Joss Whedon Talks about the Characters of THE AVENGERS

Joss Whedon is God. Deal with it. Well. Yeah. Anyway. What he's doing with The Avengers is something that's just about never been done before. You have the classic superhero movie that focuses on the key guy (or gal) who save the world numerous times, then something bad happens and seems like, "Aw shit this is bad", but they overcome that moment and just end up kicking ass. This is different. This is taking seven different characters who play some significant role in saving the world, giving them enough time together, and finding a way for them to put their personalities aside to take on the biggest threat the world may see for some time.

In an interview with Yahoo! Movies, Joss talks about what we can expect to see from Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Also starring in the film are Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Cobie Smulders, and Tom Hiddleston. The Avengers will open in 3D on May 4, 2012. Hit the jump to read some excerpts of the interview.

Here's what Whedon says about how Tony Stark will play nice with others in The Avengers:

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.

 Looking at Captain America, Whedon says that he likes how he is such a straightforward character, and says that he can relate to that character's personality:

[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.

One of the biggest questions is how Whedon will take on portraying The Hulk. With there being two other films, there's already been two different depictions in the past 10 years. But Whedon brings some hope in his depiction of The Hulk, and it sounds like a change for the better:

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.

 For Whedon, one of the bigger challenges was the character of Thor and putting him alongside a guy like Hawkeye. One guy is a Norse God. One guy shoots arrows:

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.

 The most interesting character to watch in this movie will be Nick Fury. What the hell do we know about him? Are we going to be learning who he is and what he's all about? Well, no. Not exactly. He may be the one who brought The Avengers together, but he will still remain a mystery.

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.

There you have it. A ton of news focusing on the five major heroes that will appear in The Avengers. What about Hawkeye and Black Widow? Well, it seems like Whedon has mapped out a path for all of the characters. I'm not worried at all. My main concern is...who the hell is Joss aiming to kill?