The Avengers

Year:  2012
Director:  Joss Whedon
Screenplay:  Joss Whedon, based on the Marvel comic book series The Avengers created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Starring:  Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders
Running Time:  143 minutes
Genre:  Fantasy, action, superhero, comic books

This is the long-awaited film uniting several of Marvel Comics most popular superhero characters.  When the exiled Norse god Loki (Hiddleston) steals a mysterious object called the Tesseracht, which has vast but unknown powers, Nick Fury (Jackson), head of shadowy US Government agency S.H.I.E.L.D., decides to activate the "Avengers Initiative".  He contacts billionaire industrialist and playboy Tony Stark (Downey, Jr.) who fights crime as "Iron Man" using an advanced suit of armour; super-soldier Steve Rogers (Evans), aka "Captain America", who has recently woken after being in suspended animation since the 1940s; Doctor Bruce Banner (Ruffalo) who, after being exposed to gamma radiation, involuntarily transforms into a giant, green-skinned, super strong creature called "The Hulk" when he becomes angry; Norse god of thunder Thor (Hemsworth) who happens to be Loki's adopted brother; and Russian assassin Natasha Romanoff (Johansson), aka "the Black Widow".  Their mission is to find the Tesseracht and stop Loki, however tensions among the group threaten the mission, and Loki's army of Chitauri aliens threaten the entire world.

I had had my doubts about this movie for a long time because with having four main characters each of whom has had at least one entire feature film devoted to them leading into this one, I thought it would be overbalanced with trying too much material for each of them, however the balance works right.  The main focus of the film is the wise-cracking Tony Stark and the serious straight-laced Captain America, and the two bounce off each other well.  Stark's wise-cracks also manage to anchor the pure fantasy element of Thor (2011) in the high-tech science-fiction world of Iron Man (2008).  The film features great performances from the whole cast who have genuine chemistry as an ensemble.

There are some spectacular visual effects and the film features some superb action set-pieces.  It's a witty and hugely entertaining piece of action fantasy film-making which really captures the feel of the source comic books.

In the UK the film was retitled Avengers Assemble in order to avoid confusion with the British television series The Avengers (1961 - 1969) and the 1998 movie version of the show.

Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Doweney, Jr., Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson in The Avengers
       

Firefly

Year: 2002
Directors: Joss Whedon, Tim Minear, Vern Gillum, Michael Grossman, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Marita Grabiak, David Solomon, Allan Kroeker, Jim Contner and Thomas J. Wright.
Screenplay: Joss Whedon, Tim Minear, Jane Espenson, Drew Z. Greenberg, Ben Edlund, Jose Molina, Cheryl Cain and Brett Matthews. Series created by Joss Whedon.
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, Summer Glau and Ron Glass.
Running Time: 14 episodes over 1 season. One 90 minute episode, otherwise 42 minutes per episode.
Genre: Science-fiction, western, drama


Summary: In the year 2517 the human race has moved to other star systems most of which are ruled by a brutal regime known as "the Alliance". Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Fillion), who seven years earlier fought on the losing side of a war against the Alliance, is commander of the Firefly-class transport ship Serenity, which travels among the remote frontier planets searching for ny type of work (whether of the legal or illegal variety) that will keep food on the table and the old ship flying. Also on the crew are Reynolds' wartime friend Zoe (Torres), Zoe's husband and the ship's pilot Wash (Tudyk), violent ex-mercenary Jayne (Baldwin), perpetually cheerful engineer Kaylee (Staite), professional "Companion" (a kind of highly respected courtesan) Inara (Baccarin) who gives the ship a level of respectability and social standing, preacher (or "Shepherd") Book (Glass) and doctor Simon Tam (Maher) who is on the run from the Alliance with his genius but delusional and occasionally violent sister River (Glau), who Simon rescued from an Alliance facility where she was being subjected to horrific experiments.

Opinion: The concept of Firefly was suggested to Joss Whedon after he read the novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, which chronicles the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Whedon wanted to make a show about people who had fought on the losing side of a war and their experiences afterwards as pioneers on the outskirts of civilization. The show mixes science-fiction with elements from Western movies, with many of the planets visited by the characters being like remote Old West outposts or towns, which I don't think is an unreasonable idea of what those type of worlds could be like. In science-fiction terms, the show is notable for the fact that there are no alien creatures or talking robots or anything like that. Also, refreshingly, they accept the fact that there is no sound in space.
In my opinion Firefly is very possibly one of the best, if not the best, science-fiction shows ever made. The show was well-written, with witty and intelligent scripts. The endlessly quotable dialogue mixed existing slang, invented words, Old West-style dialect and snatches of Chinese (in fact there is a strong Chinese influence in many of the show's set designs and costumes). The look of the show often used highly mobile cameras which in some scenes created a semi-documentary look. The acting was always excellent and helped create many memorable characters with Fillion's Captain Reynolds being the coolest space hero since Han Solo in Star Wars (1977).
So what went wrong? The show was produced by and originally shown on the Fox network who cancelled the show after only eleven of the fourteen episodes that were made had been screened. The network never seemed to care much about the show right from the start. Episodes were screened out of order (although Firefly doesn't really have one on-going story it does have running themes and storylines which run throughout the series) the extended pilot episode, which introduces the shows characters, themes and plotlines wasn't shown until the end of the run because the network wanted a more "action-packed" episode to open the series. Episodes were moved around the schedules and the series was marketed as kind of an "action-comedy" instead of the serious science-fiction drama that Whedon intended (although there is still a lot of action and humour in it). However, after reruns and DVD releases, the show has become kind of a cult series with a hardcore fanbase, known as "Browncoats" (a slang term in the show for the army in which Reynolds and Zoe fought). The show was popular enough on DVD for a movie sequel, Serenity, which was released in 2005 to critical acclaim but sadly not much success at the box office.
This was a brilliant television series which was sadly cancelled far too soon. However what there is of it is totally shiney.