Age of Ultron

Age of Ultron left me waiting for it to end, which is hard for a superhero story to do.

I was going to put up a long post about all the things wrong with it, but they're all some variation of this: the movie does too good a job capturing the comics it's based on. Those comics sprawl endlessly over month after month, hinting at but never delivering a satisfying resolution (big fights don't count), and are honeycombed with events dropped in to promote other comics, or the crossover du jour, or make fun of Bush (yeah, still).

And now, Marvel movies do too.

But that's not what I want to say today. No, I'm thinking about an interview Joss Whedon gave in which he said Marvel wouldn't let him do something with the Hulk, at the end, which would have been "the single greatest fist-pumping moment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,"iirc.

He wouldn't say what it was; he said he liked it so much he begged Marvel not to throw it away, because they could use it in another movie.

So what could it be?

Whedon understands structure. So when he puts in two different unsuccessful attempts to control the Hulk, it's possible that was meant to set up an epic payoff, which then got deleted.

First, we see the Black Widow's way of handling the Hulk: soft talk and a drug injection. Basically, lying. Then Iron Man has his way of dealing with a Hulk problem: hit him really, really hard. That doesn't work out so well either.

What we don't see is Banner handling the Hulk. Wouldn't it have been cool if, when Black Widow says she loves him, but she needs the other guy, he'd said something like, "There is no other guy. I am the Hulk." And turned all Hulked-out, but gray, and said, "What do you need me to do?" in Hulk's voice.

Tricking him didn't work and beating on him didn't work, but Banner yielding halfway to the Hulk to create a new personality would have worked, and been way cool.

Maybe that's not what Whedon had in mind. Maybe it was even better!

But who knows, because the writer doesn't get to decide the ending of an Avengers movie any more. That's up to the suits in the boardroom

Just like the comics.