With “The Avengers,” which he both wrote and directed, Whedon was dealing with Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Loki, Nick Fury, and more. The site asked Whedon if something clicked with him when he got the job because he’s used to working with ensemble casts, even in his comic book writing, like his run of “Astonishing X-Men.”
These are characters that have been defined not only by the comics but past MCU films, developing plans that were already in place. Whedon said, “Well, the first part of it is just extraordinary fun, which is ‘What would these characters say to each other? How would they define themselves?’ And I got to spend a few weeks just floating in that o-zone, ‘What if we did this?’ and ‘Ooh!'”
However, he said that once you “get into the practical stuff, like ‘How does this guy…’, it’s a nightmare.” He continued:
“And it’s really a recurring nightmare because it was so much like ‘Serenity’ in that way. So I really sort of went ‘Oh, God, I’ve done it again!’ Because ‘Serenity’ was pulling teeth to figure out the structure. And the same was true of ‘The Avengers.’ And because we had a release date, we had to start production; it was a fairly terrifying experience at that point. But once it started to fall into place, I got back to the fun part.”
One thing that made it all fall into place was the fact that each one of these characters is facing the very same threat, dealing with the same events, and in the case of most of them, working toward the same goal.