Film director, Joss Whedon has decided to leave Twitter behind. It seems his latest film, Avengers: Age of Ultron has been receiving some serious criticism. Whedon reportedly has even recieved death threats via Twitter from Marvel fans angry at the film’s new plot twist.
Whedon made the decision to leave the social media world after a blockbuster opening weekend for the latest installment of the Avengers franchise. There was plenty of speculation over the director’s decision to leave Twitter. Some said he was simply done with playing up publicity for the movie, now that it is released. It seems Whedon was not a big user of Twitter before he joined to promote his newest film. Others pointed to a much darker reason for When’s choice: social media trolls. A look back at the director’s past tweets show a lot of nasty comments from Avengers’ fans upset about certain plot lines in the film, such as Black Widow’s character and relationship with Bruce Banner. The comments were pretty intense. Some urged Whedon to commit suicide, while others treated death or harm to the film director.
Many others came to the defense of Whedon, such as fellow Marvel director, James Gunn. Gunn, who directed Guardians Of The Galaxy, tweeted out his thoughts on the situation.
Most of you are aware of this, but anyone who urges a filmmaker to kill himself over a movie plot point needs to seriously examine his life.
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) May 5, 2015
The threatening tweets told Whedon to “go shoot himself” and “go kill himself.”
As fans it's our duty to take what we don't love with what we do & accept not everything will play out onscreen as we imagined.
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) May 5, 2015
The trolls took the movie a little too seriously and didn’t like the director taking any liberties.
And yes, I realize that 95% of fandom are beautiful, loving, thoughtful, well-adjusted people – and you are truly & deeply appreciated by me
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) May 5, 2015
Gunn reminds everyone that the threats only came from a very small percentage of fans. Most people have enough sense to know better.
It seems Whedon may have alluded to eventually quitting Twitter. In a 2013 interview with Entertainment Weekly, one quote seems to foreshadow the future.
WHEDON: [Responding to a question about resurrecting past shows…] Now everybody is like, ‘Are you going to remake Buffy? Are you going to Kickstarter?’ My blanket answer is ‘No.’ It’s not a question I’m interested in hearing again, which is why I quit my other job—Twitter.
EW: You’ve quit?
WHEDON: I joined six months ago to specifically try to drive business to Much Ado About Nothing because I figured Much Ado needs all the help it can get. The moment I joined, oh my God, what a responsibility, this is enormous work—very fun, but it really started to take up a huge amount of my head space. I’m making a movie, I got a responsibility, this job doesn’t pay very well. It’s a fascinating medium, it’s a fascinating social phenomenon. People are like, ‘It’s like a drug.’ Yeah, and it’s like a job. It’s just another art form. Until I have a script I truly believe in or a tweet that’s really remarkable, I can just walk away and get back to the storytelling I need to do.
Whedon’s reps have not commented on his Twitter departure.
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