Joss Whedon Hates Weird Science

That Buffy episode where Warren makes a robot girlfriend, who then goes berzerk? "I Was Made To Love You?" Turns out it's Joss Whedon's way of critiquing Weird Science, a movie he loathes. That's just one of the insights that Joss dropped in a discussion with group of L.A. geeks for the GeeksOn podcast. He also revealed some new details about his upcoming projects.

The GeeksOn podcast was devoted to artificial intelligence, and when the subject of Kelly LeBrock's Weird Science came up, Joss got intense:

I hate Weird Science not a little. I find it offensive. The boy fantasy of building a girl. Obviously, we were doing the nasty version of it, because I find it grotesque.

Joss says his new Eliza Dushku show Dollhouse is "very much about humanity and how much of it is programmed," not unlike that creepy robo-girlfriend. Also in the pipeline: A movie he cowrote with Drew Goddard, which may be more bankable now that Goddard's Cloverfield is a big hit. And Joss has some "embryonic" projects to make money by putting content on the Internet. Finally, he's working on the Giant Size Astonishing X-Men annual, the end of his AXM run, and finishing up his Runaways run. But his Wonder Woman movie? Still dead.

Joss also mentioned that the metaphor of Winona Ryder, girl robot, changed his whole writing style, back when he wrote Alien: Resurrection:

That was a huge beginning for my whole career, when I had the metaphor for: "She's come back from the dead and has alien in her." And [Winona Ryder] is a robot. And to have this beautiful girl say, "Look at me I'm disgusting." I was like, "Oh my god, this robot is a metaphor for everybody who feels different." And [then I thought] "metaphors! Maybe I could do that again some time." I basically went from being a yarn-spinner to being a writer in that moment.

But of course Joss wasn't too happy with how Alien: Resurrection actually turned out on screen.

Joss is also very sad that X-fans didn't like his Astonishing X-Men storyline where the Danger Room becomes sentient, because he was trying to play with all sorts of clever themes of "cognitive dissonance" where we learn to sympathize with the exploited Danger Room AI. But the fans just wanted the X-men doing X-things. [Geeks On Podcast]

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