Her heavy involvement was prescribed by Justin Theroux. If cutting her hair was Whedon's call, that was a mistake.

I like Scarlett Johansen's golden globes

And did you learn that by shining Theroux' shoes? Or were you mowing his lawn and overheard him on the phone?

Mike

Nope. Just watched Iron Man 2 and read some interviews.

BW does little more than fight in IM2, whereas Whedon actually develops her character. You might not like what he did, but trying to say it was all Theroux is bullshit.

Okay, Theroux and Kevin Feige. Whedon didn't make the decision to feature her more prominently. That decision was already made before Penn and Whedon began their draft, if not by producer fiat then by reading the results of crowd sourcing after her performance in Iron Man 2.

I don't care how powerful you think Whedon is, there is no way in hell Feige gave him carte blanche and Whedon turned in a script that didn't feed into a pre-conceived formula. Based on the buzz generated by the after-credits teaser in Iron Man, the expectation was already in place for this movie to do exceptionally well. Long before Whedon's name was ever mentioned as being attached or involved in any capactiy.

You're forgetting who you are arguing with here, you can cite every instance of Whedon's career where he's written elements similar to those in Avengers film. According to Allen, Whedon couldn't possibly have been involved as a significant contributor to the collaborative process, or it would have failed. You can cite hundreds of similar instances of similar character development, structure, redemptive moments, dialog, group interactions, strong female characters both supporting and leads, whatever you do it won't matter, it just won't matter.

Allen hates Whedon.

If The Avengers failed it would have been Whedon's fault.

If the Avengers succeeded, Whedon had nothing to do with it.

No matter what happened, Whedon was going to be the bad guy, his motivation for even being there were sinister. And it will all be justified with seemingly insider info, or things he "sees" that are obvious to Allen.

Didn't you just say that about Lynda Carter too? I'm starting to think you're a breast man.

This will make holiday shopping much easier.

Allen's just so silly. Even if it were true that Feige really loved BW and insisted she get more screen time, what that screen time consisted of didn't just magically appear on the page. And she didn't just magically resemble so many of Whedon's other characters. Theroux had nothing to do with it.

Translation - "I'm pulling it out of my ass."

I mean, was anyone THAT blown away by the Black Widow in Iron Man II? So much so that, even in a film with RDJ, the stars of two other recent films, Agent Coulson, Samuel motherbleepin' Jackson and a new guy playing the Hulk, the producers would simply demand she be not just equal to but more significant than most in the story? Really?

Mike