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Will Joss Whedon Ratnerf*ck The Avengers?

By Dustin Rowles | Lists | August 24, 2010 |

By Dustin Rowles | Lists | August 24, 2010 |


Look: I’m loving the Marvel movies. And by Marvel movies, I mean: Iron Man. (Iron Man 2 hasn’t held up well after only three months, while The Hulk was good but kind of forgettable). Nevertheless, for the average non-geek, I’m still really stoked about the upcoming Marvel flicks: Kenneth Branaugh is an inspired choice to direct Thor and I really like that film’s cast (Idris Elba, Natalie Portmand, Anthony Hopkins, Kat Dennings, Stellan Skarsgård, and even Chris Hemsworth looks like a great fit). I’m not as optimistic about Captain America just because Joe Johnston is kind of a hack, and Chris Evans — as Scott Pilgrim demonstrated — seems better suited to tongue-in-cheek roles.

I also love Joss Whedon, like any red-blooded American with a strong affection for Canada. But I think The Avengers is already getting out of hand. There are already nine major characters in this thing, and the freakin’ villain (or more likely, villains) haven’t been announced yet. And if you thought Spider-Man 3 or X-Men: The Last Stand had a lot of characters to contend with, to borrow a term from TK: This is going to be one huge Ratnerfuck. Whedon is going to need to film a 4-hour movie just to give all the major participants substantial screen time.

But it gets potentially worse. Moviehole tracked down a Whedon quote from The Sunday Herald-Sun in which he mentioned that “”It is true that the movie is only going to have one female Avenger. But she will not be the only female character.”

I’m all for the addition of female characters, but for one tiny problem: There’s already too many characters in The Avengers. Chances are, the female(s) additions will likely be roles for Natalie Portman (from Thor), Liv Tyler (from The Incredible Hulk) or Gwyneth Paltrow, although there is apparently some talk of using Alice Eve as The Enchantress.

Nevertheless, The Avengers really does seem like it’s turning into the Scooby’s All-Star Laff-A-Lympics, where they just threw every goddamn character they could find into a weekly series so that, basically, all the characters got one or two zingers off, and that was that. Will this be the fate of The Avengers?

If so, I don’t think Whedon should half-ass the destruction of the Marvel franchise. I think he should decimate it with panache. He should power-drive this fucker into the ground. I don’t want to see a minor disaster; I want to see him out-Ratnerfuck Brett Ratner. And that’s why, I’m making these five suggestions for additional female characters to The Avengers. If Whedon is really a D.C. Comics mole, hired to take down Marvel from the inside, I hope he’ll listen. After all, nothing could improve a superhero movie like zany female sitcom stars!

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1. Laverne Defazio (“Laverne & Shirley”): A brief cameo, in the opening credits, perhaps. She can walk by, and Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner can do that palm-bite thing that Squiggy used to do in the “Laverne and Shirley” series.

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2. Chrissy Snow (“Three’s Company”): Thor moves into Tony Stark’s guest house with Black Widow and Chrissy Snow and pretends to be gay so that Stark doesn’t suspect any funny business.

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3. Carol Seaver (“Growing Pains”): The chivalrous Captain America takes time out from hunting down the super-villain to help Carol Seaver deal with her eating disorder.

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4. Kelly Kapowski (“Saved by the Bell”): The Pepper Potts thing is getting old. And Tony Stark needs a new love interest. Who fits that bill better than a Bayside high-schooler? In the end, we could even find out that she was secretly one of the villains: Kelly “The Killer” Kapowski: She spikes you to death with a volleyball.

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5. Dharma Montgomery (“Dharma and Greg”): The newest member of S.H.I.E.L.D., Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury can’t control her. She’s too much of a free spirit! And she smells like incense and Trader Joes.