
I’m also confused by the ‘lose weight to fight certain stereotypes’ because considering many of his works have been action-packed it doesn’t make much sense for his actors/actresses not to be on the more slender size.
Pressured, sure. But I believe Black Widow said it was a a choice to go through with the ceremony.
I didn’t realize people took comic books so seriously.
I know, right? I’m glad I don’t know the comic books so well that I’d be disappointed in the movie version. As long as I can enjoy the story, I don’t much care how closely it resembles the comic book narrative or not.
It actually resembled the comics quite well right down to one surprising twist.
Some people actually think they are the characters or these ‘species’. Some of the people in this movement that attacked Josh. They take this stuff verrrry seriously and will list pages of what -kin they are.
I have to wonder why Joss Wheadon ever agreed to get on board with the Marvel films in the first place. If he fancies himself an “artiste” who wants to make nuanced characters and make bold statements with his work, WHY get involved with Marvel? It’s a summer superhero movie – basically a giant CGI-action movie designed to bring in as much money as possible. Citizen Kane, this ain’t. I think the bigwigs probably didn’t care much for Joss’s “vision” and just wanted a film that would bring in a billion-zillion dollars. Which he had to know going in. So I have a really hard time feeling bad for him on this one.
because sometimes you’ve got to the big budget movie to get your name out there. Or if the studios trust you to do a big movie, then they might let you work on that little indie film you want to make.
Besides, Joss is a nerd. And Im sure working on an Avengers movie was like his teenage dreams coming true.
Meh, as a comic book fan who had 0 interest in going to see Ultron in theaters I think he did a solid to amazing job.
Sometimes I think we should make all films 8 hours so everyone has proper focus to their characters, no plot point is left unresolved and everyone gets an absolutely equal amount of screen time and catchphrases. /sarcasm.
Black Widow is Disney’s property and Disney only cares about girls when it’s princess time. That’s got nothing to do with Joss. I’ve said again and again I’m always surprised people are ON Twitter and check it enough to need to delete it. It just seems like a window into allowing all sorts of abuse to hurl at you from anonymous losers. Why bother?
oh wow….I did not realize there is no Black Widow action figure, or any merchandise for that matter. Lame, really lame.
I was JUST talking about this yesterday. While, I’m really happy he at least acknowledged that feminists didn’t drive him off Twitter, (because that is TOTALLY the angle that creepy MRA media sources are playing up), I would really really love it if he would comment on some of the controversies (such as his boys getting out of line on the press tour and the prima nocta joke). Even if those things are not HIS personal fault, I think a true feminist ally with a very large influence (and who is making a bunch of money off all of this no matter what) would stand up and say those things were wrong. Women have to live with sexist crap thrown at them (including getting vitriol from being angry when sexist sh*t happens) but he has the advantage of being able to distance himself from all this. Come on Joss, feminists need you to say something!!! I’m going to go read Captain Marvel…
Putting aside his ‘feminism’, my main issue with Whedon is that he doesn’t seem to be capable of in universe continuity. It’s almost like he didn’t bother watching any of the stand-alone movies, and just read short summaries. Tony’s growth in Iron Man 3 was completely ignored. Steve’s personality from both of his movies is non-existent. Thor’s subtlety is gone, he’s a punch line. Natasha was a completely different character than she was in Winter Soldier. He keeps making comments about how he wanted to make a self-contained film, but it’s NOT, it’s the 10th in an ongoing series. Continuity is a must.
Exactly what I thought! But you said it much better than I could ever say. Your comment was not showing when I wrote mine.
So people were threatining him on twitter?! Absurd! it is all because if a fictional character?! Hahahahaha…
I didnt like black wifiw storyline, but I dknt think was whedon’s fault . Overall, i think is marvel’s fault.
My problem with age of ultron is that it completely ignored what happened in the other movies and i thor storyline was essential for the movie. But everything is about tony stark…
I think the AV article is interesting. I dis think something was off in yhat press junket in LA. Maybe there is some issues behind the scenes with the Marvel execs.
Correcting myself: Maybe there ARE some issues…*
The pblm was him. He publicly said he didn’t want to acknowledged certains things in other movies or even the tv show.
He just got cocky.
I have not seen the new Avengers movie YET, but if there ever was a director that supported women it’s Whedon. Buffy!!!
Why are men such drama queens? You know he’ll be back on Twitter in no time!