Significant Comicbook/Movie News of the Day

April 13, 2010 at 5:07 pm · Filed under Movies & Music, Quick Thoughts and tagged: avengers, captain america, comics, directing, film, ironman, joss whedon, movie

Twitter is a-buzz with the very recent news that Joss Wheadon of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly” fame is in talks with Marvel to direct the upcoming Avengers movie.

Whoa.

So many fanboy hot-words in one sentence guaranteed the interwebs explosion that this post is but a simple addition to. You can hear the collective hyperventilation of oh-so-many twenty-somethings (yes, mostly male) whose minds simply cannot handle such stimulus in the space of a single sentence. And I must admit, I’m included in that number – why do you think I’m writing this?

Because the juxtaposition of those terms: “Joss Whedon” and “Avengers” is not something that happens often. When a comic book movie is typically risen to the forefront of the news it helmed by director to whom most fanboys will reply: “Oh, him, he made that? Eh, I guess that’ll work.” However, if there are two things in the fanboy world that are certain, it is that both Joss Whedon – the creator of some of the most revered sci-fi/fantasy shows of all time, and The Avengers – the Marvel supergroup consisting (at one time or another) of almost every one of the greatest heroes of the Marvel universe, get a whole lot of love.

But the question of the hour is this: Is Whedon, despite his fame, really the right man to take this project? This is, essentially, the culmination of most of Marvel’s blockbuster superhero movies. They have been made with the purpose of eventually contributing to this Film-of-all-superhero-Films. Whedon is a household fanboy name. Although his TV projects often run aground of cancellation problems (Firefly, Dollhouse), they are still held very, very dear. Yet anyone familiar with Whedon’s comic book ventures, like his turn in Runaways, knows that his writing seems to drift very quickly into the melodramatic, character-driven tones that contribute strongly to the success of his TV shows.

The thing is, that is not the Avengers. That is not why The Avengers is always right in the back of the collective film consciousness. People want The Avengers movie because they want to see a group of superheroes they already know and love save the world and rough up some bad guys while uttering witty, subtly hilarious comments.

In order for The Avengers movie to succeed, it needs to be sharp, clean, flashy, and it needs to hit hard. As great as Whedon might be, he is none of those things, at least in the way they are needed to be. His TV shows thrive on elaborate, extended character development. That is what we love, that you have to watch episode after episode to get the slow-reveal of the grander picture. And sure, when each beautiful little piece of the larger puzzle is uncovered it’s affecting, but not the flash “WOW! that movie was incredible!” summer blockbuster affecting that The Avengers really needs. The expectation is that these beloved characters have already been developed, and what is really desired is a spectacular finish that all the film-spanning development over the years has led up to.

Joss, you are the man, but maybe just not the man for this job.

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