Joss Whedon says he felt like 'a miserable failure' after 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'

Joss Whedon is back -- and there's a lot he wants to say. 

At a Tribeca Film Festival chat with Mark Ruffalo on Monday, the director opened up about his career and new movies he's got coming up, frankly discussing some of the highs and lows of his recent work. Naturally, the conversation turned pretty quickly to Avengers: Age of Ultron, the last film he directed that took a tremendous toll on him (he's said before it "broke" him a bit).

Though Whedon is "proud" of the massively successful Marvel movie, there were "things that did not meet my expectations of myself."

"I was so beaten down by the process. Some of that was conflicting with Marvel, which is inevitable, but a lot of it was about my own work," he says. "I was also exhausted and then we went right away and did publicity, and I sort of created the narrative wherein I had not quite accomplished it and people just ran with that. So it became 'Well, it's OK -- it could be better, but it’s not Joss’ fault,' and I think that did a disservice to the movie and to the studio and to myself, ultimately."

The process was so stressful he ended up taking his "first vacation that was more than two weeks in 25 years." 

"The fact that Marvel gave me that opportunity twice is so bonkers and so beautiful."

"The fact that Marvel gave me that opportunity twice is so bonkers and so beautiful," he says, referring to the first Avengers movie, which he also directed. "The fact that I come off of it feeling like a miserable failure is also bonkers, but not in a cute way."

That vacation period was essential, however, he adds. He set out to do nothing and "got to a higher state of f*ck-all." 

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"When I'm not doing it, I remember that I hate myself," he jokes. 

"When I’m not doing it, I remember that I hate myself," he jokes. 

Ruffalo, who plays Bruce Banner/the Hulk in the Avengers franchise, admits that he was "worried" about Whedon at that time, and begged him to direct more Avengers films. 

Ruffalo's charm and star power might work for other directors (who are we kidding, most directors), but not Whedon. Besides, he's got a beautiful new project in the works. Though he doesn't share any details, he promises it's "super good" and "definitely a departure" from his usual style. The ending is also so powerful that he was bawling while writing the script in a restaurant. 

"I wrote all the way through the end of the movie and was crying so hard in public that the restaurant closed. The valet guy came to me and then just turned around and went away without even talking to me … I'm a shy sort of fellow, I don’t like to make a spectacle of myself [but] I had to take off my shirt and blow my nose because they had taken away all the napkins," he says. "I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t stop writing. … And I got a car, luckily somebody else was driving, and kept crying for about 20 more minutes."

He also started writing a Broadway musical last year, but stopped: After the stress of Ultron, and after becoming obsessed with Hamilton -- to the point where Lin-Manuel Miranda's style was influencing and crowding his mind ("I can’t hear myself, I can only hear him").

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Ruffalo and Whedon also discussed his early days as a director. Whedon, who began as a writer, says protecting his work was part of why he became a director, particularly after one of his scripts turned into a not-so-great movie. 

“A lot of writers become directors because they want protect their material," he says. "After Alien: Resurrection, anybody would feel that way."

Writing, by the way, is "perfect bliss for him" ("It is the greatest thing anybody’s ever gotten paid to do"). 

The illustrious creator also got nostalgic about Buffy, his hit TV series. When Ruffalo pressed him to pick his three favorite projects he's ever been involved in, two out of three were Buffy-related: "The Body" episode of Buffy, issue five of the Buffy comic book and the Firefly episode "Out of Gas." 

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