Joss Whedon Talks Early ‘Avengers’ Script With The Wasp And Second Villain
Yes, yes; we all loved The Avengers movie this year, but as writer/director Joss Whedon revealed during an appearance at the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood last night, the movie that made it to screen was somewhat different from the one he initially envisioned, with that version including not only a mysterious second villain, but also an appearance by Janet Van Dyne, AKA the Wasp.
"There was a little bit of time where we thought we might now actually get Scarlett [Johansson, who plays the Black Widow in the movie]," Whedon told the audience when asked about the rumors about a mooted appearance by the Wasp in an earlier version of the script. "There was a very Wasp-y draft that I wrote. But it was way too Wasp-y. I was like, 'She's adorable! I'm just going to watch her!'"
Van Dyne might make an appearance in the 2015's sequel, however, as Whedon said that he's planning on using the comic book's tendency to announce that "The Old Order Changeth!" when it comes to the next movie. "I used to read The Avengers and part of the ethos of the team was that it changed their line-up every month," he joked. "Their 150th issue was just a bunch of faces: 'Who will be in the team now?!' We had the first issue as a poster in the offices. Now that I'm working on the sequel, I said 'Let's put the second issue up there! Let's change it up a little bit!' The second issue is 'Introducing Giant-Man!' and this character! There were already changing it up after one issue. That's what they always do."
Entirely nerdy note: Whedon doesn't really mean the 150th issue when he's talking about that cover; the cover for that issue looked like this:
I think he means the cover for #221:
As for that unseen second villain, Whedon refused to reveal just who he'd had his eye on ("I'm not going to tell you, because that person might crop up another time," he explained), but he did reveal why he was considering adding yet another character to the movie in the first place. "I definitely felt like, 'I've got Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I've got four of the biggest, baddest, toughest guys out there, and I've got one effete British character actor [against them]," he said, before adding that Marvel Studios shot the idea of another bad guy down, because "they believed very strongly that they didn't want to add any more mythology."
Well, aside from that whole Thanos tease, of course.