Joss Whedon Has the Best CV Ever.

I’m at the beach.  The internet is temporarily down.  Everyone else is asleep.

I have already gone for a run, lifted weights, read a chapter of a book, and laid the groundwork for two sermons.

As this is my vacation, I feel like I need to be unproductive for a little while to balance out all this unnecessary accomplishment.

Also, athletic shorts do not count as pants, so here goes . . .

Seeing that I was on something of a roll with these posts a few weeks ago, my friend Gary asked me to write a piece on the theology of Joss Whedon, a man who is probably most famous for his Buffy, the Vampire Slayer TV series.  Whedon has spent time as a TV writer/director/producer, a comicbook writer, and now a film director-- three of my favorite media to consume during my precious, limited downtime.  To achieve mastery in all these media is a pretty impressive feat.  In fact, the guy just needs to develop a video game, and he’ll have the nerd equivalent of an EGOT.  While I was never all that into Buffy (with the exception of developing a hardcore crush on Eliza Dushku during the show’s third season), I find Whedon’s short-lived sci-fi/western, Firefly, to be one of the greatest TV shows ever produced, so the guy is definitely worth some consideration.  Of course, even more relevant to me, Whedon will be directing Marvel’s Avengers movie (to be released seven months before the Apocalypse in 2012), meaning that he will be supervising all the interaction between Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, and Hawkeye.  Of course, Hawkeye hasn’t been in a movie yet, so I imagine a few people reading this won’t know who he is.  Know that I am judging you.  Harshly.  In fact, go to Wikipedia right now and find out who Hawkeye is.  Search “Hawkeye (comics),” and it should come right up.  Just scan like a sentence or two of the “fictional character biography” section to get an idea.  Seriously, go do it right now.  You don’t have to read the whole page (because those things are written by unnecessarily-wordy nerds like me, so you’d be reading a while).  Just get an idea.  I’ll wait.

Whoa.  I have no idea what just happened.  Must be the vacation influence making my writing more tangential than usual.  Where was I?  Oh right, Whedon.  Hmm . . . you know what?  Let’s just dive right into his work.

The Awesomeness that Was Firefly

Barring the obvious exception of Glenn Beck still having a job, few of the Fox Network’s actions have disappointed me so much as the cancellation of Firefly, an event which science fiction fans still lament.  With the frequent preemptings, the insistence on showing the episodes out of order, and the unrepresentative advertising of the show, it almost seems like Fox was trying to sabotage one of their most outstanding programs.  Firefly ran from September to December in 2002, and a handful of the show’s episodes never even aired during that brief run.  Low ratings ultimately led to the show’s cancellation, but given the fan response, Universal Studios released a follow-up feature film called Serenity (the name of the characters’ ship) in 2005.

Firefly is set in the distant future, long after the destruction of the earth, when humanity has taken to the stars and colonized a series of planets in another solar system.  Through artificial terraforming, every planet in the system can now sustain life, but I promise that the rest of the show was more scientifically on track.  While one group of central planets have formed a union (simply called “The Alliance”), the worlds farther out in the system remain largely lawless, creating a new Wild West-style frontier, and we’re talking really Wild West-- like with horses and cattle and saloons and all that business.  The show follows the mismatched crew of a transport ship that carries passengers and cargo (sometimes legally, but often not).  The ship’s captain is Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds (played by Nathan Fillion), but the show is more of an ensemble in nature, with the full cast always taking part in the action.  Even though the show is in English, the characters occasionally drop into Mandarin Chinese (particularly in order to cuss), and the intermingling of Asian and Wild West culture is a frequent element of the show’s general tone.  Basically, everything is really well thought-out.  There is a crazy attention to detail, and those tiny realistic details (like all outer space scenes being totally silent) free the viewer to focus more on the characters.

The crew of the Serenity (sans Book and Inara)

Of course, my personal favorite character is Shepherd Book, a Bible-toting monastic with a mysterious past.  Like much of the culture in the Firefly universe, Book seems to observe a fusion of Eastern and Wild West customs, observing a monotheistic religion based on the Bible (assumed to be the Christian Bible) but incorporating elements of Eastern philosophy as well.  Book often acts as a voice of wisdom to the other characters, but the occasional references to his checkered past (which is never fully explained) are always well done.  Perhaps my favorite quote from the entire series comes from a scene where Book loads and cocks a gun before a job, and when one of the other crew members asks about his religious convictions, Book quips in typical Whedon dialogue: “The Bible is very clear on killing.  It is less specific on shooting kneecaps.”   Dialogue of this nature can reveal quite a bit about a character (sense of humor, loyalty to a crew, etc.), and Whedon is a pro with it.  Virtually every character on Firefly is developed in this fashion.  Everything about their styles of speech, dress, mannerisms, etc. is given careful attention, and these tiny details fill out their personalities.  The characters evolve beautifully throughout the show, responding to problems in ways that are often surprising, but always consistent with their characters.  The show is essential viewing for anyone into science fiction.  Go watch it now.

I Feel Like I’m Supposed to Talk about Buffy at This Point

I have to admit that this is not really my field of expertise.  I watched Buffy only sporadically and never caught a single episode of the spin-off, Angel.  Still, I’ve been told that there’s some interesting stuff going on here, and the show was popular enough to run for seven seasons after all (1997-2003), so I’ve done a little research and also drudged up as many of my memories of Buffy as I can.  In terms of writing, Whedon’s trademark quippy dialogue is present throughout Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and the same character development muscles that he flexed in Firefly were being conditioned throughout this series.  Characters possessed endearing traits that Whedon was able to pronounce without ever exaggerating them to the point of annoyance.  For example, I was recently walking around Target with a friend of mine, and she pointed to a button-up, floral-print shirt and described it as a “Xander shirt.”  Now, I watched enough Buffy episodes to know that Xander does not always wear such a shirt, but the shirt had a feel to it that was evocative of the character.  When different everyday objects can remind someone of a specific character in a series, that is the sign of some seriously strong character development.  Furthermore, Whedon managed to balance a campy/cheesy tone with some pretty heavy storylines, and a few of the villains actually had some pretty unnerving gimmicks (think “The Gentlemen” . . . okay, I actually found them kind of funny, but my girlfriend at the time was incredibly unnerved by them and thought I was sociopathic for laughing).  Anyway, the seven seasons of Buffy are an impressive feat because Whedon managed to take something as culturally-clichéd as the traditional vampire mythos and stay true fairly to it --much more so than a certain other series with teenage vampires-- while also bringing fresh, well-rounded characters and interesting storylines with real, palpable, believable tensions and arcs.  (And again, I’m saying this as someone who never really got onboard with Buffy, but even I can appreciate the writers’ work on this.  The believability of character development makes or breaks a show, and Whedon nailed it.)

“If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.” --Angel

Now, given the religious elements present throughout both Buffy and Angel, I can’t not address Whedon’s religious views.  (Hey, remember how, in elementary school, they told us never to use double negatives, but in high school, all of a sudden they could be used for rhetorical emphasis?  It’s called “litotes,” and it’s awesome, and I thank Mr. Gilmore daily for teaching me about it.  Okay, must stay on task.  I can’t let the beach influence get to me.)  Professing humanism, atheism, and absurdism, Whedon has been quoted as saying, “I don’t believe in the ‘sky bully,’” but when asked if this is all there is to life, Whedon’s answer was “absolutely not,” so there’s something pretty interesting going on here.  At its core, Whedon’s outlook on life seems to be that there is some greater meaning to it all, but it is something that humans can never fully comprehend.  With that in mind, human constructions for finding meaning --i.e. religion-- are pointless.  Humans simply can’t get it.

One of Whedon’s most thorough studies of his philosophy is in the Firefly episode “Objects in Space,” which Whedon says was heavily influenced by the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, particularly an essay called We’re All Just Floating in Space.  Now, I haven’t read We’re All Just Floating in Space, but I did read No Exit in the tenth grade, so I know just enough about Sartre to pretend that I know what Whedon is getting at in the episode.  “Objects in Space” features a bounty hunter named Jubal Early sneaking onboard the Serenity to capture River Tam (a possibly-insane, possibly-psychic, teenaged girl played by Summer Glau), and as the two engage in a cat-and-mouse battle of wits, more and more about Whedon’s spiritual leanings is revealed.  Both characters display an appreciation for the physical aspects of the ship and the objects contained within, looking beyond the intended purposes of guns/tools/etc. to try and appreciate their aesthetic beauty.  Whedon highlights this by focusing heavily on the characters’ feet and hands as they walk through the ship, emphasizing the tactile parts of their consciousness.  This appreciation of the material is also coupled with a somewhat disconcerting sense of purposelessness.  While most of the episodes of Firefly have an objective for the plot (complete the job, win the client’s trust, etc.), this episode is solely about the back-and-forth between River and Jubal, with the rest of the crew caught in the middle.  I will try not to spoil the episode (especially since it was the last of the series), but by the end, everything has come strangely full circle, and the viewer is left with an odd sense of lack of accomplishment.  Yep, that fits pretty well with what I know about Sartre.  “Disconcerting” would be the optimum word.

David Boreanaz as Angel

Of course, then there’s Angel.  Man, what do we do with Angel?  Initially a heroic figure (a young vampire with the standard super-strength, bloodlust, and resistance to aging as the rest of his race), Angel was an enigmatic supporting character of Buffy, providing a love interest and a driving force behind the plot of the first three seasons.  Eventually, it is revealed that Angel, unlike the rest of his race, still has a soul (and thus a conscience), but when he loses this soul once more as part of a curse, he becomes as much a villain as any of the other vampires in the series.  Though his soul is eventually restored, Buffy still has to kill him and send him to Hell.  He eventually returns from the dead again (once again imbued with a soul) and leaves the series to pursue redemption elsewhere, a process that is followed in the spin-off Angel.  Now, I don’t really consider myself an authority on theology, but I did sit through Geoffrey Wainwright’s theology class cutting myself under the table the entire time to make the pain go away, and some of the things he said did somehow sink into my subconscious.  As I understand it, the Christian notion of redemption is that it is something for which people do not have to work.  Grace is given freely to all people if they will merely ask for it (Ephesians 2, Romans 5, etc.), so the notion of Angel having to work for his redemption is much more in line with an existential quest than a Christian one-- not that that’s a bad thing; I’m just trying to maintain a frame of reference here.

St. Augustine was not a fan of Manichees.

Angel also features both heavenly and demonic forces working against each other through earthly surrogates (including a demonic law firm, and given my near brush with law school, I find the notion of a demonic law firm awesome).  These evenly-pitted forces of good and evil seem to have much more in common with early dualistic religions than with Christianity though, and one of the show’s recurring themes (particularly in the last few seasons) is the increasingly blurred line between good and evil.  In fact, I’m going to go ahead and suggest that the Buffy/Angel religious dimension actually makes a little more sense with Zoroastrianism or Manichaeism than with Christianity.  I won’t delve too deep into Zoroastrianism, but the basic premise is that two evenly-matched gods, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, are constantly duking it out, with the former seeking to sustain the world and the latter seeking to destroy it.  Though Ahura Mazda will ultimately prevail and bring about a perfected age in which time ends and all things are united with him, humanity and the rest of creation are still caught up in the struggle.  A similar philosophy is embodied in Manichaeism, a Gnostic-influenced philosophy of which St. Augustine was once a practitioner before he converted to Christianity and denounced Manichaeism as heretical.  In fact, the Manichaean condemnation of “the flesh and its pleasures” fits quite well with the curse on Angel, as it was the ecstasy of sex that caused him to lose his soul again.  A condition of his retaining a soul had been that he was barred from physical pleasure, something which Augustine devoted a considerable amount of time and energy to exploring in his writings against the Manichees and in his Confessions.  Okay, I feel like I need to get back to Whedon.

The use of the defunct Manichean school of thought reflects an appreciation of the ancient and arcane in Whedon, but at the same time, his appeal to a religion deemed heretical and no longer practiced seems almost a little cynical to me, showing that --as made clear through “Objects in Space”-- we’re really just sort of . . . here.  The heavenly and demonic forces in Buffy and Angel fit into a larger framework that really does affect the destiny of the world in which they live, but there’s a strange purposelessness just as there was in Firefly.  Buffy is just one of a long line of slayers that will continue after she is gone.  Angel is just a pawn in a larger apocalyptic scheme, and his soul ultimately doesn’t matter in the grand designs of the blurred forces of darkness and light.  Redemption is fleeting and beyond comprehension, just as all the larger forces at play in the universe are beyond comprehension.  To Whedon, we’re all just floating in space, right?

“When I talk about belief, why do you always assume I’m talking about God?” --Shepherd Book

River (Summer Glau) and Mal (Nathan Fillion)

In spite of all this, there is a hope that pervades all of Whedon’s work, and nowhere is this better shown than in the Firefly tie-in movie, Serenity.  While the episodes of Firefly did feature phenomenal growth of the characters, there was seldom a moral at the end of the story, but this is not true of Serenity.  Throughout the film, the characters are being pursued by an Alliance operative who is seeking to capture (or kill) River, and the crew struggle with evading him while also seeking to uncover a mystery to which only River has the key.  In particular, Mal struggles with being on a quest without a profit, and Shepherd Book continually encourages him to find something in which he believes, something for which he is willing to fight.  Book tells him, “I don’t care what you believe in; just believe in it.”  Even given the Sartre-laden undertones of “Objects in Space” and the seeming purposelessness that plagues Angel, belief is actually a recurring theme in Whedon’s work, even if it is not belief in any particular faith.  Rather, Whedon seems to suggest that, since the universe is beyond our comprehension, we must identify the things in which we believe and stand by them, even though the context of Serenity seems to suggest that the belief is more related to individual purpose than to the grand ordering of things.  Of course, this sense of a purpose that exists apart from religion, redemption apart from God, fulfillment apart from grander design-- all of that fits perfectly into another universe: the world of comicbooks.

With My Freeze Ray . . .

Beast from Astonishing X-Men

Whedon has made a few forays into the superhero world already.  Starting in 2006, he began writing for Marvel Comics on the title Astonishing X-Men, and his run on the series has received multiple awards.  Admittedly, I highly doubt that Ord of the Breakworld will go down in history as the greatest comic villain of all time, but what he did with the X-Men themselves was quite impressive for --and I know I sound like a broken record at this point-- character development.  In particular, he killed off Kitty Pryde, and even though unoriginal writers brought her back from the dead (how typical), the idea of killing off a continually-annoying character in a dramatic and meaningful way was really cool.  It’s also really impressive what Whedon did with Beast.  During his run, Whedon introduced the idea of a cure for mutation, which was then adapted into the notoriously awful film X-Men: The Last Stand, but I won’t hold that against Whedon.  Given that mutation in X-Men comics has long been a metaphor for other things (particularly race and, more recently, homosexuality), this idea of a cure is a strange and terrifying thing.  Think about all those right-wing Christian groups who claim to have "cures" for homosexuality; Whedon's introduction of this idea couldn't be better timed to fit with popular issues.  Going along with the metaphor, Beast has long espoused mutation as a natural and beautiful thing-- a part of life to be treasured.  Back in the 1990s X-Men cartoons, Beast constantly consoled characters about their mutations, pointing to his acceptance of his furry physique and his joy with his abilities in spite of his simian appearance.  Beast seems like he would be the first to speak out against the cure, but Whedon revealed an underutilized side of the character by having him strongly consider it, reflecting on all the hardship he's had to endure for being different.  Ultimately, Wolverine must force Beast to stay true to himself and not accept the cure, as it would send a negative political message about mutation (the sort of message Beast would normally argue against were his head more clear).  This storyline features some excellent growth for Beast, and I’m sorry that it was adapted into such a terrible movie.

Though Whedon has been a part of a few scrapped superhero movie projects (particularly the long-tabled Wonder Woman film that will probably never see the light of day), his best-known foray into live-action superheroics might be “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” starring Neil Patrick Harris as the title character.  Whedon’s two brothers (Zack and Jed-- a writer and a composer, respectively) collaborated on the project, a musical about an aspiring supervillain for whom things just never seem to go right.  Nathan Fillion appears as Captain Hammer, Horrible’s nemesis, and Felicia day plays Penny, the love interest over whom Horrible and Hammer fight.  Also, Big Bang Theory’s Simon Helberg plays Moist, a friend of Dr. Horrible’s with the uncanny ability to make stuff really damp-- I love comedic touches like that.  The show is a fun spoof on superheroes with some really catchy musical numbers (particularly “Brand New Day” and “My Freeze Ray”) and a surprisingly engrossing story, so give it a look.  Of course, Whedon is about to be handed the reins of another superhero franchise, one of the most famous superhero teams of all time.

Wow, that was a really nice segue.

Why I Trust Joss Whedon with My Favorite Superheroes

The Traditional Avengers Roster

Wait.  Now that I think of it, with the exception of Iron Man and maybe Hawkeye, these aren’t my favorite superheroes.  I mean, in the Marvel universe, Spider-Man is the guy to whom I most relate, and I also go on pretty intense X-Men binges from time to time.  I’m not really a Captain America fan, and I’ve always been of the opinion that the Hulk is kind of a one trick pony (get mad, smash, have complicated inner monologue revolving around Bruce Banner’s guilt and lack of control, repeat).  I mean, seriously, I have never in my entire life heard someone say, “Oh man, you have got to read that new Hulk comic!”  He’s just not that versatile a character, so writers keep having to come up with absurd storylines just to keep the big green doofus in publication, which is tragic given how innovative the oldschool live-action Hulk TV series was.  That was a show so treasured by the general public that Marvel remade the Hulk movie to incorporate elements of it, and an otherwise-subpar film received pretty positive reviews just because the opening lab accident looked exactly like the one from the TV show.  At this point, he’s no longer powered by radiation; nostalgia is the only thing keeping the Hulk going.  Go on Wikipedia and search . . . actually, you know what?  You can search any Hulk comic storyline.  In fact, you can probably just type in “Hulk,” and you’re bound to strike stupid plot device gold.  The storylines have all been pretty horrible for at least the past decade-- Planet Hulk, World War Hulk, Red Hulk.  Oof, don’t even get me started on Red Hulk.  Basically, at this point, the writers have just totally given up trying to do anything with the Hulk himself, so they’re just giving everyone he’s ever met super-strength.  It’s unoriginal, uninteresting, and I’m completely flabbergasted that Marvel is still making money off this tripe.  I digress.  Also, I think I just pulled a “Tom smash” on the Hulk.

Black Widow and Hawkeye

Getting back to the Avengers, Thor is pretty cool at least, but I don’t really have an attachment to the character.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Kenneth Branagh does with him this summer, but I’m not really expecting this movie to be on par with Hamlet.

--Addendum (4/29/11): Some of the critics who have been exposed to early showings of Thor have complained that  the movie feels too aimed at children and teenagers.  Heaven forbid that a comicbook-inspired movie about a hammer-wielding space-Viking superhero should be appealing to children and teenagers.--

As for the non-superpowered members of the team, Hawkeye and Black Widow have made a fairly interesting pairing in recent storylines (talking specifically about the Ultimate Marvel continuity and the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon series), but I’m not sure that a film this length will have the time to delve into their relationship.  Really, when it comes down to it, I always thought that the most interesting character in the Avengers was Giant Man, but he’s probably not going to be in this movie, so really, as far as I’m concerned, this is mostly just another Iron Man movie where Tony Stark has a bunch of people with superpowers off of whom he can riff.  In fact, they might as well have Don Cheadle play all the other heroes so that he can be just as underutilized in this as he was in Iron Man 2.

Wow, I just shot down the entire Avengers movie project.  It is in flames at my feet, and the burning wreckage smells nothing like victory.  We need some good news to clear the air.  Oh!  I know!  This movie isn’t being written or directed by Jon Favreau!  All that stuff that I said about underutilized characters and this just being another Iron Man movie-- that’s only true if Jon Favreau is directing it, but we’ve got Joss Whedon, and he may be the only person who can pull off a project like this.  Here’s the way I see it:

The first aired episode of Firefly, entitled “The Train Job,” told us everything we needed to know about every character and their relationships with one another, and that was only a 40-minute TV show.  The Firefly movie (Serenity) worked beautifully as a standalone piece even if viewers did not know all the characters’ backstories.  The reason for this is Whedon’s mastery of character development.  Whedon is an absolute pro at telling a character’s story through his or her actions and personality rather than relying on lengthy expositions about their pasts and origins.  Hell, in that first episode of Buffy, Whedon actually showed us the entire character of Angel just by how he stands.  With an aloof posture, careful lighting, and a slightly offset camera angle, Whedon established an original character’s entire personality within seconds, and that’s from a TV show that I don’t even consider his best work, so imagine what he can do with a team of superheroes.  With the exception of Hawkeye, every character in the Avengers movie will have appeared in a film prior to the project, so Whedon is working with established characters.  The heroes’ origins will have all been explained in their previous films, so Whedon’s sole duty will be to show how they interact as a team.  Think back to Buffy and Xander and Willow and Giles.  Think back to Mal and Zoe and Wash and Jayne.  Joss Whedon knows how to write team dynamics.

The Cast of The Avengers, from left to right: Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Chris Evans (Captain America), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk), and Joss Whedon.

Here’s my proposal for how this movie needs to go down:

As Hawkeye is the only new character appearing in the film, it makes sense to tell the story from his perspective.  Having just been recruited to the team by Nick Fury, Hawkeye will meet the team of Avengers who have been working together for maybe a month or two-- long enough to be a little comfortable with each other, but not so much that all their differences have been worked out.  (Read as: Tony Stark should know just enough about each hero that he can get on their nerves.)  From there, Whedon can take the story wherever it needs to go, but I think that this will be the crucial framing device.  First off, Whedon is great with characters who are still growing into their roles on a team (think Simon or Book from Firefly), so telling the story of the Avengers from an outsider’s perspective makes perfect sense for his direction style and the flow of the story.  Also, some of the strongest character growth in Whedon’s various series occurred after the characters had been working together for a while, so establishing the main heroes as already being familiar with one another (and hinting at past conflicts/adventures without diving into full details) would be a great move.  Lastly, from a more cynical perspective, focusing on a lesser-known character will help Marvel increase comic and toy sales.  Hooray capitalism.

But yeah, taking all this into account, Whedon’s writing and direction style seem like they’ll fit really well with this film, and he is one of the few people out there who already has comic, TV, and movie credits to his name.  The Avengers film is a daunting task, and the film could easily fail.  Still, if there is any director out there can pull this off, it’s Joss Whedon.  With Buffy and Angel and Firefly and Dr. Horrible and Astonishing X-Men all under his belt, there’s no one out there more qualified for the job.

Oh, and I’ve never seen Dollhouse, but I hear good things.  Um . . . that is all.

Back to my vacation.  Hello, beach.