Dr. Horrible, or, The Internet is awesome
Spent much of yesterday in a blind rage at the internet.
Oddly enough, not an entirely negative experience.
The truly excellent Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, parts of Toy Story and miscellaneous uncredited script-polishing, including Speed, and just general awesomeness), was supportive of but frustrated by the recent WGA strike, and, in his own words (via whedonesque):
I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.
The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first.
The result is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, due to be released in three parts over one week in July.
Here’s the Dr. Horrible trailer:
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
The Internet embraced this (the internet loves Joss Whedon, and the combination of Whedon, free stuff and singing supervillains is pretty much unbeatable), and, so, about twelve hours after Act 1 was launched, the Dr. Horrible server crashed.
Hence the blind rage.
Not entirely negative, because it’s gratifying to know that the Whedonites have it in their power to cause the server collapse. And because I finally managed to watch Act 1 this morning, via a temporary site, and, yeah, worth the wait. (I’m not going to review it yet - I want to wait until all 3 acts are up)
It’s actually written by Whedon with his brothers and a sister-in-law (from which one can only determine that Ma Whedon would have been proud: more concrete evidence of this can be found in this speech given by Whedon to Equality Now):
The main site should be fully functional by now at www.drhorrible.com, with the first act up now, and the next two going online over the next few days. If the site’s crashed again, try the fan site for news. There’s also outlying areas on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace…
It’s only going to be free until 20th July - there are plans for a DVD release and so forth.
Oh, and there’s a online comic strip about Dr. Horrible’s nemisis, Captain Hammer, available from Dark Horse Comic’s Myspace page, written by one of the other Whedons, Zack.
Go! Watch! Buy T-shirt!