Many will be surprised to learn that I enjoy reading the columns of George Will in the back of Newsweek (I do not keep up with him in the Post, but probably should).
Will seems to me an unapologetic intellectual and elite in a country mad for "everyman" politicians (something the media tends to feed). Will is also an unapologetic conservative, but not a particularly social conservative... I'm not even sure what the term might be. Constitutional conservative? He seems to have a tremendous grasp of history, politics, the law, to a point where he seems endlessly put out that others are not as up on all of this stuff as he... but not in a snotty way. Just sort of in a way that charmingly informs the reader Will doesn't spend a lot of time drinking Bud Light at "Lefty's Bar & Grill".
For further evidence, up until recently, Will also thought it wasn't weird to wear a bow tie (which Tucker Carlson shamelessly tried to emulate with none of the panache).
Anyway, Will is a favorite of mine among conservative voices that I can read (or listen to on Sunday morning programs) who I feel is acutely interested in analysis on merit, not on sticking to talking points or bluster.
Anyway, I highly recommend checking out Will's recent column on the expectations of the public for the "common man" element in politics.
And this ALSO got me thinking about the other great voice of nuanced discussion, Cracked.com. Sometimes I think Cracked is having, perhaps, too much of a determining effect on both Randy and myself. But, anyway...
Cracked recently published a list of the six brainwashing techniques they're using on you EVEN NOW. Here's that article. Warning: The article is juvenile and strays into some territory our sensitive readers will find objectionable.
As the election cycle has been going on so long, I've been pondering how I've been absorbing the news, political messages, etc... The point about how headlines are written has especially hit home. I'm absolutely someone who skims newsfeeds and mostly picks out articles to read based on topic, and so I've become quite used to how news sources will frame their headlines. And, honestly, it kind of bugs me.
So why am I talking about George Will and Cracked in the same breath?
I know this is probably reaching levels of annoyance, but I think its important to take a look at not just what the politicians say and do, but how the press deals with the stories and frames them for us, both intentionally and otherwise. Will has taken the "common wisdom" perception of who we want in the White House to task of seeking just plain folks versus seeking the best and brightest (not that McCain or Obama aren't best and brightest, but its about perception), and I think challenges a single issue pretty convincingly.
But I think the Cracked list, goofy as it might be, is worth reading just once to compare against how we blindly accept ideas and how they seem to creep in to our subconscious. Sure, the article is a bit blue (this is Cracked.com, after all), and some of it is pretty obvious, but in our media-saturated world, where the election and bias are pushing both the parties and the press to find advantage anywhere, its always good to take a mo' to consider how your chain is being yanked.
None of this is probably new to the readers here, but why not take a break from the news cycle a bit and look at what your news source of choice is telling you, and what your candidate of choice is telling you about the opposition? And if they're willing to use ham-handed propaganda now, what are they going to do for 4-8 years running the free world?
Anyhoo... When you get to #1 (no, not the first #1, for which I can only apologize to our more sensitive readers), I think that's whats at the crux of the matter... I leave our less sensitive readers to read on.
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Monday, September 29, 2008
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Of late, Jamie's been waking me up at the crack of 9:30, and before I can have a cup of coffee or settle in to my hour of morning news, she's got me putting the leashes on the dogs, and headed out the door.
An oddity of our neighborhood that we did not know about when we purchased the house is that the neighborhood is ringed with trees. In some spots, the treeline is just enough to keep the cars on Manchaca from seeing into houses, but in other areas the density touches upon an unknown expanse of trees and a creek. I suspect that the area was not previously developed as no builder had the foresight to keep this little piece of what-came-before, but, also portions of the woods act as run-off from the neighborhood itself. Between the trees, the developer planted a very nice trail which we can enter about four houses down and then follow the entire circumference of the neighborhood. The dogs, of course, love it.
On Thursday Jamie woke me up to a chilly Austin morning, the heat had broken again and the temperatures a wet 50+ degrees.
On this morning, we were only 50 or so yards into the trees when Jamie whispered, "It's a deer."
It was not just a deer. I counted two more. Than three, then four more. All hidden just behind some trees, possibly thirty five or forty feet away. The deer did not move, just watched us and the dogs (who were more baffled by the deer than excited), and continued to rest in their spot. We walked on a little further, me whispering "You musn't ever go out onto the meadow...", when I saw another deer. And then another, at least a two-point buck.
We walked a loop of the neighborhood, taking a short-cut through a portion of the neighborhood, cutting ourselves short and not walking the entire trail. Back by the house, we cut up to the park so Mel could investigate and wag his tail at squirrels. Down below, the deer passed by, heading westward.
It was still chilly when we left for Las Manitas, and, of course it was plenty warm inside. We had migas and didn't really talk much. Just sipped on cinnamon coffee and looked around one of our old favorite places.
The owner of the building where Las Manitas is located has sold out to Marriot hotels. Las Manitas won't be here anymore in a year. The owners of the restuarant have put up a bit of a Quixotic battle to... I'm not really sure... But Marriot didn't do itself any favors when one of their executives recently complained publicly why a little restaurant would want to get in the way of a nice hotel.
In the end, the most Las Manitas can hope for is a moral victory, but it's not one that the folks who will stay in the Marriot will ever have heard of. They might walk out onto Congress and say "Hey, my friend used to come to Austin and said there was a great place to grab breakfast somewhere down here..." and then wonder what the fuss was about. Not just about the place, but, one wonders, about Congress itself.
Still, progress is progress. I hadn't been on Congress since we returned, and I had never been to the Frost Bank building. The Frost Tower is the new defining element of the Austin skyline, its architecture seems lifted from the exterior shots in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and jutting far above the more mundane towers along the way, surely the first of what will be a handful more.
"Is there an observation deck?" I asked the gentleman at the Information desk. "No," he nodded, "But if you want to see Austin from that high, you can just fly up there," he moved his hand in a swooping motion and winked at the red S across the chest of my sweat shirt. Guys over 50 always love the sweatshirt. Yes, yes... we all love George Reeves.
We are enjoying our retirement, but we are aware that it can't go on forever. The job hunt is on. Jamie's looking, too, which makes me happy. Not so much because we could use the extra income, but because she's feeling well enough to work, and because she's antsy and ready to take on new challenges. The move has done us both well.
Today was lunch with Denby (who is doing fantastically well, thanks for asking), reading another forty pages or so of "In Cold Blood". I've picked up two books recommended by Harms (one of which is Time Travellers Wife, which I believe JMD4 also recommended to me six months ago). I'm digging out from under a busy Wednesday at the local comic shop and a stack of back issues I picked up last weekend.
The dogs are loving the cool weather. I am, too.
We're going to maybe make some hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill around 1 on Sunday. Feel free to stop by anytime after 12.
We're living in halcyon days, we are.
An oddity of our neighborhood that we did not know about when we purchased the house is that the neighborhood is ringed with trees. In some spots, the treeline is just enough to keep the cars on Manchaca from seeing into houses, but in other areas the density touches upon an unknown expanse of trees and a creek. I suspect that the area was not previously developed as no builder had the foresight to keep this little piece of what-came-before, but, also portions of the woods act as run-off from the neighborhood itself. Between the trees, the developer planted a very nice trail which we can enter about four houses down and then follow the entire circumference of the neighborhood. The dogs, of course, love it.
On Thursday Jamie woke me up to a chilly Austin morning, the heat had broken again and the temperatures a wet 50+ degrees.
On this morning, we were only 50 or so yards into the trees when Jamie whispered, "It's a deer."
It was not just a deer. I counted two more. Than three, then four more. All hidden just behind some trees, possibly thirty five or forty feet away. The deer did not move, just watched us and the dogs (who were more baffled by the deer than excited), and continued to rest in their spot. We walked on a little further, me whispering "You musn't ever go out onto the meadow...", when I saw another deer. And then another, at least a two-point buck.
We walked a loop of the neighborhood, taking a short-cut through a portion of the neighborhood, cutting ourselves short and not walking the entire trail. Back by the house, we cut up to the park so Mel could investigate and wag his tail at squirrels. Down below, the deer passed by, heading westward.
It was still chilly when we left for Las Manitas, and, of course it was plenty warm inside. We had migas and didn't really talk much. Just sipped on cinnamon coffee and looked around one of our old favorite places.
The owner of the building where Las Manitas is located has sold out to Marriot hotels. Las Manitas won't be here anymore in a year. The owners of the restuarant have put up a bit of a Quixotic battle to... I'm not really sure... But Marriot didn't do itself any favors when one of their executives recently complained publicly why a little restaurant would want to get in the way of a nice hotel.
In the end, the most Las Manitas can hope for is a moral victory, but it's not one that the folks who will stay in the Marriot will ever have heard of. They might walk out onto Congress and say "Hey, my friend used to come to Austin and said there was a great place to grab breakfast somewhere down here..." and then wonder what the fuss was about. Not just about the place, but, one wonders, about Congress itself.
Still, progress is progress. I hadn't been on Congress since we returned, and I had never been to the Frost Bank building. The Frost Tower is the new defining element of the Austin skyline, its architecture seems lifted from the exterior shots in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and jutting far above the more mundane towers along the way, surely the first of what will be a handful more.
"Is there an observation deck?" I asked the gentleman at the Information desk. "No," he nodded, "But if you want to see Austin from that high, you can just fly up there," he moved his hand in a swooping motion and winked at the red S across the chest of my sweat shirt. Guys over 50 always love the sweatshirt. Yes, yes... we all love George Reeves.
We are enjoying our retirement, but we are aware that it can't go on forever. The job hunt is on. Jamie's looking, too, which makes me happy. Not so much because we could use the extra income, but because she's feeling well enough to work, and because she's antsy and ready to take on new challenges. The move has done us both well.
Today was lunch with Denby (who is doing fantastically well, thanks for asking), reading another forty pages or so of "In Cold Blood". I've picked up two books recommended by Harms (one of which is Time Travellers Wife, which I believe JMD4 also recommended to me six months ago). I'm digging out from under a busy Wednesday at the local comic shop and a stack of back issues I picked up last weekend.
The dogs are loving the cool weather. I am, too.
We're going to maybe make some hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill around 1 on Sunday. Feel free to stop by anytime after 12.
We're living in halcyon days, we are.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Tuesday night we had a delightful dinner with Shoemaker and his lovely companion, whose name I can't spell. Hut's was still Hut's, as I suspect Hut's will be for fifty years after I'm but a distant memory.
What's interesting is seeing the area down near Hut's (East of Lamar and 6th) grow up. When I was a kid, that area was a lot of desolate parking lots and auto dealerships. Basically, just not a place there was a single reason in the world to hang about. Katz's, GM Steakhouse, and a few other establishments are still there. But with the new Whole Foods Global Domination HQ and other shopping, etc... in the area... well, go back and watch Slacker. There's a guy who walks into Gm Stakehouse on Lamar, just North of where Waterloo Records is... the area is unrecognizable.
But I digress.
What I meant to say was:
Save the cheerleader...
Save the world...
I am sure NBC did not mean to provoke laughter in me with their promo for "Heroes", but, gee... There's something that says "Well, if you're relying on a single, perky 15 year old girl and her startling Powers of the Herky to 'save the world...', Leaguers... Powers or not, maybe we should throw in the towel."
It's sort of mindblowing how cheerleaders are only tangentially in our lives for a few years of high school, but in the world of fiction, the spritely cheerleader is an all-consuming fetish. KOHS was a very typical, All-American sort of high school, but I don't even really remember the cheerleaders in high school, except wishing they would clear the court more quickly in my few high school basketball games. But, I wasn't too concerned with KOHS School Spirit, painting banners on strips of butcher paper or asking the opposing team if they "got spirit".
I also don't remember what are now called "mean girls", bullies picking on hapless nerds, jocks ruling the school, everyone dreaming of dating the prom queen, or any of the stuff of TV's depiction of the 9-12th grade experience. But, hey, the League spent high school doodling Spider-Man in the margins of his notes and trying to lay low until graduation. We may have missed all of that.
But I digress...
What I meant to say was: Dinner with Jeff and Keora (sp?) went well. Keora is, of course, too good for Jeff.
Today, Jamie and I hit the comic shop, hit the grocery and took Lucy to the vet for her ongoing ear-issues. Poor puppy. We will get her better.
Note to JMD: This week's issue of 52? Ambush Bug. Seriously. I was ecstatic.
Jason came over for dinner, bringing Cassidy, which was a nice post-veterinarian treat for Lucy. We hit Hunan, then came home to watch some TV.
Jason was far, far more skeptical of the evidence provided on Ghost Hunters. I did vent a bit about my frustration re: Ghost Hunter's inability to remain at a location for more than a few hours of a single evening. The League is a man of science (fiction) and thusly believes in following sound scientific principles when making an observation. IF the Ghost Hunters find a location which presents evidence that the area may be "haunted", would it not behoove them to stake the place out for a longer duration and see if they can replicate and repeat the manifestations which they cannot explain? If, as was noted in the Tombstone, AZ episode, they DID see a full-body apparition, would it not benefit their research, teh world of science and (dare I say it?) all of mankind if they were to return for several more evenings with more cameras, more microphones, etc... Further, a longer duration and the use of the element of surprise upon their hosts might further guarantee that no evidence was planted in bad faith.
How would the world change tomorrow if these guys from TAPS and the Sci-Fi Channel production team recorded an honest-to-goodness ghost? I mean, presented real, live evidence rather than humanoid shadows and creepy sounds? I have NO idea. I assume we'd all lose a lot of sleep for a few days.
I guess maybe that could be the next generation of the Ghost Hunter shows. Sure, these gusy are skeptical, but shelling out a few extra bucks for a genuine research team to come in for more than a day seems like a small price to pay for something passing greater than circumstantial evidence of a world between this and the next.
Also, we should drain Loch Ness.
It's one thing to take recordable measurements. It's another to determine, without a doubt, the source of an anomaly in those measurements. It's yet another to show up on a second night and get a picture of the darn ghost with the right camera angle. Until that happens, it's all a bunch of yahoos tripping over each other in the dark and seeing what they want to see...
Wow. It's late. I'm tired.
Wagner may be coming into Austin tomorrow. or maybe Friday.
If anyone is up for anything this weekend, let me know.
What's interesting is seeing the area down near Hut's (East of Lamar and 6th) grow up. When I was a kid, that area was a lot of desolate parking lots and auto dealerships. Basically, just not a place there was a single reason in the world to hang about. Katz's, GM Steakhouse, and a few other establishments are still there. But with the new Whole Foods Global Domination HQ and other shopping, etc... in the area... well, go back and watch Slacker. There's a guy who walks into Gm Stakehouse on Lamar, just North of where Waterloo Records is... the area is unrecognizable.
But I digress.
What I meant to say was:
Save the cheerleader...
Save the world...
I am sure NBC did not mean to provoke laughter in me with their promo for "Heroes", but, gee... There's something that says "Well, if you're relying on a single, perky 15 year old girl and her startling Powers of the Herky to 'save the world...', Leaguers... Powers or not, maybe we should throw in the towel."
It's sort of mindblowing how cheerleaders are only tangentially in our lives for a few years of high school, but in the world of fiction, the spritely cheerleader is an all-consuming fetish. KOHS was a very typical, All-American sort of high school, but I don't even really remember the cheerleaders in high school, except wishing they would clear the court more quickly in my few high school basketball games. But, I wasn't too concerned with KOHS School Spirit, painting banners on strips of butcher paper or asking the opposing team if they "got spirit".
I also don't remember what are now called "mean girls", bullies picking on hapless nerds, jocks ruling the school, everyone dreaming of dating the prom queen, or any of the stuff of TV's depiction of the 9-12th grade experience. But, hey, the League spent high school doodling Spider-Man in the margins of his notes and trying to lay low until graduation. We may have missed all of that.
But I digress...
What I meant to say was: Dinner with Jeff and Keora (sp?) went well. Keora is, of course, too good for Jeff.
Today, Jamie and I hit the comic shop, hit the grocery and took Lucy to the vet for her ongoing ear-issues. Poor puppy. We will get her better.
Note to JMD: This week's issue of 52? Ambush Bug. Seriously. I was ecstatic.
Jason came over for dinner, bringing Cassidy, which was a nice post-veterinarian treat for Lucy. We hit Hunan, then came home to watch some TV.
Jason was far, far more skeptical of the evidence provided on Ghost Hunters. I did vent a bit about my frustration re: Ghost Hunter's inability to remain at a location for more than a few hours of a single evening. The League is a man of science (fiction) and thusly believes in following sound scientific principles when making an observation. IF the Ghost Hunters find a location which presents evidence that the area may be "haunted", would it not behoove them to stake the place out for a longer duration and see if they can replicate and repeat the manifestations which they cannot explain? If, as was noted in the Tombstone, AZ episode, they DID see a full-body apparition, would it not benefit their research, teh world of science and (dare I say it?) all of mankind if they were to return for several more evenings with more cameras, more microphones, etc... Further, a longer duration and the use of the element of surprise upon their hosts might further guarantee that no evidence was planted in bad faith.
How would the world change tomorrow if these guys from TAPS and the Sci-Fi Channel production team recorded an honest-to-goodness ghost? I mean, presented real, live evidence rather than humanoid shadows and creepy sounds? I have NO idea. I assume we'd all lose a lot of sleep for a few days.
I guess maybe that could be the next generation of the Ghost Hunter shows. Sure, these gusy are skeptical, but shelling out a few extra bucks for a genuine research team to come in for more than a day seems like a small price to pay for something passing greater than circumstantial evidence of a world between this and the next.
Also, we should drain Loch Ness.
It's one thing to take recordable measurements. It's another to determine, without a doubt, the source of an anomaly in those measurements. It's yet another to show up on a second night and get a picture of the darn ghost with the right camera angle. Until that happens, it's all a bunch of yahoos tripping over each other in the dark and seeing what they want to see...
Wow. It's late. I'm tired.
Wagner may be coming into Austin tomorrow. or maybe Friday.
If anyone is up for anything this weekend, let me know.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
The Secret Identity Post
Well, if you hadn't heard by now, a fairly popular comic book character unmasked himself in the Marvel comic "Civil War #2" yesterday. It's been in the papers, and I went ahead and showed Jamie the page last night (I know! I'm totally reading a Marvel comic. Go figure. Plus, I'm a becoming a big fan of McNiven.), so you'll probably know who the person was who unmasked themself on TV. But, given the hoo-hah that's gone on around here in the past, I didn't really want to spoil it for you guys who did the unmasking.
Since Superman first hopped over a building in a single bound, a dual identity has been key to the basic format of the superhero comic. When Superman first appeared, we were to understand that he was working outside the law, and for that reason above probably any other, he didn't give away his civilian identity. It's fairly well documented that the original take on Superman (pre-heat vision and flying) is most an amped up version of the lead character form the novel Gladiator, by Philip Wylie, mixed with some Tarzan and Amazing Stories features.
The conceipt of Gladiator is that the character can't live a normal life thanks to his power and others' knowledge of that power. Taking a page from the popular Zorro pulps and films, as well as The Shadow, and teaming that with the interest in the business of journalism. Siegel and Shuster came upon the idea of seeming weakling Clark Kent.
As any Zorro fan can tell you, the idea behind Don Diego's dual personality (perhaps, in itself lifted from The Scarlet Pimpernel) was to give our hero a way of moving about in society without constant fear of arrest, as well as being able to gather information that others might not readily hand over to Zorro. In that manner, Superman's early stories centered on his ability to be first to hear of disasters or potential good locations for a character of his abilities. To this day, Clark Kent still disappears abruptly when there's trouble on the wire or coming in online.
Moreover, there is the notion that Superman cannot have a private life, but Clark Kent very much can. From his earliest appearance, Clark Kent was hitting on Lois while Superman acknowledged her only with a wink and a nod, but a promise that he was there to help. As the comics progressed, the idea grew that Lois was in enough danger just being associated with Superman (while simultaneously also being someone crooks wanted to avoid lest they tangle with Superman). Meanwhile, Superman carefully guarded his secret identity in order to maintain a basic life among other human beings, rather than being basically exiled to the Fortress of Solitude.
Batman, upon the character's premier, established Bruce Wayne as having a fiancee and other trappings of a normal life, giving Bruce Wayne a bit more of a split personality. As Batman was a mere mortal, the suggestion in the comics seemed to be that the secret identity (a) kept the cops off his back, and (b) helped Batman maintain the element of suprise. It's sort of tough to get the jump on crooks if they know every time you leave the house. As the rogues gallery grew, it was logical enough to understand that Batman didn't really want these guys to be able to ring his doorbell while he was in the tub.
Of course the exposure of a character's secret identity has always been a mainstay of superhero comics, especially going back to Silver-Age Superman comics where it seemed every fourth story was dedicated to the topic. A good chunk of Superboy stories were centered around nosy Lana Lang trying to prove that Clark Kent was the Boy of Steel.
Some characters have famously not bothered with secret identities. For example: Aquaman is pretty clearly Aquaman as he lives in the sea. For years, at least the government has known Banner is The Hulk. The Fantastic Four have always had public identities (and are regularly attacked in their home). At one point Wally West's persona of The Flash was public, but they reversed that decision (see Flash: Blitz and Flash: Ignition) when terrible consequences befell The Flash's family. The prime example of late, of course, is Ralph and Sue Dibny from DC's Identity Crisis.
A few years ago, Marvel decided to reveal Captain America's identity as Cap took on Al Qaeda stand-in terrorists in the wake of 9/11. The decision was prompted by a narrative choice that neither the US nor Cap had anything to hide. I thought it was the right choice then, as I do now. Also, Cap doesn't really have a supporting cast and is more or less a career soldier, anyway. His real family is all dead and his line of girlfriends is mostly comprised of super-folk and SHIELD agents. In a story I didn't read, Iron Man revealed his secret ID.
But for some of these comics, it just didn't matter. Captain America is a perfect example. The character WAS Captain America. Steve Rogers was just a name. Other characters' dual identities are so integrated into the comics that the series would change not at all for the better if the identity were revealed. Fantastic Four has always done a good job of spinning the FF as superhero celebrities, like the Beatles living in Manhattanand they happen to have a dimensional portal to the Negative Zone (which may make a great name for a blog for Steanso or Jim D. I must pitch it.).
In my opinion, of late Brian Michael Bendis has had one of the firmest grasps on dual identities. With his excellent creator owned "Powers," featuring the homicide cops who show up when a "super" is found dead, Bendis has done a great job of exploring the dual face of celebrity and private life and public and private in a world where superheroes run rampant. Moreover, Bendis's Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man is unmasked by his foes with alarming regularity. The joke being, of course, that nobody knows who the heck this fifteen year old kid might be. So why would he wear the mask? Because he doesn't want his Aunt to know what he's doing, and he wants, despite the fact that great power comes with great responsibility, to be able to escape from the insanity of being Spider-Man for most of the day. That, and when a super-villain figured out generally where he lived, they killed his best friend.
There's a sense in the Ultimate Spidey books that, eventually, all of this is going to catch up with Peter. He's one camera-phone away from having his picture plastered all over the internet.
The best look at all of this, of course, was Bendis's recently concluded run on Daredevil where Daredevil's identity was published in a tabloid paper. He managed to fill three years with that concept, and the idea never got old. But it also couldn't sustain a series forever.
So, why why why would Marvel choose to unmask this one when it's just been done?
The option that Marvel has given their heroes with Civil War is to either (a) be conscripted into SHIELD, give them your name and work for "the man", (b) sit home and don't use your darn powers, or (c) use your powers and go to jail.
I think thus far from the little I've read, Marvel has handled the topic more intelligently than I'd expected. They've started at a very good point, by demonstrating the negative side-effects that can befall the public when super heroes run around without any supervision or anybody they answer to. There's a legitimate argument to be made. On the other hand, there's a legitimate argument to be made for not wanting to be forced to do the dirty work of a government organization that doesn't have the best record of keeping the public's interest in mind.
A lot of things can be changed in comics. There's plenty of science fiction, magic and what have you. As was done in Flash, the memory of the character's public ID can be wiped from the mind of the public in general. But, as we saw in DC's stellar miniseries, Identity Crisis, all that mind-wiping and concern about loved ones can cause a lot of havoc.
Marvel is now looking at either a very large change in the structure of one of it's strongest properties, or else they're planning a "Death of Superman" style cop out. Either way, they're going to irritate a lot of readers. I'll be keeping my ear to the ground to see how this one pans out.
Personally, I find the idea of the secret ID to be a great element of comics. I dig the idea of the everyman having unknown potential. There's something a little liberating about the idea that a hero isn't, literally, a cop or a soldier (although comics are littered with their fair share of excellent versions of those as well). Perhaps it was my early take on a compromised Superman having to play the dutiful soldier against his will in Dark Knight Returns that made me see the potential issues with losing your identity. Or perhaps Batman's unwillingness to play along with any whim of others that had forced him to quit (and just as much to return) as seen in that same volume.
My concern is this: for all their bravado about their edginess, Marvel is married to the status quo in a way DC is not (with the exception of Superman and Batman). DC's recent mini-seires was about change, and real change took place. By creating the idea of legacy in the DCU, people DO, in fact, die. New characters come and go.
How far is Marvel willing to go with this idea for the sake of short term sales gains? Especially when they stand to risk alienating lifelong readers? It's just a bit difficult to swallow that this whole deal isn't a bait-and-switch for some other change Marvel is going to try to pull. I strongly suspect that they are not planning to follow Bendis's well-worn Daredevil track.
Marvel's given itself quite the job. We'll see how they deal with it as a company. At the end of the day, for me, it's about the company. Given how they wrapped up House of M, Age of Apocalypse, etc... and how often their sprawling mini-series/ cross-company events land the reader exactly where you started, something leads me to believe there's going to be a magic "reset" button somewhere.
All I'm saying is: I see one clone show his face and I'm out.
Well, if you hadn't heard by now, a fairly popular comic book character unmasked himself in the Marvel comic "Civil War #2" yesterday. It's been in the papers, and I went ahead and showed Jamie the page last night (I know! I'm totally reading a Marvel comic. Go figure. Plus, I'm a becoming a big fan of McNiven.), so you'll probably know who the person was who unmasked themself on TV. But, given the hoo-hah that's gone on around here in the past, I didn't really want to spoil it for you guys who did the unmasking.
Since Superman first hopped over a building in a single bound, a dual identity has been key to the basic format of the superhero comic. When Superman first appeared, we were to understand that he was working outside the law, and for that reason above probably any other, he didn't give away his civilian identity. It's fairly well documented that the original take on Superman (pre-heat vision and flying) is most an amped up version of the lead character form the novel Gladiator, by Philip Wylie, mixed with some Tarzan and Amazing Stories features.
The conceipt of Gladiator is that the character can't live a normal life thanks to his power and others' knowledge of that power. Taking a page from the popular Zorro pulps and films, as well as The Shadow, and teaming that with the interest in the business of journalism. Siegel and Shuster came upon the idea of seeming weakling Clark Kent.
As any Zorro fan can tell you, the idea behind Don Diego's dual personality (perhaps, in itself lifted from The Scarlet Pimpernel) was to give our hero a way of moving about in society without constant fear of arrest, as well as being able to gather information that others might not readily hand over to Zorro. In that manner, Superman's early stories centered on his ability to be first to hear of disasters or potential good locations for a character of his abilities. To this day, Clark Kent still disappears abruptly when there's trouble on the wire or coming in online.
Moreover, there is the notion that Superman cannot have a private life, but Clark Kent very much can. From his earliest appearance, Clark Kent was hitting on Lois while Superman acknowledged her only with a wink and a nod, but a promise that he was there to help. As the comics progressed, the idea grew that Lois was in enough danger just being associated with Superman (while simultaneously also being someone crooks wanted to avoid lest they tangle with Superman). Meanwhile, Superman carefully guarded his secret identity in order to maintain a basic life among other human beings, rather than being basically exiled to the Fortress of Solitude.
Batman, upon the character's premier, established Bruce Wayne as having a fiancee and other trappings of a normal life, giving Bruce Wayne a bit more of a split personality. As Batman was a mere mortal, the suggestion in the comics seemed to be that the secret identity (a) kept the cops off his back, and (b) helped Batman maintain the element of suprise. It's sort of tough to get the jump on crooks if they know every time you leave the house. As the rogues gallery grew, it was logical enough to understand that Batman didn't really want these guys to be able to ring his doorbell while he was in the tub.
Of course the exposure of a character's secret identity has always been a mainstay of superhero comics, especially going back to Silver-Age Superman comics where it seemed every fourth story was dedicated to the topic. A good chunk of Superboy stories were centered around nosy Lana Lang trying to prove that Clark Kent was the Boy of Steel.
Some characters have famously not bothered with secret identities. For example: Aquaman is pretty clearly Aquaman as he lives in the sea. For years, at least the government has known Banner is The Hulk. The Fantastic Four have always had public identities (and are regularly attacked in their home). At one point Wally West's persona of The Flash was public, but they reversed that decision (see Flash: Blitz and Flash: Ignition) when terrible consequences befell The Flash's family. The prime example of late, of course, is Ralph and Sue Dibny from DC's Identity Crisis.
A few years ago, Marvel decided to reveal Captain America's identity as Cap took on Al Qaeda stand-in terrorists in the wake of 9/11. The decision was prompted by a narrative choice that neither the US nor Cap had anything to hide. I thought it was the right choice then, as I do now. Also, Cap doesn't really have a supporting cast and is more or less a career soldier, anyway. His real family is all dead and his line of girlfriends is mostly comprised of super-folk and SHIELD agents. In a story I didn't read, Iron Man revealed his secret ID.
But for some of these comics, it just didn't matter. Captain America is a perfect example. The character WAS Captain America. Steve Rogers was just a name. Other characters' dual identities are so integrated into the comics that the series would change not at all for the better if the identity were revealed. Fantastic Four has always done a good job of spinning the FF as superhero celebrities, like the Beatles living in Manhattanand they happen to have a dimensional portal to the Negative Zone (which may make a great name for a blog for Steanso or Jim D. I must pitch it.).
In my opinion, of late Brian Michael Bendis has had one of the firmest grasps on dual identities. With his excellent creator owned "Powers," featuring the homicide cops who show up when a "super" is found dead, Bendis has done a great job of exploring the dual face of celebrity and private life and public and private in a world where superheroes run rampant. Moreover, Bendis's Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man is unmasked by his foes with alarming regularity. The joke being, of course, that nobody knows who the heck this fifteen year old kid might be. So why would he wear the mask? Because he doesn't want his Aunt to know what he's doing, and he wants, despite the fact that great power comes with great responsibility, to be able to escape from the insanity of being Spider-Man for most of the day. That, and when a super-villain figured out generally where he lived, they killed his best friend.
There's a sense in the Ultimate Spidey books that, eventually, all of this is going to catch up with Peter. He's one camera-phone away from having his picture plastered all over the internet.
The best look at all of this, of course, was Bendis's recently concluded run on Daredevil where Daredevil's identity was published in a tabloid paper. He managed to fill three years with that concept, and the idea never got old. But it also couldn't sustain a series forever.
So, why why why would Marvel choose to unmask this one when it's just been done?
The option that Marvel has given their heroes with Civil War is to either (a) be conscripted into SHIELD, give them your name and work for "the man", (b) sit home and don't use your darn powers, or (c) use your powers and go to jail.
I think thus far from the little I've read, Marvel has handled the topic more intelligently than I'd expected. They've started at a very good point, by demonstrating the negative side-effects that can befall the public when super heroes run around without any supervision or anybody they answer to. There's a legitimate argument to be made. On the other hand, there's a legitimate argument to be made for not wanting to be forced to do the dirty work of a government organization that doesn't have the best record of keeping the public's interest in mind.
A lot of things can be changed in comics. There's plenty of science fiction, magic and what have you. As was done in Flash, the memory of the character's public ID can be wiped from the mind of the public in general. But, as we saw in DC's stellar miniseries, Identity Crisis, all that mind-wiping and concern about loved ones can cause a lot of havoc.
Marvel is now looking at either a very large change in the structure of one of it's strongest properties, or else they're planning a "Death of Superman" style cop out. Either way, they're going to irritate a lot of readers. I'll be keeping my ear to the ground to see how this one pans out.
Personally, I find the idea of the secret ID to be a great element of comics. I dig the idea of the everyman having unknown potential. There's something a little liberating about the idea that a hero isn't, literally, a cop or a soldier (although comics are littered with their fair share of excellent versions of those as well). Perhaps it was my early take on a compromised Superman having to play the dutiful soldier against his will in Dark Knight Returns that made me see the potential issues with losing your identity. Or perhaps Batman's unwillingness to play along with any whim of others that had forced him to quit (and just as much to return) as seen in that same volume.
My concern is this: for all their bravado about their edginess, Marvel is married to the status quo in a way DC is not (with the exception of Superman and Batman). DC's recent mini-seires was about change, and real change took place. By creating the idea of legacy in the DCU, people DO, in fact, die. New characters come and go.
How far is Marvel willing to go with this idea for the sake of short term sales gains? Especially when they stand to risk alienating lifelong readers? It's just a bit difficult to swallow that this whole deal isn't a bait-and-switch for some other change Marvel is going to try to pull. I strongly suspect that they are not planning to follow Bendis's well-worn Daredevil track.
Marvel's given itself quite the job. We'll see how they deal with it as a company. At the end of the day, for me, it's about the company. Given how they wrapped up House of M, Age of Apocalypse, etc... and how often their sprawling mini-series/ cross-company events land the reader exactly where you started, something leads me to believe there's going to be a magic "reset" button somewhere.
All I'm saying is: I see one clone show his face and I'm out.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Summer of Superman: Why The League is a Superman Fan
When I was working on the League of Melbotis Awards, I asked for some possible blog topics. Almost half of the respondents asked "Why Superman?"
With the movie coming, I'm hoping to put things in the right context and possibly shed a little light on why I became a fan of Superman as a character, Superman as an industry, and Superman in general.
One of the oddities of being a fan of the Man of Steel is that everyone feels a bit of ownership. As a pop culture icon, Superman is up there with Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus for recognizability. You can chop through Peruvian rain forests for two days and find yourself face to face with a local wearing a Super Hombre shirt who knows, at minimum, Superman can fly, he's invulnerable to most harm and that he's very very strong.
A lot of folks have pegged my comic obsession and interest in Superman as a juvenile interest, primarily due to the marketing of Superman to children. I doubt anyone who has bothered to read a Superman comic over the past several years would feel as if the material were not geared towards children. While the comics of today are simed at adults and "all-ages", there certainly exists a "gee-whiz" aspect to Superman that's undeniable, and perhaps it's that fantasy element which is deemed "childlike". I will be interested to see if these same folks will retain their opinion if the new Superman movie attracts millions of viewers upon it's release, all suddenly Superman fans.
That's okay. From a critical perspective, most pop culture can appear a little silly on the sruface. I personally find the adulation of professional sports to be juvenile, the insistence of celebrity culture to shove starlets down our throats entirely infantile, and the fanboy obsession with trainspotting music and hanging out in garage bands dreaming of "making it" to be a little silly. It's curious that sci-Fi, in all it's many forms, has somehow become an excusable time waster. So has fantasy writing, to an extent. Meanwhile romantic comedies and soap operas are perfectly excusable for millions of people. The truth is: It's all pop culture of one form or another, and all of it just as guilty of flights of fancy.
That said: I've seen the folks who take themselves seriously and consciously behave in a mnner they believe to be "adult". They believe that adulthood means the ending of interest in silly things. I'd rather not turn off the switch in my brain that lets me crack open a comic and peer into another world, simply because some boring life-accountant decided I wasn't spending my time in a way they liked. Just as surely as sports fans would refuse to give up on their games simply because someone pointed out what a collosal time-sink it is to watch people throw around a ball (and, honestly, how much to season tickets cost to professional sports?).
Still, even among comic readers, a Superman fan might not be safe.
Among the fanboys, Superman hit a point of creative stagnation in the 70's that began to make the character less popular for collectors. Superman was not unpopular, but at the time Marvel was having it's triumphs and Batman went from being nearly cancelled to being revived with the Dark Knight work of the late 70's. The release of the first two Superman movies certainly helped the franchise regain a stint of Supermania. In the 1980's, "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and the resulting "Man of Steel" limited series should have put Superman back on top with readers, but an odd thing happened. Miller's "Dark Knight Returns" appeared with it's Clint Eastwood 80's sensibility and painted Superman as a patsy. For many readers appearing during the 80's comic boom, the powerful, naive boy scout was the definitive Superman. For years, DC didn't bother to counter their own image. Instead of giving the world a Superman which comic fans could get behind, DC seemed a victim of their own success and went with Miller/ DKR's take on The Man of Steel.
A generation of comic fans wanting to identify with the hard boiled Dark Knight saw Superman as the old, unwelcome man at the party and believed that the image of Superman was what was behind all those "Bam! Pow! Comics not just for Kids!" headlines they suffered through. Ironic then that it was Batman, the yardstick for comic superhero legitmacy, who had been the one who cemented the idea in the baby-boomers' heads that comics were for dullards.
Anyway, that was the context with which I approached Superman as a comic character. Sort of.
Like everyone else, I'd seen the movies in the theater as a kid. I remember being afraid for Superman when Luthor put the chain with Kryptonite around Superman's neck and kicked him into the pool. That's really my only memory of seeing Superman: The Movie when I was very little. I remember seeing Superman II with Jason, John, Jim and my Dad and Wayne. I remember thinking Superman was sucker for giving up his powers for some dumb girl. I even remember seeing Superman III and being terrified of Robert Vaughn's sister when she melded with the giant computer. Superman IV I wouldn't see until college on a sunny Sunday when I was avoiding doing any homework and my roommates were MIA.
In a lot of ways, I preferred Superman as a movie and cartoon character to the comics. I liked seeing him in action, zipping across the sky, using his superbreath to freeze a lake or flying out of the sky to save school buses. The few Superman comics I picked up off the shelf at the drug store didn't match what I saw in the movies. Superman was often in space with various pastel colored aliens. Luthor had his own planet. Mxyzptlk seemed less like the annoying imp from the cartoons and more like a sinister, near omnipotent genie.
When I was becoming a full-blown comic geek in the mid-80's, I have a firm memory of hanging out with a non-comic collecting classmate and explaining to him, in detail, why Superman could never be interesting. Every comic reader has the same litany of responses on the topic, passed down from geek to geek. In a way, it's an attempt to legitimize one costumed superhero over the other, and maybe, in the process, gain literary credibility for their superhero of choice.
Superman is invulnerable. There's no getting around that one. Bullets bounce off of him. grenades are an incovenience. A lightning strike will wind him, but nothing short of a tactical nuclear strike (or a hand full of kryptonite) is going to put him down.
He has too many powers. How can any character who can do anything the writers dream up possibly be of interest? He could resolve any conflict in the time it takes for him to pick from his catalog of abilities (right down to Super Ventriloquism), and defeat anyone in his path.
Superman is a boy scout. There's no danger to him as a character. There's no chance he'll make the wrong decision.
His secret identity isn't believable. How can a pair of glasses make for a disguise? How could Lois not see through the disguise?
His costume is stupid. He wears his underwear on the outside. He has a cape and shiny red boots.
He's got old fashioned ideas. His rogues gallery is lame. He's a government stooge. He's a fascist. He's a thug in tights. Who could ever believe such a guy would make the choice to help people?
I could.
I don't know when, exactly, it clicked with me. I think it started in high school when I stayed up too late on a Saturday night in 9th grade watching Superman: The Movie with The Admiral. I still recall watching that last shot of Superman in orbit, our hero pretty pleased with the end of the movie and having a good look at his adopted home planet. I turned to the Admiral and said "That was a lot better than I remember it being."
"Yeah," nodded The Admiral. "I always liked that one."
I picked up a few issues of Superman after that, and the same confusion set in. The DCU, at the time, was a little bit of a tough place to just wander into. They weren't as locked into the Marvel formula of having every character explain themselves in every panel.
I picked up some back-issues of "Man of Steel" at some point and understood what Byrne was doing with Superman, although at the time, I think Roger Stern and Co. had already taken over the regular Superman comics. Like the Superman movie, "Man of Steel" humanized Superman in a way I hadn't expected. Superman wasn't some Super Dad there to slap the wrists of wrong-doers. He wasn't a government stooge. Like in the film, Superman was a guy given incredible power, power he could use any way imaginable, and was trying to make the world a better, safer place to be. Perhaps a bit naive in the beginning (taking the boy off the farm, but not the farm out of the boy), but learning fast enough that the bad guys don't always wear the black hats, and that sometimes a victory isn't as clear as it seems.
No movies were coming out by this point, of course, and I'm not sure the syndicated "Superboy" program ever even showed in the two markets I might have lived in during that time. If it did, I was oblivious. Besides, I was into plenty of comics and didn't need to add Superman to my list of titles.
I was still reading X-Men. I was picking up Batman from time to time, depending on the villain (I was a big Two-Face fan), and I had just started picking up these Sandman comics toward the end of high school. At the time, I didn't even know anybody else who read comics. The internet was still something in a Robert Silverberg book (so there certainly weren't any newsgroups about comics), and I hadn't been to a convention since 7th grade.
They killed Superman my senior year of high school, and I remember having to explain to everybody "No, they aren't really killing Superman." Funny how that works. People still ask me once in a blue moon if that was the end of Superman. Of course the big revelation out such a dramatic turn was that Superman got some really outdated glam-metal hair. Even then I knew the worst thing you could do was try to update an icon to "appeal to the teens".
At some point in college, I picked up a few new issues of Superman, but what piqued my interest once again was the amazing Bruce Timm/ Paul Dini animated Superman series. The show delved deeply into Superman's silver age trappings, updating them perhaps stylistically, but never in spirit. All the villains I could remember from a Superman Flipbook my mom got me out of a Troll book order when I was five popped up sooner or later. Only now Toyman was a creepy little bastard with a plastic head instead of a goof on a pogo stick. Bizarro was full of pathos I'd not realized he might contain while destroying the tables at the Legion of Doom HQ on Superfriends. The Animated Luthor was cunning and brilliant, and utterly believable as a foil for the Man of Steel in a way Gene Hackman's Luthor never appeared to be.
What impressed me once again in the cartoon was the rich origin of Superman.
One of the complaints about Superman by comic fans is that unlike, say, Batman, Superman was born to his powers. But that isn't quite true. The explosion of Krypton, the loss of not just a family he would never know, but a planet he would never know, sent by parents who refused to give in to loss and send forth their only son into the cosmic void... Yes, Superman's powers are not derived from years spent training, any more than that of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man or any others of hundreds of comic book heroes (see: X-Men).
The pained conversation in Superman: The Movie between Jor-El and Lara deciding upon the fate of their child tells you all you need to know. In vague, knowing terms the dialogue establishes that they know their son will never, ever truly belong, as cursed by his abilities as he is blessed.
It's a theme that's been explored in dozens of motifs in comics, probably most prominently in Spider-Man. Perhaps it's the grounding and relatable loss of Spider-Man's Uncle Ben rather than the catastrophic and unimaginable loss of your birth planet that seems somehow more sympathetic. But the idea that the super powers came at a price came from Superman, Batman's origin appearing well after his initial appearances. And, of course, Spider-Man and Marvel's complement of heroes came along decades after Superman's first appearance.
And, of course, the goodly Kents appeared in the cartoon as they had in the earliest episode of the George Reeves series, the Christopher Reeve film, the Silver Age comics and the Byrne comics. Guidance and honest discussion of the life his powers might bring him were the gift from his earthly parents.
So what was the difference? Why Superman?
There's the cultural archaeology of a character who has survived 67 years of the expanding American media world. There's the core of characters (friend and foe) who have made the trip alongside Superman in virtually every media from radio to internet shorts. In short, the character has thrived like none other over since the invention the super hero comic with Superman's first appearance.
He's a character everybody has some knowledge of, and who can spark conversations with just about anyone. On Wednesday I found myself standing in my sweltering house talking to the 60 year-old air conditioner repairman about George Reeves as the repairman eyed Superman floating above the Daily Planet globe (a newspaper name probably as widely known as any actual paper shy of the New York Times). Little kids point to the license plate on the front of my car in busy parking lots. More than once when I've worn a Superman shirt to work (under an oxford) someone in the elevator has looked to me and said "now I know your secret identity" with a knowing nod.
Of late it's been trendy for trucks to sport Superman stickers, perhaps suggesting that the truck is as powerful as the Man of Steel.
Seinfeld dedicated a whole episode to the comic geek friendly notion of "Bizarro".
So if Superman is all of those things that people equate with him, what is there to like?
Superman is the original superhero, and whether the average guy on the street knows that Superman was the first costumed super-powered character of his ilk is almost irrelevant. He's the most imitated, satirized and flat out copied comic character. The concept has been refined and splintered into thousands of new characters since Action Comics #1 saw print, some of whom have existed alongside Superman for almost the same amount of time (and others who pre-dated Superman and were co-opted into the world of super heroes). But all of them have some hint of Superman about them.
It's no doubt the longevity of the character and the various strictures of the time and company have often left Superman looking like a goofy do-gooder. The tendency to mistake brainless entertainment for children's and all-ages entertainment has too often affected the ace of action. With as much Superman product as has existed over the years, not all of it was going to be brilliant. Yet the character continues to find an audience, his career outlasting Sinatra, Elvis, and dozens of other icons of the 20th Century.
At the character's heart, Superman has managed to symbolize many things to many people. As often as Superman is invoked as a sign of invulnerability, his one weakness is brought up just as often. "Kryptonite" has become a synonym for a sure weakness for the seemingly strong.
However, it's in Superman The Movie that we learn that Kryptonite may be what weakens Superman, but it's his humanity that is his greatest vulnerability. No man, no matter how Super, can be everywhere at once. And with the (temporary) death of Lois Lane, we see Superman wounded to his absolute core in his grief, just as he was at the loss of Jonathan Kent. "All these powers" Clark Kent reflects at the loss of his adopted father, "and I couldn't save him."
For me, that's the weakness I can understand. Too many powers? Not enough, we're led to believe. Not enough if you can't save the ones who matter most.
If there's no danger to him as a character, I'll accept that as a criticism. The story of Superman is not the story of a character constantly compromised, nor a character who wishes to be seen as frightening to any but those caught in the act. He's the embodiment of trying to make the right choices and trying to live at the assistance of others. Rather than a sign of lack of will, Superman's character is reflective of what can be achieved by someone who has decided to live selflessly at the aid of others.
We throw around the term "super powers" in relation to governments, but just as often, Superman's dangerous potential is treated with the same cautionary wind reserved for our states of unimaginable power. In the comics, the Luthors of the world see the power and are jealous, seeing in Superman the power to topple mountains. They refuse to believe in a man who could have all of that power and not use it for personal gain, not turn upon his fellow man. How can he weild such power and not choose to enforce his will, not choose to become the single-minded fascist who crushes his will down upon the world? How can a man not reflect what they see in themselves?
Just as often, there are the readers of the comics and the viewers of the movies who turn their nose up, raising the same questions. But these readers and fans are missing the point. The story of Superman is a story of hope.
Superman is about what can be done when we not only turn away from those desires to control and destroy, but when we use that power for the right reasons and in the right way. The actual stories in the comics, in the movies, in the TV series and radio show are about that never ending battle to not only combat the endless tide of the strong over the powerless, but the struggle to know the right choice.
They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way.
Does this make the character less relatable? Perhaps to some. To me, it's a wonderful story. It's a reminder of the potential of everyone to do the right thing, and to remember that everyone has the opportunity to make the right choices. I think that inherent message is what's kept Superman flying for seven decades.
As longtime readers of this blog will know, things aren't always peaches and cream at League HQ. There are the times I wish I could spin the earth backward or lift the bus off the bridge if it could help in the smallest of ways. I don't mind cracking open a Superman comic to remind me that the good fight is a never-ending battle, that it's worth it, and it doesn't hurt if you do it for the woman you love (even if she doesn't recognize you when you're wearing glasses).
When I was working on the League of Melbotis Awards, I asked for some possible blog topics. Almost half of the respondents asked "Why Superman?"
With the movie coming, I'm hoping to put things in the right context and possibly shed a little light on why I became a fan of Superman as a character, Superman as an industry, and Superman in general.
One of the oddities of being a fan of the Man of Steel is that everyone feels a bit of ownership. As a pop culture icon, Superman is up there with Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus for recognizability. You can chop through Peruvian rain forests for two days and find yourself face to face with a local wearing a Super Hombre shirt who knows, at minimum, Superman can fly, he's invulnerable to most harm and that he's very very strong.
A lot of folks have pegged my comic obsession and interest in Superman as a juvenile interest, primarily due to the marketing of Superman to children. I doubt anyone who has bothered to read a Superman comic over the past several years would feel as if the material were not geared towards children. While the comics of today are simed at adults and "all-ages", there certainly exists a "gee-whiz" aspect to Superman that's undeniable, and perhaps it's that fantasy element which is deemed "childlike". I will be interested to see if these same folks will retain their opinion if the new Superman movie attracts millions of viewers upon it's release, all suddenly Superman fans.
That's okay. From a critical perspective, most pop culture can appear a little silly on the sruface. I personally find the adulation of professional sports to be juvenile, the insistence of celebrity culture to shove starlets down our throats entirely infantile, and the fanboy obsession with trainspotting music and hanging out in garage bands dreaming of "making it" to be a little silly. It's curious that sci-Fi, in all it's many forms, has somehow become an excusable time waster. So has fantasy writing, to an extent. Meanwhile romantic comedies and soap operas are perfectly excusable for millions of people. The truth is: It's all pop culture of one form or another, and all of it just as guilty of flights of fancy.
That said: I've seen the folks who take themselves seriously and consciously behave in a mnner they believe to be "adult". They believe that adulthood means the ending of interest in silly things. I'd rather not turn off the switch in my brain that lets me crack open a comic and peer into another world, simply because some boring life-accountant decided I wasn't spending my time in a way they liked. Just as surely as sports fans would refuse to give up on their games simply because someone pointed out what a collosal time-sink it is to watch people throw around a ball (and, honestly, how much to season tickets cost to professional sports?).
Still, even among comic readers, a Superman fan might not be safe.
Among the fanboys, Superman hit a point of creative stagnation in the 70's that began to make the character less popular for collectors. Superman was not unpopular, but at the time Marvel was having it's triumphs and Batman went from being nearly cancelled to being revived with the Dark Knight work of the late 70's. The release of the first two Superman movies certainly helped the franchise regain a stint of Supermania. In the 1980's, "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and the resulting "Man of Steel" limited series should have put Superman back on top with readers, but an odd thing happened. Miller's "Dark Knight Returns" appeared with it's Clint Eastwood 80's sensibility and painted Superman as a patsy. For many readers appearing during the 80's comic boom, the powerful, naive boy scout was the definitive Superman. For years, DC didn't bother to counter their own image. Instead of giving the world a Superman which comic fans could get behind, DC seemed a victim of their own success and went with Miller/ DKR's take on The Man of Steel.
A generation of comic fans wanting to identify with the hard boiled Dark Knight saw Superman as the old, unwelcome man at the party and believed that the image of Superman was what was behind all those "Bam! Pow! Comics not just for Kids!" headlines they suffered through. Ironic then that it was Batman, the yardstick for comic superhero legitmacy, who had been the one who cemented the idea in the baby-boomers' heads that comics were for dullards.
Anyway, that was the context with which I approached Superman as a comic character. Sort of.
Like everyone else, I'd seen the movies in the theater as a kid. I remember being afraid for Superman when Luthor put the chain with Kryptonite around Superman's neck and kicked him into the pool. That's really my only memory of seeing Superman: The Movie when I was very little. I remember seeing Superman II with Jason, John, Jim and my Dad and Wayne. I remember thinking Superman was sucker for giving up his powers for some dumb girl. I even remember seeing Superman III and being terrified of Robert Vaughn's sister when she melded with the giant computer. Superman IV I wouldn't see until college on a sunny Sunday when I was avoiding doing any homework and my roommates were MIA.
In a lot of ways, I preferred Superman as a movie and cartoon character to the comics. I liked seeing him in action, zipping across the sky, using his superbreath to freeze a lake or flying out of the sky to save school buses. The few Superman comics I picked up off the shelf at the drug store didn't match what I saw in the movies. Superman was often in space with various pastel colored aliens. Luthor had his own planet. Mxyzptlk seemed less like the annoying imp from the cartoons and more like a sinister, near omnipotent genie.
When I was becoming a full-blown comic geek in the mid-80's, I have a firm memory of hanging out with a non-comic collecting classmate and explaining to him, in detail, why Superman could never be interesting. Every comic reader has the same litany of responses on the topic, passed down from geek to geek. In a way, it's an attempt to legitimize one costumed superhero over the other, and maybe, in the process, gain literary credibility for their superhero of choice.
Superman is invulnerable. There's no getting around that one. Bullets bounce off of him. grenades are an incovenience. A lightning strike will wind him, but nothing short of a tactical nuclear strike (or a hand full of kryptonite) is going to put him down.
He has too many powers. How can any character who can do anything the writers dream up possibly be of interest? He could resolve any conflict in the time it takes for him to pick from his catalog of abilities (right down to Super Ventriloquism), and defeat anyone in his path.
Superman is a boy scout. There's no danger to him as a character. There's no chance he'll make the wrong decision.
His secret identity isn't believable. How can a pair of glasses make for a disguise? How could Lois not see through the disguise?
His costume is stupid. He wears his underwear on the outside. He has a cape and shiny red boots.
He's got old fashioned ideas. His rogues gallery is lame. He's a government stooge. He's a fascist. He's a thug in tights. Who could ever believe such a guy would make the choice to help people?
I could.
I don't know when, exactly, it clicked with me. I think it started in high school when I stayed up too late on a Saturday night in 9th grade watching Superman: The Movie with The Admiral. I still recall watching that last shot of Superman in orbit, our hero pretty pleased with the end of the movie and having a good look at his adopted home planet. I turned to the Admiral and said "That was a lot better than I remember it being."
"Yeah," nodded The Admiral. "I always liked that one."
I picked up a few issues of Superman after that, and the same confusion set in. The DCU, at the time, was a little bit of a tough place to just wander into. They weren't as locked into the Marvel formula of having every character explain themselves in every panel.
I picked up some back-issues of "Man of Steel" at some point and understood what Byrne was doing with Superman, although at the time, I think Roger Stern and Co. had already taken over the regular Superman comics. Like the Superman movie, "Man of Steel" humanized Superman in a way I hadn't expected. Superman wasn't some Super Dad there to slap the wrists of wrong-doers. He wasn't a government stooge. Like in the film, Superman was a guy given incredible power, power he could use any way imaginable, and was trying to make the world a better, safer place to be. Perhaps a bit naive in the beginning (taking the boy off the farm, but not the farm out of the boy), but learning fast enough that the bad guys don't always wear the black hats, and that sometimes a victory isn't as clear as it seems.
No movies were coming out by this point, of course, and I'm not sure the syndicated "Superboy" program ever even showed in the two markets I might have lived in during that time. If it did, I was oblivious. Besides, I was into plenty of comics and didn't need to add Superman to my list of titles.
I was still reading X-Men. I was picking up Batman from time to time, depending on the villain (I was a big Two-Face fan), and I had just started picking up these Sandman comics toward the end of high school. At the time, I didn't even know anybody else who read comics. The internet was still something in a Robert Silverberg book (so there certainly weren't any newsgroups about comics), and I hadn't been to a convention since 7th grade.
They killed Superman my senior year of high school, and I remember having to explain to everybody "No, they aren't really killing Superman." Funny how that works. People still ask me once in a blue moon if that was the end of Superman. Of course the big revelation out such a dramatic turn was that Superman got some really outdated glam-metal hair. Even then I knew the worst thing you could do was try to update an icon to "appeal to the teens".
At some point in college, I picked up a few new issues of Superman, but what piqued my interest once again was the amazing Bruce Timm/ Paul Dini animated Superman series. The show delved deeply into Superman's silver age trappings, updating them perhaps stylistically, but never in spirit. All the villains I could remember from a Superman Flipbook my mom got me out of a Troll book order when I was five popped up sooner or later. Only now Toyman was a creepy little bastard with a plastic head instead of a goof on a pogo stick. Bizarro was full of pathos I'd not realized he might contain while destroying the tables at the Legion of Doom HQ on Superfriends. The Animated Luthor was cunning and brilliant, and utterly believable as a foil for the Man of Steel in a way Gene Hackman's Luthor never appeared to be.
What impressed me once again in the cartoon was the rich origin of Superman.
One of the complaints about Superman by comic fans is that unlike, say, Batman, Superman was born to his powers. But that isn't quite true. The explosion of Krypton, the loss of not just a family he would never know, but a planet he would never know, sent by parents who refused to give in to loss and send forth their only son into the cosmic void... Yes, Superman's powers are not derived from years spent training, any more than that of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man or any others of hundreds of comic book heroes (see: X-Men).
The pained conversation in Superman: The Movie between Jor-El and Lara deciding upon the fate of their child tells you all you need to know. In vague, knowing terms the dialogue establishes that they know their son will never, ever truly belong, as cursed by his abilities as he is blessed.
It's a theme that's been explored in dozens of motifs in comics, probably most prominently in Spider-Man. Perhaps it's the grounding and relatable loss of Spider-Man's Uncle Ben rather than the catastrophic and unimaginable loss of your birth planet that seems somehow more sympathetic. But the idea that the super powers came at a price came from Superman, Batman's origin appearing well after his initial appearances. And, of course, Spider-Man and Marvel's complement of heroes came along decades after Superman's first appearance.
And, of course, the goodly Kents appeared in the cartoon as they had in the earliest episode of the George Reeves series, the Christopher Reeve film, the Silver Age comics and the Byrne comics. Guidance and honest discussion of the life his powers might bring him were the gift from his earthly parents.
So what was the difference? Why Superman?
There's the cultural archaeology of a character who has survived 67 years of the expanding American media world. There's the core of characters (friend and foe) who have made the trip alongside Superman in virtually every media from radio to internet shorts. In short, the character has thrived like none other over since the invention the super hero comic with Superman's first appearance.
He's a character everybody has some knowledge of, and who can spark conversations with just about anyone. On Wednesday I found myself standing in my sweltering house talking to the 60 year-old air conditioner repairman about George Reeves as the repairman eyed Superman floating above the Daily Planet globe (a newspaper name probably as widely known as any actual paper shy of the New York Times). Little kids point to the license plate on the front of my car in busy parking lots. More than once when I've worn a Superman shirt to work (under an oxford) someone in the elevator has looked to me and said "now I know your secret identity" with a knowing nod.
Of late it's been trendy for trucks to sport Superman stickers, perhaps suggesting that the truck is as powerful as the Man of Steel.
Seinfeld dedicated a whole episode to the comic geek friendly notion of "Bizarro".
So if Superman is all of those things that people equate with him, what is there to like?
Superman is the original superhero, and whether the average guy on the street knows that Superman was the first costumed super-powered character of his ilk is almost irrelevant. He's the most imitated, satirized and flat out copied comic character. The concept has been refined and splintered into thousands of new characters since Action Comics #1 saw print, some of whom have existed alongside Superman for almost the same amount of time (and others who pre-dated Superman and were co-opted into the world of super heroes). But all of them have some hint of Superman about them.
It's no doubt the longevity of the character and the various strictures of the time and company have often left Superman looking like a goofy do-gooder. The tendency to mistake brainless entertainment for children's and all-ages entertainment has too often affected the ace of action. With as much Superman product as has existed over the years, not all of it was going to be brilliant. Yet the character continues to find an audience, his career outlasting Sinatra, Elvis, and dozens of other icons of the 20th Century.
At the character's heart, Superman has managed to symbolize many things to many people. As often as Superman is invoked as a sign of invulnerability, his one weakness is brought up just as often. "Kryptonite" has become a synonym for a sure weakness for the seemingly strong.
However, it's in Superman The Movie that we learn that Kryptonite may be what weakens Superman, but it's his humanity that is his greatest vulnerability. No man, no matter how Super, can be everywhere at once. And with the (temporary) death of Lois Lane, we see Superman wounded to his absolute core in his grief, just as he was at the loss of Jonathan Kent. "All these powers" Clark Kent reflects at the loss of his adopted father, "and I couldn't save him."
For me, that's the weakness I can understand. Too many powers? Not enough, we're led to believe. Not enough if you can't save the ones who matter most.
If there's no danger to him as a character, I'll accept that as a criticism. The story of Superman is not the story of a character constantly compromised, nor a character who wishes to be seen as frightening to any but those caught in the act. He's the embodiment of trying to make the right choices and trying to live at the assistance of others. Rather than a sign of lack of will, Superman's character is reflective of what can be achieved by someone who has decided to live selflessly at the aid of others.
We throw around the term "super powers" in relation to governments, but just as often, Superman's dangerous potential is treated with the same cautionary wind reserved for our states of unimaginable power. In the comics, the Luthors of the world see the power and are jealous, seeing in Superman the power to topple mountains. They refuse to believe in a man who could have all of that power and not use it for personal gain, not turn upon his fellow man. How can he weild such power and not choose to enforce his will, not choose to become the single-minded fascist who crushes his will down upon the world? How can a man not reflect what they see in themselves?
Just as often, there are the readers of the comics and the viewers of the movies who turn their nose up, raising the same questions. But these readers and fans are missing the point. The story of Superman is a story of hope.
Superman is about what can be done when we not only turn away from those desires to control and destroy, but when we use that power for the right reasons and in the right way. The actual stories in the comics, in the movies, in the TV series and radio show are about that never ending battle to not only combat the endless tide of the strong over the powerless, but the struggle to know the right choice.
They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way.
Does this make the character less relatable? Perhaps to some. To me, it's a wonderful story. It's a reminder of the potential of everyone to do the right thing, and to remember that everyone has the opportunity to make the right choices. I think that inherent message is what's kept Superman flying for seven decades.
As longtime readers of this blog will know, things aren't always peaches and cream at League HQ. There are the times I wish I could spin the earth backward or lift the bus off the bridge if it could help in the smallest of ways. I don't mind cracking open a Superman comic to remind me that the good fight is a never-ending battle, that it's worth it, and it doesn't hurt if you do it for the woman you love (even if she doesn't recognize you when you're wearing glasses).
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Picking over the body: Bones
The Fall TV Season is upon us. Sort of.
Yesterday I watched the premier of Fox's new show "Bones", Fox's entry into the world of crime-scene investigation television drama.
Nanostalgia touches upon the plot of the show here, which we at The League found a bit gutsy for a pilot episode of an untested show. Notice we are not applauding the gutsiness of the plot choice, but we are taking note of the boldness of their call with so little else going for the program.
I don't watch the fictional crime scene investigation programs like CSI. There's something odd to me about police procedurals based around people standing around at 2:30 AM looking fresh as a daisy and making darkly wicked comments to one another over a dead hooker. I do confess to watching the occasional autopsy show on HBO, A&E or other cable channels as they use the magic of cable TV to solve and/ or reconstruct a crime. These scientists defy all expectations as being surprisingly unsexy, middle-aged dudes with thinnging hair and glasses. Usually they're not tortured souls looking for redemption.
The oddest bit about all of this, to The League, is how many people I meet who are so into the CSI sort of programming that becoming a forensics expert is their idea of the new James Bond.
My message: Dead people are disturbing to look at. If you're in a state that they need to call in a scientist before 8:00am to figure out what happened to make you that dead... buddy, you are not someone The League wants to be taking a peek at. Odds are, Barney Fife is not calling in a forensics expert to figure out the case of Mrs. Hunkel's missing wheel barrow. There's going to be somebody's mother, or brother, or child lying there on the ground with their blood all dried and sticky and some gaping holes in them where the life drained out.
Not every body is a stripper whose murder is going to implicate some big-wheel drug dealer and somehow help you clear some dirty little part of your tortured conscience. A lot of these are family arguments, or flashes of anger between people who've known each other for years that suddenly got out of control. But that's not compelling TV, I guess.
Fox's entry into the CSI-style programming has obviously been tweaked and notated to death by the network suits to fit their idea of what makes a good show. Any hint of originality was lost long ago, leaving only some goofy and unwelcome sci-fi elements behind. Our two heroes, Buffy's vampire boyfriend and Zooey Deschanel's fetching sister, each has a checkered and completely cliche-riddled past seemigly lifted from a 1950's era cop movie.
There's some awkward discussion of sex, seemingly jammed in to titillate, a team of scientist stereotypes pulled from 90's era big budget films like "Contact", and an X-Files Skinner clone, doomed to be demanding badges and then admitting our heroes were right and that he never should have given the case to that weasel, Johnson.
Knowing they're to spend a huge amount of time in Zooey Deschanel's fetching sister's lab, the lab is, apparently part of a shopping mall, hangar, or some other unexplained open air environment completely inappropriate for keeping corpses contaminant free. The team of crack scientists (none of which appear to be over the age of 28) have also created an amazing hologram projector (our sci-fi element) which can create a hologram based upon the bones our friend, Bones, has pieced together with Elmer's glue. What everyone else can do by looking at an image on a screen from a projector, these good folks have created in 3D, which, according to the show, everyone can see the face while they're standing behind the head of the hologram. And alter things like "flesh mass around the cheeks by 10%" at the touch of a button. That is some kick-ass processor on their hologram projector.
Even more amazing, the hologram projector can choreograph the movements EXACTLY as they occured during the murder. It's all sort of something you have to see to believe.
As for the just plain bad: We're repeatedly told Bones can't connect with people, just corpses, yet Bones goes on to spend 10 minutes telling anyone who will listen how she's cold and emotionless and can't connect. Note to writers and producers: Show, don't tell. By the end of the show, I couldn't wait for Ms. Chatterbox to quit connecting. Also, getting along with people doesn't mean telling them something you're not sure you should tell. Getting along with people at my work place means nodding and pretending like you care about what their kid said last night at the dinner table.
Look, this is Fox's idea of what CSI should be. Bones stars young, good looking people. There's some badly forced sexual tension between our two leads, and mostly nowhere to go with the show except to force it into the police procedural they promised in the ads. And while I've never watched CSI, from what I hear, this is pretty much William Petersen's character from CSI, only with big goo-goo eyes and boobies.
Fortunately for Fox, big goo-goo eyes and boobies are probably enough of a selling point for The League. We watchedThe X-Files on a similar principle for 7 years.
The Fall TV Season is upon us. Sort of.
Yesterday I watched the premier of Fox's new show "Bones", Fox's entry into the world of crime-scene investigation television drama.
Nanostalgia touches upon the plot of the show here, which we at The League found a bit gutsy for a pilot episode of an untested show. Notice we are not applauding the gutsiness of the plot choice, but we are taking note of the boldness of their call with so little else going for the program.
I don't watch the fictional crime scene investigation programs like CSI. There's something odd to me about police procedurals based around people standing around at 2:30 AM looking fresh as a daisy and making darkly wicked comments to one another over a dead hooker. I do confess to watching the occasional autopsy show on HBO, A&E or other cable channels as they use the magic of cable TV to solve and/ or reconstruct a crime. These scientists defy all expectations as being surprisingly unsexy, middle-aged dudes with thinnging hair and glasses. Usually they're not tortured souls looking for redemption.
The oddest bit about all of this, to The League, is how many people I meet who are so into the CSI sort of programming that becoming a forensics expert is their idea of the new James Bond.
My message: Dead people are disturbing to look at. If you're in a state that they need to call in a scientist before 8:00am to figure out what happened to make you that dead... buddy, you are not someone The League wants to be taking a peek at. Odds are, Barney Fife is not calling in a forensics expert to figure out the case of Mrs. Hunkel's missing wheel barrow. There's going to be somebody's mother, or brother, or child lying there on the ground with their blood all dried and sticky and some gaping holes in them where the life drained out.
Not every body is a stripper whose murder is going to implicate some big-wheel drug dealer and somehow help you clear some dirty little part of your tortured conscience. A lot of these are family arguments, or flashes of anger between people who've known each other for years that suddenly got out of control. But that's not compelling TV, I guess.
Fox's entry into the CSI-style programming has obviously been tweaked and notated to death by the network suits to fit their idea of what makes a good show. Any hint of originality was lost long ago, leaving only some goofy and unwelcome sci-fi elements behind. Our two heroes, Buffy's vampire boyfriend and Zooey Deschanel's fetching sister, each has a checkered and completely cliche-riddled past seemigly lifted from a 1950's era cop movie.
There's some awkward discussion of sex, seemingly jammed in to titillate, a team of scientist stereotypes pulled from 90's era big budget films like "Contact", and an X-Files Skinner clone, doomed to be demanding badges and then admitting our heroes were right and that he never should have given the case to that weasel, Johnson.
Knowing they're to spend a huge amount of time in Zooey Deschanel's fetching sister's lab, the lab is, apparently part of a shopping mall, hangar, or some other unexplained open air environment completely inappropriate for keeping corpses contaminant free. The team of crack scientists (none of which appear to be over the age of 28) have also created an amazing hologram projector (our sci-fi element) which can create a hologram based upon the bones our friend, Bones, has pieced together with Elmer's glue. What everyone else can do by looking at an image on a screen from a projector, these good folks have created in 3D, which, according to the show, everyone can see the face while they're standing behind the head of the hologram. And alter things like "flesh mass around the cheeks by 10%" at the touch of a button. That is some kick-ass processor on their hologram projector.
Even more amazing, the hologram projector can choreograph the movements EXACTLY as they occured during the murder. It's all sort of something you have to see to believe.
As for the just plain bad: We're repeatedly told Bones can't connect with people, just corpses, yet Bones goes on to spend 10 minutes telling anyone who will listen how she's cold and emotionless and can't connect. Note to writers and producers: Show, don't tell. By the end of the show, I couldn't wait for Ms. Chatterbox to quit connecting. Also, getting along with people doesn't mean telling them something you're not sure you should tell. Getting along with people at my work place means nodding and pretending like you care about what their kid said last night at the dinner table.
Look, this is Fox's idea of what CSI should be. Bones stars young, good looking people. There's some badly forced sexual tension between our two leads, and mostly nowhere to go with the show except to force it into the police procedural they promised in the ads. And while I've never watched CSI, from what I hear, this is pretty much William Petersen's character from CSI, only with big goo-goo eyes and boobies.
Fortunately for Fox, big goo-goo eyes and boobies are probably enough of a selling point for The League. We watchedThe X-Files on a similar principle for 7 years.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
THE LEAGUE DECIDES TO GO AND SEE DISNEY'S "SKY HIGH"
The League goes to see these movies because we know you won't...
After having watched commercials for a few weeks and noting Lynda "Wonder Woman" Cater was in the film, The League did some crafty maneuvering and tricked Jamie into going to see Disney's new teen super feature "Sky High".
Sky High is pretty much, beat for beat, what one would expect if you've seen the trailers. The movie is pretty much a lot of elements from lots of coming-of-age movies tied in with a Harry Potter-lite element. The movie is riding the superhero trend, more in the vein of Incredibles than Spider-Man.
The movie follows Will Stronghold, child of two of the greatest superheroes on earth (an earth which is well fortified with super beings, it is suggested) as he leaves the public school system to start his Freshman year at Sky High, a school for the children of super powered folks. The school is there to prepare these kids to follow in their parent's footsteps.
Nothing is really made of Will wanting to buck the family tradition, which is a relief. A character wishing for a humdrum life when he can shoot lasers out of his eyes might make for compelling inner monologue in a comic, but it's a tough sell to kids 3-12. Nor does it make for the best use of the filmic medium. Instead, he's much more concerned about not being able to live up to the legacy his father (and, apparently, grandpa) have established before him.
Will's parents are the Commander (Super Strength) and Jetstream (karate-wielding flier), but Will has not yet shown any powers himself. Of course, there's a lovely girl who likes him whom he hasn't noticed except as friend (which seems like an odd-bit of science fiction as she's quite pretty), and the pretty, popular girl whose attention he soon wants to get. Due to the fact that Will's powers don't seem to be materializing, Will is tossed in with "Hero Support" aka "Sidekicks", the folks with superpowers so negligible that they're destined for a life of assisting folks with better powers (can you see the direction this is going?).
The movie is directed towards two audiences. 1: Kids who will watch anything with people shooting fire out of their eyes (ie Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers) and, 2: The Parents of the Kids who will actually get the jokes in the movie.
Watching the movie in a near full house as we did, I sincerely got the feeling the parents (especially the dads) were enjoying the movie more than their kids. And maybe that wasn't a mistake. The main characters may all be high-school aged kids, but the teachers include two members of Kids in the Hall, Lynda Carter, Kurt Russell, Bruce Campbell and Cloris Leechman. And, perhaps befitting, the adults in the film seem to have taken the roles because most of them are really pretty funny.
Kurt Russell's "Commander" is given to ham-handed hero speak, in a sort of too-thought out attempt at speechifying (a Kurt Russell we've all sort of missed in recent years). Dave Foley plays an instructor for the Sidekicks, teaching sidekick skills and still milking his glory days as the long forgotten "All-American Boy". Kevin McDonald plays the "Mad Science" instructor with the two foot cranium. Bruce Campbell is the coach, and Cloris Leechman plays the school doctor (with X-Ray vision). And Lynda Carter is... Lynda Carter. Does she really need to be anything else?
Will kids think word problems involving flying superheroes are funny? Well, the adults seemed to like it. Will they understand why 12-story robots are inherently funny? No. Their still in a phase where 12-story robots are a dangerous threat. And, you know what? That's okay.
(ed note: I loved the gaint robot sequence. There just aren't enough giant robots in movies)
The prerequisite points about friendship, self-worth and avoiding popular girls are made in a manner slightly less embarrassing than in the typical Teen-Wolf film. Will kids get a lot of the snide commentary on high-school culture the film's producers slip in? Probably not. Well, maybe.
In one last hint that the movie is also catering to parents, the soundtrack is largely composed of 80's tunes, including an unlikely cover of the Talking Heads' "And She Was". Of course I say that, and I think the kids these days are nuts for the 80's so they might really dig a new version fo "Voices Carry".
Ed side note: Yesterday a troop of girls I saw walking across the Target parking lot looked like 1985 had barfed them up like an overripe hairball. Jamie suggested they were headed for a costume party, but that seemed a little high-concept. Plus, here in AZ it's the first week of school, so all the kids are in "fashion week" where they're breaking in their new personality they bought over the summer. (I miss having to break in really dark blue jeans that felt like they were made out of card-board tubes)
As a whole, the movie works just fine. It's nothing I'm going to be modeling my life after, but I might watch it again at some point on cable. It's nothing I'm going to recommend "YOU MUST SEE THIS FILM". But it's also not the piece of junk I was more or less expecting.
Don't expect anything too amazing, and don't be shocked when some of the FX are a bit hokey. But also give the producers some credit for showing a love for the material.
Now, for an added bonus: The League rants about nerds/ jocks in comics
Probably due to the overwhelming popularity of Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel has been publishing a spate of comics starring teen-agers. The excuse is: Teen-agers are learning about themselves and it's much more fertile territory.
The problem is this: The only story they ever bother to tell is apparently the one which resonates most with comic fans. Nerd gets bullied by "idiot jock", nerd stumbles into amazing powers, nerd gets cheap, violent revenge. Or not. But the common thread is that there's some enormous moose in the hallway at school seemingly torturing our poor, helpless hero who has undiscovered poetry in his/ her soul and is looking for an opportunity to unleash it (and impress the pretty girl/ guy).
Ugh. It's bad enough that this is the perception of "how things are in high school", but let's be honest... everyone is a jerk to everyone else at that age. You don't need enormous "jocks" picking on "nerds" for 15-17 year olds to start bugging each other. And, secondly, the people buying these comics are how old? And they're still picking this stuff up?
I can take some of it. I do, after all, enjoy most of Ultimate Spider-Man. And the nebbish dweeb reveals amazing abilities was the basis for Action Comics #1. I even don't mid reading teen-books (I pick up Teen Titans). BUT, get a new origin. No more jock-pummeling wish fulfillment. Spider-Man did it first and did it better.
Oh, and Narnia Rant: I really want to see this movie. But I need to read the book first.
The League goes to see these movies because we know you won't...
After having watched commercials for a few weeks and noting Lynda "Wonder Woman" Cater was in the film, The League did some crafty maneuvering and tricked Jamie into going to see Disney's new teen super feature "Sky High".
Sky High is pretty much, beat for beat, what one would expect if you've seen the trailers. The movie is pretty much a lot of elements from lots of coming-of-age movies tied in with a Harry Potter-lite element. The movie is riding the superhero trend, more in the vein of Incredibles than Spider-Man.
The movie follows Will Stronghold, child of two of the greatest superheroes on earth (an earth which is well fortified with super beings, it is suggested) as he leaves the public school system to start his Freshman year at Sky High, a school for the children of super powered folks. The school is there to prepare these kids to follow in their parent's footsteps.
Nothing is really made of Will wanting to buck the family tradition, which is a relief. A character wishing for a humdrum life when he can shoot lasers out of his eyes might make for compelling inner monologue in a comic, but it's a tough sell to kids 3-12. Nor does it make for the best use of the filmic medium. Instead, he's much more concerned about not being able to live up to the legacy his father (and, apparently, grandpa) have established before him.Will's parents are the Commander (Super Strength) and Jetstream (karate-wielding flier), but Will has not yet shown any powers himself. Of course, there's a lovely girl who likes him whom he hasn't noticed except as friend (which seems like an odd-bit of science fiction as she's quite pretty), and the pretty, popular girl whose attention he soon wants to get. Due to the fact that Will's powers don't seem to be materializing, Will is tossed in with "Hero Support" aka "Sidekicks", the folks with superpowers so negligible that they're destined for a life of assisting folks with better powers (can you see the direction this is going?).
The movie is directed towards two audiences. 1: Kids who will watch anything with people shooting fire out of their eyes (ie Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers) and, 2: The Parents of the Kids who will actually get the jokes in the movie.
Watching the movie in a near full house as we did, I sincerely got the feeling the parents (especially the dads) were enjoying the movie more than their kids. And maybe that wasn't a mistake. The main characters may all be high-school aged kids, but the teachers include two members of Kids in the Hall, Lynda Carter, Kurt Russell, Bruce Campbell and Cloris Leechman. And, perhaps befitting, the adults in the film seem to have taken the roles because most of them are really pretty funny.
Kurt Russell's "Commander" is given to ham-handed hero speak, in a sort of too-thought out attempt at speechifying (a Kurt Russell we've all sort of missed in recent years). Dave Foley plays an instructor for the Sidekicks, teaching sidekick skills and still milking his glory days as the long forgotten "All-American Boy". Kevin McDonald plays the "Mad Science" instructor with the two foot cranium. Bruce Campbell is the coach, and Cloris Leechman plays the school doctor (with X-Ray vision). And Lynda Carter is... Lynda Carter. Does she really need to be anything else?
Will kids think word problems involving flying superheroes are funny? Well, the adults seemed to like it. Will they understand why 12-story robots are inherently funny? No. Their still in a phase where 12-story robots are a dangerous threat. And, you know what? That's okay.
(ed note: I loved the gaint robot sequence. There just aren't enough giant robots in movies)
The prerequisite points about friendship, self-worth and avoiding popular girls are made in a manner slightly less embarrassing than in the typical Teen-Wolf film. Will kids get a lot of the snide commentary on high-school culture the film's producers slip in? Probably not. Well, maybe.
In one last hint that the movie is also catering to parents, the soundtrack is largely composed of 80's tunes, including an unlikely cover of the Talking Heads' "And She Was". Of course I say that, and I think the kids these days are nuts for the 80's so they might really dig a new version fo "Voices Carry".
Ed side note: Yesterday a troop of girls I saw walking across the Target parking lot looked like 1985 had barfed them up like an overripe hairball. Jamie suggested they were headed for a costume party, but that seemed a little high-concept. Plus, here in AZ it's the first week of school, so all the kids are in "fashion week" where they're breaking in their new personality they bought over the summer. (I miss having to break in really dark blue jeans that felt like they were made out of card-board tubes)
As a whole, the movie works just fine. It's nothing I'm going to be modeling my life after, but I might watch it again at some point on cable. It's nothing I'm going to recommend "YOU MUST SEE THIS FILM". But it's also not the piece of junk I was more or less expecting.
Don't expect anything too amazing, and don't be shocked when some of the FX are a bit hokey. But also give the producers some credit for showing a love for the material.
Now, for an added bonus: The League rants about nerds/ jocks in comics
Probably due to the overwhelming popularity of Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel has been publishing a spate of comics starring teen-agers. The excuse is: Teen-agers are learning about themselves and it's much more fertile territory.
The problem is this: The only story they ever bother to tell is apparently the one which resonates most with comic fans. Nerd gets bullied by "idiot jock", nerd stumbles into amazing powers, nerd gets cheap, violent revenge. Or not. But the common thread is that there's some enormous moose in the hallway at school seemingly torturing our poor, helpless hero who has undiscovered poetry in his/ her soul and is looking for an opportunity to unleash it (and impress the pretty girl/ guy).
Ugh. It's bad enough that this is the perception of "how things are in high school", but let's be honest... everyone is a jerk to everyone else at that age. You don't need enormous "jocks" picking on "nerds" for 15-17 year olds to start bugging each other. And, secondly, the people buying these comics are how old? And they're still picking this stuff up?
I can take some of it. I do, after all, enjoy most of Ultimate Spider-Man. And the nebbish dweeb reveals amazing abilities was the basis for Action Comics #1. I even don't mid reading teen-books (I pick up Teen Titans). BUT, get a new origin. No more jock-pummeling wish fulfillment. Spider-Man did it first and did it better.
Oh, and Narnia Rant: I really want to see this movie. But I need to read the book first.
Friday, June 17, 2005
The League gives up on the Spurs to go see Batman Begins
So, this evening at half-time, the Spurs appeared to be within a hair's breadth of having the bejeezus kicked out of them by an astoundingly invigorated-looking Pistons team. Jamie and I sighed, looked at one another and decided to take in a viewing of Batman Begins.
Followers of the Batman comics will find that the script has stuck to familiar characters from the Year One storyline, adding in elements of later stories (no Scarecrow in Year One) as well as picking up the 90's-era explanation of Batman's background (which I believe was created by Christopher Priest). The only notable addition to the cast of characters is the Bruce Wayne love interest, Rachel Dawes, played by Tom Cruise's new romantic prop.
Unlike previous Bat-films, this movie follows the pattern set out by Superman The Movie and Spider-Man, giving us a good hour of film introducing the audience to the central character before allowing him/ her to put on a cape/ mask. The movie acts as a comprehensive origin story which could provide ample footing for the sure-to-be-made sequels.
Director Christopher Nolan is also responsible for the screenplay, teaming with former comics-scribe David Goyer (JSA). Nolan's casting director deserves bat-kudos for his/ her role in selecting the players. Certainly the casting (which almost read like an comic-internet geek's who's who of dream casting) helped to elevate the movie. While the script is certainly good, good material in the wrong hands can land you with your typical Schumacherian take on the Caped Crusader.
Gotham is not the Anton Furst post-Blade Runner city scape which The League has always liked. But, you know, the design changes really went with an idea Nolan uses to sell Batman this time around: Batman is a person. He doesn't live in a mythical, fantastic city. He lives in a city you can believe is a plane flight away. And while you might not personally know any ninjas, Bruce Wayne has trained with highly proficient martial artists, which you might believe. And he doesn't build all his stuff himself. He co-opts from his own company's R&D department. he has to buy his masks mail-order from China. He uses a lathe to make bat-shuriken.
A lot of comic fans have selected Batman as their favorite superhero because he's "just a guy", and doesn't rely upon magic power rings or an invisible jet to get the job done. And while The League is an avid Batfan, we never bought this argument. After all, with all the work it would take to complete the Batcave with just Bruce and Alfred as labor, it's difficult to visualize Bruce having much in the way of time enough to go out and do any crime-fighting at all. Not to mention the difficulty of maintaining a bat-plane, boat and endless supply of Bat equipment.
Batman Begins tends to stick to a certain reality slightly closer to our own as it visualizes what near-future or not-yet-to-market technologies and a pie-in-the-sky budget could do towards bringing a person toward collecting the famed Bat-arsenal. In fact, this movie probably makes one of the best arguments since Year One regarding how on earth this whole Batman thing would work without Bruce being found out in a week or two.
Although the movie is somewhere over two hours, certain elements do seem overly compressed. The Bruce-Rachel relationship doesn't get enough attention for the audience to really become invested (an element which a viewing of Spider-Man before a rewrite might have helped solve). Batman also seems singularly fixed on one mission for the duration of the film. We don't see Batman getting involved in multiple situations and building the reputation which he seems to suddenly have among the Gotham criminal community.
Before the film came out, there was quite a bit of concern regarding the Bat-Suit. And as fans of the 1989 version of the movie will recall, that fear probably was well-founded. Keaton's suit looked great. As long as he stood absolutely still.
There are times when I wish the Bat-suit makers would try to just cover Batman's eyes completely and get those great white slits he has in the comics. It would resolve the issue of the black make-up around the eyes and make Bats all the more more menacing. And I'd buy the "you have to act with your eyes" argument a lot more if Spidey hadn't raked in a billion dollars with red pantyhose and sunglasses over his head.
The movie is rated PG-13, and rightfully so. The villain here is the Scarecrow, and the visuals tied to Scarecrow's fright gas would have melted my brain at age 8. He is one scary dude (and written better in this movie than I can recall him being written in the comics since that Grant-Breyfogle issue I alluded to earlier this week).
If this is what DC and WB are doing for their properties, count The League in. While the movie wasn't "true" to the comics from a chronological retelling of the Bat-Mythos, the characters remained true to what's on the page, and the tone matched the Batman books of the past 15 years. I do anticipate that some movie-goers will have a problem with that. I sincerely do. Even Burton kept some "Pow! Whap! Comics are for Kids!" stuff in his cartoony world of Batplanes and Jokermobiles. People expect it, and when you defy people's expectations at the box office, a lot of times you pay for it.
But I like it.
I'll probably be doing another viewing in pretty short order, and I am sure it will be then that I'll see the plot holes and a bucket load of other problems, but for now, I've got a Batman movie I never thought I'd see, cared for by people who wanted to believe in the aspects of the character that have kept him popular for more than 60 years.
Sadly, The Spurs got their asses handed to them by a margin of 30 points.
***update***
I failed to mention Gary Oldman nailing his portrayal of a pre-Commissioner Jim Gordon. Well done.
***IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER***
Do NOT read the comments section if you haven't seen the movie. Randy has spilled the beans on an important plot point.
So, this evening at half-time, the Spurs appeared to be within a hair's breadth of having the bejeezus kicked out of them by an astoundingly invigorated-looking Pistons team. Jamie and I sighed, looked at one another and decided to take in a viewing of Batman Begins.
Followers of the Batman comics will find that the script has stuck to familiar characters from the Year One storyline, adding in elements of later stories (no Scarecrow in Year One) as well as picking up the 90's-era explanation of Batman's background (which I believe was created by Christopher Priest). The only notable addition to the cast of characters is the Bruce Wayne love interest, Rachel Dawes, played by Tom Cruise's new romantic prop.
Unlike previous Bat-films, this movie follows the pattern set out by Superman The Movie and Spider-Man, giving us a good hour of film introducing the audience to the central character before allowing him/ her to put on a cape/ mask. The movie acts as a comprehensive origin story which could provide ample footing for the sure-to-be-made sequels.
Director Christopher Nolan is also responsible for the screenplay, teaming with former comics-scribe David Goyer (JSA). Nolan's casting director deserves bat-kudos for his/ her role in selecting the players. Certainly the casting (which almost read like an comic-internet geek's who's who of dream casting) helped to elevate the movie. While the script is certainly good, good material in the wrong hands can land you with your typical Schumacherian take on the Caped Crusader.
Gotham is not the Anton Furst post-Blade Runner city scape which The League has always liked. But, you know, the design changes really went with an idea Nolan uses to sell Batman this time around: Batman is a person. He doesn't live in a mythical, fantastic city. He lives in a city you can believe is a plane flight away. And while you might not personally know any ninjas, Bruce Wayne has trained with highly proficient martial artists, which you might believe. And he doesn't build all his stuff himself. He co-opts from his own company's R&D department. he has to buy his masks mail-order from China. He uses a lathe to make bat-shuriken.
A lot of comic fans have selected Batman as their favorite superhero because he's "just a guy", and doesn't rely upon magic power rings or an invisible jet to get the job done. And while The League is an avid Batfan, we never bought this argument. After all, with all the work it would take to complete the Batcave with just Bruce and Alfred as labor, it's difficult to visualize Bruce having much in the way of time enough to go out and do any crime-fighting at all. Not to mention the difficulty of maintaining a bat-plane, boat and endless supply of Bat equipment.
Batman Begins tends to stick to a certain reality slightly closer to our own as it visualizes what near-future or not-yet-to-market technologies and a pie-in-the-sky budget could do towards bringing a person toward collecting the famed Bat-arsenal. In fact, this movie probably makes one of the best arguments since Year One regarding how on earth this whole Batman thing would work without Bruce being found out in a week or two.
Although the movie is somewhere over two hours, certain elements do seem overly compressed. The Bruce-Rachel relationship doesn't get enough attention for the audience to really become invested (an element which a viewing of Spider-Man before a rewrite might have helped solve). Batman also seems singularly fixed on one mission for the duration of the film. We don't see Batman getting involved in multiple situations and building the reputation which he seems to suddenly have among the Gotham criminal community.
Before the film came out, there was quite a bit of concern regarding the Bat-Suit. And as fans of the 1989 version of the movie will recall, that fear probably was well-founded. Keaton's suit looked great. As long as he stood absolutely still.
There are times when I wish the Bat-suit makers would try to just cover Batman's eyes completely and get those great white slits he has in the comics. It would resolve the issue of the black make-up around the eyes and make Bats all the more more menacing. And I'd buy the "you have to act with your eyes" argument a lot more if Spidey hadn't raked in a billion dollars with red pantyhose and sunglasses over his head.
The movie is rated PG-13, and rightfully so. The villain here is the Scarecrow, and the visuals tied to Scarecrow's fright gas would have melted my brain at age 8. He is one scary dude (and written better in this movie than I can recall him being written in the comics since that Grant-Breyfogle issue I alluded to earlier this week).
If this is what DC and WB are doing for their properties, count The League in. While the movie wasn't "true" to the comics from a chronological retelling of the Bat-Mythos, the characters remained true to what's on the page, and the tone matched the Batman books of the past 15 years. I do anticipate that some movie-goers will have a problem with that. I sincerely do. Even Burton kept some "Pow! Whap! Comics are for Kids!" stuff in his cartoony world of Batplanes and Jokermobiles. People expect it, and when you defy people's expectations at the box office, a lot of times you pay for it.
But I like it.
I'll probably be doing another viewing in pretty short order, and I am sure it will be then that I'll see the plot holes and a bucket load of other problems, but for now, I've got a Batman movie I never thought I'd see, cared for by people who wanted to believe in the aspects of the character that have kept him popular for more than 60 years.
Sadly, The Spurs got their asses handed to them by a margin of 30 points.
***update***
I failed to mention Gary Oldman nailing his portrayal of a pre-Commissioner Jim Gordon. Well done.
***IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER***
Do NOT read the comments section if you haven't seen the movie. Randy has spilled the beans on an important plot point.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Suggestions for Further Reading: Some Quick SFFR
Hope you guys went to FCBD. Sounds like Shoemaker took advantage.
Just wanted to surface to point out some recent comics which have been released but which you might have missed.
1) Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days
Fantastic art by Tony Harris complements great writing by the increasingly popular Brian K. Vaughn.
This takes place in a world similar to our own. Things diverge in 1999 when a civil engineer is exposed to a a glowing green device. The story begins as Mitchell Hundred has hung up his jet-pack and is now serving his first term as mayor of NYC. Sound a little sappy? It isn't. Works as both a political-fiction tale (think West Wing) and post-modern Superhero story (think Watchmen).
This collection includes the first five issues of the critically acclaimed series.
Don't believe The League? Michael Chabon recently tapped Brian K. Vaughn to write comics based on the titular comics of his Pultizer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
2. We3
This collection of the 3-issue limited series by the incomparable team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely is being released June 1.
The story told in this comic is deceptively simple. Three house pets turned into military weapons are broken free when administrators decide to terminate the beta-phase of the project. Sometimes the simple stories are the best.
This story is a heartbreaker and will make you want to love your pets forever and ever.
3. Superman: Unconventional Warfare/ Superman: That Healing Touch
Collecting Greg Rucka's current run on The Adventures of Superman, these two books collect the story thus far. Superior art and a gradually unfolding mystery make this series the best of the Superman books from last year. Fortunately, Rucka has decided to stay with Superman for the foreseeable future.
Introducing a new villain, a new take on an old favorite villain, a few additions to the cast of supporting characters, and more Mxyzptlk than you can shake a stick at, this has been an amazing run.
4. Space Ghost
No, seriously. Space Ghost.
I loved the cartoons as a kid. In some ways, Space Ghost Coast to Coast was a defining element of my college experience.
But, you know, Space Ghost never had jack for an origin, and he never really seemed to be much more than a 70's era Batman in space (with power blasters!). Later, he seemed more like The Admiral with a mask and a mantis piano player.
Joe Kelly pens and Ariel Olivetti provides phenomenal artwork, Alex Ross provides covers. Kelly and Olivetti do their best to make this seem like a lost Humanoids of Heavy Metal project while still incorporating Zorak, Jann and Jayce.
I know! Crazy, huh?
This should be out as a trade in early July.
5. All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder
Coming in July, Frank Miller and Jim Lee present an all new series of Batman comics intended for both the hardcore comic geeks and for folks who barely know Batman from Captain Carrot.
This won't be collected as a trade for some time, and I haven't seen so much as a preview page yet, but I'm putting down my lawn-mowing money in order to get my copy of this one. We think you should, too.
Suggestions for Further Reading: Countdown to Infinite Crisis
Hope you guys went to FCBD. Sounds like Shoemaker took advantage.
Just wanted to surface to point out some recent comics which have been released but which you might have missed.
1) Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days
Fantastic art by Tony Harris complements great writing by the increasingly popular Brian K. Vaughn.
This takes place in a world similar to our own. Things diverge in 1999 when a civil engineer is exposed to a a glowing green device. The story begins as Mitchell Hundred has hung up his jet-pack and is now serving his first term as mayor of NYC. Sound a little sappy? It isn't. Works as both a political-fiction tale (think West Wing) and post-modern Superhero story (think Watchmen).
This collection includes the first five issues of the critically acclaimed series.
Don't believe The League? Michael Chabon recently tapped Brian K. Vaughn to write comics based on the titular comics of his Pultizer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
2. We3
This collection of the 3-issue limited series by the incomparable team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely is being released June 1.
The story told in this comic is deceptively simple. Three house pets turned into military weapons are broken free when administrators decide to terminate the beta-phase of the project. Sometimes the simple stories are the best.
This story is a heartbreaker and will make you want to love your pets forever and ever.
3. Superman: Unconventional Warfare/ Superman: That Healing Touch
Collecting Greg Rucka's current run on The Adventures of Superman, these two books collect the story thus far. Superior art and a gradually unfolding mystery make this series the best of the Superman books from last year. Fortunately, Rucka has decided to stay with Superman for the foreseeable future.
Introducing a new villain, a new take on an old favorite villain, a few additions to the cast of supporting characters, and more Mxyzptlk than you can shake a stick at, this has been an amazing run.
4. Space Ghost
No, seriously. Space Ghost.
I loved the cartoons as a kid. In some ways, Space Ghost Coast to Coast was a defining element of my college experience.
But, you know, Space Ghost never had jack for an origin, and he never really seemed to be much more than a 70's era Batman in space (with power blasters!). Later, he seemed more like The Admiral with a mask and a mantis piano player.
Joe Kelly pens and Ariel Olivetti provides phenomenal artwork, Alex Ross provides covers. Kelly and Olivetti do their best to make this seem like a lost Humanoids of Heavy Metal project while still incorporating Zorak, Jann and Jayce.
I know! Crazy, huh?
This should be out as a trade in early July.
5. All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder
Coming in July, Frank Miller and Jim Lee present an all new series of Batman comics intended for both the hardcore comic geeks and for folks who barely know Batman from Captain Carrot.
This won't be collected as a trade for some time, and I haven't seen so much as a preview page yet, but I'm putting down my lawn-mowing money in order to get my copy of this one. We think you should, too.
Suggestions for Further Reading: Countdown to Infinite Crisis
Sunday, February 20, 2005
THE LEAGUE TAKES A MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR TO SEE: CONSTANTINE
So, As mentioned here a short while ago, The League was deeply skeptical over the new Warner Bros. film, Constantine.
I'm not going to re-hash my reservations about the film AGAIN, so if you want to know what they were, and you were too lazy to click the link the first time, you may do so now. We'll be here when you get back.
Viewed without any prior knowledge of the Hellblazer comic books, I think Constantine stacks up fairly well. Or at least I think it does. It's sort of hard to tell. Jamie seemed to think it made sense, anyway.
Viewed with knowledge of the comic books, it was a sort of "Oh, why did they do that?" mish-mash of items from and not from the comics. The flick was definitely sculpted in the studio system, and thusly, a lot of stylistic choices were made from the second scene of the movie which I might not have agreed with, but which seemed to work fairly well.
To attempt to drop a synopsis of the plot here would either drag on too long or make the movie sound sort of more ridiculous than it really was.
Keanu Reeves plays a snarky version of Keanu Reeves as titular character John Constantine. To discuss Reeves' poor acting ability is to belabor the obvious, and yet, doing so fills me with a warm sense of self-satisfaction... Reeves, after dozens of movies and now at two decades as a major actor, is still one of the most wooden actors I can think of, and, honestly, I think he was terribly miscast for the role. The decision to add him into the mix was no doubt a business decision, made when the studios were misinterpreting the success of the Matrix films as being drawn from Reeves' 10-gigowatts of star power instead of Kung-Fu and explosions. Hoping to score big once again, WB tossed him into this picture, in order to, I guess, make another franchise picture. (For further examples, check out how 2 years ago some WB execs really, really, really wanted Ashton Kutscher to play Superman. Because he has a bajillion gigowatts of pure STARPOWER!!!!!!)
I didn't really notice Reeves' was looking so awkward until he had his scene at about page 30 with Gabriel, played by Tilda Swinton. Apparently this Swinton person is a very popular actress in a bunch of movies not containing robots, monkeys or people in capes, so The League saw her 11 years ago in Orlando and then immediately forgot all about her. BUT, she's really very, very good in the few scenes she appears in.
And therein lies Reeves' dilemma. Alone, in short, choppy scenes, he's okay. But give him the rest of the assembled cast to deal with, and suddenly he's sticking out like a sore thumb.
For people unfamiliar with the way Constantine works, and the way magic more or less works in DC Comics, they provide us with the token "Tour guide" character in the form of Rachel Weisz. She's also the love and interest, who serves as a landing pad for the exposition as Constantine moves from scene to scene. She's the lynchpin of the plot, and she plays her part about as well as could be expected, so I pretty much forgave her for taking on this thankless role.
Couple of points:
a) This is an odd movie for product placement, and yet there it is. A Chevy ad plays a small role in the film. Jamie and I had a short debate over whether or not Quizno's and 7-11 had paid for product placement (she believed they had, I wasn't so sure). But the fact of the matter is that a Quizno's does, in fact appear in the film in big, neon letters. And, you sort of think that perhaps Constantine is headed for the Quizno's after battling a buggy demon.
b) The poor Mexican dude. What a thankless, and, in the end, pointless role. That whole character and "storyline" needed a re-write and could have been eliminated. Spoiler here: Why did the cows die but people are immune? What was compelling the dude to make a run for the border? None of this is really ever fleshed out. It sort of just happens.
c) Papa Midnight's club was kind of neat, but with so few "normal" people inhabiting this movie, it fell into the same trap as movies like Underworld. It's all monsters, so, you know, what's special about any one of the characters? In this movie, there's nothing special about Constantine. He's just one of many of these folks running around the world.
It's worthless to sit back and say "Well, if I'd directed the movie, I would have done x, y and z." But this is my review, and I'm going to do it anyway.
This movie could have really benefitted from the "less is more" school of story telling. The first two scenes involve some large scale special effects, establishing for the viewer that Constantine and his like-minded mystical pals must be operating out in the open. By NOT showing a demon in the first five minutes, the movie could have tried to actually build a level of terror. After all, you aren't afraid of the dark when you're in a dark room, you're scared of what you can't see that might be out there. Sadly, this movie cost $100 million, so you know they aren't going to NOT show off their very expensive effects, and thusly, removed any terror element which could have helped to build atmosphere.
The movie seemed to want to pick up on a lot of neat little plot elements from the comics and cram them all into one movie. Unfortunately in doing so, it sort of created a "Hogwarts for taxpayers" filmic universe. You get to see John's neat toys, and see some of the magical crowd he runs around with. The movie invents a sort of "Q" character to provide John with his magical shot gun (seriously), his cockroach, his Nimbus 3000, and other doo-dads. They brought in characters from the comics (but to tell is to give away the plot, somewhat), and turned Chas from an old, long-suffering pal into an eager-beaver Robin proto-type.
The decision to add a "Q" character, on the outside, seems like a decent one. It ALMOST worked in Van Helsing, but not quite. But these "Q" guys are meant to assist people who are too busy punching people to fill out Purchase Order forms. The movie does re-cast Constantine as a guy who can kick-ass (as we witness in the 3rd reel) , which is a serious departure from the comics, where John gets beat up quite regularly. I think in the context of the movie, John being a ninja-master of magic sort of works, but it wasn't really necessary.
Oddly, of the elements which they did keep, two of the most important were given only the lightest of lip service.
1) Magic has a price. Jamie felt this was mentioned, and it was, but it also defines who John Constantine is from the comics. He's not a snarky bastard because he was born that way, he's a snarky bastard because life made him that way. He found out about magic, and it's cost him at every turn. If he's cutting jokes, it's in order to keep him from crying. One doesn't just muck with the laws of physics and not expect some backlash.
2) For John, these things tend to come back at him in the form of dead friends. When John goes out of his way to, say, prevent the end of known existence, and even if he's done everything just right, somebody ends up getting it. To make matters more interesting, these people are usually damned to follow John around for eternity. Some would speculate that John doesn't really see the ghosts, he's just suffering from some serious guilt and a derth of friends.
John actually mentions how he "doesn't need any more ghosts", but they never really elaborate.
Instead, the movie kind-of, sort-of makes him a wise-cracking jerk. But they never really commit. It's an odd choice, and it doesn't give Keanu a lot of room fo rhis already limited choices.
In a way, this movie was better than I was actually expecting, but that isn't really saying much. It's a renter, but it's not going to be one to be filed away for future generations of movie fans. I suspect comic fans will keep it alive on video for years.
Had they spent 1/4 of what they did, I think the producers might have felt less pressure to fill every scene with bat winged demons and zombie types. That wasn't the case, and I think for some folks, this movie is going to be fun. It has lots of crazy stuff, nifty explosions, and manages to treat the material seriously.
I'll put it this way: The League enjoyed seeing it, but isn't going to be running out to buy the poster for his dorm room.
On the plus side, the trailers for Batman Begins and Sin City had me giggling with girlish glee.
So, As mentioned here a short while ago, The League was deeply skeptical over the new Warner Bros. film, Constantine.
I'm not going to re-hash my reservations about the film AGAIN, so if you want to know what they were, and you were too lazy to click the link the first time, you may do so now. We'll be here when you get back.
Viewed without any prior knowledge of the Hellblazer comic books, I think Constantine stacks up fairly well. Or at least I think it does. It's sort of hard to tell. Jamie seemed to think it made sense, anyway.
Viewed with knowledge of the comic books, it was a sort of "Oh, why did they do that?" mish-mash of items from and not from the comics. The flick was definitely sculpted in the studio system, and thusly, a lot of stylistic choices were made from the second scene of the movie which I might not have agreed with, but which seemed to work fairly well.
To attempt to drop a synopsis of the plot here would either drag on too long or make the movie sound sort of more ridiculous than it really was.
Keanu Reeves plays a snarky version of Keanu Reeves as titular character John Constantine. To discuss Reeves' poor acting ability is to belabor the obvious, and yet, doing so fills me with a warm sense of self-satisfaction... Reeves, after dozens of movies and now at two decades as a major actor, is still one of the most wooden actors I can think of, and, honestly, I think he was terribly miscast for the role. The decision to add him into the mix was no doubt a business decision, made when the studios were misinterpreting the success of the Matrix films as being drawn from Reeves' 10-gigowatts of star power instead of Kung-Fu and explosions. Hoping to score big once again, WB tossed him into this picture, in order to, I guess, make another franchise picture. (For further examples, check out how 2 years ago some WB execs really, really, really wanted Ashton Kutscher to play Superman. Because he has a bajillion gigowatts of pure STARPOWER!!!!!!)
I didn't really notice Reeves' was looking so awkward until he had his scene at about page 30 with Gabriel, played by Tilda Swinton. Apparently this Swinton person is a very popular actress in a bunch of movies not containing robots, monkeys or people in capes, so The League saw her 11 years ago in Orlando and then immediately forgot all about her. BUT, she's really very, very good in the few scenes she appears in.
And therein lies Reeves' dilemma. Alone, in short, choppy scenes, he's okay. But give him the rest of the assembled cast to deal with, and suddenly he's sticking out like a sore thumb.
For people unfamiliar with the way Constantine works, and the way magic more or less works in DC Comics, they provide us with the token "Tour guide" character in the form of Rachel Weisz. She's also the love and interest, who serves as a landing pad for the exposition as Constantine moves from scene to scene. She's the lynchpin of the plot, and she plays her part about as well as could be expected, so I pretty much forgave her for taking on this thankless role.
Couple of points:
a) This is an odd movie for product placement, and yet there it is. A Chevy ad plays a small role in the film. Jamie and I had a short debate over whether or not Quizno's and 7-11 had paid for product placement (she believed they had, I wasn't so sure). But the fact of the matter is that a Quizno's does, in fact appear in the film in big, neon letters. And, you sort of think that perhaps Constantine is headed for the Quizno's after battling a buggy demon.
b) The poor Mexican dude. What a thankless, and, in the end, pointless role. That whole character and "storyline" needed a re-write and could have been eliminated. Spoiler here: Why did the cows die but people are immune? What was compelling the dude to make a run for the border? None of this is really ever fleshed out. It sort of just happens.
c) Papa Midnight's club was kind of neat, but with so few "normal" people inhabiting this movie, it fell into the same trap as movies like Underworld. It's all monsters, so, you know, what's special about any one of the characters? In this movie, there's nothing special about Constantine. He's just one of many of these folks running around the world.
It's worthless to sit back and say "Well, if I'd directed the movie, I would have done x, y and z." But this is my review, and I'm going to do it anyway.
This movie could have really benefitted from the "less is more" school of story telling. The first two scenes involve some large scale special effects, establishing for the viewer that Constantine and his like-minded mystical pals must be operating out in the open. By NOT showing a demon in the first five minutes, the movie could have tried to actually build a level of terror. After all, you aren't afraid of the dark when you're in a dark room, you're scared of what you can't see that might be out there. Sadly, this movie cost $100 million, so you know they aren't going to NOT show off their very expensive effects, and thusly, removed any terror element which could have helped to build atmosphere.
The movie seemed to want to pick up on a lot of neat little plot elements from the comics and cram them all into one movie. Unfortunately in doing so, it sort of created a "Hogwarts for taxpayers" filmic universe. You get to see John's neat toys, and see some of the magical crowd he runs around with. The movie invents a sort of "Q" character to provide John with his magical shot gun (seriously), his cockroach, his Nimbus 3000, and other doo-dads. They brought in characters from the comics (but to tell is to give away the plot, somewhat), and turned Chas from an old, long-suffering pal into an eager-beaver Robin proto-type.
The decision to add a "Q" character, on the outside, seems like a decent one. It ALMOST worked in Van Helsing, but not quite. But these "Q" guys are meant to assist people who are too busy punching people to fill out Purchase Order forms. The movie does re-cast Constantine as a guy who can kick-ass (as we witness in the 3rd reel) , which is a serious departure from the comics, where John gets beat up quite regularly. I think in the context of the movie, John being a ninja-master of magic sort of works, but it wasn't really necessary.
Oddly, of the elements which they did keep, two of the most important were given only the lightest of lip service.
1) Magic has a price. Jamie felt this was mentioned, and it was, but it also defines who John Constantine is from the comics. He's not a snarky bastard because he was born that way, he's a snarky bastard because life made him that way. He found out about magic, and it's cost him at every turn. If he's cutting jokes, it's in order to keep him from crying. One doesn't just muck with the laws of physics and not expect some backlash.
2) For John, these things tend to come back at him in the form of dead friends. When John goes out of his way to, say, prevent the end of known existence, and even if he's done everything just right, somebody ends up getting it. To make matters more interesting, these people are usually damned to follow John around for eternity. Some would speculate that John doesn't really see the ghosts, he's just suffering from some serious guilt and a derth of friends.
John actually mentions how he "doesn't need any more ghosts", but they never really elaborate.
Instead, the movie kind-of, sort-of makes him a wise-cracking jerk. But they never really commit. It's an odd choice, and it doesn't give Keanu a lot of room fo rhis already limited choices.
In a way, this movie was better than I was actually expecting, but that isn't really saying much. It's a renter, but it's not going to be one to be filed away for future generations of movie fans. I suspect comic fans will keep it alive on video for years.
Had they spent 1/4 of what they did, I think the producers might have felt less pressure to fill every scene with bat winged demons and zombie types. That wasn't the case, and I think for some folks, this movie is going to be fun. It has lots of crazy stuff, nifty explosions, and manages to treat the material seriously.
I'll put it this way: The League enjoyed seeing it, but isn't going to be running out to buy the poster for his dorm room.
On the plus side, the trailers for Batman Begins and Sin City had me giggling with girlish glee.
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Here at The League, we see shitty movie so you don't have to.
For whatever reason I got it in my head to go see Blade Trinity. Full disclosure: I saw Blade and Blade 2 on opening nights and just enjoyed the hell out of them. Blade Trinity? Not so much.
From the opening scene of the movie, something just feels... off. Something is wrong. I don't mean in a good tension building way. I mean, the editing seems sloppy, the scenes don't really make sense. Special editing techniques seem borrowed and poorly used. Even the audio seemed muddy a few times (but that's also Snipes playing a character who never unclenches his jaw long enough to speak). Camera shots are okay, but not great. Dialogue is covered, but there are some scenes that just feel as if the director has no idea where to put the camera or what the intention of the scene is, which is weird. David Goyer wrote and directed the movie.
Additional disclosure: I used to read David Goyer comics, so I was really pulling for this guy. He used to write JSA and some other comics, and word on the street is that his next project might be a big-screen adaptation of The Flash. Which I think would be swell. Except that large chunks of this movie have the feel of a particularly well crafted undergraduate student film. That is not a compliment.
In the interest of even more disclosure, I had read something WAS wrong with Snipes while the movie was being made. I don't remember where I read it, but it seemed to suggest Snipes may have been charged with domestic assault charges during the filming of Blade. So, you know, maybe there are good reasons why Blade seems so, uh... tense. I cannot confirm or deny these rumors, so I do not believe these allegations (note the clever way in which the League avoids yet another charge of libel).
The movie is full of simply dumb inconsistencies.
-The vampires, who burn up in daylight, live and work in a sky scraper which is big and mostly glass. Sure, they COULD be hiding out during the day, but that's like keeping a big ol' jug of chlorine gas in your house and just thinking nothing could possibly go wrong.
-Cops are armed with... nothing. So when that chick from 7th Heaven appears in the movie armed only with a bow, no biggie. She doesn't need to worry about being riddled with bullets while selecting an arrow and taking aim.
-People escape from a half-dozen police cars by... driving away in a late-80's model SUV down a normal city street.
-Our lady-hero gets a stern reprimand from Blade because she isn't prepared (ie - isn't wearing armor vs. the vampires...) and she STILL goes into t he final battle in a really cute belly shirt she found at the GAP.
-She is, however, armed with a sort of laser hack saw which is reportedly "half as hot as the sun", but which folds up comfortably onto your belt without scalding you, and which needs a power supply no bigger than a pack of gum. And the thing doesn't melt your eyes out of their sockets when you kick it on (forget needing a welders mask).
Parker Posey, who I really, really do like, plays exactly the same role she played in Josie and the Pussy Cats (a movie which I secretly love but try not to admit to enjoying). The director manages to make Ms. Posey look awkward and stilted from the very first shot of the movie (in which the vampires, for no good reason, unearth Dracula in the middle of the day in the middle of the Sumerian desert... nice stealth mission, guys). I think that's hard to do. They also seem to put her in some pretty funky hairstyles which do less than flatter Ms. Posey.
Jessica Biel seems both out of her league and element in this film. And someone should have pointed out to her character that listening to MP3's with ear-buds while people are trying to kill you is sort of like intentionally closing your eyes while someone is trying to kill you. It doesn't make you tough. It makes you silly.
Ryan Reynolds will be the reason people like this movie. He's great. Seriously. He's really funny and fits well with the modern action film as a wise-cracking tough-guy. In the SPider-Man comics, Spidey is always talking trash while he's picking fights, and the writers of Spidey 3 would do well to watch Reynolds performance here to see how it's done.
The rest of the cast are pretty much fill-in-the-blank slots. Sure, there's a big, tough bruiser vampire (played by the guy who was Sabretooth in X-Men), but not a whole lot else to take a shine to. One actor plays a blind geneticist, and I'll say she does a lot with a small role. But it's not much to save the movie.
Oh, and the Zoe character gets to riff off of Newt from Aliens. Bleah. And she completely disappears during the final firefight which she sort of sparks.
Plotwise: Dracula is dug up, ostensibly, to capture/ kill Blade. Dracula is TOLD this. Then, upon returning home, the exact same five vampires who dig up Drac immediately set-up Blade and get him captured by the cops. However, instead of just putting a bullet in Blade and going off for blood-slushies, they play with him for a while. No idea why.
Having awoken their God for apparently no reason, Dracula is then supposed to somehow be helping the vampires with some sort of formula, but for what? I'm not sure. I THINK it's to allow vampires to go out in the sunlight (which Dracula can do), but it's never really clear what master plan Parker and Co. are working out. The plan is the sort of hazy mess you usually only see at large, public universities. As they work out the details, Parker and Co. ditch Drac by giving him some clothes nobody in their right mind would wear out except to go "clubbing", a little walking round money and then letting him wander the streets of what is clearly Vancouver.
Never mind the fact the FBI is operating here in Vancouver (we see that big space-needle doo-hickey a dozen times in the film) like it's no big deal. Or that it seems like sort of a let-down to go from being the scariest vampire in the world to having to live in Canada.
Natural resources are wasted.
-Patton Oswalt show up, toss out a few lines and then are tossed away.
-Vampire dogs are introduced and then just dropped (literally).
-Even a relationship between Seventh Heaven refugee-girl and Kris Kristofferson is muddily established and then goes absolutely nowhere.
-Kristofferson backs up all his computer files (to where?) and then blows up the building he's in to, I guess, protect Blade. Never mind that his files, should they have fallen into the hands of the police, might have actually shown the police Blade might not be just some kooky guy with a great car.
Look, this is one of those movies I could go on and on about, and people who liked it could argue, "Hey, League... It's not that kind of movie, quit taking it so seriously".
And, God help me... I am not taking it all that seriously, but this has got to be one of the laziest, sorriest feature films I've seen this year (including AVP). The Blade series, which was sort of a one-trick pony to begin with, maybe never should have gotten beyond the first film. But the second one was okay, if not a great improvement. One would have hoped the cast and crew connected with this flick would have done a better job.
I assume this is it for ol' Blade. I'm kind of hoping the Blade movies have now fulfilled America's obsession with rich club kids as bloodsuckers and will move on to some new idea. The idea was great when it was fresh, but like all sci-fi fantasy ideas, its being done to death (see Underworld or Dracula 2000).
For whatever reason I got it in my head to go see Blade Trinity. Full disclosure: I saw Blade and Blade 2 on opening nights and just enjoyed the hell out of them. Blade Trinity? Not so much.
From the opening scene of the movie, something just feels... off. Something is wrong. I don't mean in a good tension building way. I mean, the editing seems sloppy, the scenes don't really make sense. Special editing techniques seem borrowed and poorly used. Even the audio seemed muddy a few times (but that's also Snipes playing a character who never unclenches his jaw long enough to speak). Camera shots are okay, but not great. Dialogue is covered, but there are some scenes that just feel as if the director has no idea where to put the camera or what the intention of the scene is, which is weird. David Goyer wrote and directed the movie.
Additional disclosure: I used to read David Goyer comics, so I was really pulling for this guy. He used to write JSA and some other comics, and word on the street is that his next project might be a big-screen adaptation of The Flash. Which I think would be swell. Except that large chunks of this movie have the feel of a particularly well crafted undergraduate student film. That is not a compliment.
In the interest of even more disclosure, I had read something WAS wrong with Snipes while the movie was being made. I don't remember where I read it, but it seemed to suggest Snipes may have been charged with domestic assault charges during the filming of Blade. So, you know, maybe there are good reasons why Blade seems so, uh... tense. I cannot confirm or deny these rumors, so I do not believe these allegations (note the clever way in which the League avoids yet another charge of libel).
The movie is full of simply dumb inconsistencies.
-The vampires, who burn up in daylight, live and work in a sky scraper which is big and mostly glass. Sure, they COULD be hiding out during the day, but that's like keeping a big ol' jug of chlorine gas in your house and just thinking nothing could possibly go wrong.
-Cops are armed with... nothing. So when that chick from 7th Heaven appears in the movie armed only with a bow, no biggie. She doesn't need to worry about being riddled with bullets while selecting an arrow and taking aim.
-People escape from a half-dozen police cars by... driving away in a late-80's model SUV down a normal city street.
-Our lady-hero gets a stern reprimand from Blade because she isn't prepared (ie - isn't wearing armor vs. the vampires...) and she STILL goes into t he final battle in a really cute belly shirt she found at the GAP.
-She is, however, armed with a sort of laser hack saw which is reportedly "half as hot as the sun", but which folds up comfortably onto your belt without scalding you, and which needs a power supply no bigger than a pack of gum. And the thing doesn't melt your eyes out of their sockets when you kick it on (forget needing a welders mask).
Parker Posey, who I really, really do like, plays exactly the same role she played in Josie and the Pussy Cats (a movie which I secretly love but try not to admit to enjoying). The director manages to make Ms. Posey look awkward and stilted from the very first shot of the movie (in which the vampires, for no good reason, unearth Dracula in the middle of the day in the middle of the Sumerian desert... nice stealth mission, guys). I think that's hard to do. They also seem to put her in some pretty funky hairstyles which do less than flatter Ms. Posey.
Jessica Biel seems both out of her league and element in this film. And someone should have pointed out to her character that listening to MP3's with ear-buds while people are trying to kill you is sort of like intentionally closing your eyes while someone is trying to kill you. It doesn't make you tough. It makes you silly.
Ryan Reynolds will be the reason people like this movie. He's great. Seriously. He's really funny and fits well with the modern action film as a wise-cracking tough-guy. In the SPider-Man comics, Spidey is always talking trash while he's picking fights, and the writers of Spidey 3 would do well to watch Reynolds performance here to see how it's done.
The rest of the cast are pretty much fill-in-the-blank slots. Sure, there's a big, tough bruiser vampire (played by the guy who was Sabretooth in X-Men), but not a whole lot else to take a shine to. One actor plays a blind geneticist, and I'll say she does a lot with a small role. But it's not much to save the movie.
Oh, and the Zoe character gets to riff off of Newt from Aliens. Bleah. And she completely disappears during the final firefight which she sort of sparks.
Plotwise: Dracula is dug up, ostensibly, to capture/ kill Blade. Dracula is TOLD this. Then, upon returning home, the exact same five vampires who dig up Drac immediately set-up Blade and get him captured by the cops. However, instead of just putting a bullet in Blade and going off for blood-slushies, they play with him for a while. No idea why.
Having awoken their God for apparently no reason, Dracula is then supposed to somehow be helping the vampires with some sort of formula, but for what? I'm not sure. I THINK it's to allow vampires to go out in the sunlight (which Dracula can do), but it's never really clear what master plan Parker and Co. are working out. The plan is the sort of hazy mess you usually only see at large, public universities. As they work out the details, Parker and Co. ditch Drac by giving him some clothes nobody in their right mind would wear out except to go "clubbing", a little walking round money and then letting him wander the streets of what is clearly Vancouver.
Never mind the fact the FBI is operating here in Vancouver (we see that big space-needle doo-hickey a dozen times in the film) like it's no big deal. Or that it seems like sort of a let-down to go from being the scariest vampire in the world to having to live in Canada.
Natural resources are wasted.
-Patton Oswalt show up, toss out a few lines and then are tossed away.
-Vampire dogs are introduced and then just dropped (literally).
-Even a relationship between Seventh Heaven refugee-girl and Kris Kristofferson is muddily established and then goes absolutely nowhere.
-Kristofferson backs up all his computer files (to where?) and then blows up the building he's in to, I guess, protect Blade. Never mind that his files, should they have fallen into the hands of the police, might have actually shown the police Blade might not be just some kooky guy with a great car.
Look, this is one of those movies I could go on and on about, and people who liked it could argue, "Hey, League... It's not that kind of movie, quit taking it so seriously".
And, God help me... I am not taking it all that seriously, but this has got to be one of the laziest, sorriest feature films I've seen this year (including AVP). The Blade series, which was sort of a one-trick pony to begin with, maybe never should have gotten beyond the first film. But the second one was okay, if not a great improvement. One would have hoped the cast and crew connected with this flick would have done a better job.
I assume this is it for ol' Blade. I'm kind of hoping the Blade movies have now fulfilled America's obsession with rich club kids as bloodsuckers and will move on to some new idea. The idea was great when it was fresh, but like all sci-fi fantasy ideas, its being done to death (see Underworld or Dracula 2000).
Sunday, December 07, 2008
DITMTLOD Special: Robot Ladies of Interest Part 2
So... looks like we got derailed with the whole Matrix discussion last week. That's all right. It's probably an important movie in a lot of ways, and the discussion it engenders is probably a sign of the movie being better than I give it credit for.
But we're not here to talk about the Matrix today. We're here to puzzle over that oddest of topics: The Robot Ladies of Interest
Alice Krig as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact
I'm sort of on the fence with this one. ST; First Contact isn't one of my favorite movies, and I think Krig's character was more interesting as a special effect than as an actual character. But if you were a fan of the Trek series, her character added a new dimension to both The Borg and Data.
Technically, Borg aren't really robots. They're organic beings being piloted by robotic intelligence in a hive mind. I figure there's enough intersection on the mental Venn-Diagram that it's okay to cover our friends, The Borg.
But, really, if we want to talk Borg, we want to talk Seven of Nine.
Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine on Star Trek, Voyager
ST: Voyager was struggling in the ratings on the fledgling UPN network (now defunct). The show was a bit dull, from some perspectives (mine), as its primary conceit was leaving behind the very rich environment of the Star Trek corner of the galaxy. This was problematic. Star Trek: The Next Generation was the best rated syndicated show in history, and UPN executives had expected their new show to carry their network until other shows caught on.
Producers seemed to have decided that the primary reason the show wasn't doing well was that the show was missing a certain element.
Three guesses what they thought the show was missing prior to Ryan's arrival.
I can't talk too much about Voyager, Ryan, Seven of Nine, etc... I didn't watch the show and saw the move to drop in a character in a shiny, skin tight suit as suspect at best (no, seriously). But Ryan's arrival on the show did, in fact, boost ratings. So say what you want about Sci-Fi audiences, I guess. They're an easy enough read.
Battlestar Galactica Reboot
In college I became nostalgic for a show I remember watching as a very young kid, Battlestar Galactica. For its time, and certainly for 1970's TV, it was a pretty awesome show. However, by 1997, when I watched it again... not so much.
After decades of attempted reboots, about five years ago someone finally re-did BSG and added what the original had been sorely lacking: really attractive Cylons.
Enter: Tricia Helfer as "Six". A robot seductress who tricks a top earth scientist into helping the Cylons wipe out the outerspace colonies.
an understandable error
Well, apparently that wasn't enough.
The show went on to introduce several models of humanoid Cylons, including Grace Park as Sharon, and Lucy Lawless as D'Anna.
If this is the doom that awaits me by steely, robot hearts... I am okay with that.
BSG is a surprisingly smart show, and unlike your average syndicated sci-fi program, there's a point to the Cylons' human appearance. I came in to the show too late to keep up, but what I have seen, I've really liked.
Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell
Yes, she's animated, but Motoko Kusanagi is a terrific character in a phenomenal movie. Just don't ask me what the hell's up with the ending.
It's a dark future in Japan (is there any other kind?) and the Japanese military/ police force has created a cyborg unit to keep up with the level of crime their having to deal with.
I saw this one on my own in the theater one night in college at The Dobie. It's a hell of a movie, visually, if the story is a bit muddy. I guess they've turned it into a whole franchise, but I haven't kept up.
The manga and anime of Ghost in the Shell would go on to be highly influential to the genre. It's tough to point to specific examples in American film where they've managed to evoke the same design, exploration of AI, etc... If anything, I'd say Blade Runner had a huge impact on the look, tone and issues of this movie.
Here's some music video that used Ghost in the Shell animation. Beware, non-sexual nudity is included.
Terminator 3 and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
I'm, like, legally obligated to mention Terminator 3, because it did star a woman as the base form for one of the shape-shifting sort of Terminators you saw in T2. But I really didn't like T3, so I don't want to talk about it (can you tell I was a little disappointed?).
I don't care
The lady Terminator was played by... you know what? It doesn't matter. She's gone on to be in a bunch of really goofy and forgettable stuff I hope you haven't seen. The producers felt T3 was so irrelevant that they used a neat narrative trick in the pilot of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles to render T3 completely irrelevant.
Speaking of T:tSCC, remember 90's band Garbage? No? Well, you guys missed out. They had some good tunes. Anyway, their singer, Shirley Manson, has hung up her mic and moved on to play Catherine Weaver, a cyborg who has taken the place of a millionaire industrialist in order to further the evil, robot agenda.
Only happy when it rains...
The Sarah Connor Chronicles demonstrates the richness of the Terminator franchise once its been divorced from the star wattage of Governor Arnie. Look, I love Arnie as much as the next child of the 80's, but if he was attached to the franchise, the promise of time travel + robots just wasn't going to be fully achieved.
And now, we have Shirley Manson creeping me out.
PLUS, we have Summer Glau as Cameron Phillips/ Baum, a Terminator unit reprogrammed by future John Connor to go back in time and protect modern-day John Connor. Glau might be recognized from her work in Whedon's Firefly series where she played "River Tam". She was also in a spectacularly bad Sci-Fi original movie "Mammoth".
Wouldn't be Terminator without a steely stare and a messed up face
The show is using the long format of a weekly series to look into the actual character of a Terminator as it continues to learn as it lives among humans. The cast is very good, even the younger players.
Plus, the show features lots of robot fights. Nigh weekly. And, also, Glau is foxy.
That's it for this post.
If you guys have any robots I might have missed, pipe up. We'll do a Leaguer special!
But we're not here to talk about the Matrix today. We're here to puzzle over that oddest of topics: The Robot Ladies of Interest
Alice Krig as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact
I'm sort of on the fence with this one. ST; First Contact isn't one of my favorite movies, and I think Krig's character was more interesting as a special effect than as an actual character. But if you were a fan of the Trek series, her character added a new dimension to both The Borg and Data.
Technically, Borg aren't really robots. They're organic beings being piloted by robotic intelligence in a hive mind. I figure there's enough intersection on the mental Venn-Diagram that it's okay to cover our friends, The Borg.
But, really, if we want to talk Borg, we want to talk Seven of Nine.
Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine on Star Trek, Voyager
ST: Voyager was struggling in the ratings on the fledgling UPN network (now defunct). The show was a bit dull, from some perspectives (mine), as its primary conceit was leaving behind the very rich environment of the Star Trek corner of the galaxy. This was problematic. Star Trek: The Next Generation was the best rated syndicated show in history, and UPN executives had expected their new show to carry their network until other shows caught on.
Producers seemed to have decided that the primary reason the show wasn't doing well was that the show was missing a certain element.
Three guesses what they thought the show was missing prior to Ryan's arrival.
I can't talk too much about Voyager, Ryan, Seven of Nine, etc... I didn't watch the show and saw the move to drop in a character in a shiny, skin tight suit as suspect at best (no, seriously). But Ryan's arrival on the show did, in fact, boost ratings. So say what you want about Sci-Fi audiences, I guess. They're an easy enough read.
Battlestar Galactica Reboot
In college I became nostalgic for a show I remember watching as a very young kid, Battlestar Galactica. For its time, and certainly for 1970's TV, it was a pretty awesome show. However, by 1997, when I watched it again... not so much.
After decades of attempted reboots, about five years ago someone finally re-did BSG and added what the original had been sorely lacking: really attractive Cylons.
Enter: Tricia Helfer as "Six". A robot seductress who tricks a top earth scientist into helping the Cylons wipe out the outerspace colonies.
an understandable error
Well, apparently that wasn't enough.
The show went on to introduce several models of humanoid Cylons, including Grace Park as Sharon, and Lucy Lawless as D'Anna.
If this is the doom that awaits me by steely, robot hearts... I am okay with that.
BSG is a surprisingly smart show, and unlike your average syndicated sci-fi program, there's a point to the Cylons' human appearance. I came in to the show too late to keep up, but what I have seen, I've really liked.
Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell
Yes, she's animated, but Motoko Kusanagi is a terrific character in a phenomenal movie. Just don't ask me what the hell's up with the ending.
It's a dark future in Japan (is there any other kind?) and the Japanese military/ police force has created a cyborg unit to keep up with the level of crime their having to deal with.
I saw this one on my own in the theater one night in college at The Dobie. It's a hell of a movie, visually, if the story is a bit muddy. I guess they've turned it into a whole franchise, but I haven't kept up.
The manga and anime of Ghost in the Shell would go on to be highly influential to the genre. It's tough to point to specific examples in American film where they've managed to evoke the same design, exploration of AI, etc... If anything, I'd say Blade Runner had a huge impact on the look, tone and issues of this movie.
Here's some music video that used Ghost in the Shell animation. Beware, non-sexual nudity is included.
Terminator 3 and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
I'm, like, legally obligated to mention Terminator 3, because it did star a woman as the base form for one of the shape-shifting sort of Terminators you saw in T2. But I really didn't like T3, so I don't want to talk about it (can you tell I was a little disappointed?).
I don't care
The lady Terminator was played by... you know what? It doesn't matter. She's gone on to be in a bunch of really goofy and forgettable stuff I hope you haven't seen. The producers felt T3 was so irrelevant that they used a neat narrative trick in the pilot of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles to render T3 completely irrelevant.
Speaking of T:tSCC, remember 90's band Garbage? No? Well, you guys missed out. They had some good tunes. Anyway, their singer, Shirley Manson, has hung up her mic and moved on to play Catherine Weaver, a cyborg who has taken the place of a millionaire industrialist in order to further the evil, robot agenda.
Only happy when it rains...
The Sarah Connor Chronicles demonstrates the richness of the Terminator franchise once its been divorced from the star wattage of Governor Arnie. Look, I love Arnie as much as the next child of the 80's, but if he was attached to the franchise, the promise of time travel + robots just wasn't going to be fully achieved.
And now, we have Shirley Manson creeping me out.
PLUS, we have Summer Glau as Cameron Phillips/ Baum, a Terminator unit reprogrammed by future John Connor to go back in time and protect modern-day John Connor. Glau might be recognized from her work in Whedon's Firefly series where she played "River Tam". She was also in a spectacularly bad Sci-Fi original movie "Mammoth".
Wouldn't be Terminator without a steely stare and a messed up face
The show is using the long format of a weekly series to look into the actual character of a Terminator as it continues to learn as it lives among humans. The cast is very good, even the younger players.
Plus, the show features lots of robot fights. Nigh weekly. And, also, Glau is foxy.
That's it for this post.
If you guys have any robots I might have missed, pipe up. We'll do a Leaguer special!
Monday, May 05, 2003
worked on this last night and finally decided to publish...
X-Men 2.
No, I haven't seen it yet, but as a fan of the later Claremont-era (and if you know what that means, it's time to readjust the tape holding together your glasses), I will drop my $8 and go to the show.
My issue is not with the movie, but with how comic-book movies are reviewed. Every comic-book movie review now contains a couple of items:
1) this movie is NOT your typical comic book movie
There is no typical comic-book movie. One cannot say they are all low-budget, nor can one say that they draw only B-Level actors, or have substandard effects. From a plot perspective, comparing Spider-Man’s story to Batman’s works only as well as comparing X-Men to Donner’s Superman or Corman’s Fantastic Four or the upcoming Hulk and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (recently re-titled, The League). I’m not sure what golden era of comic-book film franchising that critics are referring to, but I think we’re in the middle of it.
2) the critic/ author has been shocked by the loyalty of their fanboy friends who come out of the closet with a "yay" or "nay" opinion
To draw an analogy that could explain the dismay the fanboys feel: Sex and the City is a widely enjoyed television program. Now, just imagine if a film were commissioned of Sex and the City, but the creators of the film refused to watch the television program or read a single script before actually releasing their own Sex and the City movie. Now imagine NOT wanting to compare and contrast the two.
There’s understandably precious little sympathy for fanboys, and I wouldn’t suggest that comic readers should get more respect than they deserve. What I would suggest is that most people who talk in generalities about comics are talking about a cover of a comic they saw on a spinner-rack at the Piggly Wiggly when they were in 5th grade. Sure, they know what a comic looks like, but they have no appreciation for the comic, anymore than the average layman can appreciate different performances of classical music, or the variations on a standard performed by various jazz musicians.
For about 20 years the sophistication of certain comics has been lauded in the mainstream press (invariably with the tagline that “comics aren’t for kids”. Sometimes the adult skewing readership stats are cited). Hell, at this point "V for Vendetta", one of the best comics of the 80's is pushing 20.
My basic understanding is this: most folks don’t realize how much comics changed in 1963 with Marvel’s first publications and base their ideas of comics on the Batman TV show. So, when someone in a cape and tights isn’t posturing for the police, it’s considered different.
The bottom line is that comics have been telling detailed stories for years, and film makers have treated the source material the same way they treat all source material (anyone remember the happy ending to Demi Moore's Scarlet Letter?). Sometimes the results work, and sometimes they do not. Punishing comics and comic readers because film makers routinely deal with the material irresponsibly is as silly as condemning anyone who ever fell into love because romantic comedies might be tepid and silly.
3) this movie is a metaphor for something or other
Science-Fiction has always been a reaction to the trends and fears of a particular time. I shouldn’t even have to address this, yet with every review, there it is... It’s insulting. Stories don’t need to just be tidy melodramas. Sometimes you have to disguise your political viewpoint in spandex and capes so you don’t get hauled in by the thought police.
Science-fiction makes a lot of people uncomfortable, perhaps because of the parallels. Perhaps they really do not want to bother to try to understand the fictional issues and explanations and internal logic of the implausible situation being discussed. And that’s fine. Or maybe they don't appreciate serious issues being played out by Mutant Masters of Magnetism because in their eyes that diminishes the real issue. Fine. I can accept that. But when you’re a fan of “Sex and the City,” you’ve already defaulted any ability to point to the stories you watch as “plausible”.
4) this time around, the character seem to have been given some emotional depth
Critics such as Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum rarely admit that they have enjoyed any film that contains anything resembling a fantasy element. Each time any iota of enjoyment begins to be derived, a feeling of guilt begins to creep in around the edges. (See how many times Schwarzbaum sites Harry Potter in the review whenever she gets close to praising it, extinguishing the fact that X-Men predates Potter by 30+ years, and the screen version debuted a full year earlier than the movie, while simultaneously re-establishing the idea that Harry Potter is for children, and so is this. Thus, if you enjoy this, you are, by default, childish. And childish wonder might result in.. well, we know it's probably bad. So we'll stick to lauding French films.).
Since Batman watched his parents get gunned down in an alleyway in 1939, the motives of comic characters have skewed toward the extreme. Perhaps critics are once again citing the 1960’s Batman TV show or some TV movies Marvel produced. It’s difficult to gauge exactly why characters whom have existed for 40+ years should be thought to have never developed any emotional depth. Still, since Christopher Reeve wore the cape in Superman The Motion Picture, the fact that these characters do more than stand around looking like a dentifrice commericial has been gawked at. Since then results have been admittedly mixed, but so what?
Comic fans, myself included, hyperventilate when comic-based movies are bad because we know it’s just one more nail in the coffin. During the recent Superman debacle, fans protested because we know that companies like Warner Bros. would rather not ever refer to the comics when exploiting a license like Superman and allow “creatives” to take license with characters they "own." The damage this can cause to the property in its original format can take years to get through, and we know it. We're the kids who have to deal with the divorce after mom and dad are off living their new lives.
So should movies be only a dreary parade which supposedly mirrors our own lives? Christ, i hope not. What fun are movies if you can’t go to see Spider-Man swing off the Empire State Building, anyway? Or the Hulk toss a tank? Or Batman hop in his Batmobile or Superman take to the sky? Where is this supposed to happen? Movies should be able to be fun for adults as well as children. Sometimes movies throw in a helpful bit of a message, too. (I am often able to apply how With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility). But fantasy should not be ridiculed for being fantasy. There can be far more truth hiding in those capes and cowls than in the usual Nora Ephron debacle.
I hope the trend continues and audiences can enjoy the comic-based movies, even if they do not look for the comics. The basic stories can be, and sometimes are, very good. And after a lifetime of enjoyment, we comic geeks can walk out of a theater and look at our shoes and smile and know that we were right when we said "if they'd just give the comic a chance..."
X-Men 2.
No, I haven't seen it yet, but as a fan of the later Claremont-era (and if you know what that means, it's time to readjust the tape holding together your glasses), I will drop my $8 and go to the show.
My issue is not with the movie, but with how comic-book movies are reviewed. Every comic-book movie review now contains a couple of items:
1) this movie is NOT your typical comic book movie
There is no typical comic-book movie. One cannot say they are all low-budget, nor can one say that they draw only B-Level actors, or have substandard effects. From a plot perspective, comparing Spider-Man’s story to Batman’s works only as well as comparing X-Men to Donner’s Superman or Corman’s Fantastic Four or the upcoming Hulk and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (recently re-titled, The League). I’m not sure what golden era of comic-book film franchising that critics are referring to, but I think we’re in the middle of it.
2) the critic/ author has been shocked by the loyalty of their fanboy friends who come out of the closet with a "yay" or "nay" opinion
To draw an analogy that could explain the dismay the fanboys feel: Sex and the City is a widely enjoyed television program. Now, just imagine if a film were commissioned of Sex and the City, but the creators of the film refused to watch the television program or read a single script before actually releasing their own Sex and the City movie. Now imagine NOT wanting to compare and contrast the two.
There’s understandably precious little sympathy for fanboys, and I wouldn’t suggest that comic readers should get more respect than they deserve. What I would suggest is that most people who talk in generalities about comics are talking about a cover of a comic they saw on a spinner-rack at the Piggly Wiggly when they were in 5th grade. Sure, they know what a comic looks like, but they have no appreciation for the comic, anymore than the average layman can appreciate different performances of classical music, or the variations on a standard performed by various jazz musicians.
For about 20 years the sophistication of certain comics has been lauded in the mainstream press (invariably with the tagline that “comics aren’t for kids”. Sometimes the adult skewing readership stats are cited). Hell, at this point "V for Vendetta", one of the best comics of the 80's is pushing 20.
My basic understanding is this: most folks don’t realize how much comics changed in 1963 with Marvel’s first publications and base their ideas of comics on the Batman TV show. So, when someone in a cape and tights isn’t posturing for the police, it’s considered different.
The bottom line is that comics have been telling detailed stories for years, and film makers have treated the source material the same way they treat all source material (anyone remember the happy ending to Demi Moore's Scarlet Letter?). Sometimes the results work, and sometimes they do not. Punishing comics and comic readers because film makers routinely deal with the material irresponsibly is as silly as condemning anyone who ever fell into love because romantic comedies might be tepid and silly.
3) this movie is a metaphor for something or other
Science-Fiction has always been a reaction to the trends and fears of a particular time. I shouldn’t even have to address this, yet with every review, there it is... It’s insulting. Stories don’t need to just be tidy melodramas. Sometimes you have to disguise your political viewpoint in spandex and capes so you don’t get hauled in by the thought police.
Science-fiction makes a lot of people uncomfortable, perhaps because of the parallels. Perhaps they really do not want to bother to try to understand the fictional issues and explanations and internal logic of the implausible situation being discussed. And that’s fine. Or maybe they don't appreciate serious issues being played out by Mutant Masters of Magnetism because in their eyes that diminishes the real issue. Fine. I can accept that. But when you’re a fan of “Sex and the City,” you’ve already defaulted any ability to point to the stories you watch as “plausible”.
4) this time around, the character seem to have been given some emotional depth
Critics such as Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum rarely admit that they have enjoyed any film that contains anything resembling a fantasy element. Each time any iota of enjoyment begins to be derived, a feeling of guilt begins to creep in around the edges. (See how many times Schwarzbaum sites Harry Potter in the review whenever she gets close to praising it, extinguishing the fact that X-Men predates Potter by 30+ years, and the screen version debuted a full year earlier than the movie, while simultaneously re-establishing the idea that Harry Potter is for children, and so is this. Thus, if you enjoy this, you are, by default, childish. And childish wonder might result in.. well, we know it's probably bad. So we'll stick to lauding French films.).
Since Batman watched his parents get gunned down in an alleyway in 1939, the motives of comic characters have skewed toward the extreme. Perhaps critics are once again citing the 1960’s Batman TV show or some TV movies Marvel produced. It’s difficult to gauge exactly why characters whom have existed for 40+ years should be thought to have never developed any emotional depth. Still, since Christopher Reeve wore the cape in Superman The Motion Picture, the fact that these characters do more than stand around looking like a dentifrice commericial has been gawked at. Since then results have been admittedly mixed, but so what?
Comic fans, myself included, hyperventilate when comic-based movies are bad because we know it’s just one more nail in the coffin. During the recent Superman debacle, fans protested because we know that companies like Warner Bros. would rather not ever refer to the comics when exploiting a license like Superman and allow “creatives” to take license with characters they "own." The damage this can cause to the property in its original format can take years to get through, and we know it. We're the kids who have to deal with the divorce after mom and dad are off living their new lives.
So should movies be only a dreary parade which supposedly mirrors our own lives? Christ, i hope not. What fun are movies if you can’t go to see Spider-Man swing off the Empire State Building, anyway? Or the Hulk toss a tank? Or Batman hop in his Batmobile or Superman take to the sky? Where is this supposed to happen? Movies should be able to be fun for adults as well as children. Sometimes movies throw in a helpful bit of a message, too. (I am often able to apply how With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility). But fantasy should not be ridiculed for being fantasy. There can be far more truth hiding in those capes and cowls than in the usual Nora Ephron debacle.
I hope the trend continues and audiences can enjoy the comic-based movies, even if they do not look for the comics. The basic stories can be, and sometimes are, very good. And after a lifetime of enjoyment, we comic geeks can walk out of a theater and look at our shoes and smile and know that we were right when we said "if they'd just give the comic a chance..."
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