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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.
...but am I the only nerd that can't stand Firefly?
Living With a Nerd
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.
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.
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.