One s and three r's. "resurrecting."

alliterator | April 23, 16:38 CET

I agree. He would have been better off saving himself for cable.

glitchygirl | April 23, 16:54 CET

Every interview he's given about this movie makes me a little sadder.

Agent | April 23, 17:17 CET

Note: I haven't seen AoU yet.

Hmm... I've always seen Coulson's not-death as a great way to create drama between Avengers. For example, if you wanted them to all get upset at Nick Fury, reveal that Coulson is alive, and Fury knew the whole time. Or, have a subset of Avengers learn first, then create drama between the ones who find out first and the ones who find out later.

While I agree that it does take a bit of the punch out of the first movie, I also think there's plenty of interesting things that can be done with it. We're seeing quite a few of them on SHIELD already, but I think that there's a way to bring the development to the movies in a way that carries weight as well.

PaperSpock | April 23, 17:30 CET

Thanks alliterator lol

eddy | April 23, 17:46 CET

He also said he thought he was going to be in charge of AoS and got told he wasn't. He sounded a little bitter about that, in fact.

It looks like it really is time for him to walk away from Marvel.

AndrewCrossett | April 23, 18:30 CET

Where did Joss say that, Andrew?

And who's in charge then? Jeph or JMo?

[ edited by eddy on 2015-04-24 03:32 ]

eddy | April 23, 18:31 CET

JMo and Jeff are in charge of the day to day, I believe. Jeph Loeb is pretty much in charge of ALL television productions for Marvel.

I think Joss said he wanted to supervise and read every script, but then he was told, you know, he really had to work on AoU, which he was like, "Oh, right."

I think the reason he's regretting bringing Coulson back is that it does sort of numb the pain of him dying in the first place. Now when you watch it, you don't go "Oh shit! He's dead!" Instead you go, "Well, he's going to be dead for a few days and then he'll be fine."

I mean, I think bringing him back for AOS was worth it, but still.

alliterator | April 23, 18:41 CET

Does the article have spoilers for AoU? I'm afraid to read anything for the next week. (Sometimes there are no spoiler tags when there need to be. I don't want to be surprised.)

Joss has brought back many dead characters. I'm OK with the way he brought back Coulson. While I am psyched for seeing AoU, I do wish he could have overseen AoS for the past 2 years. Not that JMo aren't good at it, but they are still not Joss.

Nebula1400 | April 23, 18:54 CET

Minor spoilers, yes. Concerning what characters are actually in the movie.

PaperSpock | April 23, 18:58 CET

OK. So I'll skip that one. I did read his comments on Ant-Man. Interesting. Maybe there's an alternate universe where we can see Edgar Wright's version of Ant-Man, and Joss's version of Wonder Woman.

Nebula1400 | April 23, 19:01 CET

Yeah. If we ever get the parallel universe thing figured out, there's going to be so much media to consume. And variations of everything. We need to get on this already!

PaperSpock | April 23, 19:05 CET

This is the article where Joss talks about thinking he was supposed to run AoS. As always with no video to watch, it's hard to tell how much Joss's dry sense of humor is being invoked.

AndrewCrossett | April 23, 19:18 CET

After reading that, AndrewCrossett, I get where he's coming from, and it's not just the exhaustion (though that's part of it, for sure). Joss got offered a lot more money than he's ever made to make AoU, and I am sure he did it well. It's just that when you make your art for the money, instead of the love of making art, and the people paying you, do it because you are the best, but they expect you to do it their way, you stop loving it. You go past liking it to "Why the fuck am I doing this?"

It sounds like Joss needs to distance himself from this, take time off, and then, if we're lucky, he'll share the next great thing that is his own with us.

Nebula1400 | April 23, 19:54 CET

"The Adventures of Tara, Anya, Doyle, Fred, Wesley, Shepard Book, Wash, Topher, and Paul..."

Yes, please. I want to see this.

[ edited by Amrita on 2015-04-24 07:05 ]

Amrita | April 23, 22:04 CET

Pretty sure Joss will land on his feet, people. Complete financial security and carte blanche in your chosen industry will do that for a guy. Everyone's concern is touching.

IrrationaliTV | April 23, 22:11 CET

I don't really get that "Defeated by the man" feel in any of those Joss interviews. He just sounds really exhausted. In fact, he's made it pretty clear there's still a lot of him in the movie, even if he had to balance that creative influence with the company as a whole. In the original Buzzfeed article where that AoS quote was pulled from (about handing over the reigns), it's not really implied that he had a bad taste in his mouth about it. He was offered a huge contract and a lot of money to make Age of Ultron, and it kind of makes sense that he couldn't be a day to day creative force on a TV show at the same time. I'm actually genuinely surprised that he thought that schedule would work out when he got into production.

rabid | April 24, 03:59 CET

I'm not sure when, exactly, he was offered the job of directing AoU. I know it was announced shortly after Avengers opened, but I don't know when they started development on AoS. It could be that this all happened before he agreed to direct the second movie, and he thought they wanted him to make the TV show instead.

AndrewCrossett | April 24, 05:09 CET

I never thought Coulson died. I thought that Fury was the kind of guy that had absolutely no problem doing anything if he believes it to be the right thing. Torturing a prisoner, lying, smearing Coulson's trading cards in his blood; anything is fair game to Fury.

garyyager | April 24, 05:19 CET

I'm a little confused why his thoughts after the fact on Coulson are getting such attention and it reads like the writer of the piece are misinterpreting his reaction to watching the second movie and realizing a particular scene is changed for him with the return of Coulson as being something foisted upon him that he wishes never happened. I don't think that is it. It seems to me like he only came to this realization after watching the first movie again, but pretty sure the majority of people who will watch Avengers have already done so and had that initial reaction that he wanted (there are deadly consequences) so no one is really missing that. And like garyyager I never thought Coulson was actually dead. I too thought that Fury lied to motivate the rest and it would have been easy to have his return be from grievous wounds, not Tahiti... but instead what we get is something so much better. How Coulson was brought back is so integral to the show in fantastic and pretty horrifying ways, and demonstrates the scary depths that Fury would go to in order to complete a mission that it packs more of a long term punch to me then "oh god he's dead" in that moment in the movie, because after that Coulson is pretty much forgotten. And as someone else mentioned it could be used as another wedge once the rest of the Avengers find out (Tony specifically since he was the one that seemed to take it the hardest. Captain next.)

NYPinTA | April 24, 06:36 CET

This article is misleading. Unless I missed something (and I went back and checked the full quote) he never says he "regrets" bringing Coulson back to life, he just acknowledges that bringing him back to life weakens the impact of his movie death when you go back and watch it again. No big shocker there. This article seems like an attempt to create controversy where none exists.

[ edited by Squishy on 2015-04-24 17:13 ]

Squishy | April 24, 08:12 CET

Two things:

I also kinds regret they brought back Coulson. It was such a moment in the Avengers, and I do think on repeat viewings it loses much of its "ooommph" I also feel like AoS has been somewhat hamstrung by trying to make Coulson a leading man, when he's really best used as a garnish

I think Joss is being somewhat sarcastic when saying that Marvel told him he couldn't do SHIELD. There is no doubt in my mind that Joss knew exactly what he was getting into when agreeing to direct AoU, and that in doing so there'd be no way he'd have day to day oversight ... as much as he might want that in a perfect world where one project doesn't suck up your life 24/7.

Joss has been incredibly complimentary regarding the Marvel team and his working experience and that he's delivering "his" personal movie - some sites like to use the fact that someone wants to move on to something new as proof that The Man is crushing the beleaguered artist

TallMichaelJ | April 24, 12:22 CET

Really not digging the overall tone in that avclub write-up.

Also a pretty un-nice move to rattle off every major character that died in a Joss show/film. To hell with people who may not have watched EVERYTHING.

D-e-f- | April 24, 14:12 CET

Regarding regretting the resurrection part, I don't think well and truly killing Coulson in Avengers Assemble would have been much of a jolt because we hadn't gotten to know him very well, even if we already knew Clark Gregg and liked him. There is nothing to say that in the series, now that we, or I should say, I do, adore Phil Coulson, that won't happen. That's how Joss doing his "funny thing", as he called it in an interview years ago, is effective; a build of affection and respect for a character to make for a great dramatic moment and aftermath. Of course, as stated above Joss isn't directing or supervising AoS, so it's anyone's guess if Jed, Maurissa, Jeph take Coulson in that direction. And Clark is just awesome as Coulson; absolutely confident and dynamic, even in his uncertain, weak moments. It would be an awful blow to see him go.

[ edited by Tonya J on 2015-04-25 02:33 ]

Tonya J | April 24, 14:58 CET

As with any press tour, jokes are getting taken out of context and quotes have words added to them which change meaning.

The deal for Avengers 2 and SHIELD happened at the same time. Joss' point in the buzzfeed piece (which keeps getting recycled with less detail, like the Spiderman movies) I think was around how exhausting and consuming the process was, and how creating a TV show and a movie at same time wasn't going to go as you'd like it to in your head. I don't think he's bitter at Jed or Maurissa for not having control of the show. Nor do I think Joss is crying into his cornflakes about resurrecting Coulson.

gossi | April 25, 09:11 CET

One of the elements of the tv series has been Coulson keeping his mortality secret. He asks Sif not to tell Thor in her first appearance. I had imagined this was so Ultron could use the fact that Fury lied as a way of driving a wedge through the Avengers in the sequel -the team having been forged by this death - but they seem to have gone another way with it.

feelinglistless | April 25, 13:15 CET

It's not just out of context. We've reached the point where Joss is a part of Marvel but Marvel fans may or may not have any deep understanding about Joss. Joss does like to talk writing and by doing so, at times it comes across like he's being tangentially critical of Marvel. So the Marvel fans tend to get ornery about that. But because it causes a reaction, it keeps getting reprinted.

azzers | April 25, 13:23 CET

D-e-f, I too disliked the overall tone of the article. It was weirdly snarky, without being up front about being snarky.

azzers, you make a very good point about not all Marvel fans being like us. Thanks.

Jocelyn | April 26, 06:25 CET