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

[mollivanders.livejournal.com]

Not all of us think Joss is God, but artists in general are pretty impressed with their own work. That's where we get the pompous starving artist from :) I like most of Whedon's work, but not all. S4 and S6 of Buffy had me yawning and cringing, though I know they strongly appealed to other people.

Long story short, you can't make everyone happy (and sometimes not even yourself).

[enisy.livejournal.com]

This might explain why Joss was so exasperated over Alien Resurrection:

Joss Whedon: The worst thing about these things is that, when the actors say it wrong, it makes the writer look stupid. People assume that the line... I listened to half the dialogue in Alien 4, and I'm like, "That's idiotic," because of the way it was said. And nobody knows that. Nobody ever gets that. They say, "That was a stupid script," which is the worst pain in the world. I have a great long boring story about that, but I can tell you the very short version. In Alien 4, the director changed something so that it didn't make any sense. He wanted someone to go and get a gun and get killed by the alien, so I wrote that in and tried to make it work, but he directed it in a way that it made no sense whatsoever. And I was sitting there in the editing room, trying to come up with looplines to explain what's going on, to make the scene make sense, and I asked the director, "Can you just explain to me why he's doing this? Why is he going for this gun?" And the editor, who was French, turned to me and said, with a little leer on his face, [adopts gravelly, smarmy, French-accented voice] "Because eet's een the screept." And I actually went and dented the bathroom stall with my puddly little fist. I have never been angrier. But it's the classic, "When something goes wrong, you assume the writer's a dork." And that's painful.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The worst thing about these things is that, when the actors say it wrong, it makes the writer look stupid.

I'm afraid that it can't simply be boiled down to dialog. Dialog didn't make the mad scientist a cliche, give Ripley superpowers, or recycle "the corporation still thinks to weaponize Aliens despite the trillions of dollars they must've already lost in the process of the first three movies!" It was lazy repetition.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

Though I don't have an answer for it, it does seem that when Joss is slightly involved in something good, he gets all the credit, but if he's involved in something bad, then it's everyone else's fault but his. For example, he was one of four writers who had a hand in creating the screenplay for Toy Story, which was then handed over to four script writers (only one of whom had any involvement in the original screenplay and it wasn't Joss), YET if you listen to a die-hard Joss Whedon fan, you would think that Whedon wrote the script for Toy Story completely and totally and that what we saw on screen was all his work. And then look at BtVS and the BtVS movie. Joss blames everyone else for the BtVS movie tanking- the studio, the Kazuis, the actors- but he never stops to think that he wrote a script that was not appealing to a wide audience. And then the show... Oh, Lord, when it's good, he'll take credit for stuff that he wasn't involved in, and when it's bad, throw the whole cast and crew under the bus.

And Ripley had superpowers now. Sheesh. Way to miss the point about the lead character.
Some writers never learn from their mistakes... especially when they don't feel they made any. At least Roland Emmerich and his cast of thousands just make schlock and have fun with it.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't think that anyone was mistaking Alien Resurrection as being the best or even the second best, possibly not even the third best in that series.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

With Toy Story, I simply don't see how it's possible to know. So many people were involved. Plus, when watching "The Story of Pyxar" on CNBC they made clear that there was a major rewrite midway through because when they screened the first half of the movie, everyone concluded that Woody was an unlikable dick. The character had to be completely re-worked. So not knowing what Whedon did or didn't do and where his work fell in the order, I just don't know how we can honestly judge his work. We don't know what was his work.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

The Buffy movie script isn't very good. I give him leeway because it was his first script, but people really need to stop making it sound like it was butchered beyond recognition.

Alien 4 is horrible for a lot of reasons, but it starts with the story, yeah. It doesn't really fit the verse (IMO). Then there is everything else. And I hate Joss's clique of rogues that he tries to push into everything, but that's neither here nor there.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan of Joss's work on Bts, but I do think he has a rather annoying tendency to blame everyone else for his vision being compromised. I can believe that the direction meant that a lot of the Buffy movie missed the mark for example, but I don't see how it's all completely separate from his script. I mean the jokes and the dialogue came from somewhere, right? And I've not heard that many comments on how the script was so far above how the rest of the movie came off. It was a witty script sure, but I would hardly call it exceptional

And frankly, looking at Bts season 1, and the unired pilot, it wasn't really until Prophecy Girl that I'd say that Joss found his stride with the Buffy franchise. Yet I don't think I've ever once heard him talk about his own failings with the Buffy script, and what he might have improved upon. Even Sarah has talked about how she still doesn't think the Buffy concept would work as a movie, and I tend to agree and think it works best for tv and was never going to make a ton of money as a film, whether or not Joss did get to direct it

And I used to nod along to Joss's complaints about the Buffy movie and feel bad for him, but then when it gets so that everyone is trying to screw his work over in some way it does make you raise your eyebrows. I remember the big deal Joss made about his line in X-Men was funny, Halle Belle just delivered it wrong. But eh, even with a subtle delivery was the line really all that funny? IMO Joss is way more suited to tv and smaller networks/cult shows, and then he tries to branch out with bigger networks and films and blames someone else when it doesn't take off. But even when he does have control over his vision, the Firefly movie was still not classed as box office success, and even his fans were saying that the concept of Dollhouse would never draw in a wide enough general audience for Fox.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

people really need to stop making it sound like it was butchered beyond recognition.

Yep, from what I've always understand the basic gist of the storyline did make it to the film (even the valley girl humour speak made it to the first episode of Bts before later being abandoned, so the "comedy" of the movie is all Joss I'd wager). It seemed he was mostly upset that the direction didn't emphasize the darkness enough, and he was possibly angry with the villains being played as too camp. And those might well be valid points, but still doesn't mean they threw all his ideas out and were working off of someone else's script completely. And from the way some people talk and don't give Joss ANY blame for that movie, you'd almost think that were the case

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I think no writer is perfect and idolizing them does no one a good service.

My impression is that Joss has a peculiar writing stile that often requires characters to say one thing and mean another. This naturally means that he's much better suited as writer/director than just writer, but even so he sometimes just writes things that are no good. It's just the way it is. Commercial writing means to churn out scripts even if the inspiration is missing. Sometimes that ends up as crap.

Which is why I'm usually more interested in projects the writer is passionate about than big commercial products like the Avengers.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Actually, Whedon's gripe regarding Alien Resurrection isn't that different than oh about 90% of screenwriters complaints regarding how their films get made.

William Goldman in one of his two books on screenwriting, griped about how Robert Redford and Bernstein continued to fiddle with his script for All the Presidents Men - to the point in which Goldman wondered why he bothered writing it and refused to take credit. (Can't remember if he actually did or not.)

And then there's the infamous film that no writer would put their name on.

Oh - and Scream 4? It wasn't just written by Kevin Williamson, it was rewritten by a writer hired by the producer without Williamson's okay or approval. Williamson stopped talking to the producer.

This happens all the time. You are LUCKY if you see your screenplay actually make it to the screen intact without someone changing it completely. My kidbrother worked on the re-direction and re-writing of the Lizzie Borden film Love Crimes with Kit Carson, which got rewritten again and re-edited again they finished with it. The final product? A Mess. Credited to a lot of people.

That said, I do find it incredibly amusing that Whedon had no problem accepting credit for Toy Story - which had five different writers on it. OR for Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series - which had more then 10 writers, producers, etc involved with it.
I mean seriously, if you can take credit for group collaborations that work out beautifully, why can't you take a portion of the blame for collaborations that turn out badly?

[quinara]

I don't know what it is about Joss. I'll say what I've allowed myself to think for a while: I don't think Joss is a very flexible writer, and I don't think he's good at writing beyond type when he's worked out what type a character should be. I feel like he has different characters, but only a limited set, and often they will have very similar modes of angsting and definitely similar modes of humour. To some extent that's his 'voice', I suppose, but I think it becomes a weakness in long-running shows, like Buffy, where for example I don't think his versions of the characters are organic to their context by the end (in S7 he's credited with Lessons and Chosen, which I think are definitely two of the weakest episodes in the season, just to lay my cards on the table), and I also think it's a weakness when he tries to change up his genres. People can say that Firefly sounding like Buffy was great, but I think him showing versatility would have been more impressive. I actually liked how Dollhouse didn't sound like a Whedon show to start with, outside of Topher. (The tone leaked out quite quickly funnily enough in correlation with it losing everything that I liked.)

Meh; I think the man's a whiner. But then I do love BtVS, so it balances out?

[next_to_normal]

Is nothing ever Whedon's fault? Is it ever his screw-up?

Nope! :D

I think Joss has a bit of a martyr complex, honestly. Because a lot of times, Joss will have to change something, and the shows/movies end up failing anyway. So it's easy to say, "The show failed because the network ruined it," because we'll NEVER KNOW what Joss' version would've been like. Maybe it would've been better, maybe it would've been worse. Joss, of course, always thinks it would've been better.

But... you have to wonder. When someone turns in THAT MANY scripts (the Buffy movie, Alien Resurrection, Waterworld, Toy Story, Dollhouse, Firefly, even Angel had to scrap its second episode) that needed to be rewritten, maybe the problem's with the writer.

I'm not saying Joss sucks or isn't talented, but I think he's an incredibly uneven writer, capable of sheer brilliance and utter crap, and it'd be nice if he acknowledged that once in a while instead of passing the buck all the time.

[next_to_normal]

Word. I think that's Joss to a T.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've watched the Buffy movie at some point, but honestly nothing about it stuck with me. Generally, I found it to be forgettable.

Alien 4 was just wrong in so many ways. Although I also googled Ebert's review (because he's the critic that works best for me). Had to nod with this:

This is a series whose inspiration has come, gone, and been forgotten. I'm aliened out. The fourth movie, depends on a frayed shoestring of a plot, barely enough to give them something to talk about between the action scenes

A couple of other things he noted sound eerily familiar:

"...The movie's a little vague about Ripley: Is she all human, or does she have a little alien mixed in?"

"...They allow her reconstituted form to retain all of her old memories, as if cookie dough could remember what a gingerbread man looked like."

"...She seems uncertain of her purpose in the movie, her speeches lack conviction, and when her secret is revealed, it raises more questions than it answers."

"... The movie opens with surgeons removing a baby alien from her womb. How the baby got in there is not fully explained, for which we should perhaps be grateful."

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Actually, Whedon's gripe regarding Alien Resurrection isn't that different than oh about 90% of screenwriters complaints regarding how their films get made.

I have to admit that it's something that tends to cause me to roll my eyes. If they want their words untouched, then they probably shouldn't sell them to a comercial enterprise.

Although, even in comercial enterprises such as a novel, I've rarely seen a writer who has dispensed with editors who has produced good work.

But for something as manufactured at TV or a movie? I really have little tolerance for the preciousness of "someone touched my script" because... that's the real world.

As a parallel, sure, in school we could design buildings without constraints. But soon as we started to work in architecture for a living we have to contend with things like building codes (and clients). And that requires some modification. I just spent the afternoon having to revamp a project because the state review required the addition of sprinklers. Doesn't matter that we can argue that the code doesn't require one. Heck, doesn't matter that we have a letter directly from the International Building Code clarifying the issue, that points out that no sprinkler system requires it. The inspector is requiring one, so I have to go and retro-design it into the project even though it'll raise the budget. Because that's the real world.

Few artists are allowed 100% free range. And those who are in businesses that require profit (which TV and Movies are) have to accept that there's a real-world aspect of it. People aren't investing in Joss's ego. They're investing in a project that they hope will make a return. That's just a fact of life. If he doesn't want any of those restrictions... there's always fanfic. (But looking what he produced without restriction in the comics, I think it might be better for him to continue 'in the biz'.)

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

It always seemed like Ripley was an afterthought in the writing and only there because it was Alien movie. What made the series interesting is that it was also Ripley's story, not just some space-set creature feature.

Alien 3 was kind of the same way. The early drafts never even had Ripley at all, but at least 3 still had more of her perspective instead of being essentially a buddy action flick in space.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Word. I remember one of the reasons I didn't really get into Firefly was that it felt too familiar - specifically, the rogue's gallery crew struck me as terribly reminiscent of the Alien Resurrection group. And his take on Ripley was an early version of that same damaged-goods woman-victim thing he seems so, so into. Only Sigourney's badassness with the basketball hoops and her green nail polish kept it from being a total loss for me. Otherwise, dullness all around.

That said, I did enjoy Brad Dourif the cliche scientist because I nearly always enjoy Chucky in anything. : )

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

From the wiki article, apparently in Joss's first draft, Ripley wasn't included. He had it as resurrecting Newt.

Now how anyone would know how to resurrect Newt, or why in the hell Newt would have any Alien DNA (she died in the crash, damnit. Not by Alien), I have no idea. I wonder whether that part of the wiki is apocryphal. I don't see how they'd get aliens out of Newt...)

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

It's been awhile since I've seen Alien 3, but I believe in the scripts it's played out that a queen was hiding in Newt during Aliens and leaves her body when she drowns.

That doesn't really make much sense either, but then neither does the way they did it with Ripley.

[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.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

The funniest bit about all that is Whedon himself spent a lot of time in Hollywood as a script doctor. But of course him changing other writers' scripts is completely OK.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I do have to say that people act like the plot and the script are completely unrelated to the problems of the movie. I mean, I'm sure there were other problems, but the script can't be completely divorced from it.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever re-watched Aliens III either. I was rather hacked off that they killed Newt right off the bat. Basically all I really remember is "prison planet" and "Ripley commits suicide".

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I just have a problem with never owning that he made mistakes along the way. hey, it's no big deal. Everyone makes mistakes. It's a lot more irritating to always read how anything that doesn't fly is always someone else's fault.

(Actually there was an interview with Whedon about Dollhouse and in it it sounded like he wanted even more overt prostitution... and I don't think that would've made the series any better.)