‘Avengers’ Writer/Director Criticizes ‘Twilight And Calls It ‘Choosing Boyfriends, The Movie;‘ Talks About ‘Agents of SHIELD’

 "The Avengers" writer/director Joss Whedon started his TV career with "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer." He criticizes later teen vampire franchises as lacking "empowered female characters." He now has a new series for his TV return, "Agents of SHIELD."

Joss Whedon is no stranger to having female leads, as he started out his TV career with a spin-off from the film "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." The teen vampire character picked up, and later incarnations, foremost is the 'Twilight" trilogy has him disappointed on the portrayal of the female lead.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he states his reaction when "Twilight" and TV series "Vampire Diaries" came out: A small part of you is like, "Well, you know, I did that first. I liked that band before they were popular." The thing aboutBuffy for me is-on a show-by-show basis-are there female characters who are being empowered, who are driving the narrative? The Twilight thing, and a lot of these franchise attempts coming out, everything rests on what this girl will do, but she's completely passive or not really knowing what the hell is going on. And that's incredibly frustrating to me because a lot of what's taken on the oeuvre of Buffy is actually a reaction against it. Everything is there except for the Buffy. A lot of things aimed at the younger kids is just Choosing Boyfriends: The Movie."

He introduces the concept behind his new TV Series, "Agents of SHIELD": The people who are ignored are the people I've been writing as my heroes from day one. With S.H.I.E.L.D., the idea of [Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson] as the long-suffering bureaucrat who deals with Tony Stark's insufferability is delightful and hits the core of something I'm also writing about all the time-the little guy versus the big faceless organization. Now, somebody might point out, "But isn't S.H.I.E.L.D. a big faceless organization?" It absolutely is, and that's something we're going to deal with in the series. But what's really interesting to me is there's a world of super-heroes and superstars, they're celebrities, and that's a complicated world-particularly complicated for people who don't have the superpowers, the disenfranchised. Now, obviously there's going to be high jinks and hilarity and sex and gadgets and all the things that made people buy the comics. But that's what the show really is about to me, and that's what Clark Gregg embodies: the Everyman."