That is very well put. I mean, you are figuratively crowning and I'm asking you if you want to have another baby, but given the reports that the Russo brothers will potentially be the directors of the next Avengers movies, would you see yourself doing Captain Marvel? That is certainly in your wheelhouse.

JW: Um, I would never rule anything out, because I like working here. By the same token, the biggest thing for me is that I need to do something that I create myself. It's been way too long since I created a universe. The last thing I did before The Avengers was [directing an episode of] Glee, and in between I did Much Ado About Nothing. So I haven't created my own universe for over five years. That feels wrong. You know, my own universe might be a book of haiku. I'm not necessarily saying I've got a grand scheme.

I will say that when I was thinking about, Well, if I wasn't going to do Avengers 2, what would I want to do? — of course the first thing I thought of was "turn-of-the-century female Batman." Not Batman actually. But, you know, something cool. One person. Can't stress that enough. Movie about one person — not a team, not 10, just one. But [I would] do a nice sort of hard action movie that combined all my favorite things. Something that would be the love child of Sam Fuller and Edward Gorey. You know, I've had many thoughts since then. Oh, I could do this! Oh, I could do that! But it is my instinct to want to tell those stories.

Captain Marvel I don't know as well. There have been a few [versions] of her. I have the first issue of Ms. Marvel, back when she was that, and had the Farrah hair. My only issue with her is that she always felt sort of on top. She was very driven. A winner. I always like to dig into the soil of things to find my heroes, if I can.

There were a few other developments in Hollywood last year regarding leading women specifically that followed your interview, like Lucy becoming a global hit, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 topping the box office. Between the financial proof and the momentum at Marvel and at DC/Warner Bros., it seems like things are progressing nicely for female-driven heroic movies. Do you feel that way on the inside of things?

JW: It's a struggle. You'll always be able to rattle off the names of the female-driven genre films, and the rest are all male, and generally white men. I think the success of the young-adult trilogies that are usually not only female-driven but have a romantic bent — and are not necessarily about the spectacle of action but contain it — is great. Because, you know me, I love a bouillabaisse of genres. I like to throw everything in the stew. The superhero story — and I do consider [the YA adaptations] to be superhero stories — it doesn't have to be about one tortured billionaire. It can be a girl and her community, her crushes, her fears. We can evolve that genre more quickly if we come at it from different ways. It both makes sense commercially and artistically. Not all the movies are going to be good. That never happens. But it's going to open up the avenues.

Lucy was a huge step, in a way. Because it was such a massive hit, and because Scarlett is amazing in it. Her in the first 40 minutes of that movie is just — she's giving a powerhouse, emotional performance as a terrified and evolving person. It's not just, "Oh, we're going to pay lip service to this idea, and then get to the endless ass-kicking." It really is a character piece. She's what you're looking at the whole time. I mean, [she and I] don't even talk about movies, and I had to tell her how great she was. So to deal from that place, instead of just "here's a genre idea that will sell toys," is dynamite.