“As much as anything, my visual style as a director comes from comic books,” he says. “My understanding of visual storytelling comes from panel art, which I was reading more voraciously than I was watching movies for most of my childhood. In that sense, I had sort of a head start when I started visualizing this film.
“Visually, the movie is similar to a lot of things that I do because it’s supposed to be casually iconic. In other words, I want to hit iconic moments without hitting people over the head with them. I want it to feel like a comic book without trying to look like one.”
“I feel respect for the fans, but you can’t let yourself feel the weight of how much they want or need from the project,” Whedon explains. “I really believe that you can die from fan expectations. There are two things that I can’t stand when I go to see a movie based on a comic book: being ignored and being pandered to. Fans are well aware when movies are doing either one.”
“There won’t be a hint of, ‘Well, we thought we ought to put this in to make the fans happy.’
Whedon concludes, “I want to make a great Super Hero movie. I want to make the kind of movie that inspires people to say, ‘There should be more movies with Super Heroes in them.’”