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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've always had similar opinions of Whedon - how often has he had series (Firefly, Dollhouse) that should have gone straight to SciFi for 3-5-7 seasons and instead floundered on networks for 1-2? He's had his run with Buffy/Angel to be sure, but needs to make sure of his venues better.
That being said, I applaud this pick. Whedon tends to actually care about Geek-genre characters.
He paced Dollhouse too slow in the beginning, but if you think he did anything wrong with Firefly, you just weren't paying attention. That was FOX's mistake in handling it badly.
So to answer your question: once. He had one show that should have gone straight to SciFi. Another that was handled badly by FOX, and two that were quite successful. Not bad in my book.
...but am I the only nerd that can't stand Firefly?
Living With a Nerd
The Dollhouse pilot actually covered most of the events in Season 1. Fox rejected that in favor of the inane "imprint of the week" formula.
While I thought that Robert Downey Jr. did a really great job as Iron Man (in the first movie) the thing that made the movie was that the script was reasonably good. The second Fantastic Four movie was a total disaster because the script was absolutely the worst I think I've ever seen filmed and I was thinking all the way through the movie "Did the writer's ever actually read the original Jack Kirby, Stan Lee comic that this was based on?". The problem with the Avengers, besides needing a really good script is that the casting has to be good. To my mind the hardest problem here is trying to find someone to play Thor. You need a six foot two plus guy built like Hulk Hogan in his younger days that can do a credible Nordic accent and I think that is next to impossible.
And killing off Arrested Development, Futurama, and back-when-it-was-funny-Family-Guy aren't further proofs of Fox's incompetence as a network? Cancelling Firefly may be their biggest sin, but it's far from their only one.
> Besides; you don't know what his Iron Man contract has him obligated into.
Didn't the LotR people sign up for all 3 movies? Same for Matrix 2 & 3, or Empire and RotJ, IIRC.
More difficult would be DC's Justice League, with Batman and Superman as big, independent stars. Ok, the Superman guy would probably sign on in a heartbeat, let's be honest.
For this, more difficult than Iron Man would be producing a Thor that wasn't completely idiotic. He'd have to be a real person, and even some 7' football lineman won't measure up much to the CGI Hulk. And that's the greatly reduced Hulk from Hulk 2.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Just because some cancellations were due to Fox's incompetence doesn't mean all of them are.
Fox did enough wrong with Firefly to obscure the real problems with the show, which was that it was a space-opera-cum-western with pro-Confederacy overtones with little appeal outside of a small cadre of "science fiction nerds who like that kind of thing."
Fox didn't commission Firefly because they were enthusiastic about the concept, but because they needed to kill the absurdly expensive and rapidly tanking Dark Angel, but do so without angering James Cameron. Commissioning a replacement science fiction show from a rising star (as Whedon was at the time) was a move that would look good enough on paper that it wouldn't appear to be a slap in the face to Cameron.
Firefly was commissioned for all the wrong reasons, it was a flop, subsequent events, such as the disastrous box office figures for Serenity (a low to medium budget film whose box office receipts - half of which are kept by the cinemas - was lower than its budget), show that the concept had virtually no appeal, and it's really only a combination of Fox's screwing with the schedule - understandable given they realized early on they had a lemon on their hands - and decent DVD sales - that's created the myth it was somehow a superb, popular, series that would have been as popular as Buffy had it just had the same level of support.
Fox also put pressure on Whedon to do things to early episodes of Dollhouse that also caused a run of barely watchable episodes until Episode 6. However, the show getting back on track, losing the abysmal Terminator ball and chain, and being nurtured by Fox did nothing to improve ratings, despite switching from barely watchable to arguably the smartest show on television. Sometimes concepts just don't work. Had Dollhouse been canceled by, say, episode 11, there'd have been enough people who had become fans of the concept for it to develop a similar cult following, who'd have likewise assumed that the problem was with Fox rather than the show itself.
But we know that isn't the case. Despite becoming good, the ratings continued to drop. Sometimes shows just don't have appeal. Sometimes the concept just isn't strong enough to attract viewers. Dollhouse was a great show that fits that description. And, alas, Firefly was a somewhat poorer show (not a bad show, don't get me wrong, but I've never understood the obsession with it as "the greatest science fiction show ever!" It's not even science fiction, it's a space opera damn it!) that also fits the description.
People have the cause and effect backward. Firefly didn't fail because Fox messed around with it. Fox messed around with it, and in the end stopped caring about it, because it was a failure.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Haven't you ever seen the footage shown after the credits of the Iron Man movie? It introduces Nick Fury to Tony Stark! I have no doubt Robert Downey Jr. was under contract for it when he signed up for Iron Man... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o2lJ19qML0
While I enjoyed Buffy/Angel, the problem with Whedon of that period is he simply bit off more than he could chew work wise. Pretty much all of season six and seven of Buffy (with the exception of the musical and one down) were phoned in because he was busy with Firefly. The same thing happened with season four and five of Angel (with the exception of the puppet show) with Whedon having gotten too busy and phoning it in. If you compare season six/seven and four/five to the rest of the series you can see the writing went WAAAY downhill. Now that he isn't swamped seasons eight and six of Buffy/ Angel respectively in comic form actually have good writing again.
So I would say whether The Avengers will be good or not depends on how much work Whedon has at that moment, since the guy can't seem to stand turning down a job even when he has a full plate. If he doesn't have much to do it will probably be great, if he is swamped it will probably be shit. it just all depends on his workload at the time.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have no idea what the Avengers are but you had me at Summer Glau ;)
Think the 1960s Batman show on a good day, but slightly less goofy, and with spies instead of Batman and Robin.
I wasn't clear which Avengers he was remaking, either. I remember when the other Avengers movie came out and I was like, "Oh, gonna be some Marvel Super Heroes in here..." and it was British spies instead... And then this story comes up and I'm like, "What, they're doing The Avengers again??" and it turns out to be the Marvel one... Darn this ambiguity!
Bow-ties are cool.
...I would not call that a movie that "bombed"
Then you don't know what constitutes a bomb in the eyes of the studio execs.
If it doesn't make at least double the budget in the US release alone, then it is a bomb.
The only exceptions from their standpoint are the small-gross, tailor-made, Oscar-bait films.
--- Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary. ---
Your definition is irrelevant. My definition is irrelevant. The only definition that matters in this conversation is that of the people in charge of green-lighting these projects. If they think "Serenity" bombed, then that means it is more likely their hiring of Whedon to write "The Avengers" is, as someone stated above, a ploy to attract attention without making a huge financial commitment, and less likely because they think Whedon's writing will make it a successful movie.
Having said that, I think your definition is reasonable and the folks who actually _made_ the movie, as opposed to those who financed it, would probably agree with you.
Hollywood is first and foremost a business. If creativity happens, if someone creates art, if people are inspired or awed by their product, it is simply a lucky side-effect. Almost every movie exec will be much happier to finance a movie that makes tens of millions of people slightly less bored for 90 minutes rather than a million people (or a hundred thousand, or ten thousand...) deeply moved.
We comic books fans have been lucky in that a lot of movies based on the genre in the 15 years or so have been quite good, but Hollywood is lazy and doesn't like to take risks and the moment they think comic book adaptations are less than on fire, we fans will be back out in the weeds like we were through most of the 70s and 80s (minus a few obvious exceptions).
Personally, I think Whedon would be a mixed bag as far as this movie is concerned. There are a lot of good things he could do for the movie, but also a lot of bad things. I actually stopped reading comics in the dark days of the early 90s and have had little or no interest in going back, so I can't comment on his comic book gig, but I am still very interested in the movies, and several the recent Marvel movies have been really excellent, and even some of the less-than-excellent ones (like the Fantastic 4 movies or Spider-man 3 were still a lot of fun).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.