I'm including them because, especially in the latter, I've heavily inserted my thoughts into the comments sections. The latter explains itself. In the former, I'm thinking of a story I read in The Best of McSweeney's, "Can a Paper Mill Save a Forest?" from Nicholson Baker, which explores the curious facts of life under a digital cloud and the myths of how paper mills only negatively impact the environment. As it turns out, all those files we save have to be saved on computers servers somewhere, that just because personal devices have gotten smaller that there isn't a need somewhere else for those giant things computers used to be to still exist. This is something I'm fairly certain has been conveniently overlooked in our rush to digitize everything, arguably for the sake of progress. But it's also another instance of the emperor wearing invisible pants, hiding unpleasant realities in plain sight with a collective willingness to overlook the obvious.
In much lighter Internet discoveries, I read on Pearls Before Swine creator Stephen Pastis's blog about a far more pleasant con job, the secret return of Bill Watterson to the comic strip page. Even though Calvin & Hobbes ended nearly twenty years ago, it remains the gold standard for the medium. The whole reason Watterson ended it was because he feared the format had been irredeemably compromised, whether by newspapers or capitalism. I hope one day he releases a treasure trove of material he's done since his self-imposed exile. In the meantime, he popped up in a strip that seems to be the polar opposite of everything he used to do himself. (Though make no mistake, Pearls is brilliant.)
Something occurred to me recently. In each of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises) the villain is introduced by way of misdirection. Don't believe me?
Now, for those of you who lack the patience or time to view the videos and don't remember how things develop in the films (and are willing to trust that I'm being accurate), here're the bullet points:
Ra's al Ghul is apparently introduced in the guise of Ken Watanabe. Liam Neeson is introduced as Henri Ducard, Bruce Wayne's main contact and trainer in the League of Shadows. Except Watanabe's al Ghul is a smokescreen. It's Ducard who is really al Ghul, as Batman discovers after saving Ducard's life.
The opening bank robbery in The Dark Knight sees a whole crew of would-be clown wonders under rubber masks. As they begin eliminating each other, the audience realizes there's more going on than it seems. This is made clear when we discover these clowns are working for the clown, Heath Ledger's Joker, who emerges from under the mask of the surviving hoodlum at the end of the sequence.
Tom Hardy's Bane has a number of reveals. The second one still kind of infuriates people. He was not the prison brat who made the miraculous leap. That was the young Miranda Tate Talia. In the opening sequence of Dark Knight Rises, Bane is introduced similarly to the Joker, under a hood that makes him seem like just another thug. Despite his relationship with Talia, he most certainly is not.
Now, all of this is fairly obvious for movies about a man who chooses to run around in a giant bat costume, from a director who had already amply demonstrated his penchant for exploring mutable identity. In fact, before we go much further, let's do another list, this time of Christopher Nolan's films to date:
Following (1998)
Memento (2000)
Insomnia (2002)
Batman Begins (2005)
The Prestige (2006)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Inception (2010)
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Interstellar (2014)
Now, chances are few in my reading audience are quite as interested in Nolan's career as I am. This is not a boast. There was a point where Memento was his best-known achievement. I bet few of you even know what Following is much less have seen it. How about Insomnia?
For me, these weren't just building blocks, but touchstones in his career. I was actually disappointed by the news that he'd be doing Batman, and was generally underwhelmed for years by Batman Begins. I thought it was a step back in his creative development. It showed none of the flare of his earlier films. It was a little too obvious, straight-forward. Yeah, I can be an idiot sometimes.
The thing is, Batman Begins, and the two sequels that followed, were probably necessary for wider audiences to appreciate Nolan's talent. They were necessary mainstream translations of his instincts, and as such took different approaches. But they're every bit as remarkable, even the first one. I came around, like everyone else, by the time Dark Knight was released. It instantly became an all-time favorite. The epiphany I began this reflection with is what solidified my overall opinion, however.
It probably seems obvious to interpret a Batman film around the lens of Batman, right? Except, and I'm not saying this is inaccurate, but it's also not necessary. Take away Bruce Wayne, take away Batman (either one, really), and you still have a perfectly representative Christopher Nolan experience.
In a lot of ways, Neeson's Ra's al Ghul makes Batman Begins very similar to Following, a student and a master whose relationship becomes increasingly confused. The true genius of Ledger's Joker has as much to do with the performance as the depiction of a character many might have assumed they knew everything about, which is another way of explaining the story of Memento, which is told in reverse and constantly undoes everything the viewer thinks they knew. And yes, Dark Knight Rises is a lot like Insomnia, with a compromised hero constantly trying to play catch-up with the villain.
No, I'm not making the argument that Nolan simply remade his own early films with Batman plugged in. His Dark Knight was from the start a deliberate character study of the famous vigilante. Bruce Wayne's journey was more important than Batman's introduction. Back in 2005 I kind of just wanted a Batman movie, or a Christopher Nolan movie. I wasn't prepared for both and more besides. I was overwhelmed. And I never saw coming that Nolan had been making his own story, with the villain, all along, even when it became clear which actor was playing Ra's al Ghul.
To have the idea echoed, with considerable and effective variation, in the other two films, with more traditional villains who still work as Nolan archetypes, only affirms the accomplishment.
These films remain remarkable and singular experiences. Whereas Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark/Iron Man gleefully prances around like a regular Jack Sparrow with the rest of the Pirates of the Avengers acts openly in his duel personality (only the later somewhat misguided handling of the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 compares in the whole Marvel canon), nearly everyone in Nolan's Batman trilogy has another side of themselves they're desperately trying to hide. Rather than alienating them from audiences looking to find a piece of themselves in colorfully outsized personalities, this humanizes them, Batman especially. People like to mock Christian Bale's growl under the cowl, but it's his scenes as Bruce Wayne that truly represent the performance. Exploring his insecurities and struggles, a newly nuanced relationship with Alfred, is a revelation, and how exactly he chose to become Batman why he sticks with it for so long. It's not his resources that define him but his vulnerability, not his ability but his frailty, both emotionally and physically.
Before Batman, Nolan looked a lot more on the surface than he would later. His characters are always troubled, and stumbling into crises that overwhelm them. With Batman, he was finally able to step beyond the line that separated his characters from their own experiences, whether that was a faulty memory or lack of sleep. Finally Nolan could look at the whole picture, which was another reason why his version of the Joker was so refreshing, because it was the rare moment he allowed himself to fall back on his own instincts.
To have Nolan accepted as a blockbuster filmmaker even outside the Batman films is perhaps more remarkable than people realize even now. This is not one long hard sell for the upcoming Interstellar. But can you think of anyone else making movies today who is able to get away with stuff like Inception and find a willing and large audience waiting for it?
This is to say I'm a big fan of the guy, and I think Christopher Nolan's career is really still only beginning.
Ever since the debut of the Defiant in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (oh...about twenty years ago) and the later introduction of the Breen body armor, it's become easier to view the third live action TV entry in the franchise from a Star Wars kind of light. That being said, I'm going to have another look at it.
I've made a few special modifications...
Call this An Emissary of Hope. Our lead character is Jake Sisko, who has long dreamed of ending Dominion tyranny in Federation space, ever since a disastrous war gave way to a new order. He's recently become aware of a part of his late father's life that he'd never dreamed of before, from the old shape-shifter Odo, who once served under Starfleet but whose life became complicated when his people in the Founders were revealed to be behind the Dominion. Odo tells Jake that his father was the only one capable of closing the so-called Celestial Temple, the wormhole located in Cardassian space, thanks to his connection to the Bajorans. Benjamin Sisko's mother was what the Bajorans called a Prophet, or least that's what they thought. This effectively gave him great temporal powers among other gifts. Except he wasn't imbued by the Prophets but the Pah-wraiths. Jake can make things right by embracing the ways of the Prophets.
Jake joins forces with unlikely allies in order to confront the forces of Dukat, ruler of the Dominion who possibly also wields the powers of the Pah-wraiths. Jadzia Dax and Worf have long had private command of the Defiant, last surviving ship of Starfleet, and they have allies in Julian Bashir and Miles O'Brien (at least when they're getting along). Jake values the support of Major Kira most highly, however, a Bajoran whose relationship with Odo goes back a long time and one of the few who will be able to resolve the conflict with her peoples' gods.
Along the way, they will also have to deal with challenges provided by Garak, a Cardassian who works only for himself, and Quark, a Ferengi of considerable influence who has long held a grudge against the meddling Jadzia. The final conflict, however, will be between father and son, Prophet and Pah-wraith. Tthe fate of the galaxy rests in the hands of the Siskos. Which one will prevail?
...And here's a handy cheat sheet:
Benjamin Sisko = Anakin Skywalker
Jake Sisko = Luke Skywalker
Odo = Obi-Wan Kenobi
Gul Dukat - Emperor Palpatine
Jadzia Dax = Han Solo
Worf = Chewbacca Defiant = Millennium Falcon
Julian Bashir = C-3PO
Miles O'Brien = R2-D2
Major Kira = Princess Leia
Garak = Boba Fett
Quark = Jabba the Hutt
The scenario I've presented isn't so far-fetched. Jake and Ben actually did square off against each other (albeit with Sisko backed by the Prophets and Jake the Pah-wraiths) in the sixth season episode "The Reckoning." Feisty Jadzia and Quark indeed had an association, although an unusually friendly one for the Ferengi. The Defiant was introduced at the start of the third season in "The Search" as Starfleet's answer to combating the Borg (which finally happened in First Contact...with Worf as its commanding officer!), although it much more frequently went into war with the Dominion. Ben Sisko learned of his role as the Emissary of the Prophets in the first episode, appropriately entitled "Emissary," and that his mother was a Prophet in the seventh season premiere "Image in the Sand." Jake and Kira had some key moments together in the fourth season episode "The Visitor" (which also heavily features the Siskos) and are the last two characters seen in the series finale, "What You Leave Behind." Recasting the Dominion War, which dominated the final two seasons of the series, as a longer conflict, seems easy and fitting.
Here are a few additional associations:
Michael Eddington = Lando Calrissian
Weyoun = Yoda
In the thirty-plus years of superhero movies, the constant challenge has always been to create supervillains as compelling as the superheros. Without further preamble, here's my list for the seven best to date:
1. Heath Ledger's Joker (The Dark Knight)
I was always a fan of Ledger as an actor, but it took everyone else and one great role to make him immortal, sadly right before his passing. The genius of his Joker is that it went completely against the grain, a villain who was less interested in being obvious (which is what virtually every other supervillain does in these movies) and more understating...pretty much everything. No origin. Slapdash clown makeup. First scene he's introduced seemingly as just another goon. There's nothing I don't like about the performance, the part, how it fits into the rest of The Dark Knight. Instantly the gold standard for movie supervillains.
2. Tom Hiddleston's Loki (Thor, The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World)
I've been lukewarm on the Avengers movies from the start (Iron Man does not have a representation on this list), but one of the elements I loved instantly was also one of the most unexpected ones: a supporting character in Thor. I didn't expect great things from Thor. It was fine. But it just seemed, right from the start, like a kind of pointless excuse to add to the cinematic Avengers cycle. Without the rest of the team, would anyone really care that much about the guy? But his troubled brother Loki? Even with an arc that still hasn't gone anywhere three appearances later, the dude oozes charisma. He's a bad guy who's really easy to love (I mean, even blatantly stealing from Terence Stamp's iconic Zod in Avengers with the whole "kneel before me" thing doesn't hurt him). I would watch a whole movie headlined by Loki. Easily.
3. Thomas Haden Church's Sandman (Spider-Man 3)
Everyone knows Spider-Man 3 is the black sheep of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. Yet I've always been a fan, and it's mostly thanks to the reinterpretation of Uncle Ben's death. Turning the story around has a number of intriguing possibilities (arguably Marc Webb's Spider-Man films have benefited greatly from them), but here this means we actually get to sympathize with the villain, which is certainly rare enough. Haden Church had just experienced a career resurgence thanks to Sideways, which had the effect of finally exposing his dramatic potential. He's the rare supervillain actor to have been given the chance to explore that side, and because of all the other things going on in the movie, he's free to focus exclusively on that. He nails it. I would watch a Sandman movie, too.
4. Tom Hardy's Bane (The Dark Knight Rises)
I've long been a fan of Hardy's, so I was already expecting great things from him, although even for me (see above) it was a tall order to follow Heath Ledger. He did it. He knocked it out of the park. There have been various criticisms, such as Bane's hard to hear (he really isn't) or being revealed as Talia's henchman weakens the character (it really doesn't). Like Ledger's Joker, Hardy nails the ability to create a character who clearly doesn't mind calling attention to himself without making a parody of a character, which is what happens far too often with movie supervillains.
5. Anne Hathaway's Catwoman (The Dark Knight Rises)
A real argument could be made for Dark Knight Rises being...a Catwoman movie. Every one of Hathaway's scenes is fantastic and as a whole carry a full story. Her status as a villain fluctuates throughout the movie, although for most of it there's no real question. A lot of people have long praised Michelle Pfeiffer's version of the character, as many who have maligned Halle Berry's. Neither really has a ton of subtlety, which is something Hathaway accomplishes easily despite most of her scenes calling for high emotion or pithy remarks. If any movie supervillain has approached Tom Hiddleston's Loki, it would be Hathaway's Catwoman.
6. Ian McKellen's Magneto (X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: Days of the Future Past)
The whole reason I couldn't really get into Michael Fassbender as Magneto in X-Men: First Class is because he wasn't nearly as compelling in the role as McKellen. McKellen's Magneto isn't even my favorite role from the actor, but c'mon. The man knows how to act. Aside from Hugh Jackman, he's the actor who helped the X-Men films really take off in the first place. Without him, most of their dramatic weight would be gone, and these are movies that need that. I argue that the Avengers movies are less successful creatively because they don't have a Magneto. If Loki were more prominent, instead of the guy who keeps stealing movies, I'd like them a lot more. I like the X-Men movies more when McKellen's Magneto is around.
7. Jennifer Garner's Elektra (Daredevil, Elektra)
I think the whole reason Daredevil quickly lost mainstream support is because Garner stole the movie. At the time she was best known for the TV series Alias. In a lot of ways, her Elektra is exactly like her Sydney Bristow. Like Hathaway's Catwoman, she's not really a villain. In fact, even less so. But the story often pits Elektra and Daredevil against each other, and every time, Elektra easily holds her own. When she received her own spin-off a few years later, it was a nonevent. Everyone wanted Daredevil to show up. That's a testament to Elektra's appeal, that it wasn't just her alone, but how she fit so well in Daredevil's story, how essential she was to him and he to her. The more people disassociated them, the more they only thought about Ben Affleck, who played Daredevil. At the time he was on the verge of a career decline, and so pretty much everything he did was interpreted unfavorably. But watch this one again. It's great. And Garner's Elektra is a huge reason why. She's a villain who's not really a villain. They say all villains see themselves that way. This is a chance to see that make some sense for a change, cleverly turning classic Hollywood romantic comedy tropes on their head.
I do have a number of runners-up:
Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor (Superman, Superman II, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace)
Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor (Superman Returns)
Terence Stamp's Zod (Superman II)
Michael Shannon's Zod (Man of Steel)
Colin Farrell's Bullseye (Daredevil)
Jack Nicholson's Joker (Batman)
Peter Sarsgaard's Hector Hammond (Green Lantern)
Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer (Iron Man 2)
Liam Neeson's Ra's al Ghul (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises)
It's funny, but Star Trek only really understands its best relationships in the movies.
I know, there're a ton of great relationships in the TV shows. The original series was best defined by the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triangle. Data and LaForge were the closest family members of the Next Generation set. Bashir and O'Brien sang "Jerusalem" together in Deep Space Nine. Drunk. It was hilarious. Paris and Kim created Captain Proton together in Voyager. Tucker and Archer traded stories with T'Pol in Enterprise.
But it only got better, in the movies, every single time. Removing McCoy from the equation (not completely, but enough) made Kirk and Spock so much better. The Motion Picture put both of them through the emotional wringer. Wrath of Khan did it even better. Search for Spock was probably the definitive statement in that incarnation of the characters. They came as close to hating each other as possible in The Undiscovered Country.
In the Abrams reboot, Kirk and Spock took the Country dynamic, mashed it up with Search, and ended up with something even more beautiful than ever before. That's what I've loved so much about these films, Star Trek and Into Darkness. Every critic says they're more Star Wars than Star Trek, just because they feature better action and budgets than ever before. That, apparently, is all you need to be Star Wars. Apparently Michael Bay has been making Star Wars for years. Who knew? But to me, the Abrams films have been about Kirk and Spock, almost exclusively, brilliantly, better than ever. The first one goes back to the beginning for both characters, and then sees what happens when they meet for the first time, try and figure out what their disparate worldviews look like when put up against each other. A lot of arguments, apparently. Possibly a few instances of trying to end careers and/or lives. But in both instances a thing of beauty. Exquisite.
The thing I've been realizing is that the Next Generation movies are exactly like that. Data and Picard are the main characters in all four. They're the only instances where either is so important to each other, besides "The Measure of a Man" (when Picard makes the winning argument for Data's continued independent existence). In Generations, the stellar cartography scene in which their paths finally cross during the story is perfect. Picard is thinking of his problems, Data his, and all the while they're supposed to be focusing on something else entirely. Picard begins musing on the need to focus on the moment. He forcibly requires Data to do the same. It's the only time Data wants to deactivate himself.
In First Contact, they unexpectedly converge again as the Borg attempts another invasion. They're practically inseparable. It's true, Picard references what Data did for him in "Best of Both Worlds, Part II," but that was less to do, at that point, with what they meant for each other and more a matter of the greater family from that crew. I think as the years progressed, Picard valued Data more, his unique perspective, something that made more and more sense, especially after realizing how much they had in common during Generations.
Insurrection gets so little respect, but it's almost a sequel to "Measure of a Man," with Picard coming to Data's rescue after Starfleet has apparently decided once again that the android doesn't need a great amount of consideration. The rest of the movie is about what Picard discovers, that Data was absolutely right to go rogue (ironically, Data himself veers in a completely different direction for the duration), once again realizing how important his friend's perspective is.
Nemesis gets less respect than Insurrection, but it deserves more. The parallels between Picard and Data's arcs are the most blatant in all four movies, but the conclusion more subtle. Throughout the movie both must contend with cracked mirrors of themselves. Both variants are gone by the end, but at the price of Data's life. What does it all mean? Most people just assumed that Data would have just come back, just like Spock, and wrote off Nemesis as a cheap knockoff of Wrath (it's the ultimate dismissal for Star Trek fans, their favorite trump card). The point, I think, was that Data's life was a culmination of the decisions he'd made, just like Picard. The decision he made was the opposite of the one Picard made, however. Picard ended his problem by eliminating his doppelganger. Data had done that before. He went the opposite way this time. He sacrificed himself not only for Picard, but for his doppelganger as well. And I think that was the real point of the movie. He made the ultimate selfless gesture, something even Picard hadn't been willing to make. And that was what Picard had always wanted to learn from Data, which he only really started realizing in Generations.
Watching the movies this way, I think, is to discover what Star Trek is really about. I'm glad we had J.J. Abrams come along to make it so obvious. Maybe the fans will catch up at some point. When Gene Roddenberry first came up with Star Trek, his first idea for the pilot, "The Cage," was all about Pike realizing how profound relationships are to human existence. We try and pretend life is about everything else, our great potential in every other regard. But it isn't. It's about what we mean to each other. Not the families we have but the ones we make. If that message is best distilled into perfect friendships, their perfect symmetries, then, well, make it so.
Last November I wrote about characters from The Next Generation (1987-1994) that Star Trek fans who know Picard's crew only from their movies (Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, Nemesis) would never have met. It recently occurred to me that there are large swathes of the crew's legacy that would be hard to truly appreciate without having seen at least some of the series. Fans who existed at the time Next Generation was on the air wouldn't need a reminder like this, but we're now twenty years past the end of the series (no, really!), which is plenty of time for new fans who may not particularly have the time to sit through a hundred-seventy-odd hours (although, of course, there's binge-watching as a whole thing these days, which I'm not ashamed to admit I helped pioneer) but could easily watch the movies, if the new movies have indeed been making new Star Trek fans.
Here's the list:
1.) "The Measure of a Man"
Anyone who watches the movie will obviously know Data is an android, but by the time Generations comes around he's undergone a dramatic revision of his character. He's lost one of the biggest hurdles in his quest to become more human. "Measure" is the episode that doesn't just spotlight that quest, but threatens to take it away from him. Insurrection is kind of a sequel to the episode, actually, in a lot of ways (another reason to take this particular movie more seriously), the way Admiral Dougherty casually dismisses Data. It's also an early look at Data's relationship with Picard, which really doesn't get picked up again until the movies.
2.) "Sins of the Father"
Surprisingly, one of Next Generation's most distinctive characters, Worf, really only has a fitting spotlight in one of the films (First Contact), which doesn't even address most of what he was all about in the series. Consider "Sins" a primer on everything you need to know about the proud Klingon warrior, from his background to his relationship with other Klingons (don't expect a lot of happiness).
3.) "The Best of Both Worlds, Parts 1 & 2"
First Contact is a sequel to this defining moment from the series, one that is useful in experiencing itself, from how Picard initially confronts the Borg to the process of disconnecting him from it. Riker has a considerable role in the first part, which goes a long way to expanding his characterization.
4.) "Brothers"
The other side of Data's journey in the series is his surprisingly complicated family situation, which includes his creator, his brother, and the pesky emotion chip that he finally receives in Generations. This is probably the most concise exploration of the whole affair.
5.) "The First Duty"
There isn't really a good Dr. Crusher episode worth recommending, but there are plenty of Wesley Crusher episodes to choose from (really!), including this one where he admits to wrongdoing at Starfleet Academy, which sees the cadet confront both his mother and Picard.
6.) "Ship in a Bottle"
Next Generation was famous, some might say infamous, for introducing the holodeck to Star Trek lore. The best use of the holodeck was the underrated character of Moriarty (who debuted in "Elementary, Dear Data"), a truly cerebral villain fit for the character of the series itself.
7.) "Tapestry"
Arguably the best Q episode also explores aspects of Picard suggested in Nemesis, i.e. his surprisingly rebellious youth. Given a chance to revisit those days, the thoughtful older Picard is surprised to discover that he needed to make the mistakes he did in order to become the man he is.
Have any episodes you think deserve consideration? Sound off in the comments!
I just saw X-Men: Days of the Future Past. It's pretty good. It may be the best X-Men movie yet.
Before you say that sounds a lot like what I said about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 recently, just know that the leading contender for that title for me is X-Men: The Last Stand. (Wait a minute. I'm not making my case any stronger. I'm the guy who likes Spider-Man 3. As in "the only guy." Just like Last Stand.)
This was Bryan Singer's third X-Men. His first two were also the first two. Most fans considered X2: X-Men United to be the best comic book movie to that time (2003) and continued considering it at least the best X-Men movie until 2011's X-Men: First Class. When Brett Ratner's Last Stand was released in 2006, most observers considered it to be a pale shadow of Singer's films. (It may be worth noting that Ratner gets very little respect one way or another.) They claimed it basically undid everything that was good about the series. But hey, I thought it was the best one to that point. I really did.
I thought so because it featured a much more cohesive story and a better climax than had been featured in its two predecessors. I was never hot on X2 (very blatantly, to my mind, the first solo Wolverine movie by any other name, which is not necessarily a bad thing). The "mutant cure" in Last Stand enabled the movie to explore the core issues of the series and its characters more effectively than ever before.
And that's also, by the way, why I like Days of the Future Past so much. Well, that and Quicksilver. Seriously, the Quicksilver sequence is now legendary in my book.
I wasn't too hot on First Class either. Most of it was tepid. It was competent but tentative at the same time. By the time I realized that was Kevin Bacon, I just kind of wished he had made more choices like that in his career, not that First Class was so awesome. Villains like that are a dime a dozen in movies based on Marvel characters.
Know what I mean, Captain America: Winter Soldier? I haven't really talked too much about that one yet. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I'd been planning for the longest time to write about how today's audiences may have just seen Robert Redford turn into Alec Guinness. The poor guy's whole career might have been reduced to a single role. Maybe he'll be better about it than the erstwhile Jedi was. But as much as I liked Winter Soldier (Frank Grillo rules! all over again! which is a note for those who also enjoyed him in Warrior), I didn't like what I've called its action porn. Everything it does right it kind of throws away with every action sequence. I mean every action sequence. Which just kind of happen. Over and over again. And the fact that although technically pretty much everyone is the villain in it, and that's really awesome in a contemporary Snowden/Assange kind of way, there's no decent villain. Bucky doesn't really appear in the movie so much as make a series of cameos. That's kind of weird. But even the brilliant Ed Brubaker comics where this movie came from also didn't really know what to do with the characters besides come up with the best Captain America story ever.
(Also, why is Captain America a supporting character in his own movie? Or at least, sharing it nearly equally with Black Widow and Nick Fury? And who wouldn't've enjoyed Falcon in a role as big as all three combined?)
Anyway, I did like Winter Soldier. I think this year has been an incredibly good one for superhero movies so far. This is good, because I've been having a lot of reservations for Guardians of the Galaxy. The new trailer in front of Future Past assuaged some of those. But it could really go either way. I think we're headed back into polarizing Marvel movie territory. Apparently Amazing Spider-Man 2 already started us down that road.
Hopefully Future Past isn't really there, too. It features a lot of pretzel logic (otherwise known as comic book logic, appropriately enough). And it's basically exactly The Matrix but with mutants. But it's possibly the best X-Men movie. As a sequel to either the original movies or First Class it works remarkably well. I think better of First Class because of it, even though Michael Fassbender has even less to do this time than the stuff that didn't really impress me last time. (It's not that I don't like Fassbender. When allowed to be awesome, like in Inglourious Basterds or even 12 Years a Slave, he's definitely awesome.) James McAvoy is much better this time, more committed. Jennifer Lawrence isn't as impressive, but then, a lot of her performance is under blue paint in action scenes. Ellen Page is pretty great in a limited role. Patrick Stewart probably has his best turn as Professor X, the first time he truly has something significant to do (which is exactly as insane as it sounds).
This is kind of basically another Wolverine movie, but there's much better integration than normal. I haven't seen The Wolverine yet. I've been petrified that it's the same as X-Men Origins, where half the movie is awesome and the rest is, well, the same as any Marvel movie (insert random action here).
I don't really get why they kept referring to Vietnam as a war America lost. We gave up on it, yes. We retreated. But technically we didn't lose it. So that was curious. But it put the right kind of context on the whole story, a conflict that can be defined by how it's perceived. Popularly Vietnam has always been a quagmire. That's hardly a question. It probably couldn't be won but I'm not sure it could be lost either. As far as mutants go, however, Future Past is probably right that it's definitely a war that can be won or lost, and curiously both at the same time, too. There's a lot of that existential philosophizing that I love so much, but with mutants.
Also, the Quicksilver scenes. All of them. Really, really excellent.
I've just finished S. from J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. Put simply, it's amazing. Put less simply, it's kind of the answer to all the questions you ever had about a J.J. Abrams project.
The project you ought to keep in mind, if you ever read it yourself, is Lost. You know, that mesmerizing, confounding puzzle of a TV show that fans alternately love and hate. There're so many elements to S. that it seems a rank injustice to single out only a few, but a lot of them seem tailor-made to anyone still trying to figure out what happened on that mysterious island. It's the answer to what's inside that mystery box that seems to be at the heart of every Abrams story.
And it actually helps put Abrams into better context than ever. I started ticking off all the associations I could easily make: Christopher Nolan, M. Night Shyamalan, Orson Welles, Frank Miller, Dean Motter, J.K. Rowling, Grant Morrison. All his stories involve people trying to sort out the vagaries of identity while pushing up against powers much more frightening than they ever wanted to confront.
Getting back to Lost, however, and how S. offers such rich parallels, it reminds me all over again how drastically the series changed after its third season, the one the fans hated so much it forced a course-correction and abbreviated run of only three more years. The third season is the one where the fans thought things started to drag, become less inspired, more predictable. But I never really saw that. The opening suite of episodes are especially electric. Jack, Sawyer, and Kate are being held captive by the Others. Finally, we're finding out what the enemy actually looks like. And other than Jack's initial predicament...it's pretty mundane, actually. It plays out a lot like the action in S., in which an amnesiac man finds himself thrust into a war of attrition between two sides who operate below the public radar, both completely convinced about the legitimacy of their actions and committed to eliminating the other. He keeps ending up on the same boat, and struggles to connect with the woman of his dreams. Just from the first moment we meet Jack in Lost, you can begin to see parallels.
The whole book is like that. The approach, however, delves deeper. It speaks to what Abrams might have thought as fans followed Lost's developments, whether in the series itself or the ephemera that gave secret clues about what lay ahead, such as the earliest references to the Dharma Initiative. And just what did the mysterious organization turn out to be? That's what the third season was headed toward, the same one where Jacob was referenced for the first time, who would eventually embody the war of black and white pieces Locke shows Walt from backgammon all the way at the beginning.
The moment the series acknowledged the wishes of the fans, I think Abrams felt it was the moment to give the series over to his collaborators. The shift is so obvious, the approach altered in ways more profound than the length of seasons. It becomes a lot more mythologized. By the end of the series, the fans, who had become aware that they could affect the shape of the Mystery Box, felt it was appropriate to be disappointed when they realized the answers they thought they wanted didn't materialize. And who is to blame? The fans. They scared off Charles Widmore. The Dharma Initiative that showed up in the fifth season was as ineffectual as Widmore's role in the sixth. I daresay both would have been far different with Abrams still steering the course.
None of this is to say I personally was disappointed with the series. Abrams has explored the same story over and over, from Alias to Fringe to Person of Interest, the last of these most successful at hiding in plain sight the Mystery Box. The Smoke Monster had different permutations, too, in Super 8 and Cowboys & Aliens. Once Upon a Time took a different approach to the same fantastic lives ordinary people experience when they encounter open the box. Abrams (and the creators who will be forever linked to Lost) likes characters with daddy issues, surrogate families, and conspiracy theories. I think all these things come to their best form in Fringe. Fans can pick their favorite.
S. is a way of affirming that Abrams can be a genre all to himself. You can enjoy the book on its own merits, for its own accomplishments. You can approach it by way of Lost (and come to different conclusions if you like). But I think you'll enjoy it, one way or another. It's ambitious. It's a way of approaching Abrams as a pure storyteller, someone who clearly enjoys what he does, no matter his motives or proclivities or the demands he asks of his audience. That he asks anything at all has always been one of my favorite things about him, the moment the name "Milo Rambaldi" was uttered for the first time. I like a challenge in my entertainment, and Abrams is one creator always game to provide one. I'm glad his efforts exist in book form now.
To be perfectly clear: Batman & Robin is not my favorite movie. It's really not even close. That being said, I unabashedly love Batman & Robin.
I realize that this is not the usual position to take on this particular movie. In a lot of ways, its popular reputation is absolutely earned. This was as close to the 1960s Batcamp as the modern movies will hopefully ever get. But there's so much to love about it.
There really is.
Released in 1997, the second (of two) Batman flicked directed by Joel Schumacher (after 1995's Batman Forever), Batman & Robin closed the book on that particular wave of superhero movies, and it killed a four-film-deep series that had begun with Tim Burton's Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992). It was the second one to feature Chris O'Donnell's Robin, and first (and only) to have George Clooney under the cowl.
In a lot of ways, there's nothing but logical progression behind what this movie became. Easily best known for its villains, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy, and Jeep Swenson's Bane, chances are most of what you know and/or think about it is associated with one or all of them.
For the record, there's also Alicia Silverstone's Batgirl in the mix.
To my mind, the most egregious mistake of the movie is actually Thurman's Ivy. She's the most irredeemably campy presence in the whole thing. I love Uma Thurman. I think my whole generation loves Uma Thurman. She did what was asked of her. Didn't ultimately hurt her career, whatever anyone might think of her Ivy. Such is the power of Uma Thurman. Schwarzenegger, O'Donnell, and Silverstone all basically kissed their popular movie careers goodbye after Batman & Robin landed as a turkey. But Thurman, who was never herself considered a major box office draw, didn't really have to worry about that. A half-dozen years later, she was The Bride in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill flicks. Legacy assured.
And really, I can even redeem that element of the film. While the character herself is like Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman stripped of all pretense (I'm not really a fan of that performance, either, clearly), Ivy serves as a strong impetus for the Batman/Robin dynamic that's...pretty important to the movie (if you weren't able to tell from the, um, title).
Associated with Ivy otherwise is Bane, who was only a few years removed from his biggest comics moment when he broke Batman in the "Knightfall" story arc. Bane in this particular movie appearance is a very dim echo of pretty much every other depiction ever (hopefully). But it's about as accurate a depiction of the Venom-fueled (read: super steroids) monster aspect as you could hope to find. This is what baseball fans would be thinking in just a few years. Just a year later, Mark McGwire would carry that particular era to its greatest popular heights. But even he would crash back down to earth. In recent times Captain America's super steroids enhancements fuel him to 1998 McGwire-like, but the truth is, as certainly Lance Armstrong will tell you, people really aren't that hot on this sort of thing. So Bane in this movie makes perfect sense, especially in hindsight.
Schwarzenegger's Freeze is actually the most redeemable element of the movie. Yes, I just said that. I've already admitted that Batman & Robin pretty much destroyed his career. But it may also be one of his greatest performances. For years, the future Governator had been trying to be the perfect action movie/comedy star, setting a template his successors still follow (and that's how we got Tooth Fairy). This is the movie where he combines them most perfectly, as well as his ability to deliver quips better than anyone. Nearly every line Schwarzenegger delivers in this movie is a quip. It's so ridiculous it's awesome. Like Thurman's Ivy, there was every precedent for Freeze in his Batfilm predecessors. Critics were charging that Jack Nicholson gleefully upstaged Michael Keaton from the start. Is there really any arguing that? Batman Returns not only features Pfeiffer's loony Catwoman, but Danny DeVito's cartoonish Penguin (who is arguably even more the star of that one than Nicholson in Batman), and Christopher Walken. Who is Christopher Walken. Batman Forever has Tommy Lee Jones mugging awesomely as Two-Face and Jim Carrey. Who is Jim Carrey.
So by the time you reach Schwarzenegger's Freeze, it's really a heck of a lot more logical than anyone has ever cared admit. The thing is, just like Thurman's Ivy, this is a Batman villain stripped of all pretense. He has a great time being a villain. But he has arguably some of the best moments of nuance for any Batman villain, too.
Really??? Really.
Because that's there, too. Schwarzenegger's Freeze is a tragic villain, and the true genius (I just said that) of the performance is that his best moments are actually subdued. The complete opposite of anything else you know about it. Freeze has a wife who is mostly completely left offscreen except in her holding tank. There's a flashback to Freeze's origin, and the end of the movie, which I will get back to.
What I love so much about Schwarzenegger's Freeze is that he set a positive precedent. He really did. Another of my all-time favorite superhero movie villains, Thomas Haden Church's Sandman from Spider-Man 3, might not have happened if it weren't for this performance, this depth in the heart of a movie that seems to lack it. But it's there. It's there in spades. But I'll get back to that.
Another big precedent Batman & Robin sets is big action in a superhero movie. Until then, the most outlandish thing fans could expect from them was believing a man could fly. Technology just wasn't ready for anything bigger at that point. The Batman flicks had been upping the ante with each entry. By this point, all stops had been let loose. Batman no longer resembled the Gothic vigilante. There's very little about this movie that resembles Gothic. Completely the opposite, really. But this was one step along the way to reaching The Avengers, the most financially lucrative superhero movie ever. In other words, a movie that the fans loved. Big time. But in order to reach that point, Hollywood had to know that big risks could pay off. They could achieve the kind of action comic books had featured for decades. And that started in Batman & Robin.
The thing to love best about Batman & Robin, though, is its heart. The whole thing, rather than being about the cartoon villains, is for the first time wholeheartedly about Batman. This sounds like an odd statement, because this is perhaps the movie out of the first four with the least focus on Batman. Clooney's Bruce Wayne receives the least screen time out of all three original actors to play the role. It's pretty much the opposite of his predecessor, Val Kilmer.
And yet this is a Batman whose career has significantly advanced since the last time we saw him. He's become a media darling. But he also has a partner now. Robin. That was the true legacy of Batman Forever, too. The decision to feature an older version of the character than was traditional in the comics had a significant impact. Batman and Robin were from the start, in this version, far less a matter of hero and sidekick, and more...partners. By the end of Batman Forever, that hadn't really been resolved. Batman & Robin is in a lot of ways a resolution of its predecessor. Robin learns about what it means to accept personal responsibility both from the rivalry Poison Ivy ramps up with Batman as well as the introduction of Batgirl, who is really a means of forcing Robin to see things from Batman's point of view for the first time.
With a lot of dayglo, by the way.
Part of the reason I've always liked Batman & Robin more than is reasonably common, I admit, is that I'm a fan of George Clooney. In an alternate universe, he would have been easily digestible as Batman. He's a natural. It's just, in his one appearance in the role, he's got a supporting role, just like Keaton in Batman Returns. This was one of Clooney's first movie roles, and to this day still one of his few efforts to make a truly mainstream movie. You might almost say that the failure of this effort allowed him to do what he wanted to do, and that's been pretty good for his career.
But the element I love best about Batman & Robin is Michael Gough's Alfred. Gough played Batman's butler in all four movies from this era. He was such a reliable presence (even moreso than Pat Hingle's Commissioner Gordon) that he was easy to take for granted. In this fitting finale, he finally steps into the spotlight.
That's the arc you really ought to pay attention to. Bruce Wayne has a love interest (played by Elle McPherson, by the way!), but the relationship that matters most in this movie is the one that endured the whole series. It's a classic case of emotional manipulation, of course. Alfred becomes significant because of a mortal illness. But it works. It works completely.
And it just so happens that Alfred's illness is the very same one that has been plaguing Mr. Freeze's wife. This sets up the ending, where Freeze finds redemption by agreeing to work with Batman to cure Alfred. It's the rare instance where the villain, who in comics is typically some kind of genius who "if not for..." would probably be of great benefit to mankind but instead is trapped in a loop of their worst impulses, actually steps away from their petty nonsense.
Granted, Freeze has very little left to lose. He's already been defeated. He's lost his wife (seemingly). But Batman saved her. And now everything he's been doing as a villain is actually...meaningless again. So he can go back to what he was. Which was actually a pretty nice guy.
Which, again, also saves Alfred's life.
So I love that. Unabashedly. A lot like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, if you mostly ignore the elements that don't work as well as its best elements, you end up with something pretty awesome. Maybe it's harder to see with Batman & Robin. But I've never really had that problem.
One last thing worth mentioning about it. The soundtrack boasts the song "The End is the Beginning is the End" from the Smashing Pumpkins. This song is awesome. It was featured in the original trailer for Watchmen. One of the best trailers ever. Premiered in front of The Dark Knight. That's a kind of redemption, too, isn't it?
This post was part of the Blockbusted Blogathon hosted by Girl Meets Cinema's Katy, which I learned about from the Geek Twins, who encouraged me to participate. So you can blame them for this defense of a defenseless movie!
Count me among those who won't be going. I'd been living in New York a month when the attacks happened and saw the whole thing from my company's Learning Center, located on the Queens side of the East River, right across from the UN. My "Prints, Plates, and Diagrams" class was on a break, so along with the rest of my class, I was down on the Center's back deck drinking coffee, enjoying what would otherwise have been one of the nicest days I'd ever spent in New York.
I don't mind saying that the memory still haunts me. I have absolutely no desire to relive it. By the time the weekend rolled around, Hoboken was plastered with "Have You Seen This Person?" fliers. They were on ever vertical surface in the Mile Square. One poor guy lost his beautiful blonde wife or girlfriend. I don't know the story. But he kept putting those posters up for months and months and months. I bet I saw her particular "Have You Seen This Person?" flier for a solid eight months after the attacks. I still feel bad for that guy. Anyway, that was a long time ago.
I worked the phones for the telethon they held right after the attacks, and for awhile I jumped every time I saw a bunch of police cars rushing down the street to get anywhere. But New York is eight million people and probably a million buildings, and for the most part, the City barely skipped a beat. The Stock Exchange was out of lights for maybe four days, and I remember distinctly that when the mayor asked folks to go out and shop on Black Friday that year to help the City's economy, my mom came up, and we literally shopped 'til we dropped. That was a pretty good day.
Eh. It's fine that they have a museum, but I think it's mostly for the tourists. Anyone who was there won't need to see it to remember what it was like.
That's Dan Head over at Dan & Sally's Digital Domain reacting to the opening of the 9/11 Museum. I've known Dan since 2006. We both wrote about comics at the defunct Paperback Reader, and also overlapped at Digital Webbing (which is probably where we originally overlapped, in the message boards), so it was nice to reconnect with him in the blogging sphere. 9/11 is a subject that remains relevant to me. Every time there's a piece of news concerning it (last week I read in the paper about the current status of unidentified remains) I still want to clip it and save it (which is what I did for years). But I'm not a New Yorker (although, in some respects we're all New Yorkers since then), certainly not back in 2001. That morning I was in a college dining hall. Dan's memories are so much more...real. I was fascinated to read his perspective years after the fact. They're almost mundane. I never really imagined it like that, what it was like to live there days, weeks, months after the fact. The rest of us really only heard about the rescue efforts, the cleanup. But those who lived with it...Anyway, just thought I'd send you some perspective.
Speaking of which:
I finally took a breath and dove into The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt's doorstopper of a novel. It just won the Pulitzer Prize (like, a few days ago) and was also shortlisted for 2013's National Book Critics Circle Award, so go Donna! As with Chang-Rae Lee's novel, this was a coming-of-age story and chock full of adventure. Our hero, young Theo, goes through a delightfully Dickensian childhood full of misery and joy, hijinks and heartbreak ... just one damn thing after another. I adored the thrill ride, implausible as some of it was, but the ending was terrible. OK, so you know dramatic structure has five parts — exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement? It was all good until the denouement. When you get to that part, do yourself a favor and just stop reading. Because 90% of the book was excellent, I still recommend it. The ending doesn't kill the book, it's just boring.
...
I'm reading Goldfinch right now. I think the book lost the bulk of its momentum after Theo went to live with the Barbours. Tartt's best writing was easily her breathless opening sequence. So far she hasn't come close to recapturing it. And I don't much care for Boris, and I've gone ahead and saw that he comes back again. "Implausible" is a good way to describe the unnecessary sequence of histrionic events. Like a literary soap opera.
...
I loved Boris! I really enjoyed the Barbours, too; and the bombing scene became almost unlistenable to me (possibly because it triggered some PTSD for me, but also because it was. so. incredibly. long.). We seem to have had opposite reactions to this book! :) But I agree that it is indeed a literary soap opera.
That's from Stephanie over at Words Incorporated. It's actually from the end of last month, one of several books she discussed for the Cephalopod Coffeehouse (yes, officially I'm no longer participating in that), then a response I made in the comments, and then her reply. I finished reading it right around the end of that month, too. Actually, "finished" isn't quite the word for it. More like, "abandoned." Because ultimately, I just never got back into it, once I realized I was no longer enjoying it. The funny thing is, Goldfinch from Donna Tartt isn't really as random a topic to bring up along with 9/11 as you might think. At the start of the book the main character finds himself in the midst of a terrorist attack in New York. One of many things I would've changed about the book is that I would have just gone ahead and made it a 9/11 story. It was all but one at that point anyway; I just didn't see the point in shying away, which is what I think Tartt did. Instead it's just a random attack specifically on a museum, that's never really explained, just one of many inexplicable elements that the author uses to create unearned dramatic tumult. Stephanie loved it, though, and as you can tell even a character who rubbed me the wrong way almost directly from his introduction, the wacky foreigner Boris. But the thing is, she and I differ again, concerning the ending, and Boris is part of the reason I think Tartt managed to pull a late book redemption, because Boris actually finds some useful redemption as the story finally takes some shape after a lot of meandering through Theo Decker's life (which, as I said in my comment, was at its strongest in the opening sequence when Tartt's writing was at its sharpest and most focused). But the contrasts between Stephanie's thoughts and mine, just serve to remind me that everyone's perspective is different.
Which is also what Dan's post made me realize. But then, we all know that already, don't we? I think we tend to forget that. So this is a new feature where I will try and explore that, highlighting not just interesting things I've read, but thoughts that have made me think. Because that's about as relevant as communal blogging is for me.
Spider-Man was my earliest favorite superhero. As I got older, though, I came to realize that he didn't often have stories that lived up to the potential I saw in him. It got to the point where I wasn't even sure what that potential was anymore. The first couple Sam Raimi flicks from a decade ago were hugely popular, but they always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. And I love Tobey Maguire, but I'm not sure Peter Parker was supposed to be so...dorky. I think in hindsight those were as much Raimi flicks and the earliest attempts to keep superhero movies faithful to the comic book source material than anything I personally could really appreciate.
And yes, I was one of the few people to actually like Spider-Man 3, mostly because of how excellently Sandman was portrayed, one of the earliest true success stories in movie supervillainy.
So I was actually pretty excited when I heard about the Spider-Man cinematic relaunch a few years back. I was already a pretty big fan of director Marc Webb. (500) Days of Summer is easily one of my all-time favorite movies. Andrew Garfield had also already proven a favorite from his appearance in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. There was also Rhys Ifans, whom I've followed since Dancing at Lughnasa (it's the movie where Meryl Streep is Irish, in the likelihood that you've never heard of it). (Another note on Ifans was the wonderful juxtaposition of his appearance opposite another Peter around the same time in the SyFy Peter Pan flick Neverland.) And I loved that finally someone figured out that Peter's story is intrinsically linked with the death of his parents. The only thing I didn't love about The Amazing Spider-Man was that the villain becomes meaningless and almost spoils the whole thing once he actually becomes the villain.
The only thing wrong with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is what I can only conclude is studio interference. I think this is more common than moviegoers think. It was pretty clear in John Carter, for instance, the parts that seem blatantly Disneyesque. I think this happens when the filmmaker maybe doesn't have enough clout to get things more or less exactly the way they want. I'm even willing to believe at this point that Joel Schumacher, the great demon of the Batman franchise, was a victim of this, because it's so clear seeing the earliest scenes of Jamie Foxx's Electro the commonalities with Jim Carrey's Riddler, for instance. Just the sort of thing studio executives think is necessary to make the end product kid-friendly.
Because otherwise this is a pretty dark picture, filled with foreshadow and foreboding, which began in the first installment of the rebooted series, made all the more clear by Denis Leary popping up periodically even though he's dead. Because Peter Parker knows it's not just great power and responsibility anymore, but the danger to those he loves he needs to worry about.
Bottom line is, this is Marc Webb getting to make the superhero version of (500) Days. That's what making really good smaller films gets you these days, the chance to replicate them as best you can in much bigger ones. That's exactly how Christopher Nolan started out. Maybe Webb is not exactly Nolan, but he's the next best thing. He really is, and Amazing Spider-Man 2 is all the proof I need. It's my new favorite movie based on a Marvel property. Easily. Easily.
The charm works all the way around. Foxx eventually settles into the role, once he doesn't have to sell his character's weaker instincts. It's the kind of role that reminds you that he used to be known as a comedic personality, just as Paul Giamatti's performance is a reminder that this is a guy who wholeheartedly throws himself into all of his roles, no matter what they are. I once suggested that he could have taken up the role of the Joker after Heath Ledger's death. And he easily could have. Clearly Rhino is no Joker. But he didn't have to be. He's just a tease for what comes later. These are movies that always have their pulse not just in the moment, but what comes later, sort of like Spider-Man himself (such as in the bravura moment where he saves dozens of people at the same time by figuring out how everything connects).
And I even love Emma Stone in it. This is the first time I've really been able to say that. I know she's adorable and all that, but she's normally so precious, as if she can't get past knowing how everyone thinks she's so cute. Finally she's breaking away from that. Who better than Webb, who was completely unafraid to throw romance under the bus at least once before? Except Stone's Gwen Stacy knows better than anyone that happy endings can be complicated.
I love that the whole movie has its moving parts figured out. It builds on and improves the legacy of Peter's parents, figures out where they fit in the mythology. Maybe it's been done before. But certainly not with anywhere near this prominence. Even if the spider bite was an accident, it was still a matter of destiny. And why anyone else trying to replicate it is doomed to fail. I mean, there are two characters in this movie who are radically transformed. They're as damaged as Peter was when his life was changed forever. The difference is that he figured out a way to look outward. Forget all those attempts to explain that he needed the death of Uncle Ben to become a hero. Mistakes can be made, courses corrected. But the strength of his character was always there.
This is a Spider-Man I can believe in. It's the first time he truly looks authentic on the big screen, too. Sure, they were able to make the character look convincing in 2002 (you believed a man could websling). It's not even just that Garfield is pitch-perfect with all his quipping, but that he's having fun, he's taking risks, he's going for broke. And sometimes it doesn't work out. But the strength of Spider-Man is that he always gets back up. (I confess that I had some help realizing this from some of the recent comics, where Peter finally reclaimed, ah, his own body. You really have to read those to understand what the heck I'm talking about.)
Assuming there isn't backlash from, um, everyone else's opinion of this movie, that it's a step back and a relative failure even at the box office, I want to see the next one really, really badly. I want to see what Webb does next. I want to see Peter meet Mary Jane. (In hindsight it was absolutely the right move to cut her from this one.) I want to see, by god, the Sinister Six.
Of course, regardless, I have this nearly perfect movie, and its predecessor, which shines brighter in reflection. I love Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Shooks Run will be posted weekly for the remainder of the year and complete the story some of you may have been following in Eponymous Monk earlier this year, which kind of continued in April's Interrupting Cat feature for the A-to-Z Challenge. Together, they finally complete a story I started writing back in high school, which has been given the title Zooropa (which is also the name of a U2 album). I never knew how the story ended. I stopped writing the story in high school, and stopped again when I tried to completely rewrite it in 2005. So I'm glad that I've finally reached that point, and you hopefully might be as well by December (if you want to suffer that long!)...
(I can't pretend I made up Shooks' scale predicament. Of course, Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll played around with that sort of thing, but it was Grant Morrison's modern classic Joe the Barbarian that served as my chief source of inspiration in that regard. There's also the matter of dismissing Shooks as crazy. Which is I'm sure how he ended up in the institution in the first place.)
Mainly because it's 5/4 and it sounds vaguely like something from the movies, but you know, it doesn't really matter. I think people generally like Star Wars. (Understatement alert.) Although I've been looking at a book in a bookstore (it is still a thing) from a critic celebrating reviews he wrote back in the late '70s/early '80s and his only remarks on Star Wars are completely dismissive. For some critics, you can never admit to liking something popular. Then again, the only reason anyone ever hears about anything is that it is in some sense popular. But I digress. I don't mean to beat up on that unnamed critic. His larger point is that he relished the days when it was okay to write at length about movies in reviews, which is clearly something I do myself sometimes.
And I could write at length about Star Wars again. I could write about the prequels (which I unabashedly love) or the new movie that's coming down the pike (ooh! shiny cast photo that's been making its way around the Internet!) or the Dark Horse adaptation of George Lucas's original script (final issue being released this Wednesday, folks).
Or I can just make a vow to watch at least one of the movies today. I think I can do that. Hopefully. I've been watching Star Wars my whole life. I think I will still be able to say that in five years, ten, twenty, however long I've got.
Because I love Star Wars. So may the geeky reference be with you!
