Joss Whedon Explains His Approach to The Hulk in 'The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron'

Joss Whedon returns as writer and director for The Avengers: Age of Ultron, which hits theaters in May. Whedon has the enviable but extremely difficult task of following up the critical and commercial success of The Avengers in 2012. In a new interview, he explains his approach to doing so, particularly with regard to the Hulk.

Many fans said the Hulk stole the movie the first time. IGN asked Whedon about the success of the character in The Avengers.

"Well, I wasn't the one who said don't make a Hulk film or anything like that. It was [Marvel head] Kevin [Feige] that said to me, 'We think right now it's good to have somebody who we can only see in the Avengers,'" Whedon said. "Everybody loves Mark. He's phenomenal. But the fact that, you know, there hasn't been a Hulk since that Hulk...it doesn't suck. I mean, my job is hard enough, you know. Cap's had a movie, Thor's had a movie. Everyone's gone through big changes, Iron Man had a movie. So, you know, I have to juggle everybody's perception of that while still making a movie that you can see having not seen any except the first Avengers, or not even that."

IGN then asked how Whedon approached the Hulk for the sequel and if fans will get to hear him speak more in Age of Ultron.

"His monologue about his childhood is very poignant and lacks pronouns," he joked. "No. You know, the talking thing is something that I sort of -- I pitch it and I take it away. It's moment to moment. Done wrong, it could kill ya. So, I'm pretty leery about that. But Banner has a significant role, and the Hulk, you know, we really held back on him for a long while in the first one. That said, there's something terrible coming that you'll love. And you know, just what makes the Hulk so hard to write is that you're pretending he's a werewolf when he's a superhero. You want it vice versa. You want to see him, Banner doesn't want to see him, but you don't want Banner to be that guy who gets in the way of you seeing him. So the question is, 'How has he progressed? How can we ring changes on what the Hulk does?' And that's not just in the screenplay. That's moment to moment, because you know that even when they are putting in post mix and temp mix, they have a library of two roars. 'Aaarrgh! Uuurrgh!' What if he wasn't roaring? I'm angry, and I'm not roaring. I'm being very polite to reporters, but I'm filled with rage."

What do you make of Whedon's remarks? Let us know in the comments section.