Not at all. Let’s put it this way: It’s certainly possible to both detest Halle Berry as an actress and find Whedon to be an overrated hack. So, to be clear: I loathe both the actress and the screenwriter.
I haven’t parsed every single line of dialog the man’s ever written (perish the though; ::shudders:: ). But I guess you’re saying (via your rhetorical question) that when Whedon actually does have control over a given project, he’s quick to realize when he’s written shite and, therefore, magically makes it go away? After he first put it on the page to be used in the movie/TV show? Is that what you’re saying?
No, what he’s arguing is that if Joss Wheldon writes a line that only works if it is said sarcastically, or dismissively, or whatever, he’d correct the actor if they say it the wrong way.
A line from the first X-Men movie, said by Storm as she zaps Toad, something along the lines of:
“Do you know what happens to a toad that’s struck by lightning?” <zap> “The same thing that happens to anything else.”
Actually the Hulk is a relatively minor character to the overall history of the Avengers. He was there at the very beginning but he left almost immediately. He certainly is not a core member of the group.
Here’s the basic history. In 1963, Loki (Thor’s brother) wanted to trick Thor and the Hulk into a fight. He set up the Hulk so Thor would attack him. But three other heroes, Iron Man, the Wasp, and Henry Pym were in the neighbourhood and joined in with Thor. They quickly realized the Hulk was just a fall guy for Loki. The five of them decided to form a group - ie the Avengers (although nobody’s ever figured out what they were avenging).
The Hulk however never worked well in social settings and left the group in the second issue. The other four Avengers find Captain America frozen in an iceberg since WWII. They revive him and he joins the team. These five - Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, the Wasp, and Henry Pym - form the core membership of the Avengers.
Time passes by and in 1965 all of the members except Captain America decide to quit. Captain America decides to maintain the group and recruits three new members via open auditions; Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. This was controversial because 1) These three were not top-rated characters. They were barely second tier; 2) This line-up was a lot less powerful then the original; and 3) Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were recently reformed villains and Hawkeye’s past was also pretty shady.
So while these four remained in the group, additional members were also recruited in the sixties. Henry Pym and the Wasp rejoined. (And this is probably a good point to mention that Henry Pym changed his superhero identity and powers on a fairly frequent basis. At various points he was Ant-Man, Giant Man, Goliath, and Yellowjacket.) Other new members were Hercules, the Black Widow, the Black Knight, the Black Panther, and the Vision (who brought a unique red perspective to the group).
Around 1971, the Avengers were involved in a big war between two alien races, the Kree and the Skrulls, who were using Earth as a battleground. One of the Krees, Captain Marvel, allies with the Avengers and they get in trouble for refusing to turn him over to government authorities. In the wake of bad publicity, Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man disband the Avengers but it turns out they’re not the real superheroes - they’re Skrull impersonators. The Avengers defeat the aliens and reform with Iron Man and Thor rejoining the group.
Other big events of the seventies include fights with Ultron (a super-powered robot), Count Nefaria (a Mafia/mad scientist type villain), and Michael Korvac (a godlike being who almost destorys the universe). New members added during this time include the Beast (a former X-Man), Mantis, Wonder Man, the Falcon, and Ms. Marvel. The Avengers had some serious firepower during this period.
In 1977, the government took control over the Avengers. New rules were put in place cutting back on the membership with government deciding who stayed. The eighties and nineties were kind of a coasting period. There were new members and they fought new villains but they weren’t as epic as past battles. A spin-off group was formed in California. Henry Pym had a breakdown and relocated to that group. The Avengers were switched form American to UN control and got a new headquarters (but later moved back to their original headquarters).
The next major shake-up was in 2004 with the Avengers Disassembled storyline. The Scarlet Witch loses control of her considerable powers and snaps. As a result, some Avengers die and the remainder decide to disband. But this leaves a void with no supergroup around and several different replacement groups are formed that compete for recognition as the “real” Avengers.
Captain America and Iron Man form a group called the New Avengers. This includes a bunch of major stars of the Marvel universe including Spiderman, Wolverine, Luke Cage, and the Sentry. Iron Man splits off from the group and starts a new government sanctioned national Avengers program: the Fifty State Initiative with a NYC based group known as the Mighty Avengers. And there’s a black ops version of the Avengers known as the Dark Avengers. The current storyline is supposed to be reuniting these various groups back into a single Avengers group.
It’s basically how Marvel has been handling it in the comic books for decades; the Asgardians are “aliens”, and their whole mythology exists but again, all the giants, elves, trolls and suchlike are different sorts of aliens. Just don’t tell that to Odin, he has a temper…
It’s “science” in that anything which exists can eventually be analyzed scientifically. But whether the connexion is the Ash Tree, Bifrost or a portal opened by Reed Richards is another matter; what we definitely know is that Asgard is unlikely to become a stop in NYC’s subway lines any time soon.
All early drafts have clunky lines and scenes that are later rewritten or edited out, by the original writer or by his editors. Don’t mistake a film script for a finished product - it’s nothing more than the movie’s first draft. Things that work on paper and in the writer’s head don’t always work onscreen, which is way the film’s ultimate creator is the director, not the writer.
But my point about the whole X-Men thing specifically (and don’t get me wrong: I like the movie) is that Whedon was one of the people used to punch up the script. In other words, both Bryan Singer and Whedon himself thought that that line added a certain je ne sais quoi to all the drafts that came before it. And obviously Whedon himself backs up the line as he’s on record blaming the line’s failure not on the fact that he wrote it in the first place, but on Halle Berry’s intonation. But as I said above, the correct answer is: Both the snippet of faux-clever dialogue and Berry’s performance suck balls.
Bu again, Whedon cannot be blamed for something he had no control over. He wasn’t on the set. He wasn’t walking Halle Berry through how the line should be said. And his contributions to the script were ripped out (except for that line) so much that he didn’t even get a screen credit.
He literally had nothing to do with the final product and if he had just kept his damn fool mouth shut, the Whedon haters wouldn’t have half the ammunition they think they have.
I’ll say it again: Not only did the actress suck, but so did the line itself. So to posit the opinion that Whedon literally had “no control” over it is just a bit disingenuous. After all, he wrote the freaking thing.
True. But after turning in his version of the script, the director is free to cut and alter anything he so chooses. Which, by Whedon’s own admission, happened to the rest of his changes. So by keeping the line in, and not giving Whedon a screen credit, David Hayter (the credited writer) and Bryan Singer take full responsibility for how the line sounds on screen.
Whedon had no control over the finished product. And nothing you say can change that.
People are forgetting that *two *Whedon exchanges were left in the script. One was the toad/lightning thing; the other was probably the funniest moment in the movie:
Wolverine: Hey! It’s me.
Cyclops: Prove it.
Wolverine: You’re a dick.
Cyclops: [Pause] Okay.
That’s the other exchange that takes me right out of the movie every. Single. Time I see it. And before today, I didn’t know for sure whether it was his contribution or not, but it sure as hell sounded like Whedon’s cloying, smirk-tinged repartee, and I’ve hated it since the very first time I saw the movie.
I do agree with you, however, that Bryan Singer made the ultimate decision to leave those “gems” in. Notice, though, how the X2: X-Men United script is 100% Whedon-free. And is all the better for it.
What it means is that we probably just won’t see Banner in the movie. He’ll be Hulk the whole time. This jibes with the idea that the Hulk is the opponent for most of the movie before the Skrull/Big Bad reveal.
That was a grand total of 10-15 minutes, which were really good scenes which set up the conflicts fo the movie very well. It was a very entertaining movie, which didn’t load down the character with so much sludge a la Ang Lee. Seriously, I kinda like Ang Lee, but the man can turn anything into a miserable slog, even if its about a giant green hulk smashing stuff.
Nope. Too show boat-y and self conscious by many orders of magnitude (as is much of Whedon’s dialogue, which is why I can’t stand the guy’s writing).
Admittedly, though, a highly amusing by product of not caring for Whedon is getting to watch slavish Whedon fanboys get their panties all in a twist when someone actually calls into question his talent (or lack thereof).
