Is This Robocop?

We only saw a tiny glimpse of Robocop's chasis in that ED-209 viral thingee awhile back, either for the building of suspense or because they literally haven't settled on a design yet. Now, Geekscape says they've got a concept model of the character...

If this is the real thing (or something close) it's pretty bad; but also completely plausible as a 2012 moviemaking decision: Too slick, not at all iconic, would never peg it as being Robocop if not prompted. Clearly designed to be "dynamic" in motion (re: a lot more jumping about from New Robocop, because that was such a big, gaping hole in the first one...)

Bottom line: This looks like a random mook from any of a dozen recent video-games, not the lead of a big movie.

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Big Picture: "On The Subject of Violence"

In relation, obviously, to the recent unpleasantness...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : On The Subject Of Violence

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The Democratic Party Will (Probably) Officially Endorse Gay Marriage At 2012 Convention

In the spirit of this shocking, profound and in-no-way-just-rubber-stamping-what-already-eminently-evident news; I have decided to officially endorse my support of Mario Games, Pizza, 80s Metal and the first two "Spider-Man" movies.

Incidentally, this comes on the heels of the whole "Chik-fil-A" debacle, which is set to become even more absurd on Wednesday as "luminaries" like Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin have encouraged their fans/followers to show pride in their bigotry by making August 1st "Chik-fil-A" day. Here's an idea: I plan on making it a point to buy/eat some chicken from a competitor on that day as a form of counter-protest, and I encourage my readers/followers/fans to do the same. In fact, if anyone wants to Tweet a picture of themselves eating non-CFA chicken to me (@the_moviebob) on that day, maybe I'll post some of them here.

Anyway...

This is one of those moments where the realities of 24/7 digital-age politics smash up against our stuck-in-the-1900s election choreography: EVERYBODY already knows that the Democrats, as a party, are nominally on the side of LGBT activism, but this will be the first time it's ever been written into the "Party Plank" - a list of "official positions" whose convention-time adoption was the subject of much ceremony and fanfare in the days when news only traveled at the speed of train. Still, it's big news and will be treated as such if it's indeed going to happen. Important step, piece of history, where-were-you-when, etc.

What interests me is what this says about where the DNC's collective "head" is at and what it means for how the election will actually play out. Three things immediately jump to mind:

1. Ambiguity Is Over
If nothing else, this is the Democrats aquiescing to a reality the Republicans set up way ahead of them: There's no "middle ground" this time. This is now officially a "versus" election, where in spite of all the decrying of "divisiveness" you'll hear from all sides division is the entire goal; casting the choice in such stark terms - Red vs. Blue, White America vs. Multicultural America, Nativist vs. Globalist, Secular vs. Religious, Reason vs. Belief, Tradition vs. Future, Family Values vs. New Normal - that as many would-be voters as possible are spurred to "get off the sidelines" and choose a side (or completely tune out, which can be just as useful to the same ends); with each team gambling that "they're guys" will be more motivated to pack the polls. The DNC will be saying to pro-LGBT Americans "This is WAR, the prize is your rights, we've got your back, now get out there and kick some ass."

2. The DNC Is Either Confident Of A Win Or Preparing To Lose
As a rule of thumb, politicians and political parties don't take controversial positions during elections unless they feel they've already won or already lost. While taking this position probably won't make THE difference for Obama's numbers vs. Romney's, it will probably make things tighter. Either way, while this is a politically "risky" move (more in a bit) it's unquestionably a good move for Democrats long-term. LGBT rights, as part of the broader "social issues" package, is the #1 thing that seperates Generations X and Y from their parents and grandparents as a voting demographic; and this is the clearest signal the Dems have sent in quite some time that they're the party for them. Even if they lose this election, it's a step toward securing a bloc for next time.

3. Win Or Lose, The DNC Is Writing-Off "Red America."
If you want a "macro" of the politics of this manuever, it's that The DNC is willing to concede the previously-swingable (via Labor Union connections) "Blue Collar" demographic (in poli-speak: working-class white people, predominatly rural-rooted and family/church-centered) to Republicans for the forseeable future. Short-term risk, but long-term likely-payoff. The fact is, the "Blue Collar" demo is on-track for continued shrinkage in the visible future: America is becoming less white, less reliant on (domestic) physical-labor and less "rooted" workwise - the jobs/industries with growth prospects are the ones better suited to single, mobile professionals concentrated in urbanized areas. So while becoming "The Party of Gay Rights" will unquestionably drive a not-insignificant portion of the Blue Collar demo to The Right; it's a demo that might as well be an endangered-species electorally speaking - whatever percentage of the white/midwestern working-class Democrats lose over this will be made up for (with interest) by the two demographic megaton-bombs hanging over the near-future process: Boomers entering retirement age (expectation-of/reliance-on Social Security and Medicare = Democrat votes) and the potential permanent game-changer of either "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants or the children of said immigrants hitting voting age (Republicans eagerness to racially-scapegoat Latinos ensures most of these votes will not go to them.)

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"The Hobbit" Will Be Three Movies

Peter Jackson has confirmed that "The Hobbit" will go from being two films to a trilogy; with the originally-announced first two debuting over the next two Xmas seasons and the third hitting Summer 2014.

Details are vague, but supposedly this has been spurred by the material added (mostly "what was going on elsewhere in Middle Earth" from the LOTR appendices) to "flesh out" the events of the existing two films and tie things more directly to the events/characters that Tolkien later placed before and after Bilbo's main adventure.

Whether or not that means "Hobbit 2" gets longer with the "traditional" ending still happening in Part 3 or if the third film will be the often-discussed "bridge film" to LOTR remains to be seen.

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"Sonic Fan-Film" New Trailer

You might remember Eddie LeBron and Blue Core Studios for their ambitious "Mega Man" fan-film a few years back. Shortly after that, they announced they were going to take a swing at "Sonic The Hedgehog;" and with the film's release date apparently approaching (last I'd heard it was going to be a short instead of a feature) there's a new trailer - and yes, that's actually Jaleel White returning to voice Sonic:

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Escape to The Movies: "The Watch"

Sucks. But you knew that.

"Intermission" is full of Dark Knight Spoilers.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Watch

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"Cloud Atlas" Looks Like It Probably DOES Need a Six-Minute Trailer

The Wachowskis are two of the most interesting talents working in big-scale Hollywood movies today; so much so that the fact that they're no longer The Wachowski Brothers is NOT the most interesting thing about their output.

Their careers have never quite recovered from "The Matrix" becoming a massive overnight mega-sensation, prompting two unnecessary and innevitably-underwhelming sequels, and the the (IMO) underappreciated "Speed Racer" didn't exactly put them back on top; but I can't not respect people who make good on the dream of attaining permanent blockbuster clout and using it to do whatever the hell you want.

Now they've partnered with Tom Tykwer for a sprawling adaption of "Cloud Atlas," which features a big cast playing multiple roles that stretch across multiple genres, styles, time-periods and realities. The film's first SIX MINUTE trailer is now up over at Apple. Whoa.

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Yeah, This Is TOTALLY Appropriate

When a tragedy occurs with some kind of connection to a pop-culture property, it's only natural for the two to get bound up in eachother when it comes to artistic-expression of reactions to said tragedy. Which is a long way of saying that, while I'm kind of "put off" by the deluge of "Sad Batman" fan-art that started popping up in the wake of the Colorado Massacre (so much of it feels like it's more about empathizing with Batman - the fiction character - rather than the actual event) I expected it and understood it.

Seeing it on the days-later cover of The Hollywood Reporter, though? Advertising a series of "timely" essays on movie violence? That's just incredibly tacky. Trashy. This is National Enquirer/Fox News stuff - even an entertainment publication should have higher standards than this. Notably, the essay-collection features an astonishingly wrongheaded (to say nothing of incredibly irresponsible) "maybe the movies ARE to blame" piece by the great Peter Bogdanovich, of all people. (His 1968 film "Targets" featured a mentally-disturbed Vietnam veteran who trains a sniper-rifle on teenagers at a drive-in movie, is the connection.)

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Ang Lee's "Arthouse Calvin & Hobbes" Has A Trailer

"The Life of Pi" is based on a 2001 fantasy novel largely about the adventures a boy stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger for 227 days but also about meditations on the nature of God and The Universe as seen through the varying perspectives of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. Below, the trailer for the movie your stoner friends and your "spiritual" friends will refuse to shut up about later this year...



I'm wondering how much of an adaptation this is. Without spoiling (commenters, try not to do that either - I still have to get around to reading the bloody thing) I recall people reading the book being furious about some sort of highly-unpleasant/unexpected plot twist that's not even hinted at here; so we'll see what happens if/when audience feel blindsided by something possibly less "whimsical" than what we're seeing here.

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Big Picture: "Worlds Within Worlds"

Too much TV...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Worlds Within Worlds

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Post-Movie Podcast does "The Dark Knight"

Steve Head and John Black invited me back onto The Post-Movie Podcast to discuss "The Dark Knight" and a few other things and, yes, the Aurora Shootings did come up (we were recording this literally about ten hours after the actual event took place.)

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Guns & Football

Below the jump, some thoughts on topical issues relating to two things Americans are way, way too obsessed with. Contains politics, so don't read it if you don't wanna:


Regarding The Aurora Massacre:
Absolutely tragic, no other way to say it. That having been said, this whole thing where we're not supposed to say James Holmes' (the shooter's) name or discuss certain "bigger" aspects of this story so that he won't "win?" Look, I understand the feeling behind that... but he already "won" to the degree that he pulled off his crime. I understand the symbolism behind "denying him the fame he so craves;" but come on, that's largely impossible whether you participate or not. It's too late to deny this bastard "victory" (since he clearly doesn't care about being caught); so the only tangible "win" the rest of us can get out of this is to learn from it and prevent it from happening again...

...Which brings me to guns.

I think people have the right to own guns, because guns are tools and tools are only as good or bad the person using them. However, I also recognize the reality that it's incredibly stupid for anyone to be able to own any gun. I drive a car, for example, and to get the right to drive that car I have to prove that I know how to drive it, register it with a government agency on a yearly basis, get it inspected on a yearly basis and have a public record of what I do with it - because cars, while useful, are also dangerous. And if I prove that I'm incapable of using a car properly, my privilige to drive can be restricted and even revoked. To me, that guns should be at least as well-regulated as cars is pretty logical.

But it's not really about logic - it's about cultural mythology. It's about symbolism. Americans LOVE The Gun as symbol. It reminds us of ourselves as we like to see ourselves. Guns are symbolic of our revolution against an oppressive colonial government, our "conquest" of the western wilderness and the "spirit" of how both were accomplished - i.e. not through strategy or fighting-techniques informed by high-born martial legacy, but through a tool that any man of any background can pick up and become a warrior with. "God didn't make all men equal," goes an old saying that might as well be our secondary national motto, "Samuel Colt did." Guns and their attendant mythos are sacred to the American Psyche, so you're never going to get us to "quit" them.

But is it really too much to ask that there be common-sense restrictions on their use? Is it really "radical" to suggest that a Second Ammendment written in an era when foriegn-invasion by armed ground-troops was a very real threat and the "fastest" gun was a single-shot pistol may not be entirely applicablr in an era where foreign-invasion by armed ground-troops is a logistical impossibility and automatic weaponry is commonplace? A common gun-rights retort is that, "yes, people DO need to have assault rifles in case the enemy becomes our own government!;" in which case it seems to me that the Second Ammendment is even more obsolete: Sorry, Mr. Gribble, but The Government has nukes, radar-guided missiles and predator drones - if the Eeeeeeevil Kenyan-Born Secret-Muslim Communist President wants your ass dead, it won't matter how many AKs you've got stacked up in your post-Rapture Panic-Room.

Just saying.


Regarding Penn State.
So Penn State's football program doesn't get the "death penalty" for covering up decades of child-rape in order to protect the "honor" of a fucking athletics program. Instead they just lose a shitload of money, the Holy Program gets kneecapped for a few years and bunch of utterly-meaningless statistics and records get either wiped-out or asterix'd from the books. And yet some people think this is "too far." Me? I don't think it goes nearly far enough.

Granted, nothing can "undo" the crimes or the cover-up; but the sickness that allowed both things to happen - that allowed a monster to go about raping children while others covered it up goes higher than Joe Paterno and bigger than Penn State. The cover-up was possible because Football Programs wield far, FAR too much power in the American college system. Programs wield that power because it's often the college's main source of income - effectively supporting the rest of the institution. And they are the main source of income because alumni donors, and Americans in genral, care way, way too much about Football.

That we are willing, as a culture, to pump infinitely more money into bloated, greedy NCAA programs in order to maintain a talent farm for the bloated, greedy NFL is obscene enough, but predictable - you can't expect America to start caring as much about collegiate science, art and humanities programs that might yield cancer cures, energy-sources on the next transcendant works of art as we do about whether or not some guy can kick a ball between two poles... I mean, have you met us? Most of the time, these warped priorities manifest themselves in ways that are only superficially irritating; like raising men whose sole contribution to the world is throwing a ball pretty-good to the status of living gods. But the Sandusky Scandal represents the logical-extreme of this obsession: The willingness to excuse/ignore horrible crimes in order to protect The Game itself.

This is, incidentally, why while I feel bad for the players, potential players and other program staff whose careers have been impacted by this; I don't see that as a reason not to have done it - innocent of the cover-up they may be, it's all part of an institution that has frankly been crying out to be knocked-open, re-examined and probably dismantled to a large degree for a long, LONG time now. Yes, Penn State should be made to honor the commitments they made to scholarship athletes who may no longer be playing, up to an including financially-assisting them in finding placement at other schools' programs. Yes, either the NCAA, Penn alumni or their trustees should take the good-faith step of helping potential scholarship prospects already "in the works" get to the school (if they still want to) even if there's no real program waiting for them. But beyond that? Knock "The Program" over, find the rotten parts, reassemble if possible and above all else put the fear into every other Program that they're godhood - and their free ride - is over.

Now, obviously, you can't stop people from caring too much about NCAA football; but if colleges were better funded in other areas to begin with football programs wouldn't be quite so all-powerful, which is the only way you're going to stop the next Penn State from letting the next Joe Paterno cover-up for the next Sandusky. I'll probably be branded some kind of "socialist" for saying this, but y'know what'd be a good start? More federal funding for the non-athletic departments of American colleges. Start with the science and technology departments, since after all those have a tangible economic/security benefit to the nation as a whole so as to warrant such investment.

Just saying.

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DreamWorks Animation Just Bought Like 30% Of Your Childhood - And Your Parents' And Grandparents' Childhoods, Too

As licensed-properties have taken over Hollywood, consolidating big collections of said properties (the better to avail yourself as partner to production companies) under one umbrella has become a canny investment for companies that once upon a time might've only ever existed to license nostalgiac DVD sets.

For one such umbrella, "Classic Media," the ship has come in: DreamWorks Animation SKG just paid $155 Million for the company (which will now be called "DreamWorks Classics") - or, rather, for the impressive roster of characters, series, franchises and other intellectual-properties that DWA will now be able to leverage into movies, TV shows, video-games, etc.

So, what did they buy? Well, about 450 properties - not necessarily the gargantuan thousands-strong collection of individual characters Disney got when they aquired Marvel, but probably a more diverse and (in some cases) eyebrow-raising set all the same...


Most of the "bigger" stuff Classic Media owned tended toward really oldschool (Lone Ranger, Dick Tracy, Lassie) or near-immortal kiddie fare (Casper, Richie Rich, Baby Huey, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Felix the Cat, Gumby); but they'd also more-recently gotten into the business of Gen-X nostalgia marketing - most notably, they own Filmmation's entire library (though only partial rights to certain productions that had been based on licensed properties) and World Events Productions, which means that DreamWorks now has some kind of claim on "Masters of The Universe" and total rights to "Voltron;" both of which have been eyed for big-screen revival.

This also gives DreamWorks Animation control of Noddy (ask somebody from the UK), the U.S. distribution rights to certain "Godzilla" movies, the VeggieTales franchise and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Oh, and if your looking for a reason for your inner-child to cringe; this also nets them the "Little Golden Books" library - so, yes, "The Poky Little Puppy" is now in the hands of the studio behind "Shrek."

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Sonic Boom

I like the "Man of Steel" teaser (now online for real) a little better now than I did when it was letting me down in the theater by being a little too tease-ish. The atmosphere is killer and unexpected, and feels "mythic" once you realize what it is. I still feel like I'd be really nervous about it if I didn't already know that the broader film looks a lot more DC Universe and a lot less "Jeans Commercial."



If nothing else, it certainly puts to lie the idea that Snyder can't "do" a more restrained/naturalistic aesthetic... which I predict he will recieve precisely zero credit for, as the folks who'd previously been shitting on him as director will simply attribute it's quality to Holy Touch of Saint Nolan...

Minor editing thing, though: I think it would actually work better as a "reveal" if the title-card for the shield swapped places with the title-card for the title; I feel like kid-posing/logo/reveal/title would elicit a bigger "oh, shit!" from audiences than kid-posing/title/reveal/shield gets here - more of "gradual rise in iconography" flow.

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Escape to the Movies: "The Dark Knight Rises" (Updated)

Re-posting for regular Friday schedule and "Intermission."

THE MOVIE: Good, not great. Review probably would've been slightly more negative if I'd seen it more than just once beforehand.

"INTERMISSION": Warners is already talking reboot. Because that's where we live now.

A SECOND ARTICLE: Because why not?

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Dark Knight Rises

Before anyone asks, yes, I've been watching the same "Colorado Batman Massacre" story unfold as everyone else. Horrifying, unbelievable, tragic stuff; but thus far that it happened in concurrance with this particular movie appears to be wholly incidental and I'd appreciate it if people didn't try to pull it into the conversation here at this time beyond this obligatory acknowledgement - both out of respect to the victims and consideration for viewers/visitors who may have ties to that community.

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Bat & Switch

Went to see "Rises" again at midnight. Liked it a little less the second time - more and more "wait a second..." annoyances - but still not "bad" by any stretch of the imagination.

My real reason for heading out was, of course, because I wanted to finally see the "Man of Steel" trailer in a form other than grainy Comic-Con snippets or shot-by-shot descriptions; only to discover too late that what SDCC saw isn't the same teaser that's been attached to "Rises." Phooey.

I'll say this: If I DIDN'T have the sliver of context for how much "cooler" the footage you lucky SDCC attendees out there saw was; this teaser would've left with me a serious sinking feeling...


It's not a BAD teaser, certainly - the "when did Zack Snyder become Terrence Mallick?" feel that people at SDCC were describing is absolutely there; and it's intended effect on an unsuspecting audience ("what the heck is th... HOLY SHIT! SUPERMAN!?") went over big with everyone else at my screening. It'll have people talking, definitely.

But without the big, epic "you will believe a man can KICK ASS!" stuff I know was on the Comic-Con reel; what's presented makes it look VERY much like a "Nolanized" Superman... and that's the last thing the property needs. If anything, seeing TDKR a second time through left me more convinced than ever that, while "his" Batman has yielded an interesting trilogy with two excellent entries and one "okay" one, it's in everyone's best interest that Christopher Nolan be kept as far away from comic-book movies as possible for the forseeable future. He's had his fun with this little "deconstruction" project, now let's be done with all that limitation and timidity... there are universes to be explored.

I don't wanna undersell it - it's a good clip, and it'll probably get mainstream audiences psyched about at least the "prospect" of Superman again, so that's all well and good. But speaking for myself, if I didn't know that there's bigger, braver, more authentically-Superman "stuff" being held back this would've left me pretty deflated about a project I'm still holding out a great deal of hope for.

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Escape to The Movies: "The Dark Knight Rises"

Going a day early, 99.9% spoiler-free. You're welcome.

"Intermission" will go up tommorrow in the usual spot. Until then, did you see my long-ass Batman-related article from earlier today; "Bat-Mitt vs. The Obamavengers?"

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Dark Knight Rises

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Bat-Mitt vs. The Obamavengers

NOTE I: I was going to wait until after Midnight to put this up, but it looks like everyone and their grandmother is already running their "TDKR in bigger culture" pieces so I might as well drop it now.

NOTE II: This is NOT a review of "The Dark Knight Rises." My review of the film will run, as scheduled, on tomorrow's episode of "Escape to The Movies." This piece is not directly affiliated with any other MovieBob projects appearing elsewhere on the web and should not be taken as such.

I’ll admit, straightaway, to the unavoidable fact that the title and premise of this piece carries with it an air of exploitation, if not outright “hackery.” You would be correct in suggesting that I turned this particular vague idea into a 3,000+ word piece and titled it thusly for “attention” – I plead guilty of being a writer who wishes to be read. I can only offer that I wouldn’t be bothering to actually analyze and write-about whether or not 2012’s dueling superhero movies in some way mirror 2012’s dueling presidential candidates if I didn’t think the observations therein might’ve turned out somehow noteworthy or worth sharing… although, of course, that’s a matter of opinion.

Incidentally, yes, there are SPOILERS for “Dark Knight Rises” after this point. Not major spoilers, mind you, but descriptions of themes, story-points, dialogue, etc. You have been warned. 

In any case, while I agree with many others that the knee-jerk temptation to place Summer 2012’s far and away biggest movie/box-office stories – “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises” – in competition with one-another is very much an unfair apples to oranges scenario in that, despite both being adaptations of long-running comic-book superheroes, they’re entirely different animals in the cinematic sense… I wholly understand why the comparison leaps so readily to mind: Different to the point of non-relation as they may be in whole, in the details they begin to resemble “opposing forces” on an almost cosmic scale.

There’s the professional rivalry, of course: The Dark Knight (“Batman” to his friends) hails from DC Comics, while The Avengers come from Marvel – two publishers who’ve been at “war” for the loyalties of readers for over a half a century. This being the age of consolidation, this friendly-competition between publishers of four-color funnybooks is also a proxy-skirmish between globe-spanning corporate titans; DC being part of the unfathomably massive Time/Warner empire, while Marvel recently became a member-state of The Magic Kingdom. It’s not simply Batman and Captain America staring one-another down across the field of the battle; it’s the assembled armies of Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse – with the ghosts of Jack Warner and Walt Disney looming above like rival gods.

Even the radically-divergent approach to the source-material that separates the two films also binds them in opposition – two absolute-extremes of the two prevailing methods of superhero-adaptation. Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy is a tear-down/rebuild of not only Batman but of the genre, consciously and deliberately draining the very concept of the costumed-crimefighter of as much color, humor, archness and otherworldliness as can be drained without jettisoning the core entirely; with a goal of finding something “more” in what remains. Joss Whedon’s “Avengers,” on the other hand, is a sort-of climax to a multi-film experiment whose goal has been to translate the entire “Universe” of Marvel Comics to live-action film as unmolested as possible. “Dark Knight” sees superheroes as a subject in need of “elevation” (and an extreme-makeover) to earn a place among a serious-cinema; while “Avengers” feels made by people who looked at superhero movies and said “You’re not as a good the comics are – let’s fix that.” Nolan appears to approach the source material with something akin to the “White Man’s Burden” – the noble Colonialist bringing civilization to the savage land of the superhero; while Whedon has the zealotry of a prophet: he’s Moses down from Sinai, carrying Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Holy Writ, and fie unto thee who would alter a word of The Holy Text.

The final and yet most surprising place they differ is in their approach to the “real world” that they, fantasies both, aim to mirror. Specifically, in their approach the ultimate verboten subject of crowd-pleasing blockbuster entertainments: POLITICS. “Knight” is portentous and self-consciously weighty – it’s characters frown and sigh as they dutifully cross every “t” and dot every “i” on Very! Meaningful! Matters! like terrorism, classism and government overreach; while “The Avengers” occasionally look even more excited to be smacking an army of Space Monsters around Manhattan than their audience, and aren’t selling much in the way of explicit messages beyond “it’s good to make new friends” and “teamwork is important.” To be fair, neither one is exactly C-SPAN; that “Rises” has a philosophical/political through-line could easily be the unintended byproduct of putting topical-sounding statements into characters mouths so that we’ll know that it’s a Very Serious Enterprise.

And yet… one is the story of a single high-born aristocrat deigning to restore order to a city after the disastrous results of a (partially) poverty-instigated citizen’s-uprising; while another is about a group effort where the world can only be saved if various characters set aside self-interest and work toward a common goal. The metaphor is pretty obvious, particularly this year. Can it really be expressed so simply – The Avengers as the “progressive” super-saga, Batman leading the reactionary-retort? Is it possible that our culture is now so politically-stratified that even a pair of “rival” blockbusters could perceived/received as “The Obama Blockbuster” and “The Romney Blockbuster?”

“The Dark Knight,” immediate predecessor of “Rises,” was an explicitly (though not particularly deeply) political film; taking it’s dramatically-overhauled incarnations of Batman and The Joker out of the broader “order versus chaos” dynamic that tends to define their relationship and into an explicit allegory for the War on Terror – Joker as an extreme caricature of American culture’s post-9/11 vision of The Terrorist as the incomprehensible madman, the force-of-nature whom it would be a waste of time and resources to even consider might have some point or reason (which is not to say “excuse”) behind his actions. “Some men just want to watch the world burn,” intones Alfred; a poetic but ultimately empty turn of phrase that serves the same function as real-life’s equally-dismissive “they hate our freedom” as an entreaty against introspection: Don’t waste time overthinking it, Gotham City/American Public; they’re just pure-straight crazy. Now shut up and let us do What Must Be Done to protect you.”

In “Dark Knight,” What Must Be Done turned out to mean Batman giving The Joker an “enhanced interrogation” and later illegally wiretapping the entire city in order to “sonar map” The Clown Prince of Crime’s location. The Bat’s confidant, Lucius Fox, raises the obvious “invasion of privacy” question… but in the end his fears turn out to be unfounded: Batman is The Good Guy, he really does have our best interests at heart, and he really will only use this incredibly-unethical-yet-incredibly-effective extraordinary measure just this once – and we can trust him on that. Even Fox can only smile and shake his head at how pure the motives of The Administration – excuse me, The Batman – turned out to be. The obvious parallel to The Patriot Act and other Bush/Cheney anti-terror efforts (“warrantless wiretaps” being a hot-button topic at the time) in a massively-popular film raised antenna on both sides of U.S. political spectrum; earning high praise from The Right, objection from The Left and panicked denials that the film was about anything other than a costumed vigilante fighting a clown from a controversy-wary studio and an introspection-resistant fan-culture.

Speaking only for myself, I don’t necessarily see “The Dark Knight” as a high-five from British director Christopher Nolan to the then-outgoing U.S. presidential administration; but it’s hard for me not to concede that the film tips ideologically to the “right;” whether incidentally or by design. Even ignoring the topical business about wiretaps and mad-terrorists, there’s an unmissable element of the Privatization Ideal underpinning the whole franchise: The police are ineffective and corruptible, well-meaning White Knight beaurocrats like Harvey Dent can’t really fix a problem like The Joker. No, fixing that takes a Man of Business – not some measly rule-bound government cog but a two-fisted child of privilege with the money and the means to save us all – if only we’d just get out of the way and let him, damn it!

The seeds of this are planted in the less overtly-politicized “Batman Begins,” which adds a key dash of Nolan’s literalism to Bruce Wayne’s backstory …and Batman’s nickname. It posits the Wayne Family as having a tradition of shepherding Gotham City through tough times via charitable capitalism, a noble-burden Bruce effectively inherits along with his title, mansion and bottomless fortune. The Dark KNIGHT, indeed. Nolan’s Gotham is a medieval Castle Town, with Bruce Wayne as it’s Feudal Lord. Or, if you prefer, welcome to Trickle-Down Superheroism – if only we would just stop over-regulating Bruce Wayne’s self-punishment/symbolic-retribution, the rest of us will eventually reap the benefits of a lower crime-rate.

So when it becomes clear that in “Rises” the symbolic issue of the moment has gone from Terrorism to so-called “Class Warfare,” it’s hard not to see similarities between the chaos unleashed by the film’s antagonists and the paranoid demonization of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement from the likes of Talk Radio and Fox News – though, admittedly, it doesn’t help that the filmmakers at one point planned to incorporate real footage of the initial Occupy protest as background for the actors.

In the story, the supervillain Bane aims to bring Gotham City and Bruce Wayne to their respective knees by breaking the city off from the mainland and setting himself up as dictator of the (localized) post-apocalypse. A key part of his plan is whipping Gotham’s impoverished underclass into a frenzy against authority in general and The Wealthy in particular: In the intervening eight years between films, Gotham’s police have used the fabricated accounts of Harvey Dent’s death as pretext for heavy-handed anti-crime techniques that have “secured” the streets at the cost of bloated prisons and simmering unrest (at least in theory – like too much in the film we’re only told, not shown, much of Gotham’s citizenry until Bane’s Occupy Gotham horde starts dragging rich folks from their homes in Act III); and Bane’s faux-revolutionary rhetoric inflames both into a violent fervor that intentionally recalls The French Revolution (as imagined by “A Tale of Two Cities,” at least.)

It’s the classic reactionary alarmism of the “Socialist Boogeyman” blown-up to blockbuster proportions: Encouraging The Peasantry to question the rightness of class-stratification can only lead to societal collapse, and the guy speaking-out/organizing against it is actually a monster who knows this and actively seeks it for his own sinister agenda (Bane helpfully informs Batman/the audience of his “use-class-warfare-to-mask-mass-destruction” plans before he starts preaching, so we won’t be confused). And since said Peasantry is too dumb/short-sighted to suss that out for itself, they require the protection (from themselves, naturally) of their wealthy betters because only they’ve got the tools (“Job Creation” in real-life, vaguely bat-shaped fighter-jets here) to save us – after all, you silly poors… That’s why they’re on top in the first place!

Take out whatever ‘comic-booky’ elements left that Nolan and company weren’t able to strip-out already, and what your left with looks and sounds more than a little like the thesis of the Romney/Republican presidential campaign: “That charismatic talker agitating against unrestrained-capitalism is leading us toward class-warfare, socialism and Soviet-style collapse; and only The Heroic Executive can pull us back from the brink!”

In the film, the audience-POV for this lesson is cat-burglar Selina Kyle (better known as “Catwoman” in versions of the story not petrified of “silly” nicknames), who breathily coos activist rhetoric to justify her criminality early on but wises-up and pledges Team Batman after witnessing her friends go from zero-to-Che during Bane-instigated manor-looting – “This was someone’s home…” mourns Not-Catwoman. “Now it’s everyone’s home!” cackles her newly-villainous gal-pal. Remember, kids: Recognition of income-inequality will lead to INSTANT STALINISM!!!

It would be, again, a mistake to try and specifically ascribe a so-called “Right-Wing Agenda” to Christopher Nolan’s filmmaking vis-a-vi Batman. After all, the fact that the bad tidings in Gotham are brought on in part by Batman’s (and then Commissioner Gordon’s) anti-crime overreach is a significant shade of gray in the setup’s moral-spectrum; and to be perfectly frank the political business in “Rises” comes off pretty superficial compared to its predecessor despite how much more of the plot and dialogue it takes up – as though the topical references to social-unrest, Stock Market shenanigans and Occupy are there as attempts to infuse specific meaning into a film that, despite its thunderous self-insistence doesn’t really have that much to say about the issues it raises.

It’s been suggested many times that superheroes – particularly the crime-fighting as opposed to world-saving kind – are inherently reactionary, and that Batman’s “stock persona” tips inherently rightward in as much as he’s a “maintain law and order” hero rather than “justice” hero (see also: Dick Tracy.) Better minds than mine* have suggested that the seismic shift wherein Batman began to supplant Superman as “The” Superhero coincided with the principal fear of American children changing from “death” to “loss of personal-security and/or stuff-I-own” during America’s post-WWII boom; which was also when the animating values of the emergent Middle Class changed from community and equal-justice to “Keeping Up With The Joneses;” which is part of the same calculation.

On the opposite end, we have “The Avengers” …or do we?

The two films are diametric opposites in all other respects, certainly, but opposition can have more than one form. With its broader tone and a story where the “real world” is only ONE of many relevant worlds – and currently under-siege by interdimensional aliens commanded by the Viking God of Mischief – it would be easy to argue that “The Avengers” differs from “Dark Knight Rises” ‘conservative’ political-streak not by being the “progressive” superhero movie… but by having no political-streak at all.** There’s some truth to that – Bane’s (disingenuous) rabble-rousing is grounded in something like authentic political philosophy, while the closest to something like that “Avengers” get is when Loki waxes the poetic about benevolent fascism and earns  a stern talking-to from onetime professional Nazi-puncher Captain America. Not precisely the same degree of relevance or nuance, that.

But, on the other hand, while “The Avengers” plays things broad and simple on the surface (the plot: “The Bad Guy stole the Magic Cube, call all the Good Guys so they can get the Magic Cube back!”) it’s far from a stupid or shallow film. Instead of labyrinthine plot-machinations, it’s complexity is found in the way it’s disparate characters relate to one other; and the themes, lessons and moral-grounding of these interactions invariably espouses collective-effort, self-sacrifice, teamwork, being true to one’s self, skepticism of military/industrial authority and other reflexively progressive (or, if you prefer, “liberal”) philosophical points.

Tony “Iron Man” Stark, for example, is a Businessman Hero not unlike Bruce Wayne in his own series (he brags that he “privatized world peace” in “Iron Man 2”); but his character-arc amid joining The Avengers is all about putting his individual ego in-check to contribute to a group effort. In fact, that’s practically the arc of the whole film. (He’s also gotten into the Clean Energy business, but so has Batman and that’s a story for another time.)

Iron Man, in turn, receives his primary dressing-down vis-a-vi selfishness from Captain America, which might seem discordant until you recall that Steve Rogers hails from the 1940s – his flag-waving (or flag-wearing, as it were) is that of World War II “we’re in this together” communal war-effort and FDR’s social-justice New Deal; not the fortress-mentality “patriotism” of The Cold War or Ronald Reagan’s regressive “Morning in America.” And Cap has a lesson to learn, too: There’s real drama in a moment where, after having lectured his teammates against questioning the military chain of command, he discovers they were very right to be suspicious of S.H.I.E.L.D’s motives.*** And when The Avengers make the climactic decision to eschew S.H.I.E.L.D’s headquarters and do they’re fighting/people-protecting at the street-level (“community organizing,” one might say…) it’s Captain America who leads the charge and field-commands the mission.

And there’s The Incredible Hulk. Typically, this character’s “heroism” has been defined by his own self-denial: The Hulk is a force for destruction, and Bruce Banner is a hero for keeping him at bay unless absolutely necessary.  “The Avengers” has a different take, courtesy the influence of Tony Stark. Not only does Stark demonstrate further complexity of his own character in meeting the “weird kid” who everyone else is nervous around and immediately insisting on making friends. He also has an opinion on how Banner should handle his “condition” that’s a far cry from the suppressive self-denial: He thinks Banner needs to “come out” – embrace that part of his person and let his Hulk Flag fly. Guess who turns out to be right when “The Other Guy” becomes a tide-turner in the climactic battle?

So, yeah: Suppressing your true nature? Bad. Teamwork and group-effort? Good. Saving the world? “It Takes a Village.” If “The Dark Knight Rises” can be read as an entrepreneurial power-fantasy that could’ve sprung fully-formed from the top of Mitt Romney’s freshly Just-For-Men’d head; “Avengers” can easily be viewed as a big, bright barrel of “Hopey-Changey Stuff” and ray-gun decorated progressive optimism – “Yes We Can… close that space portal!”

These are, of course, subjective observations of mostly superficial details. Batman isn’t Mitt Romney, and The Avengers aren’t the DNC. And while neither film is without a point to hammer home, they aren’t anybody’s idea of campaign commercials; regardless of Rush Limbaugh’s bizarre (and, given the actual themes of the film, hilariously ironic) postulation that TDKR’s Bane has been so-named as a covert anti-Romney smear.**** These are pop-entertainments, after all – so expensive to produce and so desperately needed as profit-generators for their corporate masters that it’d be close to suicidal for them to take any kind of truly “divisive” stance.

And yet… there IS such a thing as zeitgeist in a culture. The movies have a way of reflecting and embodying moods among the masses, and so do political campaigns. Removed from the specifics of policy, Romney and Obama’s respective campaigns still differ starkly in THAT very realm: A campaign is a narrative - just a like a movie – with The Candidate as hero, and narratives (the ones that work, at least) have a tone, mood and thematic-arc all their own.

The Romney narrative - the Republican narrative – is dark and somber. It’s story is of an America on the brink of collapse, and it’s antagonist isn’t so much President Obama himself as it is the “naïve” left-wing idealism he was said to embody. The Romney “story” is as openly-dismissive of “liberal optimism” as Nolan’s Batman is of authentic comic-book superheroics. The world defaults to darkness and danger, it says, and those who foolishly think it can be otherwise have brought America low. Playing nice and thinking big can’t save us – only the cold-steel strength of The Businessman can do that. Hope? Change? Kiddie stuff, as childish and useless as Boy Sidekicks or flying pals from Krypton.

The Obama narrative, on the other hand? Relentless – almost to the point of parody, frankly – optimism. Colorful, diverse, energetic, youthful. The dream can work, and the dreamers can make it work. There are problems, sure, but they aren’t insurmountable and they won’t be solved by some stern, anachronistic Daddy Figure. It’s the story of a world that’s bending, however slow, toward a better tomorrow; and it’s a coalition of radically-different people working toward a common goal that will get us there. And while that may seem like stuff that only ever belonged in fairytales (or comic-books), that doesn’t make it impossible – or unworthy of trying.

So, then, is it fair to look at “The Dark Knight Rises” dark, grim story of a billionaire out to rescue the status-quo from anarchy and see it as Summer 2012’s “Romney Movie?” Yeah, I think so. And then, by the same token; do the brightly-hued, relentlessly-optimistic “up with group-effort!” “Avengers” likewise constitute “The Obama Movie?” In a manner of speaking, certainly.

Does that mean anything, for either the films or “their” candidates? Does the respective popularity of one or the other (“The Avengers,” as of this writing, is the biggest boxoffice-winner/pop-culture fixture of the year, while newcomer TDKR’s prowess remains to be seen) tell us something about the direction of the political winds? Probably not… but it’s a long year ahead yet – and I don’t expect that this is the last time me or anyone else will bring it up.

* http://badassdigest.com/2011/12/21/film-crit-hulk-smash-what-the-f-is-it-about-batman/

** The same certainly can’t be said of their directors – while Christopher Nolan isn’t known for talking politics in public, Joss Whedon is: http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-post/joss-whedon-america-turning-tsarist-russia-47756

*** Interestingly, in “The Avengers” S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the same “hack every phone” tactic “The Dark Knight” did. It passes without verbal commentary, but the initial reveal of this briefly cuts to Captain America looking vaguely-shocked. Maybe it’s meant to reinforce his awe at modern technology, but Whedon is on-record as having cut scenes featuring Cap speaking disapprovingly about present-day American political matters from the final film for time; maybe this was one of them?

**** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exm3gApFgPY&feature=youtu.be


P.S. I reiterate that this article is strictly part of this blog and not intended to be affiliated with any other writing/video-making I do about these films elsewhere on the web.

P.P.S. Breitbart headline: "Nolan Nukes Occupy Wall Street."

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I Re-Review Batman Movies

Slow news week, mostly because everything in entertainment is dutifully clearing the deck so that this week's pre-ordained blockbuster can take it's Bat-bows. Was really kinda hoping that the mass-piracy would goad Warner Bros. into dropping the "Man of Steel" trailer early, but no such luck.

So why not eat up some internet-time watching (or re-watching) me re-watch the original four "Batman" movies, now handily collected in this one post?

Batman
Batman Returns
Batman Forever
Batman & Robin

My review of the "The Dark Knight Rises" will be up tomorrow afternoon in the usual place (which I'll probably be re-watching tonight for kicks but mostly to see the how Superman trailer plays to the most pumped audience possible); but there will also probably be a rather lengthy non-review piece (partially) about the film going up sometime after midnight later today on this blog, so stay tuned.

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Limbaugh Versus Batman (UPDATED!)

Below, audio of Rush Limbaugh's radio show, wherein he posits that the villain of "The Dark Knight Rises" being named BANE is a deliberate attempt to help the Obama campaign by smearing his Republican challenger Mitt Romney (re: former head of BAIN Capital.) No, really.

UPDATE: Amusingly, The Guardian's Catherine Shoard, posits that the film is actually much more of an anti-"Occupy" capitalist power-fantasy that "Mitt Romney would be thrilled" with. I'm not reviewing or opining on the film at all until Friday's "Escape to The Movies," but I'll say that I don't disagree with this particular thematic assessment.

Not that I expect that ANY of what Devin Faraci has colorfully named "The Bat-Jihadists" (or "Mujhabatdeen") might be READING THIS and spurred to, oh, visit the contact page for Rush's radio show and have themselves a lil' old party or anything...



Y'know, I'm probably not a favorite person among the Nolan/Batman fanboys - we've had our differences in the past, etc. But if they insist on unleashing full-tilt troll-storms on any media personality who doesn't break out the 10/10 rubber-stamp for their prefered movies... I can't help but think it'd be just swell if some of that venom and vitriol got sent "Rushbo's" way. Hate-spewing reactionary vs. hate-spewing reactionaries, and all that.

I mean, not for nothing, but part of the attack-the-critics mentality is that bad reviews might hurt the film's chances at setting/breaking some arbitrary boxoffice record, no? Well, unlike ANY film critic, Limbaugh actually does have the clout to turn his sizable following "against" a media property - I don't like it any more than anyone else, but he is about that powerful.

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Big Picture: "Batman Revisited - Part IV"

This is NOT the best Batman movie I'll review this week... but by how much? Stay tuned.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Batman Revisited, Part 4

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"Captain America: The Winter Soldier" Will (Possibly) Introduce The Falcon

The Hollywood Reporter says that actor Anthony Mackie - most recently seen in a major supporting role in "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" - has been cast in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"  (previously known as "Captain America 2.") It's believed he will play Sam Wilson, aka The Falcon.

A Harlem-based superhero, Falcon has a strength-enhancing suit that includes a pair of wings he can fly with, plus a telepathic connection to his pet bird "Redwing." He was Captain America's buddy/sidekick throughout the 1970s, and also a sometime member of The Avengers. In one of the more infamous head-scratching "topical" moments in comics, he once quit the team on discovering that his hiring had been "forced" upon the team via federal Affirmative Action policies. Yes, really.

I'm not seeing anyone officially confirming that he's playing THE FALCON specifically, as opposed to "Sam Wilson: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who happens to share a name with a guy who has wings from the comics," but there's got to be at least a 50/50 chance of it.

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Comic-Con: "Man of Steel" poster online, footage shown

I don't like this "Man of Steel" teaser poster. At all. I get what it's going for, but it's dour and moody and all the stuff I thought the frachise was supposed to be jettisoning after "Superman Returns." It's also unmistakably reminiscent of the "Dark Knight" key-art, which couldn't be more of a wrong direction to take a Superman movie. It's very, very Christopher Nolan, and great filmmaker or not now that his Batman cycle is concluded I want Nolan and his "dark realism" as far-removed from Superman and other DC Universe movies as humanly possible.

Also, can we please stop with the over-designed textures on these fucking costumes?

This is really the first thing I've seen/heard of this movie that I've actively disliked; which bums me out because A.) I want this to be good and B.) if it turns out to be bad and I've said something negative about pre-release I'll be hearing about my "BIAS!!!" for another month after it comes out...

Footage was also shown at Comic-Con, supposedly encompassing the teaser-trailer which will be attached to "The Dark Knight." It's not online yet, though the usual stills and grainy bootlegs (none of which I'll be linking to so don't ask) are out there along with a lot of descriptions. What I've seen of this (read: not much) I actually like a lot better.

It's definitely a "new" take on Superman at least in terms of how we've seen him in live-action movies - big, sweeping, action-heavy and leaning on the painterly/iconic staging that Zack Snyder does better than almost anyone playing at this level. Amusing, one of the "this looks likes" being heavily invoked is Terrence Mallick; probably because the first half of the teaser is heavy on montage and pastoral/Americana imagery and the whole thing is cut to "Journey to The Line" - one of the all-time great "THIS IS EPIC AND MEANINGFUL AND YOU! ARE! MOVED!!!!!" pieces of film-music ever. Here, listen.

Not a tremendous amount of story/context stuff coming out from people so far, but what was already known (it's an "origin story" at least in as much as it's a "Clark is told he's actually an alien and becomes Superman" story) what was rumored (seems like the main plot is an amalgam of Donner's "Superman" and "Superman II") are all-but confirmed; and my old guess that the "major" tone/theme change would be making the military/government not immediately trusting of Superman seems to be right-on. Some of the descriptions make it sound as though Clark is almost living like The Hulk (re: people are afraid of the freakishly-strong guy) before he's Superman.

Warner Bros? Please don't punk-out and NOT attach this to the TDKR prints you screen to critics - that would be uncool.

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Comic-Con: "Guardians of The Galaxy"

It was already in-the-wind that some version or another of "Guardians of The Galaxy" was going to be the Marvel/Disney 2014 movie that would hit after "Captain America 2" (now officially subtitled "The Winter Soldier") and serve as a lead-in to "Avengers 2." Now it's been confirmed at SDCC, and we have official concept-art revealing the team lineup:

Who the hell are you looking at? Hit the jump...

It looks like they're going with the more recent version, where the Guardians are an all-star (figuratively-speaking) team of cosmic/space-oriented Marvel characters. From left to right, the movie lineup seems to include:

DRAX THE DESTROYER - a Jim Starlin creation whose origin coincided with the first appearance of Thanos, who is the person Drax is supposed to be destroying.

GROOT - He's a talking tree; originating as one of Jack Kirby's many, many Earth-invading space-monsters from Marvel's pre-superhero days, later ressurected as a Hulk foe and more recently as part of Marvel's "cosmic" roster.

STAR-LORD - Human astronaut born under cosmically-influenced circumstances, eventually becomes a spacefaring paramilitary-type who has a Master Chief/Cortana kinda thing going on with his sentient, psychically-linked spaceship "Ship."

ROCKET RACCOON - He's exactly what he looks like. That's right, while certain other studios are wringing their hands about whether things as "weird" as Wonder Woman or "silly" as Robin can work on film, Marvel/Disney is headling a multimillion dollar space-epic with a talking, gun-toting raccoon.

GAMORA - Thanos adopted daughter, later turned "good." Usually wears significantly less clothing than pictured here.

It's going to be interesting to see how this is recieved. It'll be the first Marvel Studios film that's decidedly not a superhero movie (they've been touting it as something more in the vein of Star Wars) and it's easily the most obscure property they'll have adapted to the screen to date. One assumes that, with two Thanos-related guys on the team and Thanos' all-but-given stature as "Avengers 2's" heavy, they'll be counting on the "this sets up Avengers 2" factor to draw in the die-hards; but are mainstream audiences really going to line-up for what will look like "The Adventures of Tree-Person and Cartoon Animal?"

At some point, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to have to learn how to accomodate "niche" movies alongside four-quadrant blockbusters like they've been making so far. Edgar Wright's "Ant-Man," for example, is probably not destined to do "Thor's" numbers, but if produced responsibly with realistic goals it doesn't need to. "Guardians," on the other hand, is going to cost quite a bit to make and will have to do sizable business to be worth it, financially.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the individual members (or traces of them) turning up in the more familiar characters' sequels to try and get people more invested in them as things go on.

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Comic-Con: Iron Curious Yellow

Lot's of big news coming out of Comic-Con... none of which I got to see/learn firsthand because I don't get to go. Harumph.

Anyway, first up: "Iron Man 3" had a panel... immediately preceded by a suprise visit from Edgar Wright, who revealed that his long in-development "Ant Man" movie is moving forward, has a logo and showed off test-footage of the size-changing effects. Good news.

The "IM3" footage, allegedly, contains the "big reveal" that Ben Kinglsey's previously-unnamed villain whom everyone assumed was The Mandarin is, in fact, The Mandarin - or, at least, he has The Mandarin's beard, Ten Rings and "oriental" trappings. Publicity-snaps via Comicbookmovie.com also revealed what seems to be Iron Man's new armor for this one, which is mostly yellow:

I feel like a lot of people aren't going to like this look, but I dig it. If nothing else, a guy running around in a suit of bright yellow armor versus another guy with "patriotic" armor and a bad guy with "magic" rings helps confirm that the Marvel Movies seem to be aiming at getting even bigger and more "comic-book" after "Avengers;" rather than regressing.

Plot-wise, one assumes the new look has something to do with the Extremis story being used in the movie.

Incidentally, the other sequels have revealed their subtitles: "Thor: The Dark World" (no idea) and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" (holy shit.)

"Guardians of The Galaxy" was also confirmed with concept-art and team-lineup revealed, more on that in a bit...

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Last Word on "Spider-Man"

There's no real point in complaining about people trolling every single post/review/article I put up that even alludes to the movie that happens to be THE big entertainment news story of the moment (seriously, people; I am "obsessed" with "The Amazing Spider-Man" in the same way that The Weather Channel was "obsessed" with Hurricane Katrina - it's kind of the only thing going on at the moment, especially since there's been no "tsunami" out of SDCC yet) since this is my job... but at this point I've had enough. Especially since The Internet ran out of new conspiracy-theories and sinister-motivations to ascribe to my not liking a movie as much as you did within the first few hours.

So I'm just gonna take one more pass through the most common bullet-points on this nonsense and then that's it from me until something newsworthy (re: sequel, casting/re-casting, who's-replacing-Mark-Webb, etc) happens...


1. If there's one thing that I just cannot stand about internet movie discussion it's that people seem incapable of grasping that not everything can be expressed as a hard-equation. Opinion and criticism aren't 1 + 1 = 2 constants. To wit: It is not "hypocrisy" or a "double-standard" to like "X-Men: First Class" but dislike some other reboot, because reboot doesn't ALWAYS equal "bad." BAD equals bad. See also: Elements that work perfectly well in one movie CAN sometimes be a mistake in another movie - which is why there is no point in excavating old reviews of this or that critic to "a-ha!" them about saying ______ was fun in THIS movie when they'd said the same ______ was bad in a previous one.

2. No, I didn't mark the movie "down" because of the business stuff behind the reboot decision. I made note of it because, from my perspective, said decisions/processes were very plausible explanations for many of the bigger problems with the film. Remember a few years back when there was a huge writer's strike and you had all these blockbusters coming out with under-cooked scripts as a result? Same basic thing.

3. I "get" that there's a younger generation of movie-people for whom Sam Raimi has only ever been "the guy who made "Spider-Man" and also some horror movies before that;" (which is tragic, btw) so I "get" that that's where some of the split on these two series is coming from - at the time, Raimi's "Spider-Man" was the biggest thing that had ever happened to film geekdom: Hiring a guy who was perennially on the "movie nerd wish-list" for every genre property but would NEVER actually land one was a neutron-bomb for us; which is pretty-much why people might as well be speaking Klingon when they tell me the original films were "bad" because of the slapstick, the crazy-zooms, the "campy-evil" Goblin, the retro-horror tone-shifts, various cameos by actors and cars, Maguire playing (personality-wise) a straight-up lift of 60s Peter Parker... I mean, that's the stuff we showed up hoping for at the time! And before anyone asks, yes, if Mark Webb HAD a singular/auteurist style of his own (he doesn't appear to, which is not necessarily a negative) I'd have liked to see him bring it.

4. Believe it or not, I choose the stuff I review mainly based on whatever is most relevant/newsworthy at the time; and form my opinions based on... well, my opinions; as opposed to carrying out some kind of grand, five-steps-ahead supervillain conspiracy to affect production decisions and manipulate the results of theoretical future movies. To be more specific; no, I am not under the illusions of carrying out a Machiavellian plot to "make" this movie fail so Spider-Man can possibly turn up in "Avengers 3" ten years from now.

5. I have no opinion about the Fantastic Four reboot right now because all anyone knows is that the director of "Chronicle" is doing it, which is a good start. Unlike Spider-Man, this reboot makes a certain amount of sense (first two movies were terrible and the second one was a huge flop) apart from the rights-issues stuff, and it doesn't involve an irritating web of studio manhandling and backstabbing; so right now it's kind of a neutral prospect as far as I'm concerned.

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Escape To The Movies: "Ice Age: Continental Drift"

Kinda hard to care.

"Intermission" talks lazy continuity.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Ice Age: Continental Drift

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Letterman Shitstorm

It's 6am on this coast, I've been repairing old video games and recording audio all night, time to crash, etc., but I wanted to have something about this up since a lot of you are probably waking up to the news:

During an interview with Anne Hathaway on The Late Show last night, David Letterman may or may not have blurted out a major, MAJOR, MAJOR spoiler for the "The Dark Knight Rises."

I'm not going to post the clip, a link to the clip or information on where/how you can get it. I will say that, for what it's worth, Letterman immediately started walking it back as a "joke;" but Hathaway's reaction/expression went from "I have momentarily left my physical body" to "someone offstage has just dropped their pants" to "oh my god Christopher Nolan is going to have me WACKED on the way back to my limo."

Make of that what you will. People HAVE seen the movie so the spoilers ARE now in the wind; supposedly, Christopher Nolan threw some kind of fit at a press event when one of the questioneers asked a spoiler-y question while everything was rolling.

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Raimi Returns With "Oz"

What I like most about this trailer for Sam Raimi's "Oz: The Great & Powerful" (a prequel/origin-story with James Franco as the Kansas con-artist/magician who ultimately becomes That Man Behind The Curtain) - apart from the indications that they're going to use a color/aspect-ratio metamorphosis for the Earth/Oz transitions a'la the MGM film's black-and-white to color transition - is the way that, despite the obvious visual connections being made to the Judy Garland version and the Disney live-action-fantasy "house style" vibe; the direction, composition, tone and especially the design of some of the creatures all immediately identify that we are indeed still getting a Sam Raimi movie...



I especially LOVE that last "stinger" shot. Apart from being another instant "from the director of Evil Dead" moment, it's a PERFECT use of shared pop-cultural iconography: Everyone in the audience who understands that this is a "Wizard of Oz" prequel instantly understands that what we're seeing is the pre-reveal (maybe even the "birth?") of one of cinema's greatest villains... The Wicked Witch of The West. In this version, all three(?) of the Oz Witches apparently start out good/beautiful, so one assumes at some point the Western one will be going green n' mean - maybe at the finale? Or as a sequel-tease?

Wanna get really psyched? Think back to The Wicked Witch in that original movie, THEN think back on how Raimi traditionally handles/depicts witch/crone creatures in his films. Awesomeness potential: HIGH.

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It Lives

As part of moving into the new place, I've been looting my parents' house for old stuff I can still use. One discovery turned out to be my original NES and collection of games; which tonight underwent a thorough disassembling, cleaning with rubbing-alcohol (system and carts) and reassembling.

The entire process was tweeted game by game (sorry, people who don't like tweetspam, I was excited is all.) and this is my favorite photo I took of the process - you can't quite see it in this image, but the NES is on a shelf below the Wii and XBox; connected via the HDTV's inexplicable-yet-welcome coax input.

I still haven't fully furnished the place - money is kinda tight right now, to be honest - but I'll be springing for some kind of plug-extender so I can properly get the oldschool big-ass AC adaptor into my surge-protector (the NES was plugged into another, not-always-convenient outlet for this test run.

After that? Let the word go out to every sold, pawned, yard-sale'd, lost and forgotten NES cartridge on the North Shore: I am coming for you, and you WILL live again!

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Aronofsky's "Noah" Will (Probably) Cause Our Next Big Bible-Movie Shitstorm

Darren Aronofsky has tweeted the first set pic of construction for his upcoming film "Noah," he of Ark-building fame. If completed on schedule, it's on-track to be the first of a potential wave of Biblical epics - elsewhere, Steven Spielberg is circling an update of "The Ten Commandments."

I'm kind of psyched about the prospects of this.

From a strictly literary perspective, Bible Stories are among those rare cases were visually/narratively bizzare material also happens to be material that a plurality of the mainstream audience is not only familiar with but takes as... well, gospel, for lack of a better word. It's the only genre where you can pack the screen with devils, demons, flaming swords and guys splitting oceans with magic staffs and still sell tickets to people who'd never turn out for, say, "Lord of The Rings." But Aronofsky's plans for "Noah" look to push that to acceptance to the breaking point...

The version of Noah's Ark that most present-day religious people (it's my understanding that despite being part of the "Old" Testament, Noah's Ark is more "popular" in a retelling sense among Christians than Jews, though Jewish readers are enthusiastically welcome to correct me on that) are familiar with is highly sanitized, coming from (comparitively, given that the events described are - literally - pre-historic) recent translations that specifically worked to tone-down the more "mythological-sounding" elements from Genesis (giants, monsters, dragons, etc) and other pre-Exodus Biblical texts. The meat of the story is always the same - the world has become hopelessly corrupt, God aims to wipe out said corruption with an apocalyptic flood, Noah is warned by God and tasked with building a massive ship that will whether the storm - allowing Noah, his family and a cargo of mated-pairs of every known animal to survive and repopulate the planet. Because strikingly-similar "flood stories" occur in hundreds of other disparate religions, the story is a fixture of pantheist/monomyth theories as well.

In most modern tellings, the "corruption" the invites the flood is just the traditional post-Exodus understanding of sin; but as Noah's adventures pre-date Exodus by millenia, you'll be unsurprised to learn that the pre-cleanup versions (there's never just one with stuff this ancient) were a little more... "complicated:" Mankind's corruption ("mankind," incidentally, being a race of long-lived superhuman's having descended directly from Adam and Eve in some variations) was incited by a sect of Angels called Watchers (yes, "the guys from Dogma") who migrated to Earth in order to seduce human women. The children of these unions were giants (or sometimes just really, really bad guys) called Nephilim, and it was the havoc they caused (and other sundry violations caused by forbidden knowledge given to man by the meddling Angels) that despoiled the Earth and necessitated the flood. Depending on which version you consult, figures like Enoch, Gog and even Lucifer turn up.

It's this more mythic, creature-featuring and (with no offense meant to my religious readers) "high fantasy"-flavored version that allegedly informs Aronofsky's take on the material. While much of it is being kept under wraps for now, it is known that The Watchers are onhand, and that the depiction of them and other Angels is described in-line with their "original" conception; i.e. less "guys with wings" and more "bio-mechanical horrors with multiple eyes, wings, limbs, etc."

How will religiously-devout moviegoers respond to a Bible Movie that's less Cecil B. DeMille and more Guillermo Del Toro? We'll see...

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Oh, Baby!

Via ShockTillYouDrop

"Killer Baby" movies are a popular monster/horror subgenre for an obvious reason: It's the ultimate extreme of both the "deceptively-harmless-looking-killer" conceit and the "evil-perversion-of-goodness" conceit. We're biologically/evolutionarily hardwired to respond viscerally to babies - that jolting chill up your spine when a baby cries somewhere? That's your ancient, ancient instinct telling you "YOUNG ONES IN PERIL! PROTECT THE FUTURE OF THE PACK!" - and Killer Baby movies exploit that.

The best one is still Larry Cohen's seminal "It's Alive" (the original, Cohen's own well-meaning remake kinda sucks) but there've been plenty since. To my recollection, though, Tara Robinson's upcoming "After Birth" is either the first or the first in a long time to come from a female filmmaker. In this variation, a homeless woman is impregnated by an evil force and must confront the killer creature she gives birth to. If nothing else, it has TWO of the best ad-copy lines I expect to see this year...



"Every Child Is A Gift From God... EXCEPT ONE!"

"For One Girl... Pro-Life... Is A DEATH SENTENCE!"

THAT, friends, is how you sell me a Killer Baby Movie. Keeping an eye on this one.

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Big Picture: "Batman Revisited - Part III"

"Batman Forever" this week.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Batman Revisited, Part 3

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