Maybe something strange about the user reviews...

I'm replying to your OP but I have read your other posts, and from what I can see your argument boils down to this:

1. But .. but .. but ... he's a TV person!

So? Most of the truly cutting-edge work in scripted drama is going on in TV. As a medium, it offers much more of an opportunity to smash through boundaries and experiment with different styles, recraft genres, and just generally fiddle around in a way that leads to ground-breaking work. And Whedon, as a TV creator, has consistently exploited that: Hey, what if we turned all our characters into puppets for the duration of an episode? Hey, what if we produced a musical in the form of a video blog and added a commentary track in the form of a secondary musical? Hey, what if we did an hour-long show in which all the characters lost all ability to speak?

All those would just be gimmicks if he didn't use the gimmicks to explore, in gripping ways, human motivation and connection.

2. But. ... but ... but ... it's 10 years old!

Since when does age cancel out greatness? But at any rate, Whedon's work continues to be inventive and challenging, even as he's tied up with big, multi-year projects. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008) was terrific fun and, like Much Ado, basically thrown together in Whedon's "spare time." Plus, he skates across multiple media, producing masterful work not just in TV and film, but comic books and interactive web content. Lord only knows what he'll do next, but chances are it will be amazing.

As others have adequately pointed out, Whedon hasn't been sitting on his thumbs, either. In fact, pretty much everything he's done* since his "marquee" accomplishments has been lauded as well.

*I'll give this one to you: "Dollhouse," Whedon's last episodic TV series, was a rare misstep. Its premise was creepy and the show inadequately acknowledged that - plus, the lead actress just couldn't carry the ball across the finish line.


3. But ... but .. but ... it's TOTAL TRASH!

Well, first, by your own admission, you didn't know what you were talking about. Moreover, you made it clear, initially, that you didn't care to find out. (I'll give you props for checking out Firefly, but honestly? You couldn't have Googled around before you started leveling scurrilous accusations of review spamming?)

Your criticism is even less meaningful in light of the high regard in which Whedon's body of work continues to be held. He's gathered a huge pile of accolades and even for his "old" work, the hits keep coming - last week, eh Writer's Guild of America put Buffy at #49 on the list of its 101 Best Scripted TV shows of all time.

Is this guy for reals?

By the way, Chris Marker (not sure if he's 'upper-echelon-cinema-ish' enough for Monsieur Balthazar here) had some very high praise for Mr Whedon, in particular Firefly.

Is it the law masterpieces have to put you to sleep or something?

I thought the second part of your post deserved its own response, and I'm still a bit riled up, so here goes:

Like you, I have a deep and abiding love of Much Ado. I've read it, studied it, and watched more performances of it than of any other play. And that's why I'm so mouth-frothingly excited to see this adaptation.

The thing I love so much about Much Ado is how utterly modern, compelling and human Beatrice and Benedick are - and how Shakespeare draws this out by setting their story next to the hollow framework of Hero and Claudio's supposedly conventional, transactional, shallow "romance."

It's almost as if Shakespeare's sending a letter directly to the 20th century saying "This is what you may think relationships were like in the Elizabethan era (a young woman handed off to a man by her father in a thinly disguised trade of chastity and beauty for position and power) but in fact, we actually were/are human beings with real and complex emotions; check it out."

Based on his entire body of work, Whedon's absolutely the right guy to tell this story (as was Branagh, for different reasons.) It's telling that the least favorable (though still glowing) reviews of this movie are by reviewers who clearly don't understand that Much Ado is far more than a slapstick comedy.

The word was USUALLY.

'Wisdom would be to see life, really see, that would be wisdom.' JLG.

[deleted]

I think the OP *is* Joss and he's just pulling our virtual legs. (Or maybe Nathan, who is "an ass.")

Why would any late "recourse" to watching previous examples of Joss Whedon's work absolve you of your knee-jerk, uninformed judgement of "TOTAL, TOTAL TRASH!!!" ( capitalization and exclamation marks yours) about his body of work? I don't believe that you would walk back your uninformed judgement, but would rather work at some justification for it.

Up until this latest incarnation, Kenneth Branagh's interpretation of Much Ado About Nothing has been my favorite... excepting a bit of scene-chewing by him, (and though I love her) Emma Thompson, and a lot by Michael Keaton and others. I have it on DVD and have re-watched it multiple times, and compelled others to watch it as an exemplar of Shakespearian interpretation in film. I'm almost sorry to say that Amy Acker blows Emma Thompson out of the water as Beatrice, but will admit that I liked her as Fred and Dr. Saunders/Whiskey (post KB-MAAN roles by the way). She runs the range of emotions that feel real for Beatrice, as opposed to Ms. Thompson who runs the range of emoting for the role of Beatrice. Almost across the board, the same applies (without supporting details) for Mr. Whedon's film adaptation.

Having read some of your responses, I'm going to cut you not just a lot of slack, but all the slack that exists. Despite your film credentials, you were unaware of Whedon's work, which has to go down as some kind of strange fluke. I think the assumption that a genre director who had never crossed your radar as being someone worthwhile must be TRASH! was not unreasonable, actually. The weird thing here is that you somehow have never heard the buzz about Whedon as an artist.

A word about my credentials: one of Elizabeth Bishop's penultimate group of poetry students while an undergrad at Harvard, World Fantasy Award nominee for twenty years of creating and running the program at the world's leading literary science fiction and fantasy conference. Countless hours discussing the nature of narrative and of genre with the best-regarded writers and editors in the field (names droppable upon request). A latecomer to film who now sees 100-170 films released per year. Not a naive fan-boy. :)

Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer is often cited as one of the 10 greatest TV shows ever (Entertainment Weekly just named it #8). For someone like myself who is especially attuned to getting extra depth out of fantastic narratives, it is #1 -- by a mile. You talk about great works transcending genre ... Buffy is insanely genre-transcendent (which is actually a term in sf and fantasy criticism, used to separate the likes of the genre-bound Asimov, Heinlein, Frank Herbert, etc. from Philip K. Dick, Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, John Crowley, Samuel R. Delany, Octavia M. Butler, Thomas M. Disch, etc.). Buffy used high school / college and vampire-slaying as metaphors for ... essentially everything.

And it was genre-transgressive. The seven seasons of Buffy include the most emotionally moving things I've ever seen on TV, the scariest, much of the funniest, and much of the most exciting in terms of action ... and it could and did move between any of those modes in a heartbeat, without warning, but seamlessly.

I am not alone in this enthusiasm. It's the favorite TV show of a plurality of readers and writers of literary sf and fantasy. (I had the pleasure of telling Whedon this the one time I met him, in the form of a "Did you know that ..." question. His reply: "No, but I would have liked to think so." IOW, he was aiming for the same heights as the most ambitious creators in the field.)

When you do something as great as Buffy, you really don't have to do anything else. But Whedon has a great deal else to his credit. The Buffy spinoff Angel was inconsistent, but at its best, nearly as good as Buffy. I think that starting with the sole season of Firefly is not bad advice at all. It's terrific, and if you finish with the Serenity movie (not quite a great movie in isolation, but a great one as the end of the series) you get a full story arc. You should know, though, that it doesn't come close to approaching the range and scope of Buffy. (NB, if you like Firefly and try Buffy next: it doesn't start to become brilliant until early in season 2. Be patient with it.)

The Cabin in the Woods screenplay is a hilarious piss-take on horror cliches. And then there's The Avengers, a film about a bunch of guys who can't get along with one another but who are forced to do so to save the world, which became the third most popular movie ever in a country full of people who increasingly can't seem to get along with one another and fear that the world needs saving. (That 95% of the film critics missed the obvious cultural significance and deep appeal of the film just makes me smile ruefully). It's not high art, but it's superbly executed popular entertainment with a deeply resonant message that was so understated that nobody noticed it. They just bought another ticket.

Oh, BTW, his Much Ado About Nothing is fabulous.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.