Joss Whedon Felt He Came Off as a 'Miserable Failure' After 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'

At a Tribeca Film Festival panel on Monday, Joss Whedon talked about Avengers: Age of Ultron in terms that were less than glowing. While Whedon did claim to be “very proud” of the film, he also had critiques for himself. “The things about it that are wrong frustrate me enormously, but I got to make an absurdly personal movie about humanity and what it means in a very esoteric and bizarre ways for hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said. “The fact that Marvel gave me that opportunity twice is so bonkers and beautiful, and the fact that I come off as a miserable failure is also bonkers, but not in a cute way.”

A year ago, Whedon told Vulture, “When I watch it, I just see ‘flaw, flaw, flaw, compromise, laziness, mistake.’” At Tribeca on Monday, he attributed those remarks to being “beaten down by the process,” which included conflicts with Marvel. So that got us wondering: What other directors have criticized their own efforts?

Stanley Kubrick said his first feature, Fear and Desire, was a “bumbling amateur film exercise.” When it was released on Blu-ray, a press release noted that he tried to keep it “buried in the past.” In 1984, Roger Ebert noted that “Alfred Hitchcock called Rope an ‘experiment that didn’t work out,’ and he was happy to see it kept out of release for most of three decades.”

Woody Allen said Annie Hall wasn’t what he intended it to be. Allen had planned the film to be a stream of consciousness, but when it came out as an “incoherent mess” — as he put it — he had to “reduce the film to just me and Diane Keaton and that relationship, so I was quite disappointed in that movie.”

In an interview with Variety in October 2014, Joel Schumacher was pretty down on himself for how Batman & Robin turned out. “There’s nobody else to blame but me,” he said. “I could have said, ‘No, I’m not going to do it.’ I just hope whenever I see a list of the worst movies ever made, we’re not on it. I didn’t do a good job.”

What do you think? Is Whedon being too hard on himself, or do you think he’s right to feel like a “miserable failure?” I mean, he shouldn’t, but, you know, maybe you’re mean.

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