Joss Whedon

In honour of Joss Whedon’s birthday yesterday (Numfar! Do the Dance of Honour!), Shadowlocked presents a list of twenty-three suggestions for where Joss Whedon could go from here.

While Whedon’s had deserved cult success up to this point, The Avengers is his chance to really break into the mainstream and hopefully get the levels of success that his talent deserves. With great box office will surely come great opportunities. Warren Ellis said that after The Avengers, Joss Whedon would be able to print his own money. Come to think of it, that would be awesome, with a picture of Joss’ face on it (which non-geeks wouldn’t recognise, and then we could educate them!), and a quote like “Grr Argh!” or one of literally hundreds (and probably thousands) of others. And we could do the Dance of Capitalist Superiority every time we spent it.

Not that I’m trying to dictate exactly what Joss should do with his life (that would be rather Dollhouse-like); these are just suggestions / over-enthusiastic fanboy ravings (some of them more realistic than others, but all of them arguably within his wheelhouse (which never stops turning)) for things that would be cool. It’s not a list of demands to pressurise Joss; hopefully he won’t be ’Heart, Broken’.

We wouldn’t want him to explode (again—see #87) by trying to do too much at once. And he should also get the chance to sleep…for a little while. :)

This is not a comprehensive list. There have been other possible projects mentioned at various points, and Joss’ career to date has been filled with variety and surprises, with many fans seeing these as being amongst the strongest elements of his writing.

The light-hearted but heart-felt list (felt is light...) follows, in no particular order. (Why 23 entries? Um...Joss Whedon’s just turned 47, which is a prime number...and 23 is also prime, so... Do I deconstruct your segues? Huh?)

— Finally be widely recognised as the successor to William Shakespeare (and even improver-upon, if that’s a word; and if not, I’ll take a leaf from both Whedon and Shakespeare’s books, and invent it). Or perhaps Sons of Anarchy’s Kurt Sutter is even more quintessentially Shakespearean in his tragedy. At any rate, Joss Whedon is a worthy successor to William Shakespeare, at least.

— Write and direct an incredible The Avengers trilogy to put Christopher Nolan’s in-progress Batman trilogy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Star Wars trilogies (yes, plural) to shame. And then, for good measure, bring back the British The Avengers spy series featuring John Steed and Emma Peel. (“Joss Whedon’s Avengers? Oh yeah, that’s awesome. Which one?”)

— Get Firefly recommissioned, bringing back all the cast and crew (they can get round the events of Serenity…well, somehow) for a glorious 20 season run, maybe ending in a similar way to Kaylee actress Jewel Staite’s hilariously awesome suggestions.

— Many more people who think that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is “just a silly vampire show” to be proved wrong and become fans. Admittedly, this is more of an indirect thing/causality, but hopefully it’ll happen.

— Set up some kind of business model where it’s impossible for great genre shows to be cancelled before their time. (The industry’s a mess, and he just needs...to rule it...)

— Make Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog into an epic saga on the scale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Felicia Day somehow still part of it, of course.

— Continue making awesome comics (though I haven’t read Buffy Season 8 or Angel Season 6, which have received generally mixed reactions from the fandom, so I can’t comment on any criticisms of those). Among other things, write much more of the awesome Fray. And maybe a movie adaptation, directed by Joss Whedon or Luc Besson (Fifth Element, which Fray’s artwork was somewhat influenced by).

— After showrunner Steven Moffat and star Matt Smith have finished working on Doctor Who (which hopefully won’t be for a long time yet, since they, along with the rest of the cast and crew, are doing a brilliant job), take over as showrunner of Doctor Who, perhaps with Amy Acker playing the Doctor, as suggested by Television Without Pity. The list doesn’t seem to adequately recognise that the show is more than fine with its current showrunner Steven Moffat and star Matt Smith, especially the episodes Steven Moffat writes himself (like the first and second episodes of the current season), but otherwise has some interesting suggestions. Amy Acker’s played a geeky scientist (and a really old character who can switch bodies) on Angel, and a doctor (and someone who can have lots of different personalities) on Dollhouse, as well as being one of the best actresses working today. Of course, they’d need to find some way around the dramatic plot development in S6 E1, ‘The Impossible Astronaut’, but I’m sure Steven Moffat knows what he’s doing, or is smart enough to make up some kind of brilliant solution, just like a certain Time Lord. And also, the brilliant, intense, charismatic Paul Bettany (Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale, Master and Commander, Inkheart, Priest, Wimbledon) needs to play the Doctor at some point.

— Team up with author J.K. Rowling on a (not cancelled) Harry Potter TV series (or even a non-Harry Potter project). The epic sagas of Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are somewhat similar, but distinct enough that both writers could bring something to the table. Sadly, they missed the opportunity with yesterday’s much-heralded Pottermore announcement, which turns out to be a Harry Potter social networking site (and there will also be upcoming e-book versions of the Harry Potter books). Moreover, it’s interesting to note that the fake fan made trailer for a Harry Potter spin-off series, ’The Aurors’ (cruelly released on April Fools’ Day), somewhat resembles Angel.

— Get Wastelanders, his planned web series with writer Warren Ellis (who continued the Astonishing X-Men comics after Joss’ run finished), made; and for it to be brilliant despite the lack of singing despite the lack of singing.

— This is less down to Joss (and co-writer and director Drew Goddard (Buffy, Cloverfield)) than it is dependent on the studio, but Cabin in the Woods finally getting released. It looks like it’s going to happen now, but, like with many of his characters, you never know if its impending happiness is suddenly going to be snatched away in a suitably Whedonesque twist.

— Kill off hundreds more of our favourite characters, in heart-breakingly awesome fashion. (Or not.)

— Continue giving (and conducting) hilarious and witty interviews. Unlike Angel, he’s good with the talking.

— Carry on having fun with language, inventing words, and writing wonderfully quotable dialogue (“That was well said, wasn’t it, Zoe?”; “It had a kind of poetry to it, sir.”)