I did like Firefly quite a lot, despite it’s short comings. But never quite got the fervor for it as the greatest whatever the fuck in the history of spacey things. Part and parcel of what works there is that the dialog is often pretty stylized, and far less “quippy” than a lot of Whedon’s other stuff.
His whole thing has always been very stagey, and he loves an info dump.
But the way opinions on his Avengers movies have shifted in the last few years, Especially Age of Ultron, is pretty telling. People commonly comment that it seems dated because of his dialog. That it’s too quippy, too “Whedon”, it doesn’t fit with where the MCU has gone since in terms of tone, humor and characterization.
I think there’s a lot more of that “at the time” running around in this. You didn’t used to see a lot of word play, or incidental/observational dialog in network TV. Genre shows didn’t used to get the big Aaron Sorkin style monologue. And when shows did do that it didn’t get undercut by a joke.
It just doesn’t stand out in the context of that whole “Golden Age of TV” thing that followed on it’s heels.
It’s interesting. Something like Buffy, a lot of what that’s credited with. A show like Xena was doing a lot of the same. Straight down to like musical episodes, and deliberately goofing on the format. At exactly the same time.
But where the reputation of Whedon’s work seems to be tapering off. There’s a whole “Wait Xena was awesome” reappraisal going on right now. Seems significantly better regarded now than it was back in the day.
