In his attempts at distancing himself from “Alien: Resurrection,” Whedon threw everyone under the bus but himself:
“It wasn’t a question of doing everything differently, although they changed the ending, it was mostly a matter of doing everything wrong. 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.”
Pointing the blame like this and refusing to accept any yourself is, frankly, gross. It’s not the only time Whedon has done so either. He wrote this infamous line from the first “X-Men” movie, delivered by Storm (Halle Berry): “Do you know what happens to a toad when it’s struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else.” According to Whedon, the problem isn’t that it’s a bad line, it’s that Berry delivered it seriously instead of stumbling over herself Sarah Michelle Gellar would.
Whedon’s tendency to do this was noted even before revelations about more serious and toxic behavior from him. In a 2022 interview with Vulture, Whedon would describe Ray Fisher as “We’re talking about a bad actor in both senses,” after Fisher alleged Whedon’s behavior while directing “Justice League” reshoots was “unacceptable.”
Being a good person doesn’t mean always doing the right thing, it means accepting appropriate responsibility when you do something wrong. Pointing the finger at other artists to keep your track record clean doesn’t cut it.