Very good article. Love the detail on excluded scenes and the insights into some of Whedon's working methods and the "executive" direction he was given. (Hope he's not making it all up!)

EffulGentleman | April 30, 12:17 CET

This is one of the better Joss articles that have been popping up of late. If not, the best.

Btw the magazine artwork for the article can be found here and here.

Simon | April 30, 13:05 CET

Good article. Memo to self: Don't suggest a "I'm getting too old for this shit" line if I get a job working for Joss. Though I'd love to see what he could could have done with it. And they weren't going to have Scarlett? WTF?
And did we know about the uncredited rewrite for Captain America? I've been trying to avoid spoilers so I may have missed that.


Meanwhile, unrelated to this article, Which Avenger are you?

zz9 | April 30, 13:31 CET

The Captain America rewrite did get mentioned here.

Simon | April 30, 13:35 CET

Yeah, that was a really enjoyable read. Thanks. (Though it always makes me sad when people shrug off Angel as way less important than Buffy, even if it's true.)

skittledog | April 30, 13:44 CET

Definitely a fun read.
This bit cracked me up:
Then the screen flickers to black. “Sorry, Joss,” says a young woman from the back of the room. “Technical difficulty.”

Whedon stands up from his couch, turns around, extends his right arm, and says—in a pretty decent Darth Vader voice actually—”You have failed me for the last time!”

OneTeV | April 30, 14:35 CET

1. REALLY liked this article. It was well written, intelligent, I think got the context of all Joss's projects completely right. I don't think I've ever seen that happen before.

2. RE Dollhouse:

"He wanted to do a show that would deconstruct identity and relationships and socialization …" If he had just stopped there, this would have been plenty of material for a good, successful, and more mainstream show. I wonder what it would have been like...? "...and celebrate human perversion." Adding this part automatically made it a premium cable story.

3. "And his work was all just so … intellectual." *giggles* I LOVE that this statement was made about stories with vampires, a hellmouth, other dimensions, spaceships, and wonderflonium.

4. "...Wastelanders, which Whedon describes as “a hate letter to the human race wrapped in a love story." *sigh* Another Joss project I won't be viewing. I just can't get on this bus with him. This is an area where we just have a fundamental disagreement in viewpoint. I'm really glad Much Ado is coming out. And I'm also looking forward to In Your Eyes. Otherwise, I'd be really worried that he wouldn't be telling stories that I wanted to experience any longer.

BreathesStory | April 30, 15:01 CET

Great article.


That had me cracking up.



I need to see this. Now!

Kaan | April 30, 15:30 CET

Oh, I thought this was very good article, one of the best of the many coming out. But I was left- being a glass half empty kind of guy- with this sense of "be careful what you wish for" kind of feeling. Joss making it big here means he has to play by others' rules- for example, and not having seen the film yet- I tend to doubt anyone important died, since they will be needed for all the coming sequels, tie-ins and so on. Disney almost does not care how well the movie does (and it will do very well indeed) but cares more about all the ways it can monetize this- clothes, backpacks, lunch boxes, sequel movies, tie-ins with Burger King and McDonald's, rides at Disneyland, and so on and so forth. Joss may not be able to do exactly what he wants moving forward as a result. Sad sigh...

Dana5140 | April 30, 16:26 CET

LOVE this quote. Also, a word I hadn't seen before: exegetical. Familiar with its root, but never seen this variant until today. New words are fun!

Tin Ear Tom | April 30, 18:26 CET

"The Ds are not 3" made me laugh.

Sunfire | April 30, 19:23 CET

The time machine line was my favorite - just showing how he took his job as director and screenwriter seriously, even in post-production to call out a bad idea for a filler line for what it was. A filler line.

spidyredneckjedi | April 30, 22:01 CET

wikipedia has the full plot online now....

Dana5140 | April 30, 22:44 CET

I'm still bothered by that whole "Firefly was a flop with a tiny audience" meme. Firefly was screwed by the network and cancelled before more than nine people had a chance to discover it. The fact that it still continues to build an audience says something about what it could have become given half a chance.

barboo | May 01, 01:12 CET

I agree barboo, if Fox had run the pilot first, and then allowed the show to be seen (Firefly was preempted for Baseball quite a few times, with me staying up until midnight, calling the local Fox affiliate asking if they would run the show AFTER the game), then I think it would have been a hit (easily 90% of my friends and family LOVED the DVDs).

embers | May 01, 03:18 CET