Remember last spring, when we were all really excited about Avengers: Age of Ultron coming out? Do you also remember last summer, during which we had all seen Avengers: Age of Ultron—a movie in which the Avengers literally have to stop an evil robot from lifting an entire fictional European city into the air and punching the planet Earth with it—and thought it was a letdown?

That Ultron was kind of a mess behind the camera as well as in front of it isn't news—the film's press tour was something of a nightmare for writer/director/geek icon Joss Whedon, whose exhaustion over the project became a part of the movie's narrative leading up to its release; his conflicts with Marvel made headlines afterward. But speaking at a panel with Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo, Whedon reiterated just how much the movie messed him up, and he expressed regret over how it all shook out.

Whedon attributes some of that to what you'd expect—difficulties with his studio. But he also expressed disappointment in himself and discussed how he let the narrative about his burnout absolve him, to some extent, of responsibility for it being kind of a mess.


Indeed, Ultron is kind of a fascinating movie to think about, even if it isn't fun to watch. It's got a titular character who seems to be a cipher for Whedon himself, wreaking havoc in a story that's all about trying to find humanity in soulless machinery. Also, Paul Bettany's Vision is a completely wild character who has no business being on movie screens, and the fact that Whedon got him there is incredible.

As for what's next? It would've been a musical, but then Whedon couldn't stop listening to Hamilton. So instead, he's got something else, something that left him crying in public after he wrote it (in a good way, it seems like).

Man, what an emotional rollercoaster.