career injection
Joss Whedon. Loosed from Marvel, what treasures he could craft...
There’s a lot of good sand in this box, I’m not going to lie,” said Joss Whedon about his time in the MCU. Now that he’s left Kevin Feige’s playground, Whedon hardly has an issue with low-running supplies. It’s more a case of options multiplied, a potential crisis of proliferation. Basically, look at all this sand: where do you start building?
If this is cause for excitement among Whedon-watchers, that’s not to knock his Avengers achievements. He made every character count, nailed the Hulk, gave us “Puny god”… If Age Of Ultron wobbled slightly, don’t blame Whedon. When a cocktail stick can’t hold an over-stacked burger together, it doesn’t mean the cocktail stick has failed. It means the burger had fundamental architectural flaws, like a film with more key characters than it could possibly hope to contain.
As with Ultron, so with Whedon. Fans want everything from him – but a little realism may be called for. ‘Browncoats’ would love to see his short-lived sci-fi western Firefly relaunched. After all, if The X-Files and Twin Peaks can reopen… Whedon back on TV would make us cheer too, especially now that his clout might provide insulation from network/studio butt-ins. But could Firefly 2 hit hopes heightened by fan fantasies of what might have been? Sure, Whedon has pulled off the seemingly impossible before, from Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s ‘Hush’ (his sassy verbal skill set tethered to a near-silent TV episode) to the Avengers’ team-play. But why not think beyond his past highs or hiccups? Maybe he could re-indulge his DC curiosities, after his spurned Wonder Woman/Batman bids. Perhaps he could repeat his offer to buy the Terminator rights for $10,000 and give us a decent film?
Or, he could do what we really want. Much as we’d love more of 2008’s lovingly larky Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the tales he hasn’t yet told are the most intriguing. Twist, his new comic about a Victorian female Batman-alike, is one such; Goners, an old, female-led, mystical-humanist horror script, is another. The other is the great unknown. “It’s been way too long since I created a universe,” Whedon said recently, sending music to the ears of anyone dreaming of life beyond reboots/ re-imaginings. Since he’s probably in a position to call some shots, Whedon’s best might be yet to come.