As I mentioned earlier my knowledge of Whedon's work was just what he'd been involved with, not what the work entailed, and in reality I had dismissed his work because the level of devotion his fans have was so great that I thought it uncool. Before you hit send on the email filled with hate directed towards my lack of Whedon love, I'm just telling it as it is, but this gets better I swear. My misconception was not the level of devotion that the fans held for Whedon and his work but the reason behind this intense devotion. I'd thought that people must have had a connection with the characters and the TV shows, which was present, but the real connection was between Whedon and the fans of his work. During the Buffy years Whedon frequently interacted with fans on The Bronze Room message boards, listening to their ideas, criticism and general talk about the show. After the Columbine shootings the studio Buffy was at decided to delay the season finale because it was set within a High School. In protest Whedon hit the message boards and urged Canadian fans to "Bootleg that Puppy" so fans around the world could get their hands on the episode.

I was hesitant at first when I learnt of Whedon signing on to direct Marvel's Crown Jewel, The Avengers, but if I was told that Marvel were looking at an unamed director who has proven that he can produce work that can keep studios happy whilst interacting with fans and not only listening to their feedback but actually taking it on board, I'd be pretty interested to learn more about this director. I got to admit that this is pretty much the most important when bringing together the majority of Marvel's big guns in one film. If Marvel screw The Avengers up it'll be a huge blow, so what better way to ensure fans will be happy with the film than to hire the guy who has a proven track record that he can interact and listen to fans.

Which brings me to the recent news that marvel are planning short films to introduce new characters. It's a testing of the waters for these characters and they'll appear before released Marvel films. I believe this may be the rumoured super pitch that lead to the hiring of Joss Whedon for The Avengers. We all remember the infamous Writers strike of 2007/08 that gave us such wonderful scripts as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Youth in Revolt. During that time, whilst doing some protesting, Joss Whedon pondered how he could create something that was cheap and easy to create that wasn't controlled by studios. The resulting creation was called Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. Starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day and made on a budget of $250K. Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long was released online and initially was available for one week as a free online stream. It was then released as an iTunes download and then on Amazon. Word spread of the awesomeness of Dr. Horrible and resulted in plenty of people willing to pay for something that was initially availble for free. Now imagine this, Marvel film short films introducing their lesser known characters, they premiere before other Marvel films and a week later are released on iTunes and Amazon to purchase. Suddenly Marvel is making money on these short films and are also able to track the popularity of these characters, Pixar do the same with their short films and people pay to download them. In the end Marvel can then release a short film DVD/Bluray that they can make more money on, just like Whedon ended up doing on Dr. Horrible. Actually it is rumoured that more than a million paid downloads happened for Dr. Horrible which means $$$ which is why studios make films.

I'd love to hear what you FOOLS think? This is not what is happening it's just the reasons I believe Whedon was hired and why he is perfect to direct The Avengers and assist Marvel into the future. If you agree or disagree let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.