There’s no such thing as too much Marvel news, right?  With Iron Man 3 hitting theaters this weekend, a bevy of details regarding Marvel’s upcoming films have been making their way online.  While it’s exciting to look ahead to Marvel’s Phase Two slate post-Iron Man 3, all roads lead to one of the most anticipated sequels in recent memory: The Avengers 2.

Steve recently spoke with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, and during their extended conversation Feige talked quite a bit about how Iron Man 3 gives audiences an idea of what to expect from The Avengers 2.  He also talked about writer/director Joss Whedon’s script for the follow-up (which he describes as hilarious, awesome, and moving) and whether or not the film will have a subtitle.  Hit the jump to read on.

As The Avengers grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide and received a positive reception from critics, one imagines that there’s quite a bit of pressure on Marvel to deliver the goods with the sequel.  Steve asked Feige how they even go about trying to top the first film, and the Marvel executive said that Iron Man 3 provides a clear picture of their outlook on that front:

“Well Joss has said it on the record in the past, it’s not about going bigger.  It’s not about, ‘And this time there will be five more explosions in this section!’  I mean certainly you want to up the ante, you want to exceed people’s expectations, but I think there are various ways of doing that and Iron Man 3 is a very, very good test for us of doing exactly that.  The first movie we make after The Avengers has our hero spending more time out of the suit than any of the other movies; that seems potentially counterintuitive to some people, but that was exactly why we did it.  We didn’t want to say, ‘Oh now it has to be bigger and he fights 100 people in armored suits.’  Yeah the action sequences are big, there’s more action in Iron Man 3 than in the other two movies, but at the same time it’s a much deeper and a more exploratory character journey on the heels of our biggest spectacle with The Avengers.”

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Speaking specifically to The Avengers 2, Feige said their focus—as always—is on character and even added that the character-centric scenes in Whedon’s script top the first movie:

“We’ve been consistent in talking about this leading up to The Avengers: what is most interesting to us and why we hired Joss Whedon in the first place is the interaction between the characters.  That’s more fun to us than the massive action scenes that are gonna have to come with it that we’re gonna have to figure out, and we’re gonna have to be clever and raise the bar, but already the scenes that Joss has of just the characters sitting around and interacting are hilarious and are awesome and are moving and a notch or two above the first movie, and to me that’s where you wanna top yourself.”

Those are strong words from Feige, but if anybody can top Whedon’s work on The Avengers, it’s Whedon himself.

Steve also took the opportunity to ask Feige if The Avengers sequel will be called The Avengers 2 or if it will have a subtitle, and the Marvel executive seems keen on the latter:

“I would say that if you look at the trend of our upcoming movies, Iron Man 3 is the only one that has a number.  I like Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi instead of Star Wars 2, Star Wars 3.”

Look for much more from our interview with Feige here on Collider soon.  If you missed what he had to say about a Doctor Strange movie, click here.

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