Not only is Joss Whedon now directing The Avengers, not only is he also rewriting the script, but he's apparently being given the entire Marvel universe on a platter. Well, OK, just Captain America. Pajiba is reporting that Whedon will be lending his skills with brainy dialogue and plotting to the script for The First Avenger: Captain America, which had originally been written by Chronicles of Narnia team Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus.
Captain America is the last of the Marvel movies to get going before The Avengers assembles, and the only one that can still be rewritten in order to fit in with whatever Whedon has planned for the movie he'll direct. It makes sense to try and unify the movies as much as possible, and you can bet that Thor and the original Captain America script both did their best to mimic the tone of Iron Man. It's an open question, though of how much Whedon influence we'll actually see on the final product. He's carried a very distinct voice in his TV projects, but as a screenwriter on Toy Story and Titan A.E., he was seemingly pretty good at just writing for the needs of the story. As Whedon is given more and more power in writing the Marvel universe, it seems less likely that we'll see Cap and Iron Man wisecracking like Buffy and their friends.
Regardless of which Whedon we're getting, though, we know for a fact that we're getting a talented writer, something that wasn't as certain with the Cap script from McFeely and Markus, who made the Narnia movies serviceable but kind of a snore. As someone who never quite jived with the super-witty, silly style of Whedon's TV shows, I'm actually more excited to see how he can put his storytelling skills to a more straightforward script. And with The Wolfman's Joe Johnston still, inexplicably, in charge of Captain America, it may very well need all the help it can get.
