Agnostic in the Church of Joss

[shipperx]

Sometimes, for little reason, Joss Whedon can annoy me.

I followed the link to a BtVS fandom article and when reading this passage, I became slightly annoyed:

Buffy wasn’t the only time Whedon felt a script of his had been misunderstood and wrongly interpreted. In 1997 Alien Resurrection was released, with Whedon having written the screenplay. Critically and financially Resurrection wasn’t a failure, yet Whedon was still unhappy with the treatment of his script. It was this disappointment that led Whedon to proclaim, “The next person who ruins one of my scripts is going to be me.” Whedon wanted more control.

The Whedon fandom has always had a tendency to have the "Joss is God" mindset.  I think that's why this little bit of fluff annoyed me.  

Is nothing ever Whedon's fault?  

Because let me say right now, I didn't walk out of Alien Resurrection criticizing the cinematography.   Nor did I walk out criticizing the acting (Okay, not Sigourney Weaver's.  I make no promises about Winnona Ryder.  If he were bitching about casting, I might have to cut Whedon some slack on Ryder.) Nor did I criticize the music score (did do that with Kenneth Brannagh's Hamlet).    No, with Alien Resurrection, years and years before I had ever learned the name "Joss Whedon" and completely unknowing of who wrote the script, I walked out of that movie bitching about an incredibly craptacular story.   Seriously, most movies I simply say were good or bad.  Few have me specifically zeroing in on a horrible script.  There have only been a couple where I found myself mentally rearranging the plot even as I watched the movie.  Not only is that a sign of non-sensical writing up on the screen.  It's a sign of painful boredom in the midst of watching a movie (For instance, in Independence Day, I was entertained by exactly how badly cliched the script was.   I laughed.  Inappropriately, sure.  But I was laughing not mentally re-writing it.  See also: 2012 {hilariously awful!}).  I can only remember being so incredibly frustrated by a bad story that I found myself analyzing 'what's really bad here and why?" in a way that stuck with me long after the fact and long after the movie itself has faded from my memory but twice in my life.  One was watching Star Wars Episode I, whose script is terrible in so, so many ways.  (I like RedLetterMedia's comment that it was like they produced the movie from a first draft... written by an eight-year-old... in crayon.)   I kept thinking over and over, "You know what would've been better..." while watching that story plod along (And, no, I did not subject myself to Episode II.  I probably would've been in the exact same position if I had).   The second movie where I found myself going "It would've been so much more interesting if..." was Alien Resurrection. I loved Alien and Aliens.  I even tolerated Alien III (though I don't think it was particularly good).  But start to finish, Alien Resurrection was terrible.  

[Googling Alien Resurrection for a plot refresher I did find this in the wiki... and I had to laugh:

Tom Meek of  Film Threat wrote "Weaver and Jeunet's efforts are shortchanged by the ineptness of Joss Whedon's script, that seems to find a way to make action sequences unexciting."

Whee!  I'm not entirely alone.]

The plot was terrible  (somehow managing to feel as though the franchise had been hijacked  and yet also highly derivative of and repetitious of the previous installments. How did he manage that exactly?  It's a neat trick.    It felt totally disconnected and yet it was also completely copying.  "Oooh!  The corporation is stupidly trying to weaponize Aliens... YET. AGAIN."  "Ooh, here we go with another android as pivotal character and Ripley having issues about it."  "Oh, look, Ripley gets a psuedo-daughter.  Again.  Only she's not 1/4 as interesting or emotionally involving as the first one."  Done. Done. And done.  And here it was again, only so much worse.  And Ripley had superpowers now.  Sheesh.  Way to miss the point about the lead character.  
 

I still wonder, other than money, why this script and this movie  were ever produced and made.   The characters were terrible (the mad scientist?  Terrible.  So damn cliched.  So predictable.  So dumb.   And I don't blame the actor for that one.  Brad Dourif was brilliant in Deadwood.   Also, Winona Ryder's character?  Well, it's a tossup whether it was her or the character.  Six of one, half a dozen of the other.  She was still annoying as heck.)

My point is, as a viewer at that time, having never heard the name "Whedon" I watched that movie and whatever criticisms I had, its one of only a couple of movies where I walked out cursing the writer.  Specifically, the writer.   That doesn't happen every day.  Especially with an unknown writer.  With Episode I, I knew I was disliking George Lucas's script.  But I didn't know who I was resenting with Alien Resurrection, just that I did, because I thought the plot egregiously sucked.   (And yes, I've read the Whedon version of the script that was leaked on the web years and years ago, and virtually everything I hated -- especially the way the mad scientist was handled in such a cliched manner -- was in the Whedon script).

And yeah, yeah, they cut Whedon's final act.  So?  The problems with the movie started waaaaaayyyyy back at the beginning with the stupid corporation regugitation of previous plot without any new twist and an entirely cliched mad scientist.

So why is a bad plot never Whedon's fault?  Why is it always the director's or the actor's or the big, mean ol' production company and the suits?  Is Whedon supposed to be infallible?  Is everything he does supposedly gold? Is that it?  Really? 

Why do people need to think of Joss as always being right?  

Because, again, I had never heard of Joss Whedon when I went to see that movie, nor did I know his name after it. And still,  what I walked out complaining about most was the writing.  Had someone told me that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was being written and produced by the guy who wrote Alien Resurrection, I probably never would've tuned in to sample the series.   And I'm glad that I did.  Turned out someone who produced suck one time out produced something good on another try.  So why can't people see it the other way around?  Just because he produced some great stuff, doesn't mean he's incapable of writing a turkey sometimes.

As you can see, my contempt for Alien Resurrection has stuck with me.  I barely even remember any more what was in the story, but I clearly remember my dismay and dislike of the script of Alien Resurrection, because I remember walking out into the parking lot telling my friend all the ways that I thought that the script and plot had gone wrong (and how repetitious it was) even if I've forgotten what many of those things  actually were.

... and in a related tangent,  this reminds me of a year or so ago when I learned that Whedon had had a hand in the script for Waterworld.

Apparently (?) there too they cut Whedon's ending (I think.  I haven't seen the movie).  I read the 'twist' end, and I had to laugh.  It may not have been the Statue of Liberty, but that's basically ripping off Planet of the Apes.  If it was cut out, I'm not surprised. 

Comments

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

..."often they will have very similar modes of angsting and definitely similar modes of humour"

Yup. And ya know what? It's starting to feel dated. Like someone using the slang of the 1920s in the 1970s.

[quinara]

Yeah, it really is. Times change! And grow! Beyond the call for characters who happen to be bitty little pieces of fluff with superpowers...