Director Joss Whedon

This past week has been extremely busy, so much so that I completely missed the news that Joss Whedon was confirmed to be the director of Marvel’s upcoming The Avengers.  In fact I found out via a follow up story that said that he would be re-writing the scripts for The Avengers and a little more surprisingly Captain America.

Now I’m torn completely.

I love Joss Whedon’s television work with the exception being Dollhouse which in fairness I have not watched past the magic sixth episode where I’m told that things become actually good so I reserve judgement.  His one directorial role is one of my favourite films, Serenity the big screen adaptation of Firefly so I know that he can direct even though it’s only been once.  It’s not like he doesn’t know comics with his run on Astonishing X-Men simply one of the best X-Men runs ever although on the flip side his ‘season’ on Runaways was in my opinion one of the weakest.

So on paper at least you’ve got to imagine that Whedon would be an excellent choice and that I would be slam dunked into geek joy.

But I’m not.

See Serenity is set in the Whedon ‘verse.  Buffy, Angel, Dollhouse are all Whedon created environments, I admit I’m a little concerned that what happened on Runaways is going to happen on Avengers, Whedon’s unique voice is going to overpower the storyline.  He’s going to mould them into the way that his characters speak which admittedly worked perfectly on the X-Men, but the Avengers are a different bunch.

But of course I don’t know, maybe his style will work as he’s done a variety of writing gigs from Toy Story to Alien Resurrection (which I don’t hate – but let’s not start on that) and maybe Marvel will keep a close rein on the characterisations.

That’s not my only concern though.

It’s well known that Whedon likes to use the same actors over and over till it almost becomes a running joke to wonder what role Summer Glau is automatically going to walk into in The Avengers?  Don’t get me wrong I love them all in their respective roles but then I usually have one character I’ll identify them with.  I just don’t want to see Nathan Fillion showing up as Giant Man or worst case scenario Eliza Dushku as a from the wrong side of the tracks Wasp.

I reiterate before the hating begins that I love all of these actors in their roles but brilliant casting is what has been working for Marvel of late and I want that separation from the Whedon universe so I hope it isn’t a “let me think about what roles my stable of actors could do first” situation.

So what do you all think of the news that in the future Joss Whedon will be telling Iron Man what to do?