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Joss Whedon To Direct The Avengers
olyar noted that Joss Whedon has been tapped to direct The Avengers. This should make a lot of nerds very excited, and begin rampant speculation on Buffy/Firefly/Horrible universe actor cameos. Hope the script doesn't suck.
I personally don't think this movie will ever get made. The first clue that this is not a serious project is the fact that the studio is talking about Robert Downey, Jr. playing Iron Man. There is no way that a) Downey is going to agree to doing an ensemble picture as a bit player after headlining 2+ Iron Man movies, or b) That the studio is going to spring for the big money it would take to hire him, just for an ensemble role in a risky new franchise.
As far as Whedon goes, he's one of these guys that studios often bring in to write/rewrite scripts just to test the waters on early projects. His name generates some buzz, and the studio may or may not get an interesting script out of him. He also works cheap (an important consideration these days in an era of "tentpole" movies with exploding FX budgets, and multitudes of comic book franchises in the works). Though geeks think of him as an A-lister, Hollywood doesn't. If you look at the guy's financial track record, you'll see he's very small-time by Hollywood standards and has had WAY more failures than successes. At the risk of committing geek blashemy, I personally he's overrated, though he did do excellent work with the characters and dialogue in "Alien Resurrection" and "Firefly" (essentially the same set of characters, but well played with depth and wit on both counts).
I suspect the studio is just looking for a little PR. The "Robert Downey is going to play Iron Man in the Avengers" thing is probably just to get some PR for "Iron Man 2." They know that's not going to happen. Hiring Joss Whedon may be a good way to get some geek buzz, but it doesn't indicate in any way that the studio is serious about actually making this movie. Until the real money starts to flow (i.e. when they actually start filming with the A-list talent), it's just another "Superman Lives"/"Green Lantern"/"Captain America" project that could spend decades in limbo and go through many directors/writers before it actually amounts to anything (if ever).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If we can have a Spike cameo, nothing else matters. I don't care if it makes no sense.
No, you're not. I don't know when this geek law went into effect that says we must all love Firefly, but I've been breaking it all along and frankly, I'm not sorry. I watched it beginning to end, and the movie as well, and I don't think there was a single idea in it that hadn't been done better somewhere else. Ship of outlaws on the run from an overwhelmingly powerful government? Farscape. Space western? Cowboy Bebop. Telepaths/psychics trying to elude capture and subsequent scientific experimentation? Babylon 5. Badguy who will do anything to get what he wants, ethics be damned? Farscape again. Strong, capable, confident female characters? Farscape trifecta, and present in a lot of other series as well - take your pick from BSG's female cast, and there's Ivanova in B5, Caroline in ReGenesis, Scully in the X Files, the list goes on and on. Whedon hardly has a monopoly on sci-fi female empowerment, and what he does offer isn't even that good.
And yet even now, 8 years after its demise, I still hear people clamoring to have Firefly brought back. Makes no sense to me either.
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Never mind. Joss, you're pardoned.
Actually, I think Joss would have been an ideal candidate for remaking the UK Avengers. Summer Glau for the female sidekick? (More of a Purdy than a Mrs Peel, I think, but she can do a good bad English accent and beat people up, so what's not to like).
Could have been more fun than more fricking Marvel superheroes. Ho hum, I wonder if they'll deconstruct the superhero mythos (again).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Some people were clever enough to notice that the show wasn't about magic and monsters, and instead was about the characters, people.
Vampires weren't undead monsters. They were innocent people who were victimized, and as a result of the trauma became cruel themselves. This happens a lot in real life, consider rapists who were sexually abused in their past.
Werewolves were people who were normally decent, but on occasion lost their cool. Is someone who loses their cool a bad person? This was an interesting question with real life implications, much like he vampire thing. Buffy didn't kill werewolves.
That is really the tip of the Buffy iceberg. The things he did with the stories was amazing.
Most people seem to watch it and say "these special effects suck" and move on. If someone was simply looking for a cool story about people with super powers kicking asses, they may not have liked it. To me, the super powers and magic made the story of the characters possible, not the other way around.
Well, to go by most of the comics I've read, you need a guy who speaks in Shakespearean English...
She had one of my favorite lines, though, in Walk Through The Fire.
of course, those things are generic *now*. They weren't when he made the original series.
I remember when Buffy was first suggested as a TV series, no-one thought "oh no, another teen girl who kicks ass" as apart from the movie there hadn't been any.