IMO that one works because of how little character each actual character has by design. Dumb jock is dumb and jocky, stoner is stoned, virgin is timid. It’s a play on the lack of real character that mid to low budget horror movies often have.
It’s a great movie but I do find when Wheadon tries to do anything else, it just simmers down to kitchy one-liners that elicit a mild chuckle and nothing else, and that gets old very quickly.
Speaking as a huge fan of firefly, I’m not even gonna pretend that the writing doesn’t have a very specific set of issues, and that cancellation might have saved it from becoming aggressively mid and boring.
If Serenity was more or less the intended ending to the season (specifically revealing the alliance actually created the reapers and are unequivocally villainous) I’m actually happy they didn’t get to put that in the show.
Same for the Shepherd Book backstory comic where he was actually a brown coat double agent in the alliance, because god forbid we have to accept that your enemy isn’t ontologically evil.
But the best criticism I’ve seen of Whedon is that all his dialogue has over time exceedingly forgone character voice in favour of funny quips.
So much of his later production’s quotable lines are almost impossible to attribute correctly just from the lines themselves.
Snappy, witty, but ultimately shallow. Good lines, not necessarily great stories.
Are we pretending that Buffy, Firefly, and Doll House weren’t great stories?
Cabin in the Woods remains one of my favorite comedy horror movies to this day.
IMO that one works because of how little character each actual character has by design. Dumb jock is dumb and jocky, stoner is stoned, virgin is timid. It’s a play on the lack of real character that mid to low budget horror movies often have.
It’s a great movie but I do find when Wheadon tries to do anything else, it just simmers down to kitchy one-liners that elicit a mild chuckle and nothing else, and that gets old very quickly.
There’s no pretending, they’re all middling trash.
Firefly gets by solely on the setting.
So Space shows are popular just because they are in space? Andromeda would like a word…
Agents of Shield was also quite enjoyable
Speaking as a huge fan of firefly, I’m not even gonna pretend that the writing doesn’t have a very specific set of issues, and that cancellation might have saved it from becoming aggressively mid and boring.
If Serenity was more or less the intended ending to the season (specifically revealing the alliance actually created the reapers and are unequivocally villainous) I’m actually happy they didn’t get to put that in the show.
Same for the Shepherd Book backstory comic where he was actually a brown coat double agent in the alliance, because god forbid we have to accept that your enemy isn’t ontologically evil.
But the best criticism I’ve seen of Whedon is that all his dialogue has over time exceedingly forgone character voice in favour of funny quips.
So much of his later production’s quotable lines are almost impossible to attribute correctly just from the lines themselves.