During Joss Whedon's umpteenth interview about Much Ado About Nothing, the filmmaker was casually asked about The Avengers 2 and precisely whether it will be following the trite sequel theme of going of darker, like Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. "No, Nolan has this thing and of it he is the master; I do not have Nolan’s thing," Whedon told Metro.co.uk, describing himself as "Tony Stark desperately trying to be Steve Rogers." He continued, "I can’t stop making jokes. In my vernacular there are two gold standards for sequels: The Godfather Part II and The Empire Strikes Back. They are darker films but they are not suddenly pretentious and losing the mission. The joy of the thing is important: the exaltation, the nobility, the humour and the humanity. But you do need to bleed with these people a little bit or you won’t want to spend another day with them." Wrapping up the interview, Metro.co.uk made an effort to ask about the inevitable Avengers 3 "The idea of doing this three times just staggers the imagination," he said. "I’m not that young. But then, I hadn’t really intended to do a second one. In the third one, I really am going to kill everyone."
In a separate interview with British GQ, Joss Whedon was quizzed about his role as creative consultant of Marvel's Phase 2 slate of movies, which includes Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy and finally his Avengers follow-up. Reiterating that his consulting deal allows him to read the scripts and look at cuts, Whedon says, "I think that they're doing great stuff, but I like to be able to help and occasionally to go 'you know, that's really going to kill us on the second Avengers.' Since the story has already been approved and everybody knows what we're doing with Avengers 2, we can really lay it out. It's not like anyone's saying 'well I don't know, what if I need that?' It's like 'doing this is troublesome for us, whereas doing this will actually help us.' It's a dance, but I had to do it on the first one too. You want to honor the events of the last movie but you don't want to be beholden to them, because some people will see Avengers who did not see any of the movies inbetween or even Avengers 1."
Below is yet another interview with Joss Whedon, via RTÉ Ten, talking more about The Avengers 2.
So far starring Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Cobie Smulders, Jeremy Renner and Samuel L. Jackson, with Kick-Ass actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson in early talks to join, Marvel's The Avengers untitled sequel is written and directed by Joss Whedon, and is scheduled to shoot in the U.K. in February next year for a May 1, 2015, release date.