How do you all feel about Whedon lately?

[darthkush]

Joss Whedon has and may always be, my favorite television writer of all time and after Buffy/Angel/Firefly/Dollhouse all ended, I never stopped being a fan. I followed most of the revamped Buffy/Angel comics they put out a few years ago(season 8 and Angel:after the fall, etc.) for awhile. I read all of Joss's X-Men stuff from the mid 2000's and I, like many of you, was downright proud and elated with his work in the MCU with his two Avengers films. I thought his Much Ado about Nothing flick was a little dry for my taste(though the acting was pretty good and I love Amy and Alexis in most anything) but overall I've been pleased with his output.

Let's look at the past year. There's all the "dirt" that came out in that article written about his ex-wife. There's the leaked aborted Wonder Woman script that many hated. And Finally, there's his work on Justice League which some seem to think makes the film worse.

What do you think of Joss now? Are you looking forward to his Batgirl(if it actually gets made)? Have you stopped being a fan due to any of the recent controversies surrounding him?

For a board with his name on it, I thought it might be nice to start some conversation about the man himself and where his fanbase currently is at with everything.

Personally, I'm still a huge fan. Infedility does not an bad writer/director make. I would also argue that although what I've read of his Wonder Woman wasn't great or as good as what was actually released, it was not the abomination and slap in the face of females some made it out to be. As for Justice League, I'm convinced that everything related to a certain big blue boyscout that was FINALLY right, was due to him so for that, I think he deserves a round of applause.

In short, my opinion of him hasn't changed much.

What say you guys/gals?

 

[C-Brock]

Per your title, we're basing this on feelz, so I feel that he is a ******... But I really do enjoy many of his creative projects.

 

[Weyland426]

There are many creators who make amazing things and are still *******s. The fact that they are not good people shouldn't change your feelings on the art they have produced or the properties they created that you have come to love. Whedon made mistakes, we all do. we are human. It doesn't make it right but he has still made some valuable contributions to modern pop culture and that should not be tarnished in any way.

 

[darthviper107]

It does bother me about him cheating on his wife and how that relates to how he's represented himself, but I still like his work. For Justice League from what I can see the changes he made helped to improve it. Batgirl will probably be fantastic, and I still enjoy Firefly/Serenity very much.

 

[karamazov80]

His personal behaviors don't factor into my opinions of the guy at all. Unless he molests young children or engages in some other kind of truly heinous act, then I'll let the work speak for itself. And on that mark, he's always been hit-and-miss. But on balance I like his work, and appreciate what he brings. His approach isn't something I am always in the mood for, but it has its time and place. He didn't have a lot to work with with JL. The first Avengers film was really good. I've actually grown to appreciate it more over time, which is probably the opposite of most opinions, given how strong the excitement was at the time of release. Ultron was not good, but I've gotta figure the studio played a significant role in that, and he might have also been in a Nolan-type situation, where he was contractually obligated, but was really creatively done and ready to move onto something else.

I hope he does get Batgirl, because I think he's got skills, and the clout to be able to negotiate well with the producers at WB. But chances are they'll react negatively, and unfairly to what he's being blamed for with Justice League and will instead make another, worse move for all involved.

If they want to put a woman at the helm instead of him, calling him a hypocrite for this or that reason, then that's a political move, but one I can understand. Trying to say that any man can speak for a woman is pretty ridiculous on a certain level. But as a man who consumes entertainment. . .it works for me when Whedon tries this (see: Buffy).

 

[a-dev]

I still remember him criticising Jurassic World for outdated female characterisation and then himself getting slammed for how Black Widow was written in Age of Ultron the very same year. I think of his Anita Sarkessian feminist alliance and then the revelations from his ex-wife that he was basically a player, using his reputation and position to get some. So I don't know if I can take him seriously anymore.

That said I still love Avengers 1. I haven't seen Buffy, Angel and Firefly in many years but I watched youtube clips to jog my memory just recently and rather enjoyed them. Reckon I'd still like those shows overall. Serenity I watched last year I think - still pretty good. Age of Ultron is passable but I was hoping for better. Haven't seen Justice League but odds are I wouldn't have liked it with or without Whedon's involvement.

 

[Star Puffs]

Creativity and high-mindedness have no discernible correlation with being a good person in my experience.

Whendon has definitely shown an ugly side in recent years, especially after a certain election result.

Creatively, he sort of lost me years ago with the Dawn-Xander coupling in "Buffy Season 8." My reaction was "eew, gross," one Nicholas Brendan (a man with problems of his own) shared, when asked about that at Emerald City Comic Con.

 

[Chakor]

Hmmm... What to say.

I don't judge anyone based on their political views. I was never really a fan of Whedon prior to Avengers 1 (one of my top 10 favorite movies), but I do also give him credit for writing some of the better Roseanne episodes. No matter how unimpressed I was with AoU or how shocked I was by his Mother's Day tweet, I'll still give the man credit when credit is due.

 

[a-dev]

Creativity and high-mindedness have no discernible correlation with being a good person in my experience.

Whendon has definitely shown an ugly side in recent years, especially after a certain election result.

Creatively, he sort of lost me years ago with the Dawn-Xander coupling in "Buffy Season 8." My reaction was "eew, gross," one Nicholas Brendan (a man with problems of his own) shared, when asked about that at Emerald City Comic Con.

What age would Dawn have been in ''season 8''? But yeah, ages aside, I thought they had more of a sibling dynamic in the show.

 

[davejames]

I definitely have much less respect for him as a person now, but the fact he's another sleazy Hollywood producer cheating on his wife isn't enough yet to keep me from still enjoying his work, or loving the hell out of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. And I'll always be a huge fan of his clever storytelling and quippy dialogue (even if I didn't think it was a good fit for Justice League or the DCEU at all).

 

[Stryker2011]

My advice is don’t pay attention to the personal lives of anyone in the entertainment industry. I mean, really, who gives a **** what these people do in their personal lives? As a former private investigator I can tell you, cheating is nothing new for the human race; it’s sad and unfortunate, but my experience has taught me that most people are basically ****-heels deep down, and it takes tremendous effort for the majority not to behave like complete a-holes one way or another. As to his creative talents, everyone has bad days, and I don’t know, or care, what his contributions to JL were, but what I do know (imho) is that Zac Snyder has an interesting visual style, but he’s a crap director who makes movies that appeal to those who haven’t seen enough good movies to know when they’ve seen a bad one. I imagine Whedon could only do so much with the original mess created by Snyder. WB needs to turn the reigns over to Patty Jenkins and send Snyder packing for good.

 

[Vetinari]

Whedon's personal issues were only a sad (re)confirmation of what I've long suspected of the man frankly. That infamous speech he gave at a feminist rally where he had the affront to tell them all that feminism was the wrong word to use wasn't even the first nail in the coffin, and I say that as someone who is largely an enthusiastic fan of much of his work and will still happily rewatch Buffy, Angel, Firefly, the Avengers etc.

Unfortunately, it's his disquieting approach to certain topics in his work that first started putting me off the guy.

As I've heard it put elsewhere, what he does was a big deal in the 90s, and made quite a jump forward for storytelling, and for all that people on this forum like to put the blinkers on, the representation of female characters on screen. But he hasn't moved on since then.

The unsettling stuff that put me off him, (but not in any moral will-never-buy-his-work-again outrage way, it's fiction) is the way that he seemed determined to guiltily undermine his own feminist label in increasingly awkward ways.

There's hints of the rot towards the end of Buffy/Angel, (several, it isn't rape if a woman does it incidents, even ignoring Slayer strength) in hindsight Firefly has its share of incredibly problematic moments (and I've got to admit I was never so guiltily relieved that a show was canned early as when I found out about the planned Inara-rape plot with Mal barging into her room afterwards even though she didn't want him there).

It was Dollhouse, which I stuck with to the bitter end, that really had me wondering about the guy. (And yes I understand that the topic the show is handling is a thorny one at the best of times.) The gist and monstrousness of the scenario weren't handled perfectly, but to be fair that's always difficult when you aren't doing a 'seriously serious' drama (and we all know how bone dry they can be). No, it was the whole actual-rape (as opposed to the equally awful mind-rape scenario the show confronted us with and then in a misstep seemed to revel in for half a series before actually moving the plot forward) Priya-kidnap subplot that somehow twisted everything so that we were supposed to focus on and feel bad for the guy who had quite literally enabled the whole awful scenario that had me going Wtf. The episode about a woman having her life systematically ruined spent more time on the feelings of the dude who let it happen than on her. We skipped the aftermath by having him erase her again.

Unfortunately for all that I will always enjoy his work, in most of his stuff there are always little moments of (hopefully unintentional) unpleasantness about the characters agency/guilt/who gets blamed/who we are or aren't supposed to sympathise with or condemn, that don't sit well with me.

I could go into details, but I'm sure that every moment I could list that has me squirming awkwardly, likely has people willing to defend it and I don't really want to start an argument since the actual work isn't really the discussion here.

Despite all of the above, I remain a fan of the majority of his output. Though his self-flagellating probing of how distinctly awful he can make certain moments without anyone calling him on it can be rather tiring when you're only looking for a dose of Buffy, or the Avengers.

 

[Sweet Rabbit]

Whedon’s actions don’t bother me as much as the others

 

[stvn1974]

I don't care about the wife cheating stuff. I agree with his political views and will always love Buffy, Angel and Firefly/Serenity. I wish he would stop doing projects based on other people creations like working with Marvel and DC and create his own things.

 

[darthkush]

Hmm...glad I made the thread. Very interesting indeed.

Question? What did Whedon say on his mother's day tweet? Also, what is his political affiliation? I always assumed he was on the far left from what I've heard but is there something more specific that he labels himself as?

Another pattern I noticed in the responses is the condemnation of his adultery. To that point, I will ask this...have any of you ever cheated on a wife/girlfriend/husband/significant other before? Okay, a silent show of hands probably but here's where it gets interesting...how many of you cheated on said other because you felt they didn't love you? Or they didn't understand you? OR what if you cheated for selfish reasons but you realized the error of your ways and you apologized to your loved one and they forgave you? Of maybe you never told them but you "learned your lesson" and you vowed to never do it again as you realized what you had done. The point I'm trying to make is that cheating on someone doesn't automatically make you an evil butthole.I've cheated on someone. I'm not proud of it, but it happened, I learned from it and I moved forward with my life. Ultimately I went back to that person(my significant other, not my mistress) more devoted and a more learned person). Now from what we've heard, Whedon may've been taking advantage of his being a celebrity but there's no information about sexual assault or non consensual anything. These women were into him for one reason or another. His flaw was that he did it while he was married, not necessarily that he did it, as these were adult consensual relationships.

Other points I want hit on specifically are the Dawn/Xander thing and the Spike/Buffy rape thing. I do remember being creeped out a bit by Dawn and Xander coupling but at the same time....it's not incredibly unrealistic. I always got the brother/sister vibe too but people DO change and DO get older and it IS possible and I'm not sure it says anything weird about Whedon and his views on relationships. As for the Spike/Buffy rape thing, I do think THAT scene was rape but I don't think Whedon is trying to gloss over this or try to say Spike is okay for doing that. I think what happened there is the character of Buffy has such an affection for Spike that she just eventually forgave him and moved on. It's hard for us to fathom forgiving someone for something like this but it DOES happen for better or worse. My wife has a coworker who was married to a man who did just....unspeakable things and yet....right or wrong, they keep getting back together. I believe the woman has definite issues but I don't know her that well. Perhaps there really is SOMETHING there that I and those who are around her can not say. I'm not saying it's right but merely that it IS. It exist.

When Buffy was airing, I despised Buffy/Spike's coupling. Now...I totally get it. I know why Buffy used him. I know why their relationship was unhealthy beyond "spike is evil and he shouldn't be with buffy" or whatever and yet, I also see all the good parts of it too and what he meant to her and what she meant to him. I was in my teens when Buffy aired. I'm 34 now. Age does make a difference.

 

[Yosituna]

I'm with Vetinari on this one...I still enjoy most of his work, and Buffy will always be one of the absolute formative series that shaped who I am, but there's always been some seriously creepy, albeit minor, undertones with his treatment of certain women characters, and some definite off-notes in his public presentation of himself as a feminist, so it wasn't quite as much of a surprise as it should have been when it came out.

The revelation of his affairs and how he treated his wife were the worst part to me. Honestly, it's not so much the cheating itself as a) the lying about it to his wife, when she got suspicious, to the point of gaslighting, b) the fact that he was having affairs, albeit consensual ones, with considerably younger women where he was their boss, which raises some serious power dynamic issues, and c) some of the absolutely creepy quotes from his text messages to his wife, which totally rang true to Whedon's writing style but also exposed some serious squick in the way he seemingly thinks about the world (basically, there seemed to be a lot of seeing hot young women as objects, specifically reward objects for "making it").

...And then I guess there's d) doing all this while under the guise of "hey guys, aren't I a super-awesome male feminist?"

So basically, I still enjoy the media he produces, mostly, but I definitely don't think about him as a writing role model anymore the way younger me did back in the day.

 

[devilof76]

I never watched any of his work pre-Firefly, which had the most Olympian cast of any ensemble television, ever. It bummed me out to learn of his social/moral beliefs afterwards because those characters would be impossible in his ideal world (or simply hounded into oblivion by his Alliance).

It's unfortunate that he's never gotten out from under the wreckage of his own philosophy. I hope some glimmer of that old heroism turns up when I get around to watching Justice League.

 

[ShadowX81]

Its kind of sickening how we seem to be normalizing adultery in this thread. Does it happen sometimes? Yes. But we should still treat it as the massive moral failing that it is, rather than trying to remove the stigma that can at the very least serve as an added deterrent to doing it. People may fail, but that doesn't mean it is ok to do so.

 

[Stryker2011]

In the entertainment industries, whether TV and film, sports, or music... adultery is so common, it IS “normal”. I don’t think anyone is saying he isn’t a s$&t-bag for cheating on his wife... he is. My experiences with it made up 65% of my business, spread out equally between the sexes, and it’s a truly selfish, thoughtless thing for anyone to do to someone they claim to love. I’ve seen it destroy people and families, a couple clients were so distraught they ended up taking their own lives (personally, I thought they should have taken the lives of their cheating spouse instead, but that’s just me... I’m not a forgiving person).
If how the self-absorbed a-holes in the entertainment industry behaved in “real life” affected me so deeply on a personal level that I could no longer enjoy their creative works... I’d never buy another CD, go to movies, watch TV, or watch a game. My mom is one of those people... she won’t watch anything with Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie because of “what they did to Jennifer Aniston”. Like she knows her personally. I despise Tom Cruise, George Clooney and Matt Damon as people, but I’m not going to stop watching their movies (unless TC makes another crap movie like The Mummy ever again). Anyway... I think the point is... It doesn’t come as a shock to... well, anyone, really... that JW is a cheating piece of s*$t. Welcome to Hollywood.

 

[melkorjunior]

I think he's a hypocrite, a *********, and, lately, a hack. Check out the "Flash falling into Wonder Woman's cleavage" bit in Justice League for Whedon copying his own ill-conceived bit from Age of Ultron when Banner did the same thing with Black Widow--that's hack writing at its best. And it isn't just that he cheated on his wife repeatedly that makes me think he's a hypocrite and a *********, it's the way he blamed the patriarchy for it in his letter to her--and also the fact that he was having affairs with much younger women who were all his employees.