It’s filled with details like that, isn’t it? In the homeless shelter (Act II) while the girl is singing, Dr. Horrible substitutes the dude filling up the plates with soup. And proceeds to hand out empty plates… 
Can you elucidate why you thought it sucked? Honest question, I’m interested in a negative critique. The only other person I know who didn’t like it would only say it sucked and she hates musicals in all forms anyway, so I have to assume the latter influenced the former.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t care much for Felicia Day. She was adequate and filled the role, and her singing is competent, but she didn’t strike me anywhere near as strong as Neil Patrick Harris did. I was looking at his acting with a critical eye from the start, and I can only call it excellent. I was frankly surprised at the level of talent I saw, given Joss’s stated goals; I went into this expecting a real low-budget, Youtube-quality production.
Okay, I feel very foolish now. I did notice that the guy behind the counter was deliberately not pouring the soup in the bowls, but didn’t clue in about the substitution or that it was Doc Horrible with a moustache.
I thought it was great. The ending was sad- but remember, we’re sympathizing with the bad guy. He’s a likable underdog, but he’s also a self proclamed villain who wants to rob banks, and take over the world. Hammer is a jerk and an idiot, but he is really a hero (at least until he tries to execute Dr. H). That’s why the ending hits so hard- our sympathies are misplaced. Hammer and Horrible both lose.
Don’t beat yourself up about it. It is a cunning disguise! :dubious:
Well, yeah, the only hero in the piece is the girl who’s working to make the world a better place the old-fashioned non-heroic/non-super villain way, and she dies .
My room mate just pointed that out to me this morning :smack:
Am I the only one who gets the idea that the Captain was literally, not just figuratively, castrated by that explosion? :eek:
I have to say, I think the reason the whole thing works is NPH’s performance (though Nathan Fillion works quite well as a bubble-headed strongman!).
I can’t quite understand what he’s singing, is it “Why?”
“Way” - it’s the last word of the song he was about to sing it when he was frozen
I totally though he was going to sing heart! For no reason at all. No wonder I didn’t understand the word. Silly brain.
Huh, we thought it was “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait!” as in wait a second while I do my heroic stuff here.
Nope, definitely “way” - 'cause he’s singing about everyone’s a hero “in his own way”
I think we just found a new Fox News slogan: It’s not enough to bash in heads, we have to bash in minds as well.
I’ve watched everything Whedon’s done, so it dawned on me somewhere during Act III that she wasn’t going to make it. She was so willfully simple that she couldn’t/wouldn’t see what a phony Captain Hammer was, and blind faith and naivete are as much a weakness as narcissistic thuggery or trying to change the world through supervillainy. Thematically, it made sense that she would get caught in some metaphorical crossfire, and Hammer and Horrible both would be partly responsible. Being a bad guy won’t be rewarded.
Even after she was leaving because Hammer told everyone they’d “totally had sex,” she still died believing that he would save him. She was sweet, but too stupid to live. Compare her to Chanterelle/Lily/Ann from Buffy/Angel, who started out naive and stupid and eventually became an advocate for the homeless while maintaining an honest sense of reality.
I was expecting something more like the original Monty Python shows. This thing had a total runtime of about 45 minutes and had about six locations, a crew of ~30, and had a special effects shop do some work on it. I guess this is “low-budget” compared to what Whedon has been working with on shows like Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, but a crew of 30, all probably union, and fairly big name performers(NPH primarily) I’m thinking he put probably eight to ten times the budget which typically goes into a community theatre production. It was about what I would expect from the people involved, who are good entertainers and storytellers, and I think that made a much bigger difference than the budget.
The music was pretty bare-bones though. The lyrics were good, but, having watched it once, the music seemed mostly a few vamps repeated almost endlessly. No complex melodies or harmonies, and while they lyrics seem Sondheim-esque the music is not their equal.
Enjoy,
Steven
Does anyone else think he’s called the Hammer because he’s a Ham?
or because he’s a tool?
In an interview, Whedon said the budget was in the ‘low six figures’. So somewhere above $100,000 and under $500,000.
For that kind of money, if they had 30 people working on it plus the need to rent the backlot at Paramount and build props and such, I imagine everyone worked for scale.
Even $500,000 is chump change in Hollywood. Your average TV show costs 1.5 to 2 million dollars per episode.
I disagree, to a point. First, I wouldn’t compare it to Sondheim - that’s a pretty high bar. I might compare it to Andrew Lloyd Weber, though - and that song with Penny and Dr. Horrible singing different lyrics to the same melody was brilliant.
I liked it a lot, and I’m sort of anti-Whedon (not because I necessarily find his stuff bad–the few episodes of Buffy I’ve watched were pretty good–but because I get tired of his often rather annoying fan following (no offense to any Doper fans)). Anyway…I have a question but I have to put the whole thing in a spoiler box since it concerns the ending.
A LiveJournal friend of mine, a Whedon fan and fairly hardcore feminist, was complaining that she didn’t like the ending because she thought Whedon could do better than “fridging.” I didn’t know this term, so I had to look it up–apparently, it’s when a superhero’s female love interest gets killed (named after one famous incident where the hero’s girlfriend was murdered and put in his refrigerator). Has anyone else ever heard this term? Is it a hardcore feminist idea, a fandom idea, a bit of both, or more mainstream and I just managed to miss it? I admit I was a little annoyed that she died, but not for that reason. I just thought it was kind of a cheap way out.
winterhawk, it’s a bit of both. There’s the concept of being “fridged” which doesn’t necessarily relate to the hero’s girlfriend, but there’s also the more specific complaint that women in comics often tend to exist only to be victimized by the villains, and give the hero a motivation for stopping them.
Brilliantly subverted, incidentally, in this webcomic.