Whedon fans assemble!

I am not a devotee of Joss Whedon. I do not light candles around a picture of his chubby-bunny face nor do I have any part of me tattooed with his likeness. This does not mean that, as a nerd, I do not grant unto him his proper nerdly respect. I do. Dude killed it with "Firefly" and Serenity. His run writing "Astonishing X-Men" was phenomenal. One day, I'll actually watch the rest of "Buffy" and "Angel," which I know to be good but vampire shit just never hooked me so back off "True Blood." I think he gets characters incredibly well, kicks ass at pacing his stories, and is a big ole fanboy geek just like me. I want to have the proverbial beer with him. I do not want him directing The Avengers, but Deadline says he's going to.
You knew I had to put some art in there, right? First off, how cool is that illustration from John Romita Jr for the new "Avengers" comic? He's just sooooo goooooood. I'd let JRJR direct the movie, I really would. I know that in the movies, Spider-man and Wolverine will not be Avengers, much to the chagrin of Marvel (kind of sucks that you sold off those rights now that Disney's backing you, doesn't it boys?). It just looked bad ass and I wanted to show it here. Second, deep breath yo: I do not think that Whedon will screw up The Avengers. He'll probably do a fine job, especially with the character stuff. Hell, if they let him in the script process (which they'd be fools not to do instead of farming the whole thing out to whatever assembly line they have writing these things), he'll probably help push the script from mainstream tripe to enjoyable fanboy funstuff. He just has absolutely zero experience helming a $150 million budgeted movie that absolutely has to have some crazy huge action sequences. Crazy. Huge. I'm not saying I'd rather have Michael Bay doing it, but I would have liked to see someone with some blockbuster experience behind the camera and Whedon in the writing room. Like I said, despite the hilarious jokes flying around twitter about how now The Avengers will be canceled after the second act, I want Whedon to succeed. I just have some substantial doubts. If he had been brought on to lead an individual movie, say Ant Man, I'd feel great about it, but this is the big time. Plus, we all know how well Whedon and top-level brass work together, right? Joking aside, suits don't get this guy. They may have let Jon Favreau have some leash on the $75 million budgeted Iron Man, but double that and I doubt they're going to feel good about a second-time movie director getting free reign of a franchise they spent 6 years setting up. Just saying, I would have preferred someone with a bit more experience and the filmography to back up his decisions to the execs. That said, there's a nerd in charge of The Avengers. You can't hate on that too much.