Joss Whedon

• 1. The Boy From The Upper West Side

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  Joseph Hill Whedon was born on the 23rd of June 1964 in New York City. He grew up on the Upper West Side as part of a family deeply embedded in television writing. His father Tom Whedon wrote for Alice during the 1970s and The Golden Girls throughout the 1980s. His grandfather John Whedon worked on The Donna Reed Show in the 1950s and contributed to radio shows like The Great Gildersleeve. This three-generation legacy created an environment where constant creativity was expected from his children. Whedon's mother Ann Lee Stearns was an activist and teacher at Riverdale Country School who also pursued novel writing. The family spent vacations reciting Shakespeare together while both parents acted in plays at the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club.

  Whedon had two older brothers Samuel and Matthew and one younger brother Jed along with another younger brother Zack. He described his childhood as marked by verbal demeaning from his parents if he failed to be amusing or entertained them. He stated that he feared his older brothers more than his parents because they constantly bullied him. A specific trauma occurred when he was five years old. A four-year-old friend died by drowning in a pond on the Whedons' upstate property. His parents divorced when he was nine years old. Whedon later cited this childhood trauma as having a direct influence on his adult relationships addictions and behaviors. He has stated that he suffers from complex post traumatic stress disorder.

• 2. The Cult Of Buffy And Angel

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  In 1997 Whedon created his first television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show depicted Buffy Summers as the latest young woman called to battle vampires demons and other forces of darkness. This idea came directly from his aversion to seeing the Hollywood formula where the little blonde girl goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror movie. Whedon said he wanted to subvert that idea and create someone who was a hero. The mission statement of the show focused on the joy of female power: having it using it sharing it.

  The writing process emerged from conversations about emotional issues facing Buffy Summers and how she would confront them against supernatural forces. Whedon usually directed episodes from his own scripts that held the most cathartic moments in Buffy's story. The series received numerous awards including an Emmy Award nomination for writing for the 1999 episode Hush. The 2001 episode The Body was nominated for a Nebula Award in 2002. The fall 2001 musical episode Once More with Feeling was nominated for a Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award and a Best Script Nebula Award. All written and directed by Whedon these are considered some of the most effective and popular episodes of the series.

  A. Asbjørn Jøn an anthropologist and scholar recognized that the series shifted the way vampires have since been depicted in popular culture representations. In June 2012 Slate identified it as the most written about popular culture text of all time. More than twice as many papers essays and books have been devoted to the vampire drama than any other choice so many that they stopped counting when they hit 200. Whedon stated that his initial intention was to produce a cult television series and acknowledged a corresponding rabid almost insane fan base that subsequently emerged.

• 3. The Space Western That Flew Too Low

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  Whedon followed Angel with the space western Firefly starring Nathan Fillion Gina Torres Alan Tudyk Morena Baccarin Adam Baldwin Jewel Staite Sean Maher Summer Glau and Ron Glass. Set in the year 2517 Firefly explored the lives of people who while on the outskirts of society made their living as the crew of Serenity a Firefly-class spaceship. The series original concept progressed after Whedon read The Killer Angels a book on the Battle of Gettysburg. An ever-present element was Whedon's injection of anti-totalitarianism writing into the show a historical analogy of the Battle of Gettysburg known as the Battle of Serenity Valley.

  The beaten soldiers were called Browncoats after the brown dusters they wore as their uniforms. Whedon said I wanted to play with that classic notion of the frontier not the people who made history but the people history stepped on the people for whom every act is the creation of civilization. Fox chose to play the episodes out of order running The Train Job first and not airing the pilot until a dozen episodes later resulting in some confusion from viewers. The series was also promoted as a comedy not a science fiction drama and placed in the infamous Friday night death slot. The show had an average of 4.7 million viewers at the time and was ranked 98th in Nielsen ratings. The series was cancelled by Fox before all of the episodes had aired.

• 4. The Marvel Blockbuster And Its Shadows

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  In July 2010 it was confirmed that Whedon would write and direct The Avengers a live-action adaptation of the superhero team of the same name. Of his desire to take on the film he explained that the core of the movie was about finding yourself from community and the togetherness derived from a group that ultimately doesn't belong together. It became the third-highest-grossing film of all time at the North American box office back in 2012 and received considerable praise from critics. In retrospect Whedon thought the film had imperfections begrudging its quality in comparison to that of The Matrix and The Godfather Part II.

  Whedon returned to write and direct the sequel to The Avengers Avengers: Age of Ultron following the deal with Marvel Studios which expired in June 2015. On the matter of approaching a sequel Whedon reasoned not to go bigger but deeper likening it to digging with a scalpel to cause pain. He said of the film's characters Strong but damaged by power describes every person in this movie. It may in fact describe what the movie is about the more power that we have the less human we are. Whedon also served as a creative consultant on films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe leading up to Age of Ultron. He rewrote some dialogue for Thor: The Dark World directed the mid-credits scene of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and suggested that James Gunn make Guardians of the Galaxy weirder after reading an early draft.

• 5. The Reshoots And The Fallout

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  In May 2017 Whedon took over post-production duties for Justice League including writing and directing additional photography for the film. He received a co-writing credit for his contributions to the film which was released in November 2017. Despite reshooting a majority of the film and largely changing the tone from what Zack Snyder had originally intended Snyder retained sole credit as director of the film. After Snyder's original cut was released in 2021 fans began to refer to the theatrical cut as the Whedon Cut or Josstice League.

  In July 2020 Justice League actor Ray Fisher accused Whedon of showing gross abusive unprofessional and completely unacceptable behavior toward the cast and crew of the film going so far as to invite Whedon to sue him for slander if he believed the allegations were untrue. A virtual panel for the 2020 at-home San Diego Comic-Con focusing on Whedon's work was cancelled following Fisher's statements. The following month it was reported that WarnerMedia had begun an investigation into Whedon's behavior during the production of Justice League. Jason Momoa posted in support of Fisher writing about the shitty way they were treated on Justice League reshoots and saying serious stuff went down. In December 2020 WarnerMedia announced that its investigation had concluded and that remedial action had been taken.

• 6. The Feminist Paradox And Personal Cost

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  Elements of feminism are present throughout much of Whedon's work and he gives his mother credit for inspiring this. The character Kitty Pryde from the X-Men comics was an early model for Whedon's strong teenage girl characters. He said If there is a bigger influence on Buffy than Kitty I don't know what it was. She was an adolescent girl finding out she has great power and dealing with it. In college Whedon studied a theory called womb envy a concept he says observes a fundamental thing that women have something men don't the obvious being an ability to bear children.

  In late 2013 Whedon spoke at an Equality Now event where he issued a pointed dissection of the word feminist. He begins to say I have the privilege living my life inside of words but part of being a writer is also living in the very smallest part of every word. Arguing against the suffix -ist he continues you can't be born an -ist. It's not natural. This sparked an unfavorable reaction from the feminist community but also an appreciation for Whedon's arguments thought provocation. News website Digital Spy released in early 2015 an interview they had conducted with Whedon during which he criticized the entertainment industry for its genuine recalcitrant intractable sexism and old-fashioned quiet misogyny.