A Justice League Movie? (or, Hopefully This Won’t Be a Missed Opportunity)
Since Man of Steel hit theaters, there’s been a lot of talk about a potential Justice League movie. We even mentioned this topic in the latest Shoot the WISB episode on the new Superman film. Much of the discussion is based on rumors, no doubt supported by this oddly blank IMDB page, which suggests that some sort of Justice League film will hit a screen of some description in 2015. Now, Henry Cavill, who plays Supes in Man of Steel, has suggested that a Justice League adaptation likely won’t happen any time soon. What does that mean? I don’t know. In Hollywood time, that could mean 3 minutes or 3 decades, or it could mean a black hole has popped into existence and swallowed DC. A lot of folks want to see Flash and Wonder Woman in film form before Justice League reaches the big screen. I, however, think that would be a bad idea. I am awesome. That is all. First, I don’t know how Hollywood will manage to avoid ruining both the Flash and Wonder Woman without completely revamping the characters, and, thus, retconning most of what has defined the character in the last 50 years. The problem? Both characters are prone to ridiculousness in the Hollywood world. After all, the only serious portrayals of either characters in the last two decades have been in cartoons, which I don’t think necessarily translate well into live action (in part because the things you can do in a cartoon are difficult to do well with real people — see every CG hellhole Hollywood has tried to make, hence my concern). There is also the very real problem embodied in the universe the current film DC adaptations have presented: a dark, serious universe. There isn’t a lot of room for camp in in a world where Nolan’s Batman and Superman exist, and that means any interpretation of the Flash or Wonder Woman has to reject its predecessors quite soundly to make any coherent sense. That doesn’t mean we need a Nolan-style treatment of either character (let alone of the various other members of the JL — Green Arrow (on TV right now, in fact)*, Aquaman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, and so on and so forth), but it does mean DC and Hollywood have to seriously reconsider how to place these characters within a cinematic universe. That said, it’s important to realize that a lot of DC’s characters have baggage from previous film histories. Batman and Superman have mostly escaped their own baggage. Not easily, of course. Batman made a minor shift in the Tim Burton films, fell into the abyss with Forever and Robin, and then took a huge turn (for the best, I believe) with the Nolan trilogy. Superman had a similar journey. My hatred of Returns notwithstanding, the film did at least offer a lead-up to the Nolan-influenced Man of Steel. The same cannot be said for Wonder Woman or the Flash — at least, not within the live action franchises. Wonder Woman, for example, has never seen a big screen adaptation, though many are still quite fond of the 1970s adaptation starring Lynda Carter (not to mention all the love for the various cartoon versions). She’s quite likely to return to the small screen soon, which I think would be a great idea; DC (or one of the studios — not sure which) has actively been trying to bring her back to TV for several years (a 2011 pilot flopped at NBC, but the CW has expressed interest in pushing their own adaptation called Amazon). The same is true for the Flash. He had a TV movie in 1990 and plenty of appearances in cartoons. But he has yet to make the jump to the big screen, and probably won’t (though this IMDB page suggests otherwise). All of these facts are good reasons for both characters to have their own films…eventually. I, however, think DC would be better off going another route. If DC is hell bent on bringing these characters to the big screen, I think the best direction would be to release Man of Steel 2 (whatever it might be called), followed by the first Justice League movie. In the interim, Wonder Woman and the Flash should have origin narratives put up on the small screen; after Justice League (assuming success), new film narratives can take the limelight (or they can stick with TV). Doing so will have a few important impacts: TV adaptations will allow the characters to develop in the sort of depth they deserve. We’ll avoid the uncomfortable mess of 2.5 hour camp-fests (Wonder Woman especially; she’s a cool character, but her origin story will not inspire audiences). I don’t think film origins of these characters will do them justice, in part because most of us haven’t seen the characters outside of the comic “universes.” If you’re not a Flash fan already, you don’t know anything about him (and vice versa for Wonder Woman). And, well, I don’t think characters with super-speed work all that well on the big screen (that’s my personal hangup, though). I think starting with the trifecta of TV series (Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, and the Flash) will also give DC’s franchise a huge boost in the right direction. If you create three TV shows that cross over one another, each leading towards a Justice League film, you cross-pollinate your audience quite brilliantly. A good deal of people will watch all three, some will watch one or two, and some will come from entirely different avenues: following on the heels of Batman and Superman. Basically, hitting almost every direction at once seems like a perfect method for making a Justice League movie a success. Granted, none of this is likely to happen. If DC is hell bent on releasing a Justice League movie in 2015, then it doesn’t really matter what I think. Two years is hardly enough time to get two new TV series off the ground. My hope is
Why I Hated Superman Returns
Honestly, I hated Superman Returns because it established Superman as virtually (though not actually) limitless, at which point he becomes uninteresting to me as a hero. Clearly Kryptonite doesn’t really matter. He can lift entire islands of the stuff into the sky, so all this talk about it being his bad news bears is really just nonsense. At best, it’s a nuisance. And since he can basically do anything, there’s no reason to ever worry that he will fail. That’s what makes a good hero for me. We know, deep down, he won’t fail, but on the outside, we see his weaknesses and know that it’s always possible that he will (or she, for that matter). What also makes Superman a fantastic hero isn’t his strength and other abilities; it’s his constant need to do the right thing, even in the face of terrible adversity. This is why I think the trailer for the new film is so effective (even if the film falls short — haven’t seen it, so I can’t say). The idea that Superman is someone we’re supposed to look up to and an image to strive towards makes him such a compelling figure, not because he’s got all those powers, but because he is the guy who will brave the storm for his fellow “man”, even if that storm is likely to kill him. (You can see why the military is using Superman to sell volunteering in some of their recent ads, since the idea behind the trailer for the new Superman film clearly jives with the mythic formation of the soldier — the one who sacrifices for others). And while a lot of that is in Superman Returns, it is trampled by the complete retconning of Superman’s abilities (in my mind, anyway). Yeah, he does go and do the big, dangerous thing, but in doing so, he ceases to be something for which we can reasonably strive. He becomes god or close enough to it that the distinction isn’t relevant. What might have made Superman Returns a better film is if the great hero had to rely on the help of regular humans for once. Maybe the military storms in as Luther is about to deal the final blow to Superman. Maybe, like in Spiderman (the first Raimi film), a bunch of regular folks start chucking rocks and telling Luther to frak off, because if you mess with Superman, you mess with humanity. This would humble Superman, and it would remind us that his abilities are not what makes him who he is. They’re just icing on the cake, as it were. No, what makes Superman admirable is his personal strength and his ability to inspire. Superman has principles, and he sticks to them no matter what. He fights while the rest of us cower, and in doing so, he gives us courage. But in Superman Returns, I don’t need to create my own courage. The god will save me. I can cower away and let greater beings do everything for me. I am weak. I am nothing. That’s why I hated Superman Returns. ——————————————————— This originally appeared on my Facebook page as a response to Alex Bledsoe.
Retro Nostalgia: Contact (1997) and Conflating Faith and Science and Its Hopeful Ethos
Anyone with a passing familiarity with Carl Sagan’s popularization of science will recall his profound optimism, both with humanity’s scientific endeavors and its almost desperate need to strive for “more.” I think it’s fair to say that he imagined science as humanity’s great thrust to greatness — to controlling itself and its environment. After all, he famously said that “[imagination] will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” And while he was not a religious man, he didn’t fear suggesting that science could provide a spiritual vision of the world: Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. Sagan’s optimism, understandably, bleeds through the narrative of the film adaptation of Contact (1997) (how could it not?). Ellie’s father, Ted (David Morse), for example, answers his young daughter’s (Jena Malone) question about life in the universe by cleverly playing the “it’s too damned big of a universe” card — he suggests that if there isn’t anyone else out there, then all that space is wasted. Adult Ellie (Jodie Foster) eventually relays these lines to preacher/religious popularist Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), who also repeats them to the world after Ellie’s return from her mission and the media firestorm of the perceived failure of the project (not to mention Ellie’s implication that faith in her story is necessary). What’s fascinating about the film (and, I suspect, the book, which I have not read) is its refusal to shy away from implying that this optimism will ultimately form the basis for a faith argument for science. In the end, it is that unison of religion and science which offers one of Sagan’s most optimistic visions: namely, that science and religion could ever unify in an increasingly hostile political environment. Palmer and Ellie are themselves stand-ins for these respective fields, suggesting that the romantic conclusion of their narrative must be deferred too, lest faith be rested from the audience on all counts. Sagan must have been quite hopeful for the future of science to have imagined a world where the greatest religious “threat” to science is an attractive religious guru who can see the writing on the wall. Hence why the last line in the above quote is so crucial: “The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” Contact is essentially Sagan’s spiritual mind at work, imagining all the possibilities of the science and spiritual realms coming together for the same united purpose: seeking some deeper truth about the universe — science on the natural questions; spirituality on the questions about understanding our place in a suddenly crowded universe. Sadly, if Contact had been written in the late 2000s, Sagan might have seemed naive. Perhaps that’s actually a good thing. When people called for more optimistic SF in 2009-2010 (resulting in Vries’ Shine Anthology), they must have had Contact on the mind, if not in actuality, then in spirit. Contact is a film that strives to find the positive in a world bloated with bureaucracy, religious terrorists, and fear (it is also a largely male world we are presented, with some exceptions). The government wants to control everything, the vain scientists want to use Ellie’s discovery to further their own careers, even at the expense of others, the people at large cower or clamber in supplication before things they do not yet understand, and, finally, the religious extremists, seeing this great moment as a threat to their authority, want to destroy the entire project, even if that means preventing humanity’s next great leap forward. Ellie’s almost desperate need to remain involved, to discover whatever is “on the other side,” to leap into the darkness and bring back answers, holds her up in this storm. She won’t participate in the politics or the glory of discovery; she only wants to discover, to know, to understand. Unlike the people around her, with the exception, perhaps, of Palmer and a handful of minor characters, Ellie has only one desire: to use this momentous occasion to understand humanity’s place in the universe. It’s her optimistic view of the world that I find so pleasant. She truly believes in the mission, not because it will bring her material wealth in the future, but because taking the leap of faith by building and using the machine will actually advance human knowledge. She is the idealized scientist (the film actually offers a foil to this idealized image; he dies — not insignificantly). But whereas Ellie’s journey to discover “the answers” proves successful, the world at large is left in the dark. The aliens, descended from a collective who occasionally reach out to new species as those species reach the next stage in their technological evolution, prevent anything but 17 minutes of static from being recorded during Ellie’s trip. In a final nerve wracking scene, Ellie must defend herself against a verbal onslaught by the government, almost as if in a mirror of McCarthyism. The irony? For a government so encumbered with religious thought, they cannot accept her meek request that everyone has to take what she says on faith (she doesn’t put things in those exact words, but that has to do with her apprehension over faith). It’s not made clear whether the government does take her seriously, or if they see this as an opportunity to attack her and the billionaire financial backer who made the project possible. Regardless, the fusion of science and faith in
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.