Avenging Serenity

Avenging Serenity (or- ‘Whedonising the masses’)       posted on February16th 2012 by David Leadbeater

Ah, where did all the Browncoats go? Still licking their wounds, I guess.

    Will we ever forget poor old Alan Tudyk being impaled at the end of Serenity? Or the spine- tingling, utterly immortal words of Summer Glau: “My turn. . .” Our desperation suddenly and expertly turned to fire.

    So, with his new movie will Joss finally avenge the death of Firefly, the greatest Space Western of our time?

    If anyone could. . .

    Our hopes are on fire. The reason I’m connecting Firefly with The Avengers is because we all know the problems that plagued the show from Upstairs.  Make this happen, they said. Make that happen, they said, whilst flicking the oily disinterest from the collars of their Saville Row suits. Malcolm Reynolds is too dour, too aggressive. The pilot ain’t right so let’s run it out of order, oh, and then let’s run some of the other episodes out of order too. That’ll solidify the viewership.

    Now Marvel are just Marvel, I guess, a huge entity of its own. But there’s no getting away from the fact that they know what they’re doing. Let me say this (too late): give Whedon free-reign, let him experiment. He will breathe new life into your aging characters. He will bring new blood to what has occasionally become a bloodless franchise. The Mutant Enemy is your salvation, my friends.

    My proof? Ask any Whedonite if they watch any new series or movie that involves a Whedon-branded actor? Well, the answer’s clear, and it’s all about the cult status. An actor achieves this status when he’s been Whedonised. Real word- just added it to my Thesaurus.

    And one more whisper into the ear of the masses: http://www.cantstoptheserenity.com/

    -they aim to misbehave in support of charity and have raised over $150,000.00 so far by movie screenings alone.

    And the trending goes on.

    The Avengers already has cult status, it started when they announced the name of the Director.

    

When ordinary people do extraordinary things.

When ordinary people do extraordinary things posted on . . .2012 by David Leadbeater

Real heroes don’t wear masks. They don’t dream in colour. In the real world they’re not super. They’re the weird guy down the street who sees you’ve managed to strand yourself on the rope that swings across the beck and gets his feet wet pulling you back to dry land. It’s your mum. My daughter. The Chosen Few who go to fight for their country, for their way of life. They don’t go trying to be special, but one day they just are. . .

    As a child I thought my heroes were caped crusaders and wise-cracking web-slingers. I didn’t know the near-real-life version was the girl who stands resolute before the approaching monster. She’s smaller, weaker, and younger, but she never hesitates. Thanks for that, Joss.

    So who did I turn to when a real-life nightmare came calling? My real heroes of course- my mum and dad. When I told them about a habitual bully, the scourge of our school, my mum wanted to head out straight away and confront him but my dad managed to calm her and  went round to see the bully’s father. Now that I’m older I know he must have been scared, but I never saw it then.

    And the next day, the bully just went on to someone else. . .

    So it’s lunch-break and I’m walking free, feeling good, and I see a crowd has gathered past the old, empty classrooms where the teachers can’t see. Where the Prefects don’t go. The crowd’s silence betrays its guilt like a government betrays its country by hiding a politician’s expenses.

    I walk among the quiet ones, the whisperers, witnesses whose eyes shine with sadistic glee, and move to the front. For a moment I stagger, I flashback and see myself there, on the ground, being kicked and jeered at by the bully, being pinched and spat upon, crying. . .

    And then I see with eyes that suddenly can dream in colour, and I utter those immortal words: “She’s a girl!”

    The bully turns to stare at me, and then shrieks in surprise as my body suddenly slams into him. He goes down. I go down. We fight, scuffle and scratch, like kids do until a pair of teachers finally wade in and break us apart.

    “I’m shocked at you.” One of them says to me.

    But. . .

    Red-faced, I am marched away and my last image is of the dishevelled girl. I never knew her name and never got to know. Her words ring out strongly: “I didn’t need your help, Leadbeater. Not really.”

    I turn to the bully and look him straight in the eyes. “My dad says: Stand Your Ground.”

    That was the day I became extraordinary.