Joss Whedon: 'I was so beaten down by the process' of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'

NEW YORK, April 19 (UPI) -- Avengers: Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon talked about his time working on the superhero epic and how he's still proud of his work despite any issues with Marvel.

"Ultron, I'm very proud of. There were things that did not meet my expectations of myself and then I was so beaten down by the process," Whedon said Monday alongside Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo during a roundtable discussion at the Tribeca Film Festival.

"Some of that was conflicting with Marvel, which is inevitable and a lot of that was about my own work and I was also exhausted, and we right away went and did publicity," he continued before mentioning how he regrets the negative remarks he made about the film leading up to its release.

"I created the narrative — wherein I'm not quite accomplished at– and people just ran with (about Ultron) 'Well it's OK, it could be better, but it's not Joss' fault' and I think that did a disservice to the movie, and to the studio and to myself. Ultimately, it wasn't the right way to be because I'm very proud about it," he explained.

The whole ordeal made the filmmaker want to take a break from Hollywood. "I took a two-week vacation for the first time in 25 years, except for the four month vacation where I wrote the Buffy musical. I set out to accomplish nothing," Whedon said of what he did following Ultron.

"I begged him to do Avengers 3 and 4, Hulk 3, Thor 3 and Quasimodo, and he said, I'll never do it again," Ruffalo told the audience. "I was getting worried about you, but you're back."

Whedon also left the door open to someday potentially return to the Marvel cinematic universe speaking with Deadline after the roundtable and mentioning that he isn't close minded on taking on another Marvel project. "It was just five years of my life," said Whedon about working on back-to-back Avengers movies.