Shoot the WISB #02: Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) Reviewed w/ Paul Weimer and Jay Garmon
Spoiler Alert: the following podcast contains spoilers for the film being reviewed; if you wish to see the film without having it ruined for you, download this podcast and save it for later. Paul Weimer (website / twitter) and Jay Garmon (website / twitter) join me to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of J.J. Abrams’ second installment in the Star Trek film reboot. Feel free to offer your thoughts in the comments below. You can download or stream the mp3 from this link.
The Black Guy is Ruining the Fantastic Four Reboot!
Oh, what? He isn’t? Are you sure? I mean. He’s black. That means, like, Sue has to be black, right? She doesn’t? Johnny or Sue could be adopted? Or they could be children of different mothers or fathers or maybe they’re interracial or something? But I thought if you’re half black and half white you just look almost white? That’s not true? Really? Well, the original Johnny was a white guy, so he has to stay white. What about Idris Elba? Oh, yeah, he was cool in Thor? The original character wasn’t a black guy? Oh, well, then that’s OK because he’s not a major character. Besides, this doesn’t have anything to do about race. I know I keep talking about it. But just because I talk about race doesn’t mean what we’re talking about is actually about race, even if the only reason we’re talking about it is because a black guy might be the Human Torch. It’s just not about race, OK? That pretty much sums up the stupidity you’ll find online about the rumor of Michael B. Jordan’s (of Chronicle fame) possible casting as the Human Torch in the reboot of The Fantastic Four. Cracked.com has a brilliant take-down here. Read the comments on the first link at your own risk (I’ll post some gems below). Let’s call this for what it is: soft racism. For example, here is this amazing quote from The Wrap (linked in the previous paragraph): This is a horrible idea. Johnny Storm is an iconic Marvel character, a blonde, blue-eyed, party boy daredevil. He’s not a second string character, he’s a principal team member of one of Marvel’s flagship series. As a long-time comic book collector, it would completely distract from any story to change Johnny’s ethnicity. (It was bad enough that Jessica Alba was such an awful, awful blonde). Johnny once dated a Skrull – an African American could play her, or She-Hulk is an ancillary FF character – her ethnicity could be changed with little distraction, even Ben Grimm would be less distracting as another commenter suggested, although that would raise the question of whether Ben would stay Jewish (there are far less Jews in Marvel Comics than African Americans). But Johnny Storm? Comic book fans take “canon” very seriously, and this idea just smells like disaster. Translation: Johnny Storm was white in the comics, and if you made him black, we’d all get distracted because he’s black; if you’re going to have black people in this, let them play aliens or green rage monsters who are secondary to the plot, but don’t you dare put a black guy as a main character, because I’ll just be so distracted by…black guys. Clearly, none of this has anything to do with race, am I right? If you’re distracted by black people, you’re not distracted because they’re black; you’re distracted because they…are…look at the beautiful sunset! There are a lot of people arguing variations of this type. The irony is that in throwing a hissy fit over this topic, these commenters have inadvertently punched themselves in the face. It’s not possible to wiggle out of a soft racism charge when your main argument is “black people are distracting when they are in my movies about white people.” Some, however, have taken a different strategy, such as this fellow over at IGN: The whole “defined by whiteness” arguement is stupid (by that same standard many black heroes should easily be recast as white as they’re not “defined by blackness”), the guy is wrong for the role plain and simple, it’s about race because that’s where he’s wrong for the role…if he was a 300 pound white guy that could nail Torch’s personality exactly, he’d still be wrong for the role. Rather than taking the time to proper cast the movie the guy is trying to go with an associate wrong for the role, it doesn’t matter how good he can act, Johnny Storm is white, and people are looking for proper adaptations for things of this sort…try creating or utilizing the existing black super heroes if it’s that important rather than lazily shoehorning bad choices for the sake of it. i.e., even though the Human Torch is not defined by his whiteness, he can’t be played by a black guy because he’s not black. If you can see the circles going around and around here, you deserve a pat on the back. The irony with statements like these is that they often not only refute themselves, but they also fall for the typical anti-racist-is-code-for-anti-white rhetoric that assumes that because you can’t do the same thing to other races, it is just as racist to do it to white people. Let’s set aside the fact that changing the Human Torch’s race isn’t really an insult to white people (after all, it’s not like we don’t have a shitload of white superheroes in film already *coughWolverineCaptainAmericaCyclopsProfXBatmanGreenLanternOnAndOnAndOncough*). What is alarming about arguments like this is the bizarre amnesia to which their proponents have succumbed. Not to beat a dead horse, but racism is alive and well in this country. This is why I find historical amnesia on this subject disturbing, since it allows people of any race to make arguments that are counterproductive and, in some cases, damaging. The two positions are not equal: casting a white guy as Luke Cage is not the same as casting a black guy as the Human Torch. There is no history of white people being denied entry based on their race (especially in American comics). Isolated cases may exist, but one cannot rationally argue that whites are discriminated against at the same level as blacks (today and in the past — see here) — it’s an absurd claim. None of this is new to the world of film adaptations, though. We saw something similar when Idris Elba was cast as Heimdall. Not surprisingly, when the film came and went, it didn’t seem to have that much of an impact on,
How Not to Write a Review (or, “Oblivion isn’t about Tom Cruise, dumbass…”)
In a recent New York Times review of the SF action adventure film, Oblivion, Manohla Dargis opens with the following: If only it were less easy to laugh at “Oblivion,” a lackluster science-fiction adventure with Tom Cruise that, even before its opening, was groaning under the weight of its hard-working, slowly fading star and a title that invites mockery of him and it both. The agony of being a longtime Tom Cruise fan has always been a burden, but now it’s just, well, dispiriting. You not only have to ignore the din of the tabloids and swat away the buzzing generated by his multiple headline-ready dramas, you also have to come to grips with the harsh truth that it no longer actually matters why and how Tom Terrific became less so. No one else much cares. This opening paragraph is followed by another much like it, in which Dargis argues pretty much the same thing: Tom Cruise is on the way out because he’s nuts. This train of thought makes up most of the review. There’s little time spent actually defending why Oblivion is lackluster or why, as Dargis suggests, there is something wrong with the film mashing together a number of different SF ideas (this is a charge that applies to basically all SF films these days, so it seems like a pointless argument if you can’t add something, well, original to it — ha!). This is not how one writes a review. When you come into a film with a pre-loaded bias — in particular, a bias against an actor/director as a person rather than as an actor/director — your ability to assess the quality of that film will be greatly diminished. Dargis suffers from this problem. Because she cannot see beyond Cruise as a person, she cannot honestly assess Oblivion on its own terms; she’s assessing the film as a reflection of an individual. In other words, Dargis’ review is about why she doesn’t like Tom Cruise, not Oblivion itself — not “Tom Cruise” the actor, but “Tom Cruise” the person. That Dargis cannot set aside the tabloids and Cruise’s various eccentricities is telling. Anything she can say about a movie involving Cruise will be tainted by her personal biases, something made apparent by her desire to front-load the personal barbs over an honest assessment of the man’s work. Many of the other reviews I’ve read have not done this. David Edelstein made a Scientology joke in his review on Vulture, but it was not the central “thesis” of his argument about Oblivion. Others might drop a hint at Cruise’s personal life or nothing whatsoever. But most of them justified their critiques of Oblivion by addressing the film itself. They wrote actual reviews, not character assassinations. That is exactly what Dargis did — she went for the jugular and forgot to actually write a review.
The Sequel We Deserve: Galaxy Quest…2 or the Show?
In a recent Flavorwire interview, Mark Johnson, the producer of Breaking Bad (a show I’m told is really good), offered this little gem: I wish… It’s complicated. I can’t get into it because it only gets me angry, because I’m so proud of that movie… For a while there, and someday we may actually get there, we actually talked about doing a television show which would be sort of fun because it would be a TV show looking at a movie that’s looking at a TV show, something like that. So I wish I could answer you and I wish we did have a sequel or certainly a half hour comedy based on it. So we’ll see. It’s not over. Needless to say, some of us are excited. I’ve previously said that Galaxy Quest would make a terrific TV show. I still believe that, though I certainly wouldn’t complain about a sequel film if the studios put up the dough to make one. The primary benefit to a film is its length. With two hours, you can effectively create a parody and adventure story all in one, without disrupting the viewing process with the disconnected sitcom form — every moment leads to somewhere else. But films also limit the comedic frame, as overloading those two hours with references, jokes, and so on can pull apart the plot. This is what has happened with the various incarnations of Scary Movie — each became less and less about the characters existing within a parody and more about the parody itself. The result? Crappy films. Granted, a lot of folks would disagree with me, but I’ll stick by the claim. Under the proper writing and direction, Galaxy Quest 2 could easily surpass its predecessor — the folks who were behind the original should return if a sequel film ever happens. Having said that, though, I have to admit that a TV series might offer a different set of useful conditions for a parody. First, Galaxy Quest is an obvious parody of the most popular science fiction TV show of all time: Star Trek. While the film never tries to follow the exact format, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t benefit from taking things to the episodic level. Personally, I would prefer to see 45-minute episodes rather than the traditional 23-26-minute sitcom form. Doing so would let the writers play with the interconnected storylines, parody the narrative form of Star Trek and other TV franchises, and develop characters and comedy in a more efficient, laugh-track-free zone. Galaxy Quest doesn’t deserve a laugh track, but it does deserve sufficient space to explore the parodic form. A film might let the franchise expand and develop certain aspects of its universe, but a direct narrative parody would do so much more. Of course, this is what I think, and I’m nobody. I’ve never written for television. All I’ve got to work on are my personal desires and the shows I’ve already seen. Besides, Doctor Who has done well for itself, has it not? Galaxy Quest could be the American response, if you will… What do you all think?
Memorial Day: A Quick Note
I’ve said similar things before, but because today is the day we honor our fallen friends who have served the United States of America, I am going to say a few things before the night ends. I am eternally grateful for those men and women who served in the United States military and gave their lives for whatever cause (our freedom or someone else’s). It matters not whether you participated in a war that we now disagree with or condemn, because, to me, you did nothing but what you were supposed to do when you took that oath to serve as a soldier or pilot or what have you, and when your country said, “We need you,” you didn’t say, “Sorry, I won’t have any of that.” You took up your pens and rifles and ships and planes and so on and did your duty, and many of you died or will die as a result. Not many people can say they have that kind of dedication to a cause or nation or people or anything. So, to the men and women currently serving in the U.S. military: thank you; there are few people I can say are true heroes, and military people make up 99% of all heroes in my book. To the men and women who have died, who have left behind families and may or may not be able to see this, depending on your belief in the afterlife: thank you; you, like the men and women who are still here on this planet, are heroes, and you deserve more respect than you have collectively been given by the nation you sacrificed yourself for.That is all. Happy Memorial Day…
Video Found: The Light of Life (Short Film)
I randomly discovered this video while perusing Vimeo last week and thought it was so beautiful stylistically that you all had to see it. It’s hard to describe, so I won’t say anymore. Here goes (after the fold):The Light of Life from daihei shibata on Vimeo.