Film Friday: Superman v. Batman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

I finally got the chance to see Superman v. Batman. Yee haw. What a ride... to nowhere.

“Plot”

Ok. This has some twists and turns, so take notes if you need to. The guy who founded Facebook wants to kill Superman because somethingsomething God. Wonder Woman is in the movie. Facebook tricks Ben Affleck into fighting Superman but he loses, so Facebook sends a generic blobby muscle creature to do it. Superman, Affleck and Wonder Woman kill it, and Superman fakes his death.

Got it? Don’t worry if you don’t, you’ll have about an hour long pointless fight scene you can use as time to think about it. You might want to bring a book.

Who's A Bad Boy?

So what can I say? DC sure knows how not to put together a movie. To sum up this stink-burger, it is fake liberal “drama” randomly sprinkled between tremendous sound and fury signifying nothing.

Here’s the thing. The back half of the movie is designed for idiots who like shiny lights. The front half of the movie needs to offer some explanation for the back half, or people complain. So the front half needed to figure out why Batman and Superman would fight. The answer, originally offered, comes from modern liberalism. Modern liberals are conflicted cowards (except when attacking people “who deserve it”), ergo they think that all heroes must be conflicted types who see the faces of the people “they killed” when they sleep. And naturally, "they killed" anyone they didn't save.

Indeed, the story starts with the public turning against Superman because people died whenever he tried to save the planet. Ergo, Superman is the menace... not the thing that would have killed everyone. That makes no sense except to snowflakes, but Hollywood is packed with snowflakes and “strong” women... the greatest snowflakes of them all.

So Superman is bad.

Now we need to hate Batman, so he brands a couple child molesters and rapists and that shows that vigilantes are just sadistic criminals who target other criminals, making them worse than the people they stop... the standard Hollywood view. “No one is above the law, unless it’s for the right reasons, and stopping criminals is not the right reason!”

So Batman is bad.

Now we just... huh. Crap. This explanation didn’t get us to where we need to be. //scratches head Wait! I know! Lex Facebook send nastygrams to Batman and Superman making them think... You know what? Let’s just cut to the fighting.

There were only two things that interested me in this film. The first was that the bad Senator who tries to make Superman a villain is a Democrat from Kentucky. Why a Democrat? Democrats are never bad. Hmm. Then it hit me. This was Affleck’s dig at his estranged wife, Jennifer Garner, a Democrat from Kentucky. LOL! Niiiiiice!

The other thing is this. The initial discussion of how the public could come to hate Superman offered a promising social commentary on modern cynicism. The problem was, it never fleshed it out. To do this, the film should have been smaller with Superman and Batman in closer contact and coming to dislike the other. The story should be told through assistants who represent the two positions. The cynicism needs to grow: cynical logic being used... increasingly self-aggrandizing armchair quarterbacking... the rise of conspiracy theories believed through confirmation bias and growing paranoia... a growing acceptance of extreme solutions and positions, leading to violence... and then the arrival of opportunism – journalists first, then academics, comedians and finally politicians. Team Batman falls for this, as does the vocal public. Team Superman understands genuine goodness, real logic, actual facts, and the importance of good faith. The fight starts until they remind Batman that the majority of the public isn't this stupid and doesn't deserve to be lumped with the sh*tbirds.

Unfortunately, that would make for a strong, emotional film... not a shiny stupid one. Hollywood also doesn't understand what Superman needs to understand; good faith, logic and lack of cynicism are like a foreign language to them. So Facebook’s plan it is!

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Captain America: Civil War (2016)

With the Brexit, I thought it would be a good time to review Captain America: Civil War. Oy vey. Where to being? How’s this: I really disliked this film.

Let me start by saying that I’m not the biggest fan of most comic book movies. Many lack depth and interesting characters, and they try to hide this by substituting tired recycled plot points, pathetic teenage-level family “issues,” and a CGI frosting that lasts so long you want to claw your way out of the theater exit to escape.

That said, there have been definite instances where these films have been done right. These are films that involve clever new plot twists, genuine characters with real relationships, and typically a strong sense of humor. The Avengers, like the Iron Man movies and the X-Men films, have generally fallen into this category. DC films, the putrid Fantastic Four and the Hulk movies have generally fallen into the other category.

During Captain America: Civil War, there is a fight at an airport in Germany where the two competing camps of Avengers do battle. Iron Man and his team have come to capture Captain America and his team. The fight is fun to watch. It’s surprising. It’s really funny at times. It highlights the genuine relationships between the characters. And it lets the actors flex the character muscles we have come to love.

The rest of the movie is a dark, depressing pile of sh*t that made me want to walk out.

Plot

Turn down the lights and suck the color rods from your eyes, because this is one of those films done in a brown and dark blue pallet. I thought we were rid of that crap, but apparently not. The film begins with a fight you can’t watch because it’s all shaky cam. Apparently, some guy decides to blow up some disease center in Africa (as if) so he can steal a killer virus. But his real plan seems to be to get captured and blow up Captain America. At the time, this makes sense, but it won’t if you think about it later.

Indeed, let me give you the plot in a nutshell. Some guy’s father was killed off-screen in Age of Ultron. Guy decides to blow things up, in the hopes that the Avengers will kill innocent people in the process, which will lead the UN to decide to force the Avengers to accept evil bosses, which will result in the Avengers splitting into two camps who will then fight to the death after Captain America decides to save his frenemie Bucky the Winter Soldier while Iron Man decides to try to kill him. Why go this Rube Goldberg way? Because no one but an Avenger can kill an Avenger.

See any holes in that one? How about every single thought.

Anyways, the guy blows stuff up, the UN is given power over the Avengers, there’s some fake talk about what is right, and Captain America and Iron Man split. The rest of the movie is a chase scene as Iron Man hunts down Captain America’s team and makes them all look sad in prison while we are constantly lectured about all the people who died that the Avengers didn’t care about.

The whole thing ends up in a CGI ice cave as we learn that the whole plot was a red herring just to make the Avengers fight. Yeah, ok.

Why I Really Disliked This Film

This movie is visually and spiritually dark. It is a nine hour two-hour-thirty-minute finger wag in your face stupidly accusing the heroes you have come to like of being cold-blooded murders. Not one single character throughout this film ever points out the millions of lives they’ve saved. Not one character outside the Avengers ever supports them at any point in this film. Not one single character ever gives a speech telling you why it is important that the Avengers be allowed to save people’s lives without first having to clear every sh*t they take with the UN. Even after the UN bureaucrats start imposing Nazi-like surveillance, sanctioning torture, and locking up the Avengers for disobedience no one suggests that they are wrong.

Only Captain America stands against them (with a couple blind followers) and all he does is whine about how bad he feels for everyone he’s killed.

Other than that happiness, the film is a depressing CGI assault of buildings being blown up by terrorist bombs or Avenger mistakes. The UN guys are monsters. The themes we run into over and over are “you killed my family and you don’t even know who they were!”... saw that a dozen times. Or you have Avengers admitting that they can’t control themselves. Or you have Bucky and Captain America talking about how bad things have gotten. Or you have Iron Man dealing with the death of his mother and father, which it turns out is a secret Captain America kept from Stark. You have Iron Man losing Pepper. Cap dealing with the death of Peggy Carter. The Black Panther dealing with the death of his father. How about Don Cheadle being paralyzed? Not a moment of this film, other than the airport, is light-hearted. It is an unrelenting downer trafficking in death, destruction and regret.

What’s worse, it’s all stolen! The film style was taken from Jason Bourne, as were the locations... all of them. The public turning against superheroes for the deaths they cause without thinking about the lives they save is so worn it should be considered abuse to use it. So is the weapon’s lab in the ice cave. Seen the prison too. Seen the vet recovering from being crippled. Seen the dead mentor, the “you killed my parents!,” the “you didn’t even care” and all the other “conflicts” too. Nothing in this film felt original. Nor did it feel organic.

A lot of people compared this film to Batman v. Superman, but that’s actually not the right comparison. This film is not Batman v. Superman... it’s Watchmen. This is a film about a group of corrupted superheroes who do the corrupt government’s bidding and find themselves banned because they scare people and now live in a dark cynical world.

Between this, the angry Fantastic Four and the trend toward “adult” (read: 30 year old man-child) storylies, this all bodes poorly for Marvel, which has seems intent on ending a golden age premised on films built around the interactions of fun, likeable characters as they fight villains who are destined to lose.

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Film Friday: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

I’m back! I admit the ads for this one intrigued me. This movie was sold as a tongue-in-cheek knock-off of James Bond with traces of Vin Diesel’s XXX and Samuel L. Jackson as the villain. What could go wrong with that? Well, what I got instead was a British white trash rip-off of Men in Black without the aliens.

Plot

The story opens with a spy being killed and another (Colin Firth as agent Galahad) breaking the news to his wife and young son. Firth works for a privately run “Secret Service” based out of a tailor shop in London, with a training base in the same castle used by Professor Xavier to train the X-Men. Their agents all wear uptight British-cut suits and old-lady glasses and carry umbrellas. They are essentially caricatures of British “gentlemen.” And they use a variety of gadgets, each of which you’ve seen in James Bond movies.

As an aside, I’m sure that the use of these gadgets and a handful of scenes taken from Bond movies will be described as “an homage,” but they really aren’t used in any creative way to suggest anything other than pilferage.

Anyways, the son’s name is Eggsy. Flash forward. Eggsy is now firmly ensconced British white trash. He can’t speak the English language in any recognizable way. His mother is a welfare whore. He drinks, fights in bars and steals cars. The pride of modern Britain. Firth, who thinks he owes Eggsy because of what his father did, bails Eggsy out of jail and enters him in the Kingsman training program, where he naturally doesn’t fit in with the other snooty trainees. Insert obligatory “bad rich guys mock Eggsy and heroine steps up to defend him” scene.

Meanwhile, in the plot: Samuel L. Jackson, who plays a lispy billionaire who wants to save the world by destroying it, starts kidnapping or co-opting famous people and celebrities. Firth investigates and immediately narrows his suspect list to Jackson because Jackson is the only possible suspect. As he and Jackson then trade uninspired and obvious innuendo telling the other they know what the other is, Eggsy goes through his training montage in a series of scenes you’ve seen in dozens of other films. Meanwhile, Firth acts like he’s doing something. Finally, Eggsy soon teaches us that white trash is tougher than effete rich Brits.

Yawn

//swills beer, knifes someone Oy! This movies sucks! It’s boring and predictable. It’s a pure rip off through and through. And it’s annoying to watch. There isn’t a single moment in this film which is surprising. There are a few things that are supposed to surprise us, like Jackson being a villain who faints at the sight of blood, but that’s a minor idea which the writer wrongly thinks is strong enough to carry the film.

The plot itself is so worn that it’s threadbare. How many times have you seen the young man who is brought into a plot by a friend of his dead father? How many times have you see a training plot that involves the hero start out as the student most likely to fail out, who gets picked on by the rich white males everyone thinks are the best but is defended by the hot chickie co-star, who then shows up the rich white males (who are secret cowards) while proving his natural talent makes him the best, only to decide to quit over some hidden pain, only to come back when his mentor gets killed and everyone is cool letting him lead the team to a victory at the end of the movie. Nope, never seen that before.

Jackson plays an insane villain. Been there, done that a million times. The hot chick turns out to be just as good as the hero and they hook up. Been there, done that too. The boss double-crosses the hero because he secretly works for the villain. Check. There’s a final fight at the villain’s lair that plays out by the numbers. Check. The hero wins because the villain does something stupid which lets him overcome an entire army of henchmen. Check. Yawn.

You get the point.

This movie is Men in Black with the British trash kid in the Will Smith role and Colin Firth in the Tommy Lee Jones role. Unfortunately, whereas that movie thrived on Smith’s fish out of water learning to fit in role and the great chemistry between Smith and Jones, this film fails miserably on both counts. Trash and Firth have zero chemistry. It’s like watching two dead fish lying side by side when they interact. And whereas Smith was endearing in how he learned that the world was bigger than he thought, Trash spends his time showing us that he’s got bigger balls than the rest of the f**ing world! Oy! It’s annoying.

And speaking of annoying, this movie’s politics suck. At first, you wonder if the film might not be conservative because the villain is an environmentalist who wants to kill humanity to save the earth. That sounds like a conservative criticism, but I think the writer just thought they were being “outrageous” in picking an “impossible” villain. The rest of the movie has very different politics. At one point, you get to watch the members of a racist white American church kill each other and you’re supposed to revel in seeing Firth kill them all off. The rich white male candidates are shown to be deceitful, shameful cowards who scream about who they know, whereas the white trash boy is made the hero without reforming any of his nasty traits. Rich = effete. White trash = pure. Ditto on the rich elites who sign up voluntarily with Jackson’s plan to kill off the rest of humanity. There are anti-Thatcher references, anti-police statements, anti-Americanism, and so on.

This film felt to me like it was written by someone from a British low-class community who wanted to make an over-the-top attack on the people who “is f**in keepin me down oy!”, but knew to throw in a handful of Hollywood liberalisms to get it made. And what they did was take a plot they’d seen a million times and fill it with anything they could steal from other movies. Everything – the gadgets, the characters, the locations, the scenes, the plot points, the overall plot itself, etc. – is stolen from some other movie. It’s boring, derivative and insulting.

This one sucked.

Thoughts?

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Summer of Marvel: Iron Man 2 (2010)

What can I say about Iron Man 2? I liked it. Hmm. Now what am I going to talk about for the rest of the column?

Plot

Some dude in Russia, Anton Vanko, sees the disclosure on the news that Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is Iron Man. He starts building his own arc reactor, which is the thing that powers the Iron Man suit, so he can prove that Iron Man isn’t invincible.

Back in the US, Stark grows despondent and reckless when he realizes that he is dying because the reactor in his suit is poisoning him. He hands his massive company over to his assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), and he starts having wild parties and doing stupid(er) things. He even decides to compete in the Monaco Grand Prix. During that race, however, he gets attacked by Vanko. Stark defeats Vanko, but Vanko attracts the attention of Stark’s rival Justin Hammer, who breaks Vanko out of jail so he can build a line of armored suits for his company.

In the meantime, Stark gets drunk and angers everyone at a party he throws. He needs to be subdued by Air Force Lt. Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), who confiscates an armored suit for the government; so far, Stark has refused to part with them. At the same time, Stark learns that his new assistant is really Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and he meets Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) of SHIELD, who claims Stark’s father was a member of SHIELD and wants him to join too.

Soon, Stark cures the problem of the arc reactor poisoning him. He then learns that Hammer has created heavily armed drones he intends to show off for the government, but Vanko arrives and they fight to end the movie.

Why I Liked This Movie

Hmm. Ok, stick with me. By and large, I’ve found that I like sequels better than originals in the “franchise” genre, i.e. the genre where “properties” are put on film with the hope of being able to milk an existing fan base through three or four movies and some spin-offs. The reason is simple. The first film in every franchise series is invariably an origin story, especially in the comic book universe, and origin stories suck. It’s in the sequel that the writers normally first get the chance to offer real stories.

Iron Man 2 is not an origin story. The writers don’t waste time trying to explain who Tony Stark is or how he ended up in the suit. Instead, they get to focus on the next step in the story. That gives this film an instant boost because it adds the element of the unknown because the story isn’t following a tired formula that everyone follows. This is unchartered water.

What’s more, the Marvel universe is much more prone to interesting movies than the regular comic book fare because Marvel likes to delve into the heroes in the story and what makes them tick. That shifts a significant portion of the screen time from seeing useless CGI punches being tossed to seeing the writers make the characters interact. The end result of that is that the characters tend to be much more interesting, the dialog is less transactional (“I will stop you now”) and more about who these people are and how they interact, and you end up caring more for the characters.

Trust me, nothing spells “soul death” like watching Superman trade punches with another cardboard villain who can’t be harmed physically for forty f*cking minutes!!! Arggg! Fortunately, you will never find that in Marvel films (excluding the Hulk crapfests): “Hulk smash pixels until you slit your wrists with popcorn bucket!”

Anyways, Iron Man 2 is a movie I enjoyed for these reasons. It is populated by real characters with different personalities and different goals whose interactions are often endearing or humorous. There were few fight scene to bore me, none were all that long, and none of them felt really pointless. The actors were perfect too.

Paltrow is an excellent foil for Downey Jr. Cheadle evokes a lot of sympathy because you know he’s a good guy and he’s being held back by Downey’s irresponsibility. Johansson is hot... and is in this movie. Rockwell is slimy as Hammer and you really despise him. Even Vanko, who is rather clichéd, is enough of a brooding presence that you at least get a sense of menace whenever he is on screen – too often villains just prance around and act melodramatically; not so here.

Ultimately though, the guy who sells this movie is Downey Jr. Stark comes across as simultaneously inspiring and annoying as hell. You want to punch the guy. He’s such a genius with such a potential to save the world, and yet he acts like a spoiled child who is more interested in fart jokes than achieving his potential. THAT SAID, HOWEVER, (here is the key), he’s not a slacker. Stark is an ass and an annoyance, but he’s also a brilliant scientist with a strong sense of responsibility. He works hard. He bathes. He does take his responsibilities seriously... too seriously at times actually. Nothing about him is the pathetic modern slacker that these films jam into the hero roles (cough cough Green Lantern, Green Hornet, etc.). He really is a hero.

Unfortunately, he’s also a bit of a control freak in the worst possible sense. Indeed, Stark doesn’t trust anyone else to handle the suit and he is rather fascist in his outlook, thinking that he can impose order on the world to make it a perfect place.

All of this makes him a genuine contradiction and easily the most complex and unpredictable character ever written in the comic book film world... and Downey Jr. is 100% believable as him. In fact, thinking about it, I can’t imagine another actor who could handle this role. Most would try to hero-him-up and give him a secret pain which is keeping him from being perfect. Some would slacker him down into Van Wilder. Others simply would never present themselves as having a dark, a-hole side. And others would make him into manic depressive Batman who wants the world to die so its misery ends.

Only Downey Jr. can balance the good with the bad, the responsibility with the obnoxiousness, the self-pity with the nobility, and give us this unique Tony Stark. Only Downey Jr. revels in the complexity and doesn’t try to make Stark into a one-note antihero.

That is why I like this film.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

A couple weeks ago, I reviewed Blue Thunder. I noted that Blue Thunder was a truly stupid film, but you didn't care because it was fun. Well, in 2014, Marvel put out a sequel to the first Captain America movie. This was called Captain America: The Winter Soldier and, like Blue Thunder, Captain America: TWS was stupid but quite enjoyable.

Plot

For being a superhero movie, Captain America: TWS has a surprisingly complex and interesting plot. The story starts when Samuel L. Jackson (Samuel L. Jackson) gets attacked by the Washington D.C. police for DWB. But these aren’t real cops. No. They are a private army under the control of a guy in body armor who is an unbelievable (i.e. not credible) badasp. Well, Mr. Jackson refuses to die, and he and his car KITT fight back. After wasting most of the bad guys, Mr. Jackson seems to escape but has suffered major wounds.

Mr. Jackson now travels to the lousy apartment of Captain America (Chris Evans), who has befriended a random black dude with post traumatic stress syndrome. Jackson tells the Captain that his secret organization, S.H.I.E.L.D. is full of people he doesn’t trust and he asks the Captain to somethingsomething with a data stick.

Soon, Jackson dies and Condor (Robert Red-Ford) takes over the agency. When this happens, the Captain discovers that some sizable percentage of S.H.I.E.L.D., including all the top managers, are actually bad guys. They decide to hunt him down because they realize he will never help them. Soon the good Captain is on the run with Scarlett Johansson (if that is her real name).

As they run, they are chased by this mystery figure who is “the Winter Soldier” (John Kerry). It turns out that through some vague and unexplained process, the Winter Solider is really Bucky, Captain America’s sidekick from the 1940s. He’s been brainwashed by the bad guys and now fights for them with his memory erased.

Anyhoo, they race to an old S.H.I.E.L.D. base that looks like it was abandoned at the end of WWII and they discover a supercomputer made of old sticks and bits of string. Inside this computer, someone preserved the consciousness of supervillain Armin Zola. They also discover that Hydra has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. to the point of controlling it entirely except for Samuel L. Of course, Samuel L. isn’t really dead because you can’t kill Mr. Jackson.

Naturally, this means that the Captain must sneak back into S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ and destroy their latest weapons before they can be used to conquer the planet. Then the CGI machine gets turned on until the movie ends.

Stupid, But Fun

Wow is this film stupid. No part of it makes sense. How in the world can Hydra infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. for decades and no one knows? If everyone thinks the Captain is a bad guy, why not call in the other Avengers to help catch him? It’s not like anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. can do it on their own. There is absolutely no reason for the inclusion in the film of Bucky as The Winter Soldier, nor does it make sense that Hydra waited this long to use him. Did they expect that one day the Captain would be thawed out?

You know what? I don’t even want to think about it. This movie is stupid and you have to ignore a LOT for it to work.

That said, however, the film does work. And what makes it work is similar to what made Blue Thunder work despite all the silliness. In Captain America: TWS, just as in Blue Thunder, you overlook the plot holes because the film keeps you too entertained to worry about it. It does that by giving you likable characters, clever dialog that engages your mind once in a while, little surprises throughout, and they do an excellent job presenting the action scenes.

Taking the action scenes first, what this film does which is so rare in superhero films today is that it uses short fight scenes, which are spread throughout the plot. By comparison, most action films these days turn on the old CGI machine and let the “action” run for twenty to thirty minutes at a time. That’s far too long for anyone except the most diehard nerd to care about. So by keeping the action scenes shorter, this film never causes its audience to zone out.

Moreover, the action scenes have two additional things going for them in Captain America: TWS. First, since you like the characters and care about them, you actually do care how the fights end. It’s the rare superhero film where I can say that’s true. When the Green Whogivesashit is fighting the big stinky fart monster, it’s impossible to care about the outcome. Either Ryan Reynolds wins and we need to endure a sequel or the fart monster wins and... well, somethingsomething. In this instance, the fights have meaning because we think Mr. Jackson was killed and we don’t want to see other people we like get killed.

Further, the fight scenes here have some suspense. We don’t know who will win each fight, nor do we know the consequences of winning or losing. That makes these fights more interesting. By comparison, in the circle jerk known as The Man of Steel you watch two guys who cannot even be scratched punch it out for an hour as they knock holes in buildings. Boooooring.

This film also does something else clever: it gives you constant little surprises. Indeed, throughout this film, almost every significant scene results in some revelation that adds to the plot. Few other superhero films do that. Most consider the generic twists (i.e. discovery of superpowers, when average loser morphs into supervillain, the fake victory of the bad guy, the discovery of the secret weapon/secret villain) to be enough. But they don’t feed you little things to keep the story interesting between those well-worn points. This film does. It was also packed with clever little moments in the dialog that play the cultural reference game, which is something people really like because it connects the film to their lives.

Finally, this film works because you really like the characters. Captain America is a dull character, but Evans plays him in a way that makes him endearing. Scarlett Johansson plays the hooker with the heart of gold very convincingly and Anthony Mackie plays the cool best friend you wish you had. Both are traditionally characters with strong appeal. And Samuel L. Jackson plays Motherf*cking Samuel L. Jackson, who is always compelling. It’s hard not to like these people and they pull you into their plight as they struggle to land the plot in a good way.

Once again, there is a lesson here. The lesson is that you don’t even need a super smart film to make a good film. All you really need is to do the things that good story-telling normally requires: put engaging characters on the screen and let them fight for stakes that interest the audience. That’s a pretty low standard. So why can’t more films, especially superhero films, at least achieve that bar?

Thoughts?

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The Shadow (1994) v. The Phantom (1996)

I want to like The Shadow. I also want to like The Phantom. But I can’t. I don’t dislike them per se, they just disappoint me. They are indifferently made, squandered potential.

The Shadow is the story of Lamont Cranston (Alex Baldwin). Cranston set himself up as a brutal warlord in Tibet after the First World War. He is abducted by a holy man who wants to train him to become a force for good. This holy man trains Cranston for seven years in the power of hypnosis. Cranston then returns to New York City, where he lives as a wealthy playboy. What no one knows, is that Cranston is secretly “the Shadow,” a crime fighting superhero of sorts who has the ability to seem to vanish.

Cranston will be challenged by Shiwan Khan, another student of the holy man, who possesses even greater powers. Khan is, of course, the last descendant of Genghis Khan and has plans for world domination. Those plans include kidnapping the father (Ian McKellen) of Cranston’s fiancée so that he will build an atomic bomb Khan will detonate in New York City for reasons not well explained.

The Phantom, by comparison, is the story of Kit Walker (Billy Zane). Walker is a superhero called “the Phantom,” who lives on Bengalla Island. “The Phantom” is a position passed down from father to son and Walker is the 21st Phantom to hold the title. They apparently fight pirates. In this case, Walker finds himself fighting a mercenary named Quill (James Remar), who is a member of something called the Sengh Brotherhood (even though he’s white), and he’s searching for the Skulls of Touganda, which give the owner of the skulls a tremendous power which looks suspiciously like a laser.

Walker returns to New York City where he meets his ex-girlfriend, who happens to be a journalist. She’s investigating evil businessman Xander Drax (Treat Williams). Drax, of course, is the one really after the Skulls. He kidnaps the ex-girlfriend and takes her to Begalla Island, where Walker chases Drax and his men through the jungle until their final confrontation. And there are pirates.

Yawn

The potential of these two films is really rather high. The 1930’s is a cool period and can make for an excellent setting. Look at films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Hudsucker Proxy as prime examples where the period itself drives much of the film and pulls you into the film. Superhero films often rock as well. Noir films are great too. So a film noir, superhero film set in the 1930’s should have major potential. But neither film comes close to exploiting that potential.

The first problem that both films succumb to is that neither ever makes you feel like you’re in the 1930’s. Raiders, Hudsucker and L.A. Confidential all transported you to the era in which those films took place by immersing you in the eras. The clothes, the buildings, the cars and all the little props all fit the era. The eras were meticulously researched and they wanted you to know that.

The Shadow and The Phantom, on the other hand, feel like the 1930’s era is just a veneer. For starters, neither does much more than show you a couple sets. They fill the sets with the same old cars you see every time they make a film like this. And even then, they are shown in such a tight angle that you never see more than a couple vehicles. The main characters are given fancy 1930’s clothes, but there’s no variety of costumes. The result is that unlike the better films where you get a glimpse into an entire world, here it feels like you are seeing a small soundstage that includes only a few props from the era. There is no sense that any of this is real.

Moreover, the characters are era clichés. Both of these films are populated with only a handful of standard characters you see in every 1930’s - 1950’s period piece: the taxi driver, the journalist girlfriend, the chief of police, the supposed playboy who is really a superhero, and the evil business mogul. These are the characters you’ve seen time and again in every period piece set in the 1930’s – 1950’s, they are in every comic book of the era. You see nothing else. Indeed, neither The Shadow nor The Phantom ever go beyond and show you people you haven’t seen before.

The bigger problem with these films, however, is that their plots aren’t very tight. Specifically, they are packed with nonsense and filler. Consider this. How does an American make himself a warlord in Tibet after the First World War, which wasn’t even fought in Tibet. Why would a holy man pick a brutal drug addicted warlord to make into a hero? Why send him to New York City after training him? What a coincidence that Lamont just happens to be dating the daughter of an atomic scientist who also happens to be telepathic. Why does Khan want to blow up New York City anyway? None of these things hang together. They feel like ideas tossed in to make the film interesting rather than legitimate parts of the plot.

At the same time, The Phantom is full of coincidences and its premise is frankly stupid. In an age when the forces of darkness were the Nazis or the communists, when the Japanese were raping Nanking, “the Phantom” fights generic pirates near some nonexistent island. Oddly, “the Phantom” is the 21st in a long line of father-son teams, which means they’ve been doing this longer than America was even a country, yet the film and the character are both American-centric. The story moves back and forth between New York and the island for no believable reason except that the filmmakers wanted to show the Phantom in New York and wanted to finish in the jungle. Even worse, this film gives off the distinct feel that they simply took the “cool” visual elements from Raiders and just tossed them all together into a meaningless jumble.

Ultimately, I find both films to be very frustrating. Either easily could have been the next Raiders of the Lost Ark, but both cut so many corners and were made so indifferently that it just wasn’t possible. These films are all about the veneer and they completely lack substance. That is frustrating.

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Is Superman v. Batman Impossible To Write?

Let's discuss an interesting article from Scriptshadow which claims Warner Brothers is making a mistake trying to do Batman v. Superman. It wasn’t that the author (Carson) didn’t think the movie would make money, but he thought it was an impossible film to write and that it would likely “kill the Golden Goose” and could leave both franchises “catastrophically injured.” Interesting.

Carson makes some really good points and I absolutely respect his analysis, but I think there are solutions to each. Let’s see what you think. Here are his reasons why this film is impossible to write and my workarounds:

● It’s a gimmick. This movie is a gimmick. It’s being done for all the wrong reasons. Rather than telling a good story, this is “fan-fiction” meant to answer the “geek question”: “who would win?” Says Carson, that automatically wipes out any chance to have an interesting script. Basically, rather than having a wide open script, you end up with a script which is geared toward setting up the reason these two would fight and then pushing everything toward that fight. That will create an unnatural feeling story because whatever happens, you know it’s been written to have only one solution.

o My solution: A good writer can easily hide the unnatural parts of the story or make them feel natural. And if people expect a fight, then play with their expectations. Personally, I think the best solution is to move the fight to the opening of the film. That gets it out of the way and disarms the expectation. Then you can fill the middle of the film however you want because there is no need to build to a second fight. Then you finish with a surprise second fight.

● Tone Mixing. Superman and Batman come from different worlds with very different feels. Batman’s world is darker, more cynical and more gritty. Superman’s world is more fantastic, being a world of superpowers and aliens, and he's more idealistic and more sentimental. Those two worlds don't mix.

o My solution: This is a great point, and this one bothers me too. In Superman’s world, he has largely cleaned up crime except for the super villains. Batman, on the other hand, lives in a sewer. Having them exist in the same world makes Superman out as a lie because he’s cleaned up Metropolis of even petty crime, yet he lets Gotham rot. Still, I have a solution: set the film in the 1950s. If this film takes place in 1957, then the audience will focus on your recreation of 1957 rather than whether the tone of the city is Gotham or Metropolis. And if Superman is FOB (fresh off the boat), then he hasn't had the chance yet to clean up the world, so him ignoring Gotham is forgivable. Thus, he and Batman can happily co-exist in a city that is halfway between Gotham and halfway between Metropolis but isn't really either yet.

● Neither character can win. Both characters are too big and too important to the studio for either to end up losing this fight. That means they need some sort of tie. Only a tie will feel like a cop-out.

o My solution: Yeah, this is a problem. Your best bet here is probably that Superman fights to the death, almost kills Batman, and then snaps out of it at the last second... just as Batman manages to escape undetected during an explosion. That way you get the full on fight to the death, only Batman retreats because he realizes he needs a stronger secret weapon than the one he used. This leave the right order in their world: Superman is confirmed as stronger and a good guy, but Batman is confirmed at more sly and a good guy willing to kill to defend himself... it fits both worlds mythos.

● False Character Motivations. There is no motive you can give either character to motivate them want to kill the other. That means the fight can’t be a “to-the-death” fight, which means the whole thing will feel staged and fake, i.e. it will have low stakes and be disappointing.

o My solution: There are two solutions here. First, by placing this story in the past before the characters know each other, they can mistake each other for villains and fight to the death. Alternatively, the better solution is to give Superman some sort of mental block so he attacks Batman all out. Batman will fight to the death to defend himself... which is why he needs to defend himself (Superman wouldn't). He is also capable of cheating and of running away, which Superman is not, which is why Superman needs to be under mental control of some sort.

● This isn’t a fair fight. It’s obvious that if you take Superman’s powers literally, there is no way a mere mortal, no matter how talented, could kill Superman. That means Batman can’t win. Hence, the writer will need to invent a way to make the fight fair, but that will feel like a cheat to the audience.

o My solution: In a straight-up fight, yeah... but since when does Batman fight fair? Give Batman an advantage that looks strong enough to let him defeat Superman, but then Superman overcomes the advantage at a critical time, causing Batman to escape. That way Superman's strength and straight up fighting ability prevail, but so does Batman's cleverness, and it leaves you in a position where Superman is recognized as the bigger dog, but Batman is left thinking he knows how to beat Superman next time. Both win.

So based on all of this, Carson concludes that they will probably invent a villain that requires Batman and Superman to team up. They will disagree about the approach to fighting the villain, probably contrasting Superman’s good guy-ism versus Batman’s propensity to go too far. This will result in the fight, which must end in a draw.

Carson is probably right that this is what they will do and he’s right that this will be “stupid and cheesy and forced.” I personally would go a different way however.

I would start by setting this in the past and opening with the fight ongoing. Superman is new to Earth and is under the control of something like a virus that makes him murderous. He and Batman (who doesn't know much about him) then engage in the plot, with Superman barely retaining control over his mind as they work their way through the plot... always ready to pop. Doing this means the fight could restart at any point... which it does near the end and Batman escapes a moment before he would be killed, but he cures Superman in the process. This solves the problem and starts their relationship with suspicion.

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Film Friday: Men in Black (1997)

Men in Black is an excellent film. It was such an excellent film that it made a fortune, spawned a franchise, and has proved to have very strong staying power. What’s interesting about this film though, is that it is the perfect marriage of a tent-pole film with a cult film. Seriously.

The Plot

Although it appears to have a complex story, Men in Black is really just a superhero origin-story centered around Agent J (Will Smith). Smith is a New York City cop who gets recruited by Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) to work for a shadow organization known as M.I.B. (Men In Black). Located in New York City, M.I.B. polices all the extraterrestrials who live secretly among the human population of the Earth. Their job is to make sure that the aliens behave and that the humans never discover the aliens. They also protect the Earth from various threats.

J’s first case involves tracking down a bug (Vincent D’Onofrio), who has come to Earth to kill an Arquillian prince. The prince lives in Brooklyn and his people are at war with the bugs. As J and K track down the bug, they are given an ultimatum from an Arquillian battle cruiser, which threatens to destroy the planet unless something stolen from the prince (“the galaxy”) is returned within a few hours. Simple.

What Makes This Movie Work

So what makes this film work? Well, in a sense, everything. The actors have a strong screen presence and excellent chemistry. Will Smith was a rising, bankable star at this point, having just come off of Independence Day. His presence in what appears to be a lighthearted summer film all but guaranteed success. Adding to that, Smith gets teamed with the cranky, quasi-redneck Tommy Lee Jones, also a bankable star at the time, which evokes memories of prior successful opposites-attract buddy-cop films like Lethal Weapon. Barry Sonnenfeld had cache as a direct as well, having just directed Get Shorty and the Addams Family films. Sonnenfeld did a great job too: solid pacing, clean visuals, memorable scenes and great effects. The film also had the right feel. It came across as lighthearted, funny, and easy to enjoy.

Those are the perfect tent-pole traits and are guaranteed to put butts into seats.

What kept them there, however, and what has kept people enjoying this film so many years later, is the thing almost all tent-pole films lack: intelligence. In fact, at its core, this is one heck of a smart film. That intelligence, however, was hidden within a ton of ambiguity, just like a cult film.

As I’ve said before, what makes a film into a cult film seems to be that the film is highly intelligent, but lacks the clarity most general audience require. Thus, the film finds an audience because of its intelligence, but it is a limited audience because of its ambiguity. You would think Men in Black would suffer the same fate because of its ambiguity, but it doesn’t. Consider this:

● Unexplained Jokes: This film is crawling with jokes general audience will never get on their own. I saw this film in the theaters and it was fascinating to watch the audience. When Will Smith calls K’s car a “Ford POS,” about ten people laughed. The rest waited for the joke. When Z tells the smug guys who just brutally bombed the test to become members of M.I.B., “You’re everything we’ve come to expect from years of government training,” the same ten people burst out laughing. The rest didn’t see the joke. Oh, they laughed a moment later when Will Smith said, “Yo, yo, with the thing,” but they didn’t see the joke about government training leading to hopelessly rigid thinking.

Throughout this film, there are jokes that don’t pay off until a scene or two down the line. There are jokes that require you to grasp that what the characters say isn’t what they mean. There are jokes that require you to have some understanding of the outside world to get the joke. The general audience I sat with didn’t get those. Those other ten people got each one. Fortunately, there were enough other simple jokes that the general audience didn’t miss them. In effect, both groups laughed, they just laughed at different things.

● Unexplained Background: So who are the M.I.B.? You never really find out. You get a lot of words thrown at you, but in the end there’s little in the way of clarity. In fact, it’s a running joke that Tommy Lee Jones avoids answering those questions. Then they toss out ideas like the nature of “the galaxy,” but they never clearly answer it, unless you are smart enough to connect the ending of the film to that answer -- it turns out the Earth is in a “galaxy” of its own, which is in a bus station locker, which is itself in a marble being played with by some kids.

Throughout this film, we are introduced to characters whose fates we never learn. We run into subplots that go nowhere. We get no answers to basic questions. This is the sort of stuff that excites cult-film fans because it leaves it up to the viewer to debate the answers and fill in the movie... this is the stuff a thousand web pages are made of. But general audiences don’t normally like this. So why did they like it here? The reason is that every time something ambiguous happens, the scene finishes with Will Smith distracting the audience... “Look, shiny!” That way, both audiences get what they want.

● Hidden Depth: The film is crawling with hidden depth too. A good chunk of the jokes involve scientific principles or theories. The film constantly makes hilarious analogies, always without telling you. For example, the film starts with border patrol agents rounding up illegal aliens. That is exactly what M.I.B. are, which makes that scene rich with irony. But no one points this out. The bug is driving around in a truck belonging to an exterminator. The fact that “superior” aliens view coffee and cigarettes as our highest achievement is hilarious too.

Then there’s philosophical depth. Throughout the film, you are constantly being bombarded with ethical, moral and philosophical questions. Is it immoral to change someone’s memories? Does it make it less immoral to give them a happy memory? Would you want to be able to block out memories? What is the nature of the human race? One of the most insightful comments ever in film was this:

J: “People are smart. They can handle it.”
K: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

There was also this: “The only way these people get on with their lives is they don’t know the truth.” That’s very true of humans. Do our prejudices blind us to truth:

“Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.”

These are not only intensely complex questions, but the film frames them in amazingly clever ways to allow those who “get it” to think about it and to allow those who don’t to just see dialog.

So what does all this mean? Well, on the one hand, I think the intelligence is what has given this film its longevity. Tent-pole audiences are remarkably fickle, but cult-fans tend to be the ones who watch movies over and over. It also tells us that you can make a film that appeals to both audience. This film provides a guidepost on how.

Think about this. Here is a film that actually satisfies both groups, groups who rarely see eye to eye: “It was mindless and stupid” v. “It was confusing and stupid.” The reason it did was that it let each audience see what they wanted. People who are looking for smarter films got deep, philosophical points, jokes that trusted the audience, and rich depth throughout. Then people who are looking for something mindless got The Big Shiny from Will Smith to punctuate each joke or close out each philosophical moment.

I would call this a model for successful filmmaking.

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American Mythology

Unfortunately, genuine analysis is becoming a lost art. Indeed, in the modern world, most analysis takes the form of uninformed opinion followed by the cherry picking of facts to fit the conclusion. This is probably because it’s easier to be right when you pick your own facts. In any event, I ran into just such an article the other day and I think it’s worth discussing.

This article was on Yahoo, a wretched hive of scum and idiocy. And what drew my attention was the assertion in the headline that Americans can’t do fantasy stories: “Where are all the American fantasy characters?” Well, this struck me as rather stupid because America wasn’t around in the time of knights and dragons, so naturally there won’t be any American fantasy characters. But it turns out this wasn’t what the writer meant. What he eventually got around to saying was that “our mythology” is based on fantasy books and Americans simply don’t write fantasy books. See, the big three fantasy books (Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter) are all British and “talk about British values.” Thus, spoke the moron,

“Yet if Fantasy books make up much of our mythology, and I think strongly that that is true, then I also think that we, in America, have a problem. The problem is that most of our Fantasy isn't written by Americans about American culture and values.

* * *

English values are similar to ours, but they're still not American. And if mythology is supposed to teach a culture how to act and behave, what type of person you should strive to be, then we have a serious problem, because all our mythology is teaching us how to be good Brits, not good Americans.”

Oh boy.

Let’s take this idiot down, shall we?

First, in the article itself, he notes that it was the start of the third season of Game of Thrones which made him ask this question. Game of Thrones was written by an American. So his own article contradicts the point he was pondering. He also seems to have ignored other American fantasy writers like Terry Brooks to reach this point.

Secondly, I don’t for a minute buy his conclusion that “fantasy” is our mythology. American mythology is much more real-life, focusing on the Founders, on the Civil War, on the American West and gangsters and astronauts. American kids don’t say, “I want to be Frodo Baggins or Harry Potter when I grow up,” they say, “I want to be a cowboy... an astronaut... a gangster.”

Actually, if you really want to know what forms our mythology, it’s not wizards and dragons at all. Sure, we like dragons, but out mythology is a combination of many things: some dragons/wizards, some Ancient Greece, some Rome, some Samurai and Ninjas, lots of cowboys, lots of science fiction and some horror. And what does all of this add up to? Superman. Batman. James T. Kirk. American kids don’t get their understanding of our culture from Harry Potter, they get it from superheroes who lay out truth, justice, and the American way.

Finally, even if you look at Narnia and Harry Potter as something which resonates with kids, it’s rather selective to just pick those but ignore Twilight and The Hunger Games, both of which are American. Walt Disney’s effect on our culture is a million times that of Harry Potter. So is Luke Skywalker’s effect. So is Stephen King’s.

This is one of those theories that has some appeal for the brief moment the idea enters your head until you realize that you just picked some random stuff and invented a pattern rather than finding a genuine pattern. Sadly, in the modern age, there is no longer a filter that requires people to think before they voice their opinions authoritatively. Welcome to the net.

Anyway, what do you think makes up our mythology?

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Toon-arama: Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)

Usually, tryanmax does the Toon-arama articles around here, but this one needed to be done. . . grrr. If you’re like me, and I know I am, then you enjoy a good Superhero cartoon now and then. Justice League: The New Frontier is NOT such a cartoon. To the contrary, it’s vile leftist crap flung from the bowels of a fetid monkey. Do not see this film. Do not let your kids see this film.

Justice League: The New Frontier tells the story of how rotten the racist police-state known as America is. It is the story of the various well-known superheroes and how they struggle against the oppressive American state in the 1950s. For example. . .

● The film begins with a tirade against humanity and nuclear weapons.

● We are told that the Korean War was not worth fighting.

● We arrive in Indochina, where we learn that Superman and Wonder Woman were made to sign “loyalty oaths,” because they are suspect.

● The police are omnipresent and spy on average citizens. The government also rounds people up and makes them disappear to keep them quiet.

● There is a lot of talk about McCarthy and we’re told that the country “needs a leader” to set us free. . . a very leftist way of thinking: only an all-powerful leader can free us from the oppressive all-powerful state.

● We are shown a television news broadcast which informs us that a black vigilante had kept “white supremacists at bay” until he was “caught by a mob and killed,” because no doubt mobs of whites get incensed when blacks defend themselves against white supremacists. Naturally, the cops “have no suspects,” because no doubt white cops would look the other way. The Flash then uses this news broadcast as a backdrop to tell us that the world needs more vigilantes like the dead guy and that he’s quitting being a superhero because the government is hunting him like a criminal and he doesn’t want to see his family hurt. Funny, I don’t recall our government ever rounding up family members of criminals.

● In the most obnoxious moment in the film, Wonder Woman returns to her homeland and is asked by one of her people “tell us about America.” To this, Wonder Woman responds, “It’s changed since the war. Back then, we were in the right. They still say they are in the right, but they don’t always act that way.” Uh huh, like when they make lying cartoons like this perhaps?

● Frank Sinatra is presented as a coward.

● Our government decides they want to commit genocide against Mars because the Martians might be dangerous.

● And obnoxiously, after the good guys defeat the evil creature which wants to wipe out humanity, the film ends with Kennedy’s New Frontier speech and we’re all supposed to cheer because America has found a leader who would stop the mass arrests, would never send US troops to somewhere like Indochina, would never support an invasion of Cuba, would never threaten the world with nuclear annihilation, and would never be seen with shallow posers like Frank Sinatra. Yep.... that Kennedy.

*ssholes.

Even beyond this, this cartoon is despicably cynical and it’s definitely not for children. The film begins with a rather graphic suicide as the narrator shoots himself. It then moves to the end of the Korean War where Hal Jordan (aka the Green Lantern) is forced to kill a North Korean soldier in hand to hand combat. After he shoots the soldier in the head, you see blood splatter all over Jordan’s face. The introduction of Wonder Woman a minute or two later involves her discussing what sounds like mass rapes in Vietnam and how she disarmed the Vietcong rapists and then let the women of the village “extract justice.” Batman at one point tells us that he has a piece of Kryptonite so he can kill Superman, just in case, and he threatens to kill another ally by setting his house on fire. He must be fun at parties. It goes on like that.

This cartoon stinks.

This is evidence of why you can’t just assume that cartoons are safe for children. It also shows you the bizarro world in which liberals live. Indeed, focus on the key moments of hypocrisy here. The film tells you that the all-power government is evil because it uses violence and terror to control its people (something which never happened). They even add fake ideas like the government rounding up family members and making people “who know too much” disappear. . . whoever that is. Yet, the solution, offered is to find “a strong leader” who will bring vigilante justice, i.e. violence and terror. Does that seem sick to anyone?

Think about this. You constantly get beat over the head with this idea that violence is evil. BUT at the same time, we’re told that violence is great when it’s done for a reason the leftist writer believes is appropriate. That’s called the ends justify the means. And don’t forget, these same hypocrites who are decrying violence are exploiting violence by creating a very violent cartoon to milk your wallet.

This cartoon really highlights the unprincipled nature of liberalism. Everything they decry is only bad so long as the wrong people do it, but once the right people do it for the right reasons, suddenly it becomes a good thing. In essence, this belief system is a form of the ends justifies the means, combined with a caveat that people we like are presumed to have good ends.

The left is sick.

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