I might not be the biggest fan of the superhero franchise genre, but I continue to be a big fan of Joss Whedon. Having finally been given his due by the Hollywood establishment, Whedon has taken every opportunity to advocate for stronger female roles and more original content, ripping on the current Hollywood tendency to bring back franchise after franchise without actually taking the time to develop new ideas. In a recent interview with EW, Whedon said that he’d like to put some original ideas into practice, once he’s finished with Avengers: Age of Ultron.
When asked about what future properties Whedon has ‘always wanted to play with,’ the director had this to say:
There’s probably a dozen. It’s very important I don’t do that. It’s very important that we start creating new content again. We can only build on nostalgia so much before we have nothing left to build on. Before we’re rebooting Spider-Man—again. It’s dangerous to the culture, and it’s boring to me. I squeezed in between my Avengers movies a 400-year-old play. So I really need to create some new worlds.
Bam. While we might ask just how easy it will be for Whedon to walk away from a Boba Fett film, or yet another reboot of Batman, it’s nice to hear him saying, on record, that he’d prefer to work on something new. This is not just Whedon’s personal preference, it seems, but something that he feels is important to the culture. He recently said that mainstream cinema feels like it’s repeating itself right now, so these new comments are very much in keeping with what Whedon has said in the past.
Once more, I want to give some major respect to Joss Whedon. Rather than excitedly talking about how awesome it would be to do another Spider-Man film, or direct one of the new Stars Wars episodes, he’s talking about how he needs to get away from that. He admits that it’s tempting, but that there’s too many franchises and not enough new content. We’ve got to remember, after all, that all of those franchises were once original ideas that someone in power had to believe in. Whedon is one director that finally has enough clout to get some interesting mainstream movies made. Hollywood needs that right now.
You can read the entire interview on the Entertainment Weekly website. What do you think about Joss Whedon‘s concerns about original content? Let us know in the comments.
