Joss Whedon Calls Edgar Wright’s ‘Ant-Man’ Script Best Marvel Has Ever Had

Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man has seen its fair share of problems. Edgar Wright dropped out at the last minute because of a major script overhaul; the studio eventually settled on Peyton Reed to replace him as director; Adam McKay and star Paul Rudd did rewrites to Wright’s script. No one will really know what Wright’s version of the movie would have looked like had he stayed on to direct, and in fact there are only a few people who have seen the actual script.

Joss Whedon is one of those people. The Avengers: Age of Ultron director recently spoke about Ant-Man, and praised Wright’s script calling it one of the best that Marvel has ever had. Hit the jump for more.

Buzzfeed spoke to Whedon about Ant-Man during the Avengers: Age of Ultron press tour, and he couldn’t quite understand why the two split up:

“I donâ€™t get it. I thought the script was not only the best script that Marvel had ever had, but the most Marvel script Iâ€™d read. I had no interest in Ant-Man. [Then] I read the script, and was like, Of course! This is so good! It reminded me of the books when I read them. Irreverent and funny and could make what was small large, and vice versa.”

Last year, after Wright walked away from the project, both Whedon and Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn shared their thoughts on Twitter and Facebook. Whedon posted a photo of himself holding a Cornetto to show his support for the director.

Here’s an excerpt of what Gunn said last year:

“Itâ€™s easy to try to make one party â€œrightâ€ and another party â€œwrongâ€ when a breakup happens, but it often isnâ€™t that simple. Or perhaps itâ€™s even more simple than that â€“ not everyone belongs in a relationship together. It doesnâ€™t mean theyâ€™re not wonderful people.”

Whedon’s interview with Buzzfeed seems to mirror Gunn’s sentiments:

“I donâ€™t know where things went wrong. But I was very sad. Because I thought, ‘This is a no-brainer. This is Marvel getting it exactly right.’ Whatever dissonance that came, whatever it was, I donâ€™t understand why it was bigger than a marriage that seemed so right. But Iâ€™m not going to say it was definitely all Marvel, or Edgarâ€™s gone mad! I felt like they would complement each other by the ways that they were different. And, uh, somethinâ€™ happened.”

One of the rumored problems that Wright had with Marvel was that he felt that they were trying to take over his script by turning it into something more episodic than something that could stand on its own. Here’s Whedon addressing that problem:

“In my movie, itâ€™s designed to be a complete experience. And if I donâ€™t do that, if I havenâ€™t brought you on that journey and closed it out, fuck me. Thatâ€™s the danger of this sort of serialized storytelling, turning the motion picture experience into episodic TV. Because we have episodic TV, and now you donâ€™t even have to wait to watch it, you can binge it. So thatâ€™s to me a dreadful mistake.â€

Ant-Man will be a curious film, no discredit to what Peyton Reed, Adam McKay, and Paul Rudd have done to salvage the film in the short time they were given, but there will always be that “what if Edgar Wright directed this?” question in the back of our minds.

Ant-Man opens in theaters on July 17, 2015.