Joss Whedon Compares Avengers, Shakespeare

Joss Whedon, whose shot-in-two-weeks iteration of Much Ado About Nothing will debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, mused a bit in an Entertainment Weekly interview earlier today about the connections between the work of the Bard and his own big-screen adaptation of Marvel Comics's premiere super-team. "There's a reason Tony Stark makes fun of Thor, and mentions Shakespeare in the Park in The Avengers," said Whedon. "It's great to play high drama and comedy alongside a modern story. Shakespeare was shameless about that stuff, pop culture references. Much Ado is very much in the vein of the movies I make, which surprised me. It's not that different from The Avengers. It's about finding why everyone is in the movie. What makes Ursula the maid shine? It was oddly similar." Whedon noted, too, that the rat-a-tat, snarky dialogue that he's famous for fits snugly in both worlds. So, of course, does Tom Hiddleston, who played Loki in both Thor and The Avengers and--even without Whedon's involvement--has been working on a pair of Shakespeare adaptations for British television.