I really, really don't understand that in an established multiverse
I mean, as far as the films go, the idea of there being a multiverse within the continuity of the DCEU series was not "established" as of 2017.
where it's all crossed over and everyone knows anything can happen in a multiverse, the mere existence of a "grimdark" DC universe where bad things happen and Jimmy Olsen died and life is a struggle is so repellent? How's it different to the crapsack universe Wild Beard Riker came from in "Parallels"? Christopher Reeve Superman is still out there in his happy smiley universe where nobody asks difficult questions about the implications of Superman.
I would say that a hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars, promoted-and-released-to-millions blockbuster movie has a far, far,
far more significant impact on audiences, particularly on children, than a random episode of one TV show, or a one-shot alternate continuity comic book that only a small percentage of the motion picture audience reads.
It's ironic. Batman is normally the easiest DC character to write but I think that he chafes against Joss Whedon's plucky style. I mean, Angel was kind of similar as a brooding dark avenger but Whedon often subverted that by making him act like a total dork. But then, Whedon had full control over the tone of Angel and was able to balance his brooding & dorky natures over the course of 110 episodes.
There were certainly similarities, but I would say at least one major difference is that Angel has a sense of humor but the most compelling versions of Batman are ones where he can't tell a joke to save his life because that's just not how his brain works.
Also, we should bear in mind that while Joss was ultimately in charge, he delegated most of the day-to-day showrunning of
Angel first to David Greenwalt and then to Jeffrey Bell -- especially during the 2002-2003 season, when he had three different shows in production (
Buffy season seven on UPN,
Angel season four on the WB, and
Firefly on Fox). That's part of why it is so bizarre to me that he was so angry at Charisma Carpenter for getting pregnant -- not
just because a decent human being (let alone a feminist) shouldn't be angry at his employee for getting pregnant and should never retaliate against her for that... but also because, fuck, Joss, shouldn't you be concentrating on
Firefly or something? Maye focus on saving
Buffy S7 from its meandering plotless mess of a season? Why do you
give a fuck when you barely even
do anything on
Angel?
(In fairness, who knows if day-to-day showrunner Jeffrey Bell was any better to Carpenter?)
Funny bit of trivia: Ben Affleck had a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo as a high school basketball player in the very first movie that Joss Whedon worked on, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992). And then he headlined what may well end up being Whedon's final movie 25 years later. It's weird how things come full circle sometimes. Whedon's primary complaint about the Buffy movie was that his script had been bowdlerized by someone who didn't understand the material. Then he ends up doing the exact same thing to Chris Terrio's script.
I mean, I don't think Whedon "didn't understand" the material. I think he
rejected the material as low-quality and tried to restructure what he could. The end result absolutely did not work, but I think this is more a matter of Whedon thinking that Terrio's script and Snyder's direction was bad, not a matter of lacking an understanding. This seems consistent with Fisher's characterizing Whedon as talking shit about the Snyder version of the film in the course of his abusive episodes.
Kinda reminds me of the discussions surrounding Ghostbusters (2016). There's the people who hate it and the people who say that, if you hate it, you're a sexist. But I never hear people actually defending it as a good movie (beyond the occasional, "I liked it fine.").
It was a fun movie. I really don't see what there is to "hate" it for. It's not the stroke of brilliance the original was, but it was, say, better than
Ghostbusters 2.
I can see how, if someone doesn't like what Snyder did with the previous movies,
Justice League at least looks
salvageable compared to the other two. It's the most clear-cut instance of Cavill's Superman really feeling like Superman. Still, it's a pretty mediocre movie. It reminds me of
Fantastic Four (2005). It just kinda lurches around inoffensively but never seems to have a good reason for doing what it's doing besides, "Well, isn't this what usually happens in superhero movies?"
Yeah, that about sums it up.
Sci said:
And again, to be clear: My enjoyment of Whedon's work does not mean I think Whedon is a good person or that he should continue to have a career. I think his career should be over; he can spend the rest of his life idling away in his McMansion as far as I'm concerned.
That would be a shame. I still think that he's a once-in-a-generation talent and I hope that he at least continues to write.
I mean, I think he
was a once-in-a-generation talent. But if you look at his output, really nothing he's done since
The Avengers in 2012 has reached the levels of quality he used to achieve.
Much Ado was fun but honestly Denisof didn't turn in nearly as strong a performance as he should have -- Amy Acker was carrying that movie.
In Your Eyes started out strong but falls apart in the third act, and frankly feels completely incongruous in the era of cell phones (he wrote it in the early 90s and apparently never updated it).
Avengers: Age of Ultron was better than its critics tend to claim, but it certainly didn't reach either the "awesome fun" heights of
The Avengers nor the "holy shit this is so well-written" heights of his best
Buffy/Angel/Firefly-era scripts. His pilot for
Agents of SHIELD was fun but hardly amazing. His cut of
Justice League was better than Snyder's stuff but not truly
good. He couldn't get himself together to write
Batgirl. Somewhere along the line, something happened to Whedon's output.
Honestly I think it's at least in part a result of his divorce -- he and Kai Cole split around the time of
The Avengers. I don't know if she was some kind of uncredited co-creator, or if she was an uncredited editor/sounding board for him, or if just the fact of their relationship put him into a mental place to be a good writer, but I strongly suspect their divorce is a major factor in the decline in quality of his work.
Secondly...
I'm sorry, but abusers should not be rewarded just because of talent. They just shouldn't. His abuse directly led to Charisma Carpenter developing a medical condition she
still struggles with. He did
something so inappropriate with Michelle Trachtenberg that she says he wasn't allowed to be alone with a room in her anymore. (Whether that was some sort of sexual predation or just plain ol' emotional abuse, we don't know.) He bragged about emotionally abusing female writers. He physically shoved James Marsters up against a wall because he was pissed that Spike had become popular. He tried to order a stunt coordinator and stunt double for SMG to break up (who the hell
does that??). According to
Variety this past week, he openly carried on affairs with his female employees and thereby created a hostile work environment for women. He engaged in relgious discrimination against Carpenter and then fired her for getting pregnant, which is literally textbook retaliation. It's not even any
one thing, it's
all of the things combined.
And
every time a studio hires Joss Whedon for a job, they're by definition
not hiring someone else for that job. It's a zero-sum game that goes into Whedon's favor. And it's particularly galling that a studio would hire Whedon, after discovering all of his misogynistic abuse, rather than give a shot to a woman creator. Why should an abusive misogynist get a job instead of a member of the community he abused?
Plus, now that his flaws are out in the open like this, it shouldn't be too hard for his coworkers to tell him to f--- off if he steps out of line.
You try telling the boss to shut the fuck up. See how well that works out for you. Joss Whedon abused his position of power over numerous people who depended on him economically, and that kind of inequality does not just go away.
Roman Polanski continued to have a celebrated career for decades even though everyone knew that he was a fugitive rapist.
Roman Polanski is a monster with a history of stalking and sexually preying upon multiple underage girls. Check out the episode on Roman Polanski after Sharon Tate's murder from film historian Karina Longworth's podcast
You Must Remember This; her episode on Polanski really sheds light on his status as a pedophile and predator. Roman Polanski should have gone to prison, and he should never, ever have been allowed behind a camera after he became a sexual predator.
Joss Whedon just insulted a bunch of people.
That is a grossly inaccurate white-washing of the extent of his abusive behavior.
That's not a good thing to do but I think that we need some perspective between criminal & non-criminal offenses.
I never called for Whedon to be imprisoned! I said his career should be over. Saying that a multi-millionaire shouldn't get hired anymore is not the same thing as saying he ought to be incarcerated. Sheesh.
I do worry about the moral health of a society that made Joker the 3rd highest grossing DC movie given that the story is fundamentally immoral. Even in a movie like Suicide Squad, they may be criminals but they're repentant criminals or "criminals with a code." They're bad people but they still exhibit virtues like loyalty & bravery and ultimately save the world. In Joker, he's just a depressed guy who is given added reasons to become more depressed & angry until he eventually murders people and inspires a riot that murders dozens more.
I'm with you on the depiction of Superman, but I'm not so sure about
Joker. I haven't seen
Joker yet, but I've read a fair number of folks who view the film as a warning about the undesirable consequences of economic inequality and the lack of a social safety net. I think there's artistic and moral value in studying evil through art, and particularly in studying how society functions in ways that are evil and thereby reproduces other evils it hypocritically condemns. I don't think any of that is the same thing as celebrating or endorsing evil per se.
Look at films like Pirates of the Caribbean, celebrating a lifestyle of debauchery, drunkenness and immorality or Fast and the Furious celebrating fighting against the law.
Or, alternatively, both series are actually celebrating the ability of people with courage to defy oppressive and morally illegitimate social structures.
