Avengers Fans: Thank TV For That Awesome Movie

[Hytok]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/avengers-joss-whedon_b_1485356.html

Don't worry, the following piece does not contain spoilers for "The
Avengers," which you really should see soon.

There's a cloud to the silver lining of "The Avengers'" record-smashing
success: We've probably lost its screenwriter and director Joss Whedon to
the movies forever.

A $200 million opening weekend. Wow. We're a long way from Sunnydale. But
we're really not, in some ways.

For devoted followers of Whedon's TV shows, the success of this extremely
enjoyable movie is all the more sweet. Everyone who's ever championed
Whedon's work to uncomprehending or wary non-Whedonites probably spent half
this weekend saying (if only in our heads): "See? I told you he was a
frakkin' genius!"

Not only is the insane success of the movie something to revel in, but the
film itself is a celebration of everything we ever loved about Whedon's
small-screen work. The things that he did really well in "Buffy the Vampire
Slayer," "Angel," "Dollhouse," "Firefly" and "Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along
Blog" are the things he did very well in "The Avengers." You'll forgive us
TV aficionados for claiming the movie's success as the triumph of a
sensibility we knew was special from 1997 (when "Buffy" debuted) to 2010
(when "Dollhouse" ended).

If you've seen Whedon's shows, you know that he excels at creating
mismatched groups that haltingly form ad-hoc families -- fractured families
with lots of internal tensions, of course. Most shows (and movies) have
enough trouble creating just one or two compelling characters, but in
Whedon's work, there are usually a half dozen characters, each with his or
her own baggage and agenda. The ways in which each person works out their
personal issues and comes into conflict with, or assists in, the mission of
the group as a whole -- well, those kinds of rich, knotty dynamics drove
the best episodes and arcs in the Whedon canon.

What Whedon proved with the Marvel movie is that he has such refined skills
in this arena that he can line up an array conflicting and ultimately
aligning agendas in a couple of hours, as opposed to a full season of
television.

Sure, it helps that the Marvel heroes were exceptionally well cast and the
previous films did a fair amount of heavy lifting in terms of fleshing out
their personalities, but "The Avengers," for all its exultant clobbering
time, actually deepened most of the characters in important and exciting
ways. That's where Whedon's other area of expertise came into play: He
makes us relate to the specially chosen and the superpowered because he
shows them experiencing self-doubt, self-loathing and fear.

It's astonishing that Whedon was able to do this in two and a half hours,
but he managed to make us care about the dilemmas of half a dozen
superheroes, not to mention those of Loki, whom Tom Hiddleston and the
script managed to make both theatrically imperious and tragically
misguided. I won't go into details, for fear of spoiling the movie for
those who haven't seen it, but suffice to say, each superhero has real
reason to either fear their own powers or be wary of working with the
group. And one of my favorite moments of the smashy-smashy final sequence
shows one of the heroes looking tired and a little bit overcome.

Yes, these men and women are exalted and special, but they're vulnerable
too. That's what makes us love them, and Whedon has always understood that.

It's their reluctance -- the kind of reluctance exhibited by every major
Whedon character -- that makes their sacrifices all the more meaningful.
It's easy to be on a character's side when we know what their choices have
cost them, and what flaws they had to overcome to make a meaningful
contribution to the Big Plan for Battling Evil. We can't relate to being
indestructible or unspeakably powerful (though of course, these movies tap
into those aspirations), but we all know what it's like to have doubts
about our own abilities, to fear letting people down and to wonder whether
we can trust other people (especially others who appear to be every bit as
flawed as ourselves).

For all that, once it gets past some setup and exposition in the early
going, "The Avengers" is a joyful, funny movie, one that shows a fan's
exuberance as it improbably but successfully turns superheroes into
underdogs. What's going to drive this movie's repeat business (and having
polled dozens of friends in the past two days, I've got a feeling the
repeat business is going to be insane) is that it's amusing to watch these
people interact; movie executives may think we just want stuff to blow up
real good, but we'd much rather have a lot of crisp banter, well-timed
dollops of psychological shading plus a goodly amount of explosions. Come
for the biff-bang-pow; stay (and come back) for Captain America's barbed
interactions with Tony Stark.

It's worth noting that Whedon's past as a comic-book nerd and fine
comic-book writer ensured that the dialogue and arc for each character felt
very specific. These weren't generic spandex wearers; the people on screen
were clearly the distilled essences of characters with long, complex
histories. Those backstories were so well understood and synthesized by
Whedon that he was able to launch the first truly engaging big-screen Hulk
and introduce two characters I wasn't familiar with -- Hawkeye and Black
Widow -- but who instantly made strong impressions.

As a years-in-the-planning tent-pole film, "The Avengers" was about as
commercial a project as could be, and yet, with this film, TV fans got what
we have wanted for years: Whedon was left more or less alone to do his
thing. Note to entertainment industry (especially clueless television
executives): That seems to have gone pretty well.

Power can bring its share of headaches -- that's another constant Whedon
theme -- so what will Whedon do with the kind of clout that comes from
having "The Avengers" rake in more than half a billion dollars in its first
couple of weeks? The mind boggles.

Our Joss Whedon, the man whose brain-bending, word-playing, heartbreaking
shows needed constant care, attention and "save this show" campaigns from
legions of TV devotees in order to survive, is an entertainment industry
superhero now. Will he forget about us? I sure hope not.

My personal hope is that he lets a hundred (or maybe a dozen) Whedons
bloom. Let's hope he repays the loyalty of his fans by opening the doors of
the entertainment kingdom to the kind of writers and creators who might not
get a crack at the big time without his backing. Nobody's done more than
Whedon to create and inspire a generation of TV writers; many of the best
scribes working today got their start on Whedonverse programs and most of
the rest were powerfully influenced by his shows. I hope he throws his
weight behind those writers' most impassioned passion projects (as he did
with Drew Goddard's twisty "The Cabin in the Woods"), backs those writers'
pitches, gets their shows on the air and brings more fine entertainment
products to the Web. (Some of that is already in the works, thank goodness.)

Do the weird stuff, unleash the mainstream fare, and please, please, help
bring us the kind of dense, serialized, character-driven narratives that
truly come alive over seasons of television, not two-and-a-half hour films.
So few people know how to execute long, meaningful story arcs really well;
if Whedon doesn't help birth those kinds of projects, online or on the
small screen, it'll be such a criminal waste. And if Whedon himself deigns
to give us a show of his own some day, when he tires of the movie machine,
that's cool too, but I'm not holding my breath on that front.

What's more likely -- and possibly even more valuable, at this point -- is
for Whedon to become the Judd Apatow of genre entertainment. Apatow,
executive producer of "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared," was jerked
around by television for a while, but then, he found enormous success as a
movie titan by translating his worldview and philosophy into a series of
successful films, which are usually written and directed by longtime
collaborators and friends from his comedy posse. Maybe Whedon can do the
same for challenging TV and movies -- not all of it necessarily horror,
supernatural or superhero-related. By doing so, incidentally, Whedon, an
avowed feminist, would undoubtedly increase the number of complex,
ass-kicking ladies on screen and behind the scenes as well.

The funny thing is, if "The Avengers" had come out 20 years ago, it might
not have been as successful as it has been in 2012. Two decades of
influence -- some of it traceable back to Whedon, some of it evolving from
the visions of other bold and idiosyncratic creators -- have made this
moment possible.

For a guy who got kicked around repeatedly by the industry, becoming its
new colossus must be a deeply enjoyable irony. Having spent more than 20
years working in the entertainment trenches and helping infect pop culture
with a distinctive and subversive worldview, Joss Whedon is having his
Moment, the defining experience every hero both dreads and longs for.

Let's hope he slays it.

Follow Maureen Ryan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/moryan
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Jolan Tru
Filippo "Hytok" Simone
http://perestroika.iobloggo.com/