It's a three act story, released over several days online. It's available to buy on iTunes, and it even got a DVD release. Without Joss's name and loyal-bordering-on-obsessive fanbase, a 45 minute internet series would never gave gained as much attention as it did, and it also wouldn't have attracted stars like Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day.
I'm almost incapable to describing everything that's brilliant about this because I love it so much, but I'll try.
First off, the songs. In my last post I said how much I hated musicals, well this is an exception. The songs are witty and honest, with clever rhymes and beautiful harmonies. "I cannot believe my eyes" is a brilliant song, which forwards the plot and explores character motivation; "Laundry" is one of the most truthful descriptions of falling in love I've heard; "Bad horse" will stick in your head like Sticky the sticky stick-insect; "I won't feel" is perfectly tragic. It helps that the cast are all excellent singers.
The characters are instantly lovable - so important given that we only have 45 minutes to get to know them. Billy, aka "Dr Horrible", is lovably inept, and it's refreshing to have the Baddie be the hero for a change. Penny, his unattainable object of affection, is sweet and good-natured yet hopelessly unaware of others' true characters. Captain Hammer is hilariously macho, and a better representation of what a superpowered dude would be like than an angsty Clark Kent - he's basically just a big bully.
As always, Joss's trick is to make the audience empathise and care about these characters so that every event in the brief plot is an emotional hit.
The afterlife for this series is unique, in that it has gained in popularity thanks to word-of-mouth (or, more likely, messageboard) and has spawned more creative spinoffs.
The DVD has the best commentary of any tv show or film ever in the history of DVDs. I won't be moved on this. The commentary is sung. They wrote and recorded songs, making the actors and writers into characters as much as Billy and Penny. Some of those are even better than the musical's songs, my favourite being "Pick it apart", Joss's lament about being constantly questioned about his work. I've probably listened to the commentary more than the series itself, to be honest.
Dr Horrible also made a Horrible appearance in the Emmy awards, (where it was criminally passed over I might add):
So, go out and watch it, it'll only take 45 minutes and you'll be a convert by the time Moist appears. I promise.
Act 1 / Act 2 / Act 3
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2 comments:
I'm a fan of Dr Horrible but I just wanted to draw your attention to the season finale of the new Batman series Batman: The Brave and the Bold which is currently screening on Cartoon Network. The episode - Mayhem of the Music Meister - is done almost entirely in song as a parody of a Hollywood musical and even has Dr Horrible himself, Neil Patrick Harris, as the titular villain. You can get a flavour of it here
www.comicbookresources.com/?page=video&show_id=177547
That was brilliant, I think I'll go try to find the rest of this series. It'll be interesting to see how it compares to the version I had growing up, Batman Beyond.
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