Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy j_philipp.
Friends, I can offer you no better way to interpret the marvelous news that Joss Whedon is, in fact, in talks to direct The Avengers, than to direct you to Ned Resnikoff's #whedonsavengers tweets. I mean, come on: "Oh no! Pepper's dead almost immediately after I finally told her I loved her! What a horrible coincidence!" Or: "The fact that I turn into a 10-foot green monster when I get mad is a metaphor for how being a teenager is HARD." Kills me dead.
Now my only complaint is that She-Hulk isn't in the lineup of characters Marvel's going to include in The Avengers. I really do think Whedon would make a great She-Hulk movie, even more so than the Wonder Woman movie he was at one point slated to make. The issues of sexual identity and practice, of finding your place in the professional, adult world, are just so well done in that narrative. In fact, my real worry with The Avengers is what Whedon will do with a majority-male cast. Women and gender balance have just been so important to his work, and I'm so grateful for that. In fact, the second piece I ever wrote for The Atlantic I wrote (for which he was nice enough to email some thoughts) is kind of about that. It's just so rare to get a male writer and director who is so interested in and perceptive about female characters...it may be selfish, it is kind of selfish and has nothing to do with his artistic trajectory and what he wants to make, but I want him to keep making movies and television about women, because, well, I need them.