Joss Whedon, nominated for Best Direction for his film "Marvel's The Avengers," as well as Best Writing for "Marvel's The Avengers" and "The Cabin in the Woods," poses at the 39th Saturn Awards at The Castaway on Wednesday, June 26, 2013 in Burbank, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

"People have made it very clear that they are fed up with movies where entire cities are destroyed, and then we celebrate," Whedon said, recognizing that of all of those things crashing into other things is an attempt to harness somewhat newly found visual effects.

"Now, I watched 'The Dark Knight' and I thought of that as riffing on the genre," he said. "That was a superhero movie as 'The Godfather.' And I was like, 'But I just still want to see a superhero movie!' We had just gotten the technology to make it awesome, and I wasn't ready to be post-modern about it yet."

There is an inherent clash that characterizes the genre, and Whedon is tapped into that discordance more so than the use of CGI. "You're in a constant state of being pulled both ways at all times," he said, "You're trying to make a populist film with fascist iconography that is just bigger, and better, and longer, and trying to break that down and find a weakness and humanity."

Ultimately, what Whedon finds important in his work (and what we will see in "Avengers: Age of Ultron" which he wrote and is currently filming in the U.K.) is that emphasis on humanity.