Joss Whedon Is Not God

(Warning: The following opinons are not favorable to Mr. Joss Whedon. Read at your own Risk)

Ok, I'm not a fan, so sue me. I've tried to get into his work, but cannot seem to find the appeal. Mr. Whedon became a television writer on the coattails of his father and grandfather. Both wrote for credible shows over the years. He has managed to gain a ridiculously large fan-base due mostly to what can be summed up in one word, Buffy.

Writing the screenplay to the original movie, Mr. Whedon was not satisfied with the finished product. One has to wonder if this was before or after it was not well-received by the critics and movie-goers. Somehow, though, he was able to convince someone at Warner Brothers to pick it up as a TV series. Over seven seasons and a network change, he managed to win awards and an almost religious following. When Angel and Firefly came along, nobody cared whether or not the shows were any good, just that they had his name on it.

I have been able to sit through the train wreck that was Ishtar, and the critically acclaimed, but most boring movie ever made, Passage to India. However, as hard as I tried, I was never able to sit through an entire episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I felt my IQ, as well as my will to live, being drained by the minute. The plots were boring and predictable (except when they didn't make any sense at all) and the characters were written completely with no depth at all. The tongue-in-cheek dialogue was stupid and rarely funny. I had high hopes for the episode in which she finally came up against Dracula. I thought, cool, she's going to fight the king of all vampires. Instead, they portrayed him as a bumbling fool and Buffy was able to take care of him easily in a final showdown that lasted all of 3 minutes. After that, I really lost interest. I know she returned from the dead, gained a sister that never existed before, blah, blah, blah. This show was just written for fan-boys who wanted to watch Sarah Michelle Gellar every week and for the girls who wanted to be her. At least I hope that's it. Because if someone was watching this for story content…….

Next was Angel, a superior show to Buffy with a campier feel. However, this was not the sole creation of Mr. Whedon. Established TV writers David Greenwalt and Tim Minear helped. Still, the show was mediocre at best. This idea had been done before, with Rick Springfield no less (Forever Knight), and has been done since (Moonlight) by David Greenwalt, go figure. Still, the show managed to limp through five seasons, mostly on the momentum and fan-base of Buffy.

Then came Firefly. What can I say. I had high hopes for this one. A change of pace for the writer, trying to tackle a purely sci-fi premise. Unfortunately, it was ill-conceived. Set in a solar system with hundreds of habitable worlds (what?), it told the boring story of a boring captain whose boring resistance fighters lost some boring war. He became a boring freighter pilot with a boring crew. Did I mention the show was boring? The only bright spots were Adam Baldwin's character, and the mystery surrounding Summer Glau's character's past. It was nice to see Ron Glass again, too. Once again, most of the characters were completely one-dimensional. Suddenly, though, the religious zealots of the Church of Whedon, could not keep the show on the air. Fourteen episodes were filmed before the show was canceled, only eleven of which were aired until syndication.

But, miraculously, Mr. Whedon and his fun-bunch found a way to resurrect this bore-fest from the ashes like the legendary Phoenix, and turn it into a major motion picture entitled Serenity. I couldn't believe it! I did watch this big budget stinker once it made it to video (I borrowed a copy from someone. I couldn't bring myself to pay money for a rental.). Let me say that it was fun watching Miss Glau kick butt (even though this was the scene that aired in every preview) and I'm glad she's continued the tradition in the new Terminator series (which, in contrast, is really well written). Mr. Whedon directed this and tried to bring some closure to the ill-fated series for the fans. In doing so, he managed to kill off Ron Glass' character and fan-favorite, Serenity pilot Hoban "Wash" Washburne played by Alan Tudyk (the latter for no apparent reason other than for the supposed "drama").

Mr. Whedon is currently working on several other projects, such as Dollhouse, and recently walked away from the Wonder Woman movie after eighteen months of work and several rewrites. He cited the reason as being that he and the studio had different ideas of where to take the story. Yeah, the studio actually wanted a story and that's not Mr. Whedon's strong suit. In the midst of all this is the one bright spot, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. This online show was done as a “video blog” with music and singing, and starred Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion (I won’t hold Firefly against him). This show is actually kind of funny. I have to give a lot of the credit to Joss’ brothers, however, who helped write and produce the story and the songs.

But, finally, I heard an interview with Joss Whedon on NPR about his stint as a comic book writer and received the quote that made all of this fall into place. He said (paraphrased slightly)"No one wants a 3 dimensional character anymore". That explains a lot if this is his writing philosophy. It does not explain, however, why so many people like his stuff. Maybe he's right. Either way, I'll take my chances with the crowd who expects a good story and characters you can feel something for.

At this point, some may ask why I know so much about Mr. Whedon if I am so loathsome of his body of work. My answer is simple. I like to know what I'm talking about if I'm going to criticize something. Most critics today could take a lesson from that. Too many times I've read reviews that miss the mark so completely because they didn't take the time to learn anything about what their criticizing. I'll admit my lack of knowledge of the entire Buffy mythology, but I bet someone could write me up a summary in less than a paragraph. That's probably the amount of good story telling content seven years of episodes amount to.

Note: I posted this a while back on MySpace and it appears that an Admin somewhere deleted it. I think I may have offended a Whedon disciple at MySpace.com