Joss Whedon Talks ‘Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D’

Marvel’s AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D has been building up to it’s release with posters and cast shots ahead of it’s premiere next month on US screens.  The show explores a group of agents who will investigate new and strange goings on in order to protect mankind and sees Clark Gregg reprise his AVENGERS ASSEMBLE role of Agent Phil Coulson. Executive producer Joss Whedon, who directed AVENGERS ASSEMBLE and it’s upcoming sequel THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, spoke recently about just how the show is going to work in the Marvel universe.

‘My collaboration with Marvel on the movie was pretty extraordinary and, for me, unprecedented.  It wasn’t a question of them getting out of the way.  We really worked that story together.  ABC and Marvel have been very active in making sure the show is what they want for their company and their network and their audiences and, at the same time, they’re very supportive of the vision that we first laid out to them.  The most important thing is that we all are trying to make the same show.

There’s not going to be some new hero, every week.  There could be a device.  There could be a mystery.  There are so many aspects to what’s happened, since everybody in the world found out that there is a superhero team and there were aliens that invaded New York, and we want to be able to change it up, every week.  We want to be able to deal with every aspect – the spy stuff, the hero stuff, the heartfelt stuff, the humor.  We want to make sure that you get something that feels a little bit different, so it’s not just turkey, every day.

The thing that appealed to me about this show, from the very beginning, is the idea of the people who don’t have the superpowers, who didn’t get the hammer and who didn’t, get the super soldier serum, and the idea that everybody matters.  There’s very much a sense of, “Well, what about the rest of us?  How do we cope with this?”  And so, yeah, it was important that our core team, while they are extraordinary and incredibly good at what they do and ridiculously attractive, they don’t fall under the category of super.’

During AVENGERS ASSEMBLE we saw Agent Coulson being killed off and there has been a lot of speculation about his return AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.  Here’s what Whedon had to say about that:

‘I absolutely killed him.  It was not percolating. Yes, we will be dealing with the issue, obviously.  That will be part of the thread throughout the story.  I don’t say anything [about the speculation] ‘cause I’m not going to confirm or deny anybody’s ideas.  I’ve heard a dozen ideas, or more than a dozen.  Somebody, at some point, is going to be right, but I’m never going to say when that happens.  I’m not even going to blink.’

And on the subject of cameos from certain characters:

‘We’ve seen Cobie [Smulders] on the show.  We would love to see her again.  We would love to see Sam [Samuel L Jackson], too, but he’s a movie star and a workaholic, so whether or not he’ll make time for us, I can’t say yet.  I’m not going to go begging, and I’m not going to use up favors that I need for THE AVENGERS 2.  The DNA of the show is the show.  Those guys would be a delightful bonus, but we’re not building our arcs around them.  We’ll just see what happens. The good thing about the universe is that they’re superstars in that universe, so if they showed up and they overbalanced it slightly, it would actually make sense.  That’s how people would react to them, in the universe of the show.  So, I don’t think that’s a problem.  But, I do think it’s a problem, if you have them too regularly, and then people are just wondering, “When do I get to see the movie star again?,” instead of concentrating on these guys.

There is an element of absurdity in the Marvel universe that’s come from back when I was reading the comics in the ‘70s, that is satirical and bizarre.  The fact that we’ll be able to tap into that will keep the show from feeling too self-important or dry.  We definitely want to push our boundaries and give people new stuff, but we’re not just looking for a cool angle.  It’s always going to be built from the characters and their stories.’

AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D stars Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Iain De Caestecker,  Elizbabeth Henstridge and Chloe Bennet and premieres on ABC on September 24th

Source: Collider