News out of Comic Con SD today indicates that Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer helmer, Joss Whedon, is set to direct the upcoming Avengers movie, Entertainment Weekly reports. The nerd in me is excited, but it’s also cautiously raising it’s eyebrows (when around Whedon, you want to cautiously raise your eyebrows, otherwise he might mistake you for a transforming vampire and have you staked).
Yes, Whedon is responsible for some well-done nerditity with his sci-fi story-telling, but there seems to also be a part of him that wants to appeal to pre/post pubescent girls, a demographic that just doesn’t work for the geek demographic you’re selling to and the actor load that’s lined up. Okay, maybe X-Men tapped into that some of that younger lady appeal with Hugh Jackman and James Marsden, but here’s the thing. Who’ve we got for the Avenger’s line-up? Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., Ed Norton (maybe?), Chris Hemsworth (Kirk’s dad in Star Trek), and Chris Evans (Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four). Sure, some of these guys are dream-boaty, but not to the Buffy crowd.
That aside? Whedon’s a phenomenal story-teller, giving otherwise dry, bloated characters a sense of realness. Is Tony aka Iron Man about to hit the sauce super-hard? Will an out-of-time, maladjusted Captain America beat the living snot out of some dude for coming on to him? Will a useless Bruce Banner unleash the Hulk so that his over-funded team-mates have something to hit? What about Henry Pym, are we going to see him break his wife’s face in celluloid? How far are we taking this Whedon?
The director is a self-professed feminist, who does terrible things to his female characters, in order to have them drag themselves up by their beat-up boot heels. Considering that the line-up of the Avengers doesn’t include very many women, generally, that we’ll definitely have The Wasp, and that yeah, her husband’s probably going to hit her. Other qualifiers for the position of team chicks include: Black Widow (which is a STRONG possibility, being established in IM2), Scarlet Witch (less so, she didn’t appear in the X-Men movies…did she?), She-Hulk (fuck that green snatched two-d character), Hellcat (who?), and Jessica Jones AKA Ms. Marvel, who’s a fan favorite, but obscure enough for the studios to just say “no,” as though her outfit were made of marijuana.
They say to not judge a book by it’s cover, and that’s probably doubly so when that book hasn’t even been written yet, so I’m going to reserve judgment until I see a trailer. Then we’ll judge galore. Until then, have a great weekend, true believers.
-Excelsior! (Eh? See what I did there?)