Joss Whedon Is Good At Making Movies ‘For Morons’ Says Former Collaborator
Joss Whedon is getting slammed by fellow director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, saying the Avengers director makes movies for "morons."
Avengers director Joss Whedon is feuding with another director, trading insults over who makes worse films. The latest salvo against Whedon comes from director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who said in a new interview with The UK Independent that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator makes films “for morons.”
The bad blood between Jeunet and Joss Whedon goes back over two decades, after the pair worked together on the 1997 film Alien Resurrection. Jeunet, who also directed the 1991 film Delicatessen, was speaking to The Independent about the 25th anniversary of Alien Resurrection, and took the opportunity to slam Whedon as very good at “making films for American geeks” but also “something for morons.” He continued his backhanded compliment by saying “He’s very good at making Marvel films. I hate this kind of movie. It’s so silly, so stupid.”
Whedon wrote Alien Resurrection and Jeunet directed it, and it not only scored a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, it is genuinely hated by fans. The two began blaming each other rather than take responsibility for their cinematic disaster, and the rhetoric hasn’t calmed down at all.
Whedon previously criticized Jeunet’s direction for allowing the cast to improperly deliver the lines he wrote. “They said the lines… mostly… but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong that they could possibly do. It wasn’t so much that they’d changed the script – it’s that they just executed it in such a ghastly fashion as to render it almost unwatchable.”
Obviously, Jeunet took offense to Whedon’s statements, and used the interview to strike back, although he claims not to care about his opinion. “I know Joss Whedon said some bad things about me. I don’t care,” he said.
In all fairness, both went on to create better work separately. Jeunet was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his 2001 film Amelie, and Whedon scored a hit with the short-lived series Firefly before Marvel came calling. He was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the original Toy Story.
Jeunet’s criticisms are likely the nicest thing said about Whedon recently. The director has been under near-constant criticism ever since Justice League actor Ray Fisher came forward to accuse him of abusive behavior while working on the 2017 film.
Whedon took over directing the film when original director Zack Snyder had to step down, and Fisher says he treated the cast badly the entire time. Gal Gadot backed up his comments with allegations of her own. Whedon dismissed her accusations by claiming she did not understand him because English is not her first language.
Fisher’s statements started wave of other actors who felt empowered to come forward with their own stories of Whedon’s abusive behavior. Charisma Carpenter, who worked with Whedon on both Buffy and its spinoff series Angel, exposed his “casual cruelty” (as she described it) in a number of posts on Twitter. Amber Benson, who also starred on Buffy, added her own abuse allegations against Whedon.
A handful of actors have come to Whedon’s defense, including Captain Tightpants himself, Nathan Fillion, who said he never saw such behavior from the filmmaker.
