Formal Film Study: Joss Whedon Sci-Fi

The three films of his I have chosen to look at are, Dr. Horribles Sing-Along Blog, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Serenity!

(DISCLAIMER: I was sadly distracted and realized that Dr. Horrible was first released as a TV Series and it was cut into episodes. However in my defense when I found it online it was labeled as one big TV movie.)

The first thing I immediately noticed after watching all of these movies, was that each film carried one similar message: that message being, "Technology is dangerous!" Whedon skillfully uses modern technology to advance plot lines and tell a compelling story, and not just for the sake of showing viewers something shiny. A theme running through Whedon’s shows and movies is that technology is to be used cautiously. In Dr. Horrible, this theme is portrayed on a very literal level. Dr. Horrible video blogs about his criminal plans, and as “the L.A.P.D and Captain Hammer are among [Dr. Horrible’s] viewers,” his plans are foiled. Even more disastrous is Dr. Horrible’s use of rays, of both the “Freeze” and “Death” varieties. Initially appearing just to be comic-fun-after all the Freeze ray is powered by "Wonderfloniam"- this technology ultimately results in the death of (SPOILERS).

In Avengers: Age of Ultron, the premise is how futurist, co-leader, Tony Stark a.k.a Ironman, finds a power a source and tries to create A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). The experiment results in him creating the villainous robot Ultron, who want's to provide eternal peace for humanity. However, he believes the only way to find piece is in humanity's extinction. Without giving too much away, one of Ultrons attributes is that he is able to hack into the web and access all types of surveillance. This is mostly where the message of technology being dangers fits in (aside from the fact that a piece of technology wants to destroy the planet). During an interview, Marc Ruffalo (The Hulk) had this to say to the Wall Street Journal


"It's not a coincidence, I don't feel, with this giant surveillance state and this sort of explosion of technology, and now with artificial intelligence — that this movie comes out around this very moment where you have people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking coming out with a warning letter to the world that we should cease and desist further development of artificial intelligence so we can really understand what it is we're creating with fear that it will come to destroy all mankind.
 -a month later, Avengers: Age of Ultron is coming out, where you have the direct manifestation and nightmarish specter of Ultron and all of the collected knowledge of mankind and the ability to be everywhere at once, hits the market, hits the populace." - Mark Ruffalo

But Ultron as a villain wasn't just born out of super-intelligent AI paranoia fueled by dire "AI will end us" Ultron-5 was depicted as "The Living Automation" in Marvel comic Avengers #55. In fact, mankind has long been afraid of technological singularity (robot uprising). Anyone remember "Skynet"?

A powerful example that technology can be dangerous lesson comes from the movie Serenity, based on the canceled -too early series, Firefly. I would like to mention that no shot better captures Whedon's juxtaposition of old and new than the title credits of Firefly that shows a horse galloping on dry, desert land, while a space ship soars overhead. The basic description of Firefly and Serenity is the series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of "Serenity", a "Firefly-class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity. The show explores the lives of a group of people who fought on the losing side of a civil war and others who now make a living on the fringe of society, as part of the pioneer culture that exists on the fringes of their star system. In this future, the only two surviving superpowers, the United States and China, fused to form the central federal government, called the Alliance, resulting in the fusion of the two cultures. 

In the Film Serenity, it is revealed that a government’s secret technology that was designed to keep a planet’s population calm (releasing substance in the atmosphere) unexpectedly resulted in the entire population either dying of apathy (including not wanting to eat) or, for a small percentage, turning them into rage-filled cannibalistic creatures (reavers). This isn't only trying inform the audience of the dangers of investing in sciences and technologies that we still don't fully understand but that we shouldn't be afraid to question our government.

According to Whedon's vision, "nothing will change in the future: technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today"

Speaking of advanced technologies, both Age of Ultron and Serenity, required the aid of a lot of CGI and special effects, but Dr. Horrible had an extremely limited budget. In fact, they could only afford to do a lot of scenes in one take so they had to make sure that everything went completely as planned.  The reason for the small budget was because Whedon and his writing team came up with musical during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The idea was to create something small and inexpensive, yet professionally done, in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike.

Theres something I noticed about Joss Whedon movies: He likes to kill off his main characters. I don't just mean he kills off a side-character or a villain, Whedon prefers to kill off someone in the main cast. This is so common killing off members of his central cast has almost become standard operating procedure.  Also he kills these characters without any build-up or warning. In Dr. Horrible the main love interest, Penny (Felicia Day) was killed in a quite depressing way. In the film Age of Ultron we lost a new Avenger! Pietro Maximoff a.k.a. Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the most upsetting (to me) was Wash (Alan Tudyk) in the film Serenity. Actual two people were killed in that film, Wash and Shepherd Book (Ron Glass). Although each is killed in an impersonal and seemingly random way (sliced in half, hit by stray bullet, and impaled by wooden missile, respectively), their passing serve to remind us that death is an inevitable part of life. While we would like to believe that the good guys will always walk away and live to fight another day, Whedon reminds us that casualties occur on both sides in a war.

Now while all these similarities are well and good, I was thinking about what connected these films on a larger directing level. I tried to think what element of all these films 100% guarantees these are Joss Whedon branded movies. Was it the stories? No, Age of Ultron has so many characters that they steal the focus. Was it the size? No, no it can't be the size, I mean look at Dr. Horrible they had such close knit cast of characters. . .

Then I realized it. The strongest element in all of Joss Whedon's productions. The Characters! It's Joss Whedons special ability; his superpower! Whedon has a great talent of writing and developing characters! No matter the size, no matter the diversity, Whedon is able to connect these characters together on a larger level. Even though there are so many big names in a film like Avengers, you care for each and every character and you want to see them all make it through the ordeal. When he kills off characters, it's not for shock value, it's to help you realize that you could relate these characters and that you shouldn't be taking them for granted. Think about it! Fans get infuriated when we lose a character because we love them so much!  None of his characters are cardboard cut outs, they definitely aren't stereotypes. They are human beings (aliens, robots, vampires what have you). I'll will remember these characters whether they're alive or dead.