Joss Whedonites gathered at Comic-Con Friday to witness the ten-year reunion of Firefly, Whedon's short-lived space Western cult series that spawned a 2005 feature film and an unusually fervent fan following. The show, Whedon announced, will get a new forthcoming Dark Horse comics continuation that will pick up after the events of previous Firefly/Serenity lore. As for fans of his other genre adaptation... well, he's not quite set on leaping back into the Avengers' director's chair. “I have not come to a decision on directing Avengers 2 yet,” he said. “I am having too much fun with this now.” [Deadline]
The Avengers probably wouldn’t ever find itself compared to The Cabin in the Woods if the two films hadn’t been released within weeks of each other. As it is, moviegoers have had a virtual feast of familiar tics laid before us by writer-director-geek hero Joss Whedon. My Whedon fatigue is well-documented, so I was pleasantly surprised to find some of his schtick to be the best part of The Avengers. It’s not a straight-up assessment of quality -- I liked The Cabin in the Woods better overall than The Avengers – but some of Whedon’s usual crutches worked better under the restrictions of the big-budget blockbuster than they did in the small, indie, meta-horror film, where he could let his id run wild. On the Whedonism scale of distracting to effective, here are four familiar tropes that worked well in The Avengers.
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The Cabin in the Woods is mind-blowing, daring and revelatory – unless you’re a nerdy girl who grew up watching Joss Whedon’s television series. Then it’s just kind of nostalgic and occasionally tiresome, like talking to an ex at a high school reunion. Yes, the movie’s a lot of fun, especially if you didn’t start watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer from its low-budget beginnings. But if, like me, you’re intimately familiar with Whedon’s works and regular crutches, you’re going to see a lot of things you recognize in Cabin, which he co-wrote with longtime collaborator and director Drew Goddard.
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