Joss Whedon directing the avengers – hell?

Iron Man isn’t Xander Harris

Whedon’s brand of dialogue – which is so influential, it’s bled across so many TV shows, comic books and movies – is quite distinctively rhythmic, and doesn’t match every context. Are we going to have to hear ‘Not so much with the alcoholism’ from Tony Stark, before recoiling in disgust at the director’s smug sense of self-satisfaction? Possibly.

Whedon’s a newbie

A huge budget, supremely popular actors and gigantic expectations: these are all new to Whedon, or, if they’re not, they’ve never been presented on quite this scale. Of all the projects in the Marvel pipeline, this is the biggest – could a more experienced director be necessary, to handle the absolute onslaught of characters and action on screen?

The Avengers is still a congested movie

No studio has ever tried anything on the scale of The Avengers. Taking four major franchises and unifying them into one super picture is going to be rife with tonal irregularities – Whedon could be taking on too great a task, in this respect. This isn’t really his shortfall, as such. There’s a chance that no director can make something of this nature work.

Could it fall apart?

Whedon’s work on Joel Silver’s long-gestating Wonder Woman film came to an unfortunate end a few years ago, when he parted the project on mutual terms due to creative disagreements. While The Avengers already has a release date and is about 99 per cent certain to go ahead, at this point, it’d be a bummer if fate had other plans for Whedon.

Has he lost it?

Whedon has been relatively quiet since 2005’s Serenity, working on the script to stuck-in-development-hell movie Goners and horror flick The Cabin In The Woods. His one high-profile project was the Fox show Dollhouse, which wasn’t just a ratings flop, since it had a cool reception from viewers, as well. In terms of track record, Whedon’s has been slight of late.

Superhero saturation

As we recently learned, Iron Man 2 wasn’t exactly helped by its ties to The Avengers, plus we have another… oh… two movies to go before we even get to Whedon’s project. This is out of his hands, but there’s a chance we might not give a damn about the Marvel Universe on screen when 2012 gets here, especially if Thor and Captain America turn out to be guff.