When you sign up for a Marvel movie, any precious notions you have about creative autonomy basically go out the window. Whether you’re the director, an actor, an electrician or the guy who makes sure Samuel L. Jackson gets his cronuts, everyone is there to serve the Marvel universe and its fans. No more, no less. And while it’s fun to think about [insert favorite auteur] getting a chance to make an R-rated movie about [insert gritty hero that no has heard of], it will basically never happen. But if you can give into that spirit of collaborative creation, then you’ll probably be cool with someone stepping in to help on your movie.
And that’s just what happened to “Thor: The Dark World” helmer Alan Taylor. Faced with some story issues on the super sequel, there was only man who could save the day: Marvel guru and fanboy fave, Joss Whedon. “Joss came in to save our lives a couple of times,” Taylor told SFX (via Comic Book Movie). “We had a major scene that was not working on the page at all in London, and he basically got airlifted in, like a SWAT team or something. He came down, rewrote the scene, and before he got back to his plane I sort of grabbed him and said, ‘And this scene and this scene?’ And he rewrote two other scenes that I thought had problems. Then finally we let go of him, he took off again, and we shot the scenes; and they were just much better and much lighter on their feet. Much more fun, much more surprising than what we had been trying to do. I can relate to guys who come out of the TV world, since that’s where I come from. And being able to land and work and solve a problem quickly… I really was grateful.”
No fuss, no muss. And Taylor’s point about TV is interesting, particularly that it’s a medium where the writer is king, not the director. And given he’s a veteran of that world (“Game Of Thrones,” “The Sopranos,” “Sex & The City,” the list goes on), he likely didn’t feel anything about Whedon coming in and messing around with his movie. And the end result of that lack of ego, seems to be a finished product everyone is happen with. Hooray.
