New TV Spot for "The Cabin in the Woods"

Tweet

Watch after the jump!

Joss Whedon Says "The Avengers" Will Be Told From the Perspective of Captain America!

Tweet

More after the jump!

Joss Whedon Discusses Assembling "The Avengers"

Here's an excerpt from the interview:

MM: Now, you said you talked to everybody sort of about their character, was there sort of an aspect or facet of Tony Stark that Robert brought up that you hadn't considered before?

JW: I think the conversations were largely about "Where is Tony now?" Like, "Who is he now? Where is he [going] from 'Iron Man 2' towards 'Iron Man 3'?" He is such a well-delineated character, so it was really a question of, "What do we want to stress and what do we want to say? We have said that, we have done that, so let's not go there." He felt a sort of isolated man who is -- even though there is an element of that, just because that's sort of what any team movie is about. He didn't want to be the sort of just, "I am totally wrapped up in one thing and I am not thinking about everybody else." He didn't want to be the tortured lonely man, which I totally get. And it was easy to make him as delightful and gregarious as he can be and still go, well, there is a piece missing and it's the piece that makes him an Avenger.

MM: I was really impressed by Chris Evans in "Captain America" because his performance was so different than what you usually see from him. There was no snark, no sarcastic edge to him. How did you have to adapt your sort of writing style to fit that sort of straightforward character?

JW:I love a straightforward character. I am the guy who loves Cyclops on the 'X-Men', because he is square. [Captain America] is a little square, and he is aware that he is a little square, and he is aware that the world is a beat ahead of him, or in his case, 70 beats. I think that's very disarming and very charming. I relate to that guy. I also don't know who the popular singers are right now, so he is actually really easy for me to write.

There were some lines where [Chris] would be like, "Okay, now I just sound like an idiot." And in context, I was like, "Yeah, actually, now that it's all laid out that is a bit much." But he is very aware of his dignity, but at the same time understood why I wanted to find the humor in somebody who was so out of touch.

MM: You have Mark Ruffalo stepping in for the first time playing the character of Bruce Banner. So did you feel more freedom to kind of create your own take on the character?

JW: Yeah, he and I did the most character work of anyone, because we really were starting fresh, but we were starting with something that had been embodied several times.

And both of us agreed upfront that the template for who we wanted this guy to be in his life was Bill Bixby, the TV [show character] who was busy helping other people. That was more interesting to us than the Banner in the first two movies who was always fixated on curing himself. We spent a lot of time talking about what makes us Hulk out, the nature of anger, how it feels.

We even fought some. I mean literally we actually got some pads out and did some tussling. Just to talk about the physicality, and also the physicality of somebody who has to control this thing, and the way he moves in space and the way he relates to the people and the objects around him. It was extremely fun. What we found was that he could be very bumbling and kind of awkward, but at the same time very graceful and in this almost transcendent control of himself.

MM: Personally, I am excited for the movie just to see the character of Nick Fury come into his own, because we have just gotten these little glimpses of his function in this world. Did you want to keep that edge of mystery to him, or explore who he is underneath the patch?

JW: Well, he is not going to be talking about his childhood, and you do want to keep a certain mystery. Also -- and this is something that I was very pleased that Marvel actually mandated -- they were very interested in keeping him, not just in the sort of a mystery of how the organization operates, but a real moral gray area where you really have to decide, "Is Nick Fury the most manipulative guy in the world? Is he a good guy? Is he completely Machiavellian or is it a bit of both?" And that was really fun to tweak.

I felt that in the other movies, they had been cameos and he had been called upon to come in and be Sam Jackson and bluster a little bit. And I told Sam upfront that my big agenda was to see the weight on someone who is supposed to be in control of the most powerful beings on the planet. The weight on somebody who has to run the organization and the gravity of it. Not that we don't have any fun with Nick, but he definitely -- it's, I feel like a much more textured performance and at times really moving.

MM: I imagine the other hard part about that is balancing a God and who can create lightning, and a guy with a bow and arrow, and giving them both the action that brings out the best in them.

JW: Yeah. Well, I feel like we pulled that off. At the end of the day, the guy with the bow and arrow is a lot easier to write gags for than the God. But we created a situation where everybody can be useful, and everybody can be in jeopardy, and they really can act as a team, even though -- as we have known from the first issue of 'The Avengers' comic -- there's no reason for these people to be on the same team.

Follow @gonewallace

Joss Whedon Discusses Dealing with Multiple Characters in "The Avengers"

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Is it hard to give every character a descent share of screen time?

"I think the whole point of a team movie is to explain why every member is there, so it's about getting those moments for each character. I think we end up identifying with Steve Rogers, he's our intro into the modern world - because he's only recently joined it. Sometimes we refer to him as Luke Skywalker... but obviously a lot less whiny."

Does that mean you've got a Han Solo?

"Well that would be Tony Stark!"

How is it managing a set full of leading actors?

"You might imagine it would be a giant ego-fest but there are so many stars in this movie no one's carrying the burden of the whole film. Everyone's been very gracious and I think they all really trust each other. I spoke to every one of them about their characters and what I was planning to do before I ever set pen to paper, so I had their input all the through. It was just a question of putting them all together and makign it work."

Also, it's nothing major, but somewhat complimenting - heres a brief set video depicting Joss Whedon seemingly thinking something over. What exactly that "something" is; we may never know. And theres also a random great view of extras running.

Joss Whedon Gives An Update on "The Avengers" and He Says It's Gonna Be BIG!

Rundown of interview:

We're about 2/3 of the way through filming. For some reason, I am not dead, and for some other weird reason, I have not been replaced, but we're having a lot of fun. Is that okay for us to have fun? Everybody's working really hard, throwing themselves all over the place emotionally and physically, interacting with each other in fascinating ways. I'm trying desperately to keep the big picture in my head, make sure it coheres and is an exciting film all the way through. Every scene has something in it that I'm so proud of, and so delighted by what the actors have given me -- not to mention the crew and everybody else. It's not just big, it's big.

It's a blockbuster. There are certain things you do... you bust blocks.

I'm thinking that far ahead as much as I should. My main goal is make a movie that's good. If possible, make a movie that's super good. Don't try to make a movie that's great, because then it'll be pretentious. Just go for super good. But yes, it's not like they all die and The Avengers are shut down forever. There's definitely franchise potential, obviously, but I didn't pepper the movie with franchise notions. I've seen a lot of movies that failed because they were just being part ones. This is a complete film. We'll tease out something that might happen later, but basically, all I did was complete this story. Han is not frozen in carbonite at the end of this movie.

First Look at Joss Whedon's "The Cabin in the Woods"

Joss Whedon Directed the Post-Credit Scene from "Thor" SPOILER ALERT!!

Description:

So in the last scene of the movie Dr. Selvig played by Stellan Skarsgård meets up with Nick Fury played by Samuel L. Jackson, in some kind of government S.H.I.E.L.D. location. Fury is standing in front of a table with a large metal box/case on it. They go on to discuss some recent discoveries that Selvig has made in relation to some of the alternate universes. Fury then asks Selvig for his advice on something... and that's what is in the case on the table. Fury opens up the case and inside is the the Tesseract or Cosmic Cube linking the film to Captain America. Selvig then asks what is it, Fury tells him that it is a source of incredible power. After he says this the camera moves a bit revealing a reflection of Loki played by Tom Hiddleston. So Loki is actually possessing Selvig. Loki responds to Fury with... "That's very interesting…" Boom, end.

Comic-Con 2010 Day 4: The Avengers Cast Announced Courtesy of Geek Tyrant

During the Marvel Panel at Comic-Con the cast of all the main Avengers characters and actors were announced! It was announced earlier this week and Mark Ruffalo would replace Edward Norton as The Hulk and now it's officially official. It's also official that Jeremy Renner will be taking on the role of Hawkeye. I'm 100% on board with both of these casting decisions. Here's how it all went down.

After the Thor panel ended the lights went down and and an Avengers logo slowly resolved on screen as Sam Jackson did a voice over as Nick Fury explained the formation of the world’s most awesome superhero team. After it ended Jackson came on stage to introduce the cast of the highly anticipated movie.

He ended up bring out the familiar cast members such as Clark Gregg (SHIELD Agent Coulsen), Chris Evans (Captain America) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor). Then Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) and Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man) made surprise appearances. Well, I guess it wasn't really a surprise, we all kin of knew they would be there.

Downey Jr. took over the mic, and commented on the ambition of Christopher Nolan's Inception, then he proclaimed the idea of bringing together the leads of all of Marvel’s superhero films for The Avengers to be the most insanely ambitious movie production yet. It's hard to argue.

Downey Jr. then introduced Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, and Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk.

There was definitely a mixed response from the audience regarding Ruffalo's casting. Only minutes before an audience member asked Marvel President Feige about the return of Edward Norton, and it was followed by boos that erupted from the audience when Feige pretty much downplayed the dismissal of Norton.

Joss Whedon then came out on stage with a huge smile on his face! He said “I’ve had a dream all my life, and it was not this good!” He then jokingly added, “and I am going to blow it.”