Whedon didn’t puppet-ify Clint in the first draft, but it ran too long and there were too many characters to introduce so he dropped Barton, along with big chunks of Steve’s storyline, which might be why characterization seems off? idk

ink-phoenix:

I heard about that re: Clint, and it is unfortunate. But I doubt Steve’s characterization was off because of that. Because the moments where the characterization is the most OCC are carefully crafted plot points, which I don’t believe could’ve been mitigated by any amount of deleted scenes. 

Now don’t get me wrong — I like The Avengers. I like the movie. I think it accomplished an AMAZING feat, it handles so many characters, and it has to go through so many channels and rewrites and approvals that things will fall through the cracks. It’s still a fantastic film even with what I find problematic about it. I can love something and still pick it apart, and demand more from the creators. Demand better.

I ultimately don’t think Whedon understands Steve Rogers, and doesn’t understand his relationship with Tony. He’s made it abundantly clear. And as someone who grew up with 616, that has always bothered me. There are a lot of other things that bother me about him, and a lot of other things that bother me about AOU, but you know. I’m trying to be as optimistic and supportive o AOU as I can — cautiously so. But I make an effort not to pass negative judgement until I’ve seen something, so we’ll see in 2015. 🙂 

At the risk of oversimplifing the problem I wonder if Whedon leaned too hard on Ultimates Cap and Iron Man. I also think that if you play the man behind the curtain game that Whedon has his archetypes that he uses for everything and that’s what we see here. (I live in fear of what he’s going to do to Scarlet Witch based on the credits scene in CATWS.)