Joss Whedon- Director

[John1701D]

At it again...

[Star Lord]

The Avengers is excellent. There's so many ways that movie could have been a disaster with having this many superheroes for the first time on the big screen. It's still crazy how well the movie works the way it does, giving each character their moments. The writing is great, lot of memorable dialogues.

Age of Ultron has a comic book-y vibe and the opening sequence still slaps! I like it even more now than I did back then.

Firefly is great, yet to watch Serenity.

[Chaotic]

He’s a tool.

[CyberpunkCentral]

Originally Posted by John1701D

At it again...

[Guy87]

Writer
Buffy Film - Not terrible, but a missed oppurtunity

Toy Story - Stone cold classic

Alien: Resurrection - Not a fan, but need to rewatch as my issue might be direction over script.

Cabin in the Woods - Fun horror homage monster mash. Direction could've been tighter.

Director
Buffy TV - Probably my favourite TV show of all time

Angel - I don't really see as a seperate show, I can't watch Buffy without Angel alongside. All current controversy aside the only time I'm not a fan of Angel is when clear show rewrites had to be made around Charisma's pregnancy. It's obvious that they had a plan that went out the window and the rewrite stuff is just bad.

Firely - Classic genre mash-up

Serenity - Fantastic conclusion, to a story cut too short

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long blog - Enjoyably camp webisode experiment

Dollhouse - Great concept that never felt like it got to be properly explored.

The Avengers - What should never have worked turned into pinnacle of popcorn cinema. This is the movie Joss was made to adapt.

Agents of Shield - Unfairly forgotten piece of Marvel TV history. Has some great moments and some average ones, but Joss was less and less involved so it's a bit pointless going into it.

Avengers: Age of Ultron - Outside of the abrupt editing out of Thor's side trip, this is a perfectly enjoyable sequel that I find to be unfairly critiqued for no good reason.

Much Ado About Nothing - Enjoyable indie adaptation that could've done with a tad more time and patience given to it to make it a "proper" film (like a second location). As it is it's a quirky 'student film' made by charismatic TV actors.

Justice League - This was never going to work. Snyder's interested in being 'edgy' and 'grimdark' but has a nice photographic eye for a still frame, whereas Joss is more post-modern subversive and light-hearted but with a flat eye. The two styles were never ever going to merge and any executive worth their salt would've known this. It's clear Joss was hired simply to "make it fun, like The Avengers" which would have worked perfectly fine if he was working from scratch, but attaching to existing tone from 2 prior movies and an already shot movie was always going to see a Frankenstein-esque end product. I'm happy to see Snyder's vision realised, not because I like his first two (I actually think they're awful) but he did not deserve to have his movie snatched out from underneath him by a studio, especially considering his personal tragedy.

All in all I'm a big fan of Joss' output. I find his direction can be flat at times, but his characters' growth and relationships are so well defined in most cases and so specific to his sensibilities that all of his material is usually better understood in his own hands than ever has been in anyone else's. It's a shame all of this shit has come out about him, obviously because it means people have suffered in silence over the years, but also because his output has such a large following and Buffy is tied into the memories of an entire generation.

[Farerb]

I never liked him as a person ever since Buffy/Angel ended. That Charisma/SMG story was known to everyone who was active in the fandom. He really is a case of "Power reveals" IMO.

I love Buffy, it is probably my favorite TV Show, but I don't care for anything he has done ever since, including the overrated Firefly. I like seasons 1-2 of Angel because they had a neo noir feeling, but after season 2 it was awful with the exception of few episodes here and there, didn't like that Angel had a son, didn't like what they did with Cordelia, even before Jasmine, she was completely OOC in season 3 and never liked the Angel-Cordelia pairing, I liked them more when they had brother-sister dynamic (remember when she forgave him because he bought her new clothes?).

Overall I think he is a bit overrated, as a writer and even more as a director. He has a tendency to write his characters the same (which is unnoticeable because the actors elevates the characters with their acting, but even buffy season 1's writing feels awkward at times).

[J999]

The Avengers. Excellent. Still one of the best Marvel movies. Very fun and rewatchable.

The Avengers Age of Ultron. I was a bit disappointed in this when I first saw it. I still think the first is better, but Endgame improved my opinion of the movie, and what it was building towards.

Justice League: I don't hate the theatrical cut, but it is a mess and his contributions did more harm than good. I will miss the "Everybody Knows" opening when Snyder's version comes out.

I never got into Buffy beyond the original movie that I liked at the time, but haven't seen in at least a decade.

[stvn1974]

Love Buffy, Angel, Firefly/Serenity and Dr. Horrible even if Whedon is a stain of a human being. The fact that he wasn't the only one working on the shows makes it easier to still enjoy them.

Dollhouse: Didn't like it mostly because I felt that Dushku was miscast. She couldn't pull off each of the different characters each week.

I am not a fan of super hero films but liked both Avenger films for what they are. Justice League was awful but so were the two films that it followed.

[CrazyBlu-RayFan]

This is all my opinion:

Honestly his best work is Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. The humor, songs, character development, and story is all fantastically written and all comes together in a great and tight 45 minutes.

The first two Avengers are good, I honestly like the second movie better than the first. Visually it looks much better and more cinematic. The villain is way better, the character development is better, and the dialog is better than the first.

Firefly sucks, absolutely terrible in writing, directing, characters, and so forth. The fact he probably stole a lot of it from animes that are way better doesn't help. However, I did end up liking Serenity, the writing, story, and characters were WAY better written than the main show.

Justice League (2017) is just boring. It's just so by the numbers and dull that it doesn't give me any emotions. At least I'd rather be angry at a movie (like Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman) than feel nothing about it. But the Justice League shouldn't be boring, that's the biggest crime of this movie. However I don't fully blame Whedon, WB heavily interfered and gave him a thankless task of essentially reshooting an entire movie quickly and fit all of these characters (half of which are introduced in this movie) and story in an exact 2 hour runtime (even his Avengers movies were longer, first Avengers was 2hrs and 24mins long, Age of Ultron was 2hrs and 22mins long).

Buffy, the show sucks in all aspects, the 1992 movie was vastly superior.

[Verisimilitude1984]

Originally Posted by CrazyBlu-RayFan

This is all my opinion:
Buffy, the show sucks in all aspects, the 1992 movie was vastly superior.

Why do you think that?

[Gamma_Winstead]

Buffy: One of my favorite shows, mostly because of the characters... there's a LOT I don't like though. There's a lot of just absolutely terrible episodes, or plot lines that totally pissed me off. Joss is a try hard weasel when it comes to character deaths, and Buffy has some that just pissed me off. Also, the Spike rape plot line... ew. But I did love a lot of Buffy too though. It's a love hate relationship. It's highs are indeed REALLY damn good.

Angel: To be honest I didn't bother that much. I liked what I saw, but knew it didn't really have an ending before I watched it so I didn't invest much time. His treatment of Charisma was awful though, and Id heard about that years ago.

Firefly: Thank christ it was canceled. I loved it, but his ideas for season 2, including another rape centric storyline were just... -shudders-. Firefly is also massively overhyped now. It's definitely not the masterpiece people look at it as. You can watch dozens of canceled syfy shows that are incredibly similar in terms of quality.

Serenity: Good, but thank god it wasn't successful. Would have been terrible to need to make sequels without the characters that didn't survive.

Dr Horrible: Actually probably his best work. I dont have a complaint here. perfect for what it was.

Dollhouse: While I enjoyed the first season, I never bothered with season 2. I did watch the finale as it aired, and it pulled a lot of the Joss Whedon trademarked "Lol character death!" nonsense he was obsessed with. cant say it was bad, but I'll never watch it again.

Avengers: I dont think its great, but its absolutely the film that was needed. He balanced the characters well enough, and while his visual style is flat and ugly, there were enough cool ideas (the one shot with all the heroes in the final fight) that it worked well enough.

Ultron: Uh... not much positive to say here. Whedon's insistence at pairing up Banner and Widow has been a cancer in the mcu since the films debut. He treated bruce as a self insert and wanted to pair him with the hot chick so bad its embarrassing. There might not be a single set of actors who have less romantic chemistry than Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johansson. Awful. Still, it too has some good moments. My least favorite avengers film, but I'd at least watch it again.

Justice League:

[Show spoiler]

That a good enough response?

[Guy87]

Originally Posted by Gamma_Winstead

Buffy: One of my favorite shows, mostly because of the characters... there's a LOT I don't like though. There's a lot of just absolutely terrible episodes, or plot lines that totally pissed me off. Joss is a try hard weasel when it comes to character deaths, and Buffy has some that just pissed me off. Also, the Spike rape plot line... ew. But I did love a lot of Buffy too though. It's a love hate relationship. It's highs are indeed REALLY damn good.

I actually thought the rape stuff was pretty spot on. Spike thought himself in love, but was also immmoral (literally soulless) it stands to reason he would eventually get to that point. The reason that scene is so intense is because the actors play it perfectly, nothing sexual actually "happens" either on or off screen, but it brought a threatening physicality to the show that Buffy superkicking vampires and quipping all the time never could, and brought the Spike character so low that even he is ashamed (which, let's be honest, a souless, immoral creature that has led the life that Spike and Angel have wouldn't bat their eyes at rape)

Also it made 13 year old me suddenly very aware of the subject, and the physical and emotional horror of it, without it even having taken place.

[kemcha]

Don't get me wrong, I still think Joss Whedon is a talented producer and director but I think too much is made that these talented creators like Whedon are perfect. I have no doubt that the man is talented but I think there are too many people who look for anything negative to tear down successful creators. Buffy, Angel, Dollhouse, Firefly were all pretty damn good TV shows. Joss understands the dynamics of ensemble casts, which is likely why Disney and Marvel Studios wanted him to do "The Avengers". But, not every actor, director or producer can create hit after hit.

Remember, Buffy The Vampire Slayer was originally canceled by The WB (Seasons 1-5) before it was rescued by UPB (Seasons 6-7). Firefly was canceled because executives interfered and broadcast the episodes out of order and viewers were confused by the series. If they had broadcast the pilot episode (Serenity) first, viewers would have understood what the series was about. Dollhouse was simply too complicated for most fans and they became disinterested.

I don't think the movie and television studios should write Joss Whedon off because he has a lot to offer. We're not talking about a director or producer who has drugged women and had sex with them and he's not a sexual deviant. But, I think they should conference with Whedon to improve his image, get him into therapy to better control his temperament and bring him back in a limited capacity for a time to see if he's improved.

The only problem I saw with Justice League was that he tried to keep the footage that Snyder shot. Something he should have never done. This is the same problem that Lucasfilm had with Solo: A Star Wars Story, they kept the previous shot footage. These directors who take over film projects from other directors need to stop it with wanting to retain the original footage that was shot for the film and simply start over from scratch.

With Snyder's Justice League, he's simply finishing what he started but that I think the film is going to be seriously marred with the Ray Fisher drama.

Joss Whedon isn't the first director who has created more headaches for studios than what should have been but studios should also be aware not to listen to "voices on the internet" whose only goal is to destroy people.

Everyone has the capacity to change and I think it's too early for anyone to write the man off just yet. If Mel Gibson could overcome his darkness, I think Joss Whedon can as well. But, without Joss Whedon involved in "The Nevers", I don't think it's going to last that long. Controversy almost always attracts attention and if everyone is trying to cancel Joss Whedon, they're going to want to cancel the new show, simply because he created the show and he created the movie studio that's producing it.

[JayTL]

I have no opinion of him as a person, since I don't know him.

I do like some of his work *shrug*

[Moviefan2k4]

I was a Buffy fan for the first three years, and I still enjoy the first Avengers movie, but to me Whedon operates best when left to his own sandbox. Otherwise, he seems to get very frustrated with someone else's rules. I'm also not a fan of how he seems to have treated his actors in the past, judging by news that has recently been revealed online.

[kemcha]

Originally Posted by Moviefan2k4

I was a Buffy fan for the first three years, and I still enjoy the first Avengers movie, but to me Whedon operates best when left to his own sandbox. Otherwise, he seems to get very frustrated with someone else's rules. I'm also not a fan of how he seems to have treated his actors in the past, judging by news that has recently been revealed online.

The only thing I can say about the man is that he expects those people working for him on his movies and television shows to do what he wants them to do. If you look at his personality, he could be a borderline narcissist. When it comes to directors, I would think that there are many who tend to act like mini-dictators, that old concept of "I'm the boss and you do what I tell you". The actors and actresses involved in his various projects might also need to get some classes about dealing with people who are like this. Especially when there seems to be more and more actors with personalities like Christian Bale (who was made famous for his rage-rant against his director of photography. But, where you have a bunch of guys on a movie or television set, you're going to have hotheads and egos clashing.

What's funny about Ray Fisher is basically "I'm sad, I'm going to cry, because you hurt my feelings". They make millions of dollars per movie to play pretend in a movie. What I'm curious about is all these actors and actresses complaining, why didn't they bring these concerns to the studios when they happened? Joss simply needs to learn how to talk to people, and that's not a skill you can learn overnight if you're not used to people talking back to you.

[Underworld54]

We've all had bosses that were jerks, it seems Joss is a jerk...no more, no less. One actor said that Joss yelled at him lol...people are so soft nowadays.

[HillSprinter]

How much credence do we give to millennials complaints?

[Guy87]

Originally Posted by HillSprinter

How much credence do we give to millennials complaints?

The entire Buffy cast is Gen X...

[Farerb]

Originally Posted by Guy87

The entire Buffy cast is Gen X...

Yeah but it's more fun to complain about millennials and not to take anything seriously. Who cares about facts? Or that Charisma Carpenter is 50 years old?