I'll give anything Joss writes a shot, but it took me years to finally go, "Okay, fine. I'll watch Buffy. But only a few episodes." I was absolutely taken in, and I watched the whole thing as a marathon, promptly followed by Angel.Elizabeth Grunewald said:
My first experience with Joss was with Serenity. Not Firefly, mind you, but the movie. I had a bad week and went to a movie expecting some okay, popcorn-worthy sci-fi comedy (based on the previews). And I was absolutely floored. Later on, I found out about the series (which I promptly watched), and since that time I've always had an eye out for Whedon's next project.
There are two things that this movie will be missing, both of which just go more smoothly in Joss Whedon's hands:
1) Ensemble. Many of the pieces in Whedon's fiction--the settings, the characters, and so on--aren't all that unique or ground-breaking. They're usually best classified as "an interesting blend of..." rather than something new. But the difference in Whedon's writing is that he seems acutely aware of how all of those pieces interact and play on each other. His writing balances it such that the story may have a "central character," but it does not have a singular "star." All of the pieces fit together in such a fluid and organic way, even throughout various shifts in the group dynamic. The cast is the star, a complex composite character made up of many--heroes and villains alike.
(Incidentally, his ability to weave and juggle multiple characters in this way is exactly what makes him perfect for The Avengers. If only he'd done X-Men as well.)
2) Authenticity of character. I submit Xander, Cordelia, and Wesley into evidence (since your most recent posts have revolved around those two series). The "day one" version of each of those characters and the "day final" character are nothing near similar. Any writer can suddenly change a character for one thing to another, but this was done in such a patient and authentic way that you scarcely notice it until you look back. Characters grow, learn, and change--rather than "goofy fall guy" remaining "goofy fall guy" forever to preserve the familiar feel of the show--and they do it in a way that is wholly believable. The process pulls the viewer into the change, essentially making the viewer's emotional palette another piece of the ensemble.
You don't have to be super-deep to pull an emotional response effectively, either. Nicholas Sparks knows exactly which strings to pull to make most people cry by the end of his books/movies. It's not that they're particularly deep, intellectual, or artistic. It's that they make effective use of the basic moving parts we all share. I think it's more impressive if someone can get a rise out of you with the simplest of tools, in the same way I find pencil drawings often more artistically impressive (though not technically impressive) as computer-generated images. Doing more with less, sticking to the basics.
Hell, Joss demonstrated more character development in Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog with the Dr. Horrible character that most television series demonstrate in a handful of seasons. Not because he's some sort of literary genius, but because he made Dr. Horrible's character believable by speaking to the audience on the most basic level--wanting two very different things at the same time, and what happens when you try to have them both. Who hasn't felt that at some point? This kind of authenticity is what really sets Whedon's work apart in terms of its characters, which then makes what he does with the cast-as-character even more effective.
And how about Giles and Shepherd Book? Developed through absence of development--you are given the sense that they've gone through immense changes, even when you're not explicitly shown, or even told, the extent of those changes. Yet still you somehow feel that they're carrying the weight of an unknown past.
(This is also why I feel Joss is far better on television than he is in movies, as movies rarely afford the opportunity to establish characters in that way. With Serenity and Avengers, he worked/works with previously-established characters, helping him along somewhat. And while Alien:Resurrection was just plain awful on many accounts, I'll say that the freelance crew still carried with them the feeling that their stories went further back that what we were seeing.)
OVERALL: I think this movie is going to try to capitalize on the least effective aspects of Joss's writing--the premise/setting. Firefly was in space, not about space. Buffy and Angel had monsters, but they weren't about monsters. Dollhouse was set in the house, but it wasn't about the house. Joss works well in sci-fi because it gets us off our "reality guard," and lets him do some fun things once in awhile, but (unlike most mainstream sci-fi) it's not about the sci-fi stuff. That's just backdrop, contrasting to our own reality, as a way of showing us that--even in futuristic, monster-filled fantasy worlds--people go through the same stuff we do now... oh, and sometimes there's a cool gadget or monster or something.
