Is it May yet? No? How about now?! The anticipation for Age of Ulton, the upcoming sequel to Avengers, is palpable, and the remaining weeks are starting to feel like years. But our anxious wait for the next blockbuster is nothing compared to the pressure director Joss Whedon is under to “recreate the magic.” During a recent interview with SFX (courtesy of THR), Whedon confessed that he longed for the days when he didn’t have to juggle the personalities of several superheroes and the expectations of fanboys.

“Shoot me in the face! It’s a nightmare. I long for the simple movies like Serenity!” said Whedon. “This is the hardest juggling act I have ever, ever tried to pull off.”

Part of the difficulty lies in allowing each character to get enough screen time and in ways that ring true to his or her comic book past. “They’re very disparate characters. The joy of the Avengers is they really don’t belong in the same room,” said Whedon. “It’s not like the X-Men, who are all tortured by the same thing and have similar costumes. These guys are just all over the place.”

Fans of Mark Ruffalo’s take on Bruce Banner will be pleased to know the balancing act has resulted in more screen time for the temperamental doctor. “There is more Hulk in this movie than there was in the last film,” said Whedon. “What I love is we have the opportunity, because we went in with this mission statement, to shoot the Hulk like a character in a movie, and not like a ‘Look, what we’ve got! We have ‘overs’—blurry ‘Hulk’s over there!’ bits, very quick shots. Everything isn’t, ‘We built the Hulk so for God’s sake you’re going to watch him in this long take, full-frame, the whole time!’ We really got to make him one of the characters in the movie. And that was a gift.”

Age of Ultron will arrive in theaters May 1. Check out the latest trailer below.