Director: Joss Whedon

Joss Whedon built his reputation on television with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, and the dialogue style, self-aware, rhythmic, joke-under-pressure, became so widely copied that it acquired a name.

The Avengers was the film that proved a shared-universe ensemble could work, and its structure, separate characters colliding and then coordinating, is the template every subsequent crossover has followed. Serenity closed out Firefly for the audience that had kept it alive.

Multiple performers who worked with him, including Charisma Carpenter and Ray Fisher, have described abusive conduct on his sets. He has largely not worked since, and the reappraisal of both the films and the writing has been substantial.