River Tam, played by Summer Glau, was a young runaway born with genius intellect who throughout the season is treated like a pseudo-child after brutal government experiments leave her traumatized and with erratic psychic powers. It was … confusing, to say the least. When asked to return for the th episode, Carpenter requested that Cordelia not die, something she says everyone agreed to, only to have production later backpedal and kill off Cordelia anyway.
While Noxon held a stronger writing hand as producer in season six of Buffy , Whedon was at the helm of Angel throughout the entire series with his co-creator, David Greenwalt.
It became a theme throughout the series that while male characters grow through each birth, women lose their agency and their lives, paying the final price for their birth. Throughout the film, Black Widow is flattened to being a sexy caretaker for Bruce Banner, and in a pivotal scene with him, she equates her inability to have children with being a monster.
Shortly after, Whedon left Twitter, which many thought was because of the criticism he was receiving from feminists. June Whedon received lots of backlash after his scrapped Wonder Woman script was leaked in for all of the internet to see. Over and over again, he wanted you to know that Wonder Woman was strong but also extremely sexy. It felt like I had a disease, like something from a Greek myth.
You hear me? November 25, Whedon exits his upcoming HBO show The Nevers, citing the challenges of filming a big-budget science-fiction series during a global pandemic. February 10, Earlier this year, Carpenter came forward to speak about the trauma she says she endured on the set of Buffy at the hands of Whedon.
Carpenter played Cordelia Chase, the most popular girl at Sunnydale High who, after gaining skills to combat the underworld in Buffy , moved on to become a main character in Angel with co-star David Boreanaz. Joss Whedon has earned a reputation for crafting female-driven stories, making him an obvious choice for a project such as a Wonder Woman movie. Whedon ended up leaving the project in over creative differences with the studio, with Whedon claiming that they never showed much interest in his ideas for the film.
The lack of enthusiasm was overwhelming. Whedon is well known for directing The Avengers and its sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron , but what you might not know is that he also directed a couple of the post-credits tags included at the end of every Marvel movie. Jackson shows Dr. Source: Screenshot via Mutant Enemy Productions.
Despite being a big studio production, The Avengers was clearly a passion project for Whedon, as the self-professed comic geek wrote and directed the film. Still, Whedon is refreshingly self-critical when necessary.
However, he does claim that it was necessary so that the Avengers could enjoy a moment of triumph at the end. It's efficient. One less thing to worry about, the one thing that might matter more than a mission. It makes everything easier — even killing.
In the context of Natasha's overall character arc — she's a deadly assassin trying to atone for the awful mysterious things she's done — it's hard to argue that Natasha thinks she's a monster specifically because she can't bear children. She's never seemed particularly interested in starting a family, and her story is about seeking redemption, not about having kids. To a lot of people, it seems as if Natasha, like so many female characters, is being reduced to her reproductive choices.
But in the context of this scene, and specifically in the context of her relationship with Bruce which culminates in the two of them discussing running away together , it's much easier to infer that Natasha is so sad about not being able to have kids that she thinks of herself as a monster. To a lot of people it seems as if she, like so many female characters, is being reduced to her reproductive choices.
For more on why many find this scene troublesome, check out Meredith Woerner and Katharine Trendacosta's excellent io9 post which also wonderfully explains why it's silly to call Natasha's brief capture by the film's villain a damsel in distress moment , as well as a piece by Jen Yamato at the Daily Beast.
But much of what's driving fans' anger isn't really about Natasha. It's about Joss Whedon in particular and, perhaps more important, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's general inability to launch a story about a woman superhero. When it comes to incorporating prominent women into its movies, Marvel struggles. The studio has Black Widow, as well as a standard-issue girlfriend character for each of its main heroes. One of these characters — Peggy Carter — has spun off into her own very enjoyable TV series.
In fact, the company's record is slightly better on TV, where it also has Agents of S. But its TV shows have a fraction of the cultural impact of its films. Black Widow has been four different things in four different movies. Marvel's treatment of Black Widow is frequently outright lousy. In the buildup to the release of Ultron , the lack of Black Widow merchandise prompted an outcry that grew to eventually include Ruffalo himself , and the reasoning behind the company's lack of said products was depressingly cynical.
Disney corporate, it turns out , assumes it has the young girl market locked down with its princess franchise. But Marvel also doesn't know what to do with Black Widow. As Darren Franich points out at Entertainment Weekly , she's a character who has been four different things in four different movies, with only Johansson's rock-steady performance holding all of these interpretations together. Some of that is just a byproduct of the way serialized storytelling tends to twist characters to fit the story, rather than vice versa, but it's also well beyond what any of Marvel's male heroes deal with.
And despite the obvious fan desire for one, Marvel has no plans for a Black Widow solo movie — and its first female-led superhero film won't arrive until , after 19 movies led by men. If Marvel were doing a better job of appreciating that there are superhero fans of both genders, the outcry might have been a minor spat, instead of a major storm. But the outrage is also particular to Joss Whedon, the director of Avengers: Age of Ultron , and that's in part because of how Whedon has presented himself.
Personally and politically, Whedon is definitely a feminist. He frequently labels himself as such, he works with groups like Equality Now , and he's been a frequent public supporter of figures like Anita Sarkeesian, whose Feminist Frequency YouTube series has been the target of misogynistic outrage.
Whedon's work trends toward feminism, but his true great cause is storytelling. But artistically, things are more complicated. Whedon's work trends toward feminism, but his true great cause is storytelling, and he always prioritizes the latter if it makes for a better story.
Whedon likes to tell stories that test the strength of communities, stories where horrific actions are often forgiven and written off because the larger community requires it. And though this is why his stories are so frequently good, it also has a tendency to clash with his fictional feminism. More on this in a bit. As he told BuzzFeed's Adam B. Vary when explaining that he'd left Twitter to concentrate on his writing, not because he was being attacked by militant feminists as some had assumed from his timing :.
It circles directly back upon you. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the best TV shows ever made. Don't you dare say otherwise. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an early, terrific example of television establishing that women can be in control of their own lives and their own action shows, just as easily as men.
The arrival of Buffy and Xena: Warrior Princess in the late s signaled the arrival of the feminist action hero on TV. Whedon has specifically pointed to the landmark portrayals of Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise and Sarah Connor from the Terminator franchise as touchstones.
Both Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor were notable for the way they simply overthrew existing action paradigms by putting a woman at the center of both stories. Yes, their films were science fiction, but the characters felt like genuine breakthroughs.
Alien , in particular, is structured in such a way that the emergence of Ripley as the hero is almost a twist ending. Whedon's characters exist within patriarchal institutions designed to control them. It's easy to see how Buffy and Whedon's later female action heroes are inspired by this particular character type. But Whedon traditionally goes one step further.
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