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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 3 years

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Michael in the Mainstream: The Dark Knight Trilogy & Its Negative Impact on the Superhero Genre

Superhero movies have come a very long way in the past couple of decades, cementing themselves as a genre unto themselves rather than the odd action movie here or there. Almost every year a few new ones of varying quality pop up that incite equal parts excitement and derision. It’s definitely a genre people feel very strongly about, but even people who tend to not love superhero films will admit that Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is fantastic.

From 2005 until 2012, Nolan reinvisioned Batman in a way that grounded the character in reality. There’s no fantastical elements, there’s no insane science, there’s no superpowers… Everything in these films could happen in the real world. In a post-Batman & Robin world, this was seen as a breath of fresh air, and the critics loved it. In particular, The Dark Knight helped to usher in the modern age of superhero films, releasing the same year the MCU kicked off and widely being hailed as one of the greatest films of all time. That’s right, not even superhero films, films period. These films were impressive, groundbreaking, and… they fundamentally ruined superhero movies for quite a while.

Look, I don’t particularly hate these films. I think all of them are pretty good, in their own ways. But they have a lot of glaring issues that really hamper them a fair bit and yet, somehow, they became the blueprint that studios decided to look at for what they thought a successful superhero movie should be. Nolan’s films are serious, brooding, dark, and lack the whimsy and creative insanity that makes comics such a fun and engaging medium, and I think this right here is what has hurt comic book movies the most over the past decade. These are films that feel absolutely ashamed to be comic book movies, and they desperately want to seem like they’re “mature” and for “adults.” And, unfortunately for the rest of us, this shame translated over into a lot of other films, something we’re only just now recovering from.

Looking at the greatest strength of the trilogy shows this issue pretty well, that being the villains. Nolan’s films gave us truly iconic portrayals of characters like Bane, Joker, and Scarecrow, and you’re not gonna hear me say much bad about them. Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Aaron Eckhart, and Heath Ledger all do fantastic jobs as the insidious rogues of Batman. But the issue I have is that by grounding these characters in a realistic setting like this, it kind of misses the point. Joker isn’t using exploding cakes and laughing gas, Ra’s al Ghul isn’t an immortal warrior, Bane isn’t a drugged-up super soldier… They’re all just Guys. They’re Guys With Gimmicks, yes, but at the end of the day they aren’t what should be looked at as the be-all, end-all of the character’s portrayals.

And yet everyone acts like no one should ever play Joker again, because Heath Ledger’s Joker was just so good, guys! And he was good, but I don’t think Ledger’s Joker should be the absolute final Joker ever. Quite frankly, I prefer Phoenix’s Joker, because even if that version is also in a rather grounded film missing the overt weirdness of comics for the most part, he still dresses in a colorful costume, acts weird, tells jokes, and is in general more Jokery. Out of all of these villains, I think Bane and Scarecrow at least come within the ballpark of being close to how they should be, but Scarecrow is horribly underutilized and Bane is given a rather undignified sendoff.

Then there are the bigger issues. Batman himself is really downplayed throughout the trilogy, getting fairly little screentime compared to villains and side characters. This was a huge point of contention when The Dark Knight Rises came out, with most of the film featuring Bruce Wayne, and in hindsight it highlights how unwilling Nolan was to engage with the comic book trappings of what he was adapting. I like Christian Bale a lot, he’s a great actor, but I don’t think he really carries any of the films; in fact, it’s usually the villains carrying the movies. Bale is certainly not as bad as Val Kilmer in the role of Wayne/Batman, but he’s no Keaton, he’s no Clooney, he’s not even an Affleck. A lot of the time, he also just feels like… a Guy. And Batman should not ever, ever just be a Guy.

But perhaps the most egregious fault of the films is what it did to Gotham City itself. In Burton’s films, you really get a feel for the Gothic atmosphere of the city with how it’s designed, and this goes for Batman: The Animated Series too. And even the more cartoonish, colorful Gotham of Schumacher’s films pops and leaves an impact. But Nolan’s Gotham? It’s very much just a City. There is nothing distinct about Nolan’s Gotham, it’s literally just a generic city, and if you even have the faintest knowledge of Batman you will know that Gotham is not just a city. Gotham is pretty much a character itself, a dark, imposing landscape in which Batman does battle with his costumed foes. Every other adaptation I can think of knows to make Gotham feel unique and distinct, but this one just absolutely drops the ball. You might as well just have the city be New York if you’re going to put no effort into giving it personality.

And that all brings me to this: every reviled superhero movie of the past decade, from F4ntastic to The Amazing Spider-Man to Dawn of Justice, all have their genesis in Nolan’s trilogy. He laid the groundwork for these films to exist, and a large majority of the blame needs to be put on Nolan for sapping the fun out of comic book movies. Now, to be totally fair to Nolan, he’s not entirely responsible for what happened to the comic book film landscape; prior to him, the X-Men film series was giving all of the heroes dark costumes and being a bit more serious. But despite those films playing a bit of a part, there’s one major reason I don’t fault them nearly as much: The X-Men films never once felt ashamed to be comic book movies.

You have to understand, people loved grit and edginess in the 90s and had just violently rejected Batman & Robin a few years prior to the original X-Men film, so it’s hard to really fault it for wanting to avoid being too campy. But much like Blade, the films never tried to act like they weren’t still crazy comic book films. Scott still has eye lasers, Mystique is still blue, Nightcrawler looks like a demon, there are Sentinels and Apocalypse and even Dazzler shows up at one point! The X-Men franchise wasn’t always good, but it managed to balance between being silly and taking itself seriously pretty well for the most part. Magneto is still a Holocaust survivor, his relationship with Xavier still has impact, there are still emotional moments here and there, but then you also have Deadpool movies and the multiple comic book style retcons to the timeline that leave the continuity a mess, and something about that just feels right. And all that makes Logan less egregious despite being the sort of brooding, angsty superhero drama Nolan would make, because even if it is those things, it still centers around a dude with metal claws coming out of his hands trying to stop his best friend from wiping out everyone with psychic seizures. Nolan could never make this superhero film.

Nolan’s films, on the other hand, did. These films did not feel like they wanted to be comic book movies, they felt like they wanted to be serious crime films but Nolan was stuck with Batman so he just mashed the two together. And honestly, I’d probably be more forgiving if it weren’t for the hugely negative impact these films and their critical success had on the superhero genre even until this day. The first decade of superhero films as a major contender in cinema were colored by these films. People outright balked at silliness in superhero movies for quite some time, with a lot of criticism levied at the early phases of the MCU for being too goofy; in fact, at times it seemed as if the MCU was going a bit too far in the goofy direction without striking the proper balance, with films like Age of Ultron having most of its tension defused by constant wisecracks. And on the DC side, Nolan’s grounded approach lead to Zack Snyder’s flaccid filmmaking with dark coloration, moody atmosphere, and not a shred of joy to be found. Nolan is essentially the peak of dark, grounded superhero films, and Snyder is the nadir, but Snyder’s awful DC films wouldn’t exist if not for Nolan.

It was a slow crawl getting to what superhero movies should be. Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man were films tossed out only when Marvel was certain they could take risks, because absurd concepts like those would just not have been able to survive if not for years of good will beforehand. That’s not even getting into some of the more bonkers elements of later films, such as Ego the Living Planet and basically everything about Doctor Strange. In fact, Doctor Strange, for all its issues, is still a massive step forward for a genre that outright rejected magic for a long time, instead for a time turning Thor and his costars into a cast of hyper-advanced aliens, with later films having to clarify that there is magic and zombies and so on. The recent WandaVision was able to further clarify this by making Wanda unambiguously magic and not an evil Nazi science experiment.

Superhero animation didn’t suffer quite so much, but that’s mostly because, much like comics, animation is still seen as “kid’s stuff” by way too many people. And even then, they didn’t escape the shadow of Nolan totally unscathed; one need only look into the infamous Bat Embargo, which limited Batman villains so there could only be one given incarnation of said character in media. For instance, the Scarecrow being in Batman Begins meant he could not appear in the animated series The Batman. This lead to such things as no Batman characters appearing in Justice League Unlimited. It was truly a stupidly frustrating time to be a Batman fan when some of his most iconic foes were relegated to only certain appearances because it “might confuse kids.”

Let me again clarify this: I mostly like the Nolan films. I usually like Nolan, though he has become unbearably, obnoxiously pretentious these days. I think a lot of elements of them are great, I feel like they mostly have strong villains, and I don’t disagree that The Dark Knight is a fantastic film. But the thing is these are only good as AU stories, as their own thing; they should not be the template every superhero movie should follow, or any superhero movie for that matter, because they lack the ability to engage with the things that make people love comics in the first place. People love wacky, off-the-wall concepts, superpowered aliens, magic, talking animals, evil living planets, alcoholic ducks, and all that fun stuff.

People desperately want the fun, camp, and wacky stuff back in comic book films, as the success of the goofier DC films like Aquaman, Shazam, and Birds of Prey as well as the success of shows like Doom Patrol in comparison to the critical and audience revulsion of Snyder’s films, with Shazam in particular giving us such bonkers concepts as an entire family of superpowered children and Mr. Mind, the evil alien caterpillar. Thor: Ragnarok and the Guardians of the Galaxy films have become some of the most beloved MCU movies despite being weird, wacky, and wholly embracing the joy of comics to the point the latter films feature Howard the Duck and the aforementioned Ego alongside bizarre characters like Rocket Raccoon, Groot, and Taserface. And the thing with all of these films is that they’re able to balance the weirdness and wackiness of comics without losing sight of human emotion, moving storytelling, and drama. They’re both fun and deep, goofy and yet meaningful. This is what comics are, and what they should be, and anyone who thinks comics should be grim and gritty really needs to think about why they think an entire genre needs to be colored in with only the dullest colors.

I think what I’m trying to say here is this: Make a Detective Chimp movie, you cowards.

#Michael in the Mainstream #mitm #review #movie review #the dark knight trilog #the dark knight #batman begin #the dark knight rises #superhero movie #christopher nolan #DC

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shlabam · 4 years

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TOP TEN COMICS BOOK VILLAINS WE PROBABLY WON’T SEE IN THE MOVIES

Superhero media is the hottest thing going right now. It was true ten years ago when the MCU was in its adolescence, and it’s even truer now. Even with film production on lockdown, Marvel and DC are still planning on literally dozens of their characters entering their respective cinematic universes. However, for the fans of the source material, things can be contentious. For every memorable Tony Stark quip, there’s Superman destroying an entire city because he’s, frankly, kind of dumb now. A major point of contention is how the various popular villains are utilized. Making an intimidating and potent villain in a comic book is very different than in a film. In comics, you have months to establish motive, powers, and backstory before the villain even makes their first move. In films, that all has to be compressed and spilled out in the scarce few minutes when Captain America and Bucky aren’t making bambi eyes at each other. To be concise, some villains adapt perfectly, and some, no matter how good they are in the comics, just don’t. And to be clear, this list is of popular villains who have the possibility of appearing in a big-budget film, so no, you won’t be seeing Ten Eyed Man or Big Wheel in there. Their powers are, respectively, having ten eyes, and being very good in business. (That’s a lie, he’s just a huge wheel who chases Spider-Man.)

10: Mr. Mxyzptlk:

Cool, let’s get this one out of the way. Despite being one of Superman’s oldest, longest-lasting, and most popular enemies from all the way back in the Golden Age, there’s no way in hell he will be in a movie. For the uninformed. Mr. Mxyzptlk is a 5th dimensional wizard-genie who appears every ninety days to torment Superman with his reality-altering antics, and can only be sent back to his home dimension if Superman tricks him into saying his own name backwards. Yes, it would be very dazzling, as Mr. Mxyzptlk’s powers in a movie would basically look like if Christopher Nolan directed Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but he’s a little too silly to fit in with the current “everything is gloomy and also a bummer” tone of the Superman films. This silly tone has lent itself perfectly to the Supergirl series, where he’s made a handful of appearances. Besides, if we get Mxyzptlk in a Superman movie before Brainiac, I’ll lose my entire freaking mind.

9: Hobgoblin:

There have been eight Spider-Man movies so far, and of those eight, four of them have, in some capacity, featured the Green Goblin. And that makes sense, right? The Green Goblin is easily Spider-Man’s most memorable and reoccurring nemesis, with Doctor Octopus and Venom close behind, and Peter Parker’s link with Norman and Harry Osbourn makes their tragic story perfect for film adaptation. On the other hand, we have the Hobgoblin, who is essentially Green Goblin with all the gimmicks, none of the Parker-adjacent backstory, and an orange and blue color scheme, likely tying him to the Denver Broncos [citation needed]. Still, in those four cinematic attempts at tackling the Goblin, none of them have quite gotten him right, and I can’t imagine this character, who is, even in canon, an intentional Green Goblin rip-off, would fare any better.

8: Starro:

Brave and the Bold #28 from 1960 featured the first story with the Justice League, and this story put them up against a very unique new villain: Starro the Conqueror, a giant telepathic starfish who can release tiny versions of himself. If these tiny starfish latch onto your head, you’re under his control and obey his commands. The Justice League have battled him fairly regularly over the last fifty years, and he’s a distinct and powerful enemy that the fans generally appreciate, leading to him being referenced occasionally in Smallville, Arrow, and Flash. Why won’t he ever be in a movie? Because if you’re a Hollywood producer, you stopped paying attention at “giant telepathic starfish”. Sorry. Maybe Shuma-Gorath will pop up in the next Doctor Strange movie, and he’ll set off a Twilight-esque wave of starfish monster movies! Then again, almost absolutely not.

7: Puppet Master:

Speaking of mind control, what’s scarier than that? For my money, nothing. Having your body and will taken away from you by an unseen force is a terror greater than death. How could you possibly make a villain based around such a chilling concept and have him not be scary? Well, maybe if it’s an old bald man in an apron playing with dolls. The Puppet Master is an ongoing threat for the Fantastic Four who is just that: he makes models of his foes out of radioactive clay, and makes them punch themselves and dance around and kiss each other, because he’s, y’know, a weird old man. Why is he such a consistent threat who hasn’t fallen into obscurity like other dumb gimmick-based villains? His stepdaughter, Alicia Masters, is the Thing’s longtime girlfriend. As long as she keeps appearing in movies (including being played by… Kerry Washington? That can’t be right), there’s always a chance he’ll pop up, but I don’t think any movie studio is that stupid, despite the quality of every Fantastic Four movie blatantly defying that prediction.

6: Bizarro:

Superman has always suffered in the villains department. When you’re essentially a god, what can they throw at you? As it turns out, Lex Luthor, almost always. But why not another Superman? Bizarro is essentially that, an imperfect clone of Superman who speaks in opposite speak - “Bizarro am good! Me not punch you until you live!” - and features the same abilities as the Man of Steel. Sounds great, right? Putting a hero against a villain with their same powers has worked for nearly every Marvel movie (shots fired). So why won’t we see him grace our silver screens any time soon? Because they’ve never really figured him out. Is he funny? Is he lethal? Does Kryptonite work on him? If he does everything the opposite of Superman, why does he wear clothes? Isn’t being naked the opposite of being clothed? Bizarro is a major Superman side-character and has made appearances in Smallville and Supergirl, but the idea of him being the Big Bad going toe-to-toe with Henry Cavill doesn’t sound like it would generate a lot of views.

5: Impossible Man:

You remember what I said about Mr. Mxyzptlk? Remember? So take that bit, but everywhere I say Superman, have it say Fantastic Four instead… yeah, that should do it.

4: The Wrecking Crew:

Thor has a unique quirk of having a very cinematic rogues gallery. Sure, most of the movies have pitted him against Loki, but if they were to run him up against the Enchantress, or the Absorbing Man, or Ulik the Troll, or Kurse, or even the Stone Men from Saturn, that’s not a bad movie! However, in one of the attempts to give Thor more of a mortal nemesis, they put him up against the Wrecker, who has an… enchanted… indestructible… crowbar. Yeah. Incredibly, the Wrecker and his Wrecking Crew have become very present characters throughout the Marvel Universe, essentially serving as “jobbers”, being rolled out to get beaten up by the new top hero or villain, but that may not work in a movie, where villains have to be seen as having some level of potency before being struck down. That means we’d need at least a short scene where it seems like Thor might lose to a guy whose power is “crowbar”, and that’s about as likely as an Edward Norton cameo in the next Avengers. Ho boy, they did NOT part on good terms!

3: Clayface:

When the movie-going public goes to see a Batman movie, they generally want something a bit more grounded than your typical superhero fare. After all, Batman has no powers, and therefore the most supernatural thing that should happen in these movies is a gas that makes you smile, or a different gas that makes you think your dead parents are back and disappointed in you. Might wanna put a mouth covering on that mask, Bruce! The one and only they’ve made a movie where Batman fights people with real, off-the-wall super powers (Batman and Robin), it did not go great. And those guys pale in comparison to Clayface, who is, yes, made of clay. In the comics and cartoons, Clayface looks awesome, turning his limbs into weapons and being very challenging to incapacitate, but in a live-action, realistic Batman adventure, we wouldn’t want to see the Dark Knight fight a poop-colored version of the T-1000, especially if it’s got the same chemical composition of a little dreidel that I made.

2: Red Hood:

A relative newcomer to the Batman universe, Red Hood is the revived body of Jason Todd, the second Robin, who was brutally killed by the Joker in one of the most controversial storylines DC Comics ever produced. Literally, fans called a 900 number to tell the writers to kill him off. A 900 number. That’s how much they hated the little turd. Anyway, Jason Todd, whom Batman and the rest of the world believed was dead, was revived by Ra’s al Ghul and became a ruthless villain. Since then, he’s gravitated more to the side of the hero, though one a bit more willing to spill blood than his mentors. Why won’t we see him in the darker, edgier Batman films? Because… that’s Bucky. It’s the same thing that happened in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Teen sidekick killed in controversial manner, revived by super villain to be a thorn in said hero’s side, later changes his mind and becomes a good guy again, though with enough PTSD to fill a PTSD super store. The two storylines even occurred in the comics in the same year, 2005, to much fanfare and across-the-board declarations of one company ripping off the other, reminding the world of the great Aquaman-Namor debates of the 1940s. Considering that DC’s films have criminally underperformed compared to Marvel’s, the last thing they want to do is be accused of lazy plagiarism, so Jason Todd will likely remain a permanent fixture in the afterlife, hanging out with Batman’s parents and, at the rate that people are coming back from the dead, literally no one else. (Plus, if they can’t even get Robin right, how are they gonna do this?)

1: Mister Sinister:

Yes, he was teased at the end of X-Men Apocalypse, but ignoring that the film underperformed both critically and commercially, Mister Sinister is never going to be in a movie. It would make sense for him to appear, though, right? He’s one of the most present and potent X-Men villains, he’s played crucial roles in many memorable storylines, he’s got a sick cape, but… something a lot of comic book fans tend to overlook is his murky backstory, powers, and motivations. He was a biologist in Victorian London who did genetic experiments on homeless people in the hopes of finding clues about the oncoming threat of mutants. In this time, he unearthed the long-dormant En Sabah Nur, whom you plebeians may know as Apocalypse, and Apocalypse gifted him with great abilities. What abilities you ask? HA HA, good question! At various times, Sinister has displayed: telepathy, telekinesis, energy projection, shape-shifting, regeneration, and teleportation, but these powers will mysteriously disappear whenever they want him to get sliced up real good by Wolverine. Additionally, it has never been made very clear what Sinister wants. Does he seek perfect mastery of the human genome? Does he live to torment Cyclops? Is he a blind follower of Apocalypse? Is he just running through all the different kinds of goatee? Of course, in adaptation, the writers would pick and choose the aspects they’d want to use, but I doubt they’d want to untangle the Christmas lights mess that is Mister Sinister, especially when they’ve got a perfectly good villain whose power is just “magnets”.

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hecallsmehischild · 3 years

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Recent Media Consumed

Books

The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I have mixed feelings about this book. I am torn between admiring the writing device the author employs and being annoyed by it every time it crops up. The idea is that the writer, Goldman, is actually presenting you with an abridged version of an antiquated Florinese novel while cutting out all the “boring political satire” bits and only keeping the action/adventure/romance portions just like his father did when reading the novel to him as a child. The author character continually interjects himself and this was distracting to me in a way that Lemony Snicket’s work was not (I cannot tell you why). Also there’s an awful lot of uncomfortable racial depictions in the original novel. Also I hated Buttercup’s guts, she truly comes across as someone who doesn’t deserve anyone, MUCH LESS WESTLEY. My end impression was that there are some parts of this novel that really elaborate on scenes in the movie and give an interesting depth to them (for example, we really get to know Inigo Montoya’s father and when he dies, it’s a character that we the reader can mourn as well) but in my estimation, the movie adapted the book marvelously and actually is one of the rare movies that I would say is overall better than the source material.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. Second read, I bought my own copy this time. This is such a chick flick book but it’s soul food for me because goshdarnit a novel took fanfiction writing seriously and it’s so comforting to read. It also re-inspires me to keep pegging away at my fanfic.

The Dancing Realms series by Sharon Hinck. Hidden Current and Forsaken Island are written by one of my current favorite Christian fantasy writers. This is her second developed fantasy world, and while there are some things that I didn’t care for as much (I thought some bits of characterization didn’t work as well in this series as her previous one) the world she built is really cool and there are moments in the story where real glimpses of something deep and beautiful bleed through. My favorite set of themes from this work is the damage that can be done by elevating one sort of gift above all the rest OR by losing yourself entirely to your gifting and seeking only the pleasure derived from your gift without any grounding. I’m not synopsizing very well, but it’s worth a read and I look forward to the upcoming third book, Windward Shore.

Momo by Michael Ende. I wish this story were as well known as The Neverending Story, which Michael Ende also wrote. This novel wielded a surgeon’s knife on my fears of being meaningless and wasting my time and my life. It’s one of those novels that really has something important to say about life, I think. I want to add this into my queue of books to read on my Youtube channel, when I get an opening.

Given by Taylor Nandi. The cover looked amazing, and I was intrigued that Wattpad now has its own publishing press. However I was (I really am sorry) disappointed. I had to put it down within a few pages. There is very much a “tell, not show” feel to the writing and I can’t keep on with it.

Movies

Soul. PIXAR KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK AGAIN, REPEAT, PIXAR KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK AGAIN ON BASICALLY EVERY LEVEL. The visuals and character designs were fantastic, the messages beautiful, the characters believable, relatable, and fully embraceable. And every five or ten minutes, Sergey and I would pause and discuss implications and theorize about different parts of the movie and lore which turned a ninety minute watch into a three hour one which made it EVEN BETTER (for me). This is THAT kind of movie. Hats off to you, Pixar.

It’s A Wonderful Life. It must have been well over ten years since I’ve seen this movie. First, I was shocked to see it has been colorized. Second, the colorizing actually helps me catch a few fantastic details I would never have noticed (like Mr. Potter’s giant gold-framed painting of himself in his own office). Also there’s so much adult context I missed watching this as a kid, it’s fantastic to re-watch it and get so much more out of it this time around. I don’t think all “great classics” deserve their crowns, but this one does for sure.

Batman: Hush. Fun! Not much else to say. Just, fun to watch.

Collective films I binge re-watched for whimsy value: Klaus, The Little Prince (recent re-imagining), Mary Poppins Returns, The Lego Move 2.

Shows

24. So I finally finished all (the good) seasons, 1-8. Talk about an emotional meat grinder. This is possibly one of the most well written, well acted TV shows I’ve ever seen in my life, and it just. Never. Stops. Punching you in the gut. I had to take massive cartoon binge-watching breaks in between seasons. But it was worth it. This is an amazing show for many reasons. One of the things that stands out most to me is how it tackles the post 9/11 racial tensions from almost every angle. *announcer’s voice* Now featuring, that time a Muslim was the bad guy, and then that OTHER time when a Muslim was the valiant head of the Counter Terrorist Unit tracking all the terrorists down, and that OTHER time when you were certain someone was being wrongfully accused of terrorism by a dumb racist but it turns out the dumb racist was right and you hated him for being right because he was right but all his reasons were wrong, and that OTHER time the Big Bad was from China/Russia/Africa/our own dang government/our big corporations, and that OTHER time when we got a whole scene of an Imam guiding our protagonist in a deathbed prayer that was so moving I was choking up, etc etc etc. There is no black and white, it is all shades of gray, and every moral you ever held will be challenged in the course of watching this show.

Batman Beyond (3 seasons + Movie). Kinda cheesy, kinda campy, and I will punch the next person who says “Schway” out loud. But it was fun to watch. And some individual episodes were really excellent, I think. Also Re: Return of the Joker movie, HOLY CRAP.

DuckTales (reboot) 3rd season. It felt… like they ran out of ideas? Like they ran out of caring? The first couple seasons were spectacular, but it kind of petered out at the end, there. Still, the first couple seasons were fantastic.

Animaniacs (reboot) 1st season. IT’S TIME FOR ANIMANIACS. THEY’RE STILL ZANY TO THE MAX. IT’S LIKE THEY NEVER LEFT, AND THEIR COMEDY’S STILL DEFT, THEY’RE ANIMANIACS!!!

#child loves books #child loves movies #recent media consumed

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smokeybrandreviews · 4 years

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Cheeseburgers

The Infinity Saga is over. The MCU is moving forward into uncharted waters. Disney+ has pushed back certain shows and moved up WandaVision. Black Widow finally has a well deserved movie, postmortem. The future is wide open but, before we get on a brand new pain train, i wanted to take a look back and talk about some of my favorite movies from the first eleven years of the MCU.

Avengers: Infinity War

This movie, man, is probably peak MCU. There are better films in the series but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a film that walks the line of comic book and cinema to deftly. This is the penultimate tale for that first decade and what a f*cking climax it was. Holy sh*t! There was just so much good in this film, from character development to visual flair to legitimate stakes. I’m a massive Marvel fan and i am well aware of the Infinite Gauntlet saga in the comics but seeing this sh*t? Seeing Thanos actually Snap? I never though in a million years that would happen onscreen. And then it did. It was at that point i absolutely knew the MCU was about that life. I knew to expect the unexpected because , with the wealth of the Marvel universe to draw from, they were going to craft some motherf*ckers of stories.

Like, I f*cking cried when Pete got dusted. I shed legitimate tears and I’m not even embarrassed to say it out loud. For a film to move me like that? and it’s not Forrest Gump? Motherf*cker had to be on point, for sure. The entire theater was silent as those strings hummed and Thanos sat on his farm, smiling contently. I had never experienced that before The entire auditorium - completely silent. We were in disbelief. We were in mourning. I saw Infinity War in theaters four times and literally every time, the same thing happened. In two hours and some change, Marvel had gave a theater full of people straight emotional trauma. Your movie has to be absolutely on point for that to occur.

Speaking of Thanos, yo, how was this big ass purple grimace looking motherf*cker one of the best antagonists of film, period? How was this cat written so well? I lost my sh*t when they teased him at the end of Avengers and that little bit we got of him in Guardians was cool but i was not prepared for how goddamn formidable he turned out to be. Josh Brolin brought this character to life but the writing gave me real agency. I was flabbergasted by how great this character turned out to be. Thanos felt real. He felt flawed. He felt legitimate. Id have to put him up there with The Dark Knight Joker and Hans Landa as one of the best antagonists ever.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

I adore Spider-Man. Ive written at length about that love. He’s the reason i even picked up that Marvel comic all those years ago. I’ve seen every cinematic iteration of Webhead and i mst say, this portrayal is the truest to the source material i have ever seen. Cats get on the MCU about making him Tony Stark jr. but most people don’t understand that’s where he was going anyway. Most people don’t know that, in the comics, he’s basically Reed Richards jr. and since the MCU has no Reed, Tony is a pretty smart substitute. But that argument is inconsequential because the core of who Spider-Man is, the actual spirit of the character, has been captured so perfectly by this version of Pete, it’s borderline miraculous. I love Tobey McGuire’s take in Pete because he was the first to do it. Kind of like how i have such nostalgia for the 89 Batman. That version of Spider-Man felt like the old Lee/Ditko version from the 60s. Andrew Garfield was adequate. He didn’t get a fair shake though, mostly barbecue the writing in his run was so goddamn terrible. But this new kid? This casting was as perfect as RDJ was to Iron Man.

Tom Holland kills it as Spider-Man. His version of the character feels right. It feels modern. It feels like Ultimate Pete but grounded in the spirit of the 90s cartoon version. He’s this massive geek, this kid really, granted power in tragedy and it feels so goddamn authentic, i couldn’t believe it. The second he showed u in Civil War, i absolutely knew Underoos was about to be a star in these films and that is saying a lot considering how loaded this cast has become. Homecoming was the first film we got to see Pete stretch his legs and it was f*cking brilliant. Everything about this movie is what a great Spider-Flick should be and the MCU nailed it! if i never got another Spidey appearance, this movie was more than enough to sate my appetite. Homecoming is my second favorite MCU movie. I loved every second of it!

Also, how about that Aunt May stinger, though?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Look, i love the Dark Knight. For me, that is the pinnacle of a capeflick. That movie was a great crime thriller first, a Batflick second. Nolan approached it with a grounded sense of reality that left you, as an audience, breathless. It is one of the best films i have ever seen in my entire life and Ledger gave one of the most brilliant performances ever captured on celluloid. There is nothing as good as that film in the MCU. The Winter Soldier comes f*cking close, though. This movie made me sit up and realize that the MCU had some teeth. Until this thing came out, i thought we were going to get a bunch of flamboyant costumes and snarky Wedonisms. I wasn’t mad, mind you, Avengers was dope, but Winter Soldier took all that campy bullsh*t out back and murdered it. This movie was the MCU growing up and almost everything afterward has been brilliant. The Winter Soldier forced everyone to step their game up with how goddamn brilliant it turned out to be. I can’t say there were any performances as great as Ledger’s Joker but i can make the argument the overall writing was better than The Dark Knight, and that is stupid high praise.

Guardians of the Galaxy

This film has no right to be as good as it is. I went into this thing on a whim, mostly because I thought it was going ti be filler like Ant-Man or something, and then it wasn’t. It was great. Legitimately great. I had no idea the MCU could take a C-rate team like the goddamn Guardians and uplift them so beautifully. James Gunn took those characters and wrote the best Star Wars film since f*cking Empire and I didn’t think that was possible, not with this wayward branch of Marvel History. Seriously, if you do even a minuscule amount of research on who the Guardians are, they’re a joke. I mean, they have a f*cking talking Raccoon on the team! Gunn had the wherewithal to lean into that and he produced one of the best in the entire MCU. He took these loser clowns and injected so much emotion and humanity into them, you couldn’t help but love their rag-tag asses. This was the first MCU movie to move me to tears. That stuff about Quills mom? I felt that. Both times. On an extremely personal level. I was the young Quill. I watched my grandma, the only person who i believe loved me unconditionally up to that point, die just like Quill’s mom; Cancer and everything. I was about his age when it happened, too. That sh*t f*cked me up. To this day, i have nightmares about it. Seeing that sh*t so accurately captured in a capeflick was the most for me and I legit had to leave the theater until the first part of the movie passed. To this day, i can’t watch that scene. I can just barely make it through the Dance of to Save Th Universe, but that opening gambit? No way. It hits way too close to home for me. Still, for a comic book movie to solicit such a response? It has to be special and Guardians is one of the best.

Iron Man

Boy, we’ve come a long way since Tony Stark uttered those fateful word, “I am Iron Man.” But none of these other films would even have the opportunity to exist if he hadn't said them. Iron Man had the tall order of being the first, proper, MCU film AND compete with The Dark Knight. N one thought a film about B-List superhero, narcissistic billionaire, and straight up lush, Tony Stark, would amount to anything. How wrong everyone turned out to be. I knew, from that second i saw the teaser and concept art by Adi Granov, that Marvel was taking this sh*t crazy serious. Then there’s the casting of Robert Downey Jr. That sh*t was a boon, for real. The entire cast of this first film was impeccable but RDJ makes this movie. He IS Tony Stark. Even before he got comfortable with the character like in the later films, fresh out the box with the scripts, you can tell he knows how to bring this tinkerer to life. You had to nail that aspect in order to have any chance to build something great and Marvel hit a goddamn bullseyes, for sure. Revisiting this flick, Iron Man isn’t as good as the later films in the Infinity Saga but it still holds up against the vast majority of entries and that’s saying something.

I love these films, man. As a geek growing up reading these stories, reenacting them with their action figures, sitting glued to the television every Saturday as their cartoons aired, I never imagined id see such a berth of fantastic media brought to life on the silver screen. Seriously, some of my favorite interpretations of these characters appear exclusive in the MCU. War Machine, Thor until recently, Ant-Man, f*cking Hulk? i never gave these assholes the time of day in the comics but in the MCU? They’re fantastic! And it has everything to do with how well written they are in-universe. There are over twenty films in this run an i love all of them to varying extents. Spider-Man: Far From Home, Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Endgame, Thor: Ragnarok, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 all could have made this list. For sure, they’re 6 - 11 or whatever, but that speaks to the sheer depth of the MCU. I’m not even counting flicks i would consider B-tier like Captain Marvel or Avengers or Iron Man 3 or Doctor Strange; All of which are still dope in their own right.

There is just SO much great in these films and i can’t wait to see where we go next. With Disney acquiring Fox, Marvel finally has the full toy box to play with and i am absolutely a tizzy with the potential arcs they can adapt. Secret Wars? Annihilation? Age of Apocalypse? Avengers Disassembled? Dark Reign? F*cking Onslaught?? I have no idea where we are going but i am, for sure, jumping on this pain train once again.

#Marvel #MCU #Infinity Saga

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smokeybrand · 4 years

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Cheeseburgers

Avengers: Infinity War

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Also, how about that Aunt May stinger, though?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Guardians of the Galaxy

Iron Man

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janiedean · 5 years

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Do you think hollywood will ever get out of its “woke” phase or will it only get worse from here?

... I sat on this for a while and I honestly don’t know how to take it, because woke means absolutely nothing put on like that and it’s not like if movies address social justice issues or start caring about accurate representation or whatnot or what we mean for woke it’s automatically a bad thing, but like the problem with any hollywood production is that hollywood makes movies thinking about money first and artistic value later unless we count a handful of directors/people who can go a good movie that will make money (spielberg/zemeckis etc) or who are at a point in their career where their CV is so out of this world good that they can afford to do whatever they want and/or are huge names who made history who have their own money/circle/clout or their own production company (scorsese, clint eastwood etc). also the second contingent problem is that most people only watch mainstream movies that were released recently which means that everything that comes out these days is supposedly groundbreaking when in truth it’s not 99% of the time.

ps: this rant has very vague spoilers for the 2019 joker so like... thread carefully but it’s really really vague xD

now, since I apparently decided to go at this pseudo-seriously even if I think the question means all and everything, I’ll try to, but basically:

if by woke we mean performative representation/performative social justice themes/*insert-token-character-here*, it’s a 100% question of what the studios think the audience wants vs what makes money vs milking the thing until it’s dry. I mean, I’m talking in general about a genre no one on tumblr cares about, but as someone who loves bad/trashy testosterone-driven action movies every single time I see one with the Badass Female Character Inserted By Force Because The Studio Said They Needed At Least One Quota Because Otherwise People Say It’s Not Feminist I roll my eyes a lot because if I’m watching a genre which is the male equivalent of the female empowerment romcom (ie: if romcoms are the-empowerment-fantasy-for-girls the trashy action movie is the same for guys) I don’t need the Fake Strong Female Character in it because I’m not watching it for the feminism, but until people will worry about the bechdel test as the ultimate proof a movie is good then we’ll get the token character that makes no sense, but since these days the hype is there, you’ll get it because the studio wants the money;

on the other side, if we mean people want actual representation and should push the studios to have it/not whitewash characters etc it’s an entirely legitimate complaint and I don’t think hollywood should *get out of the woke phase* or whatever, but my issue is that most of the time it ends up turning performative as well. as in: you know the dark tower movie? (yeah, yeah, I hate it, I earned the right to trash talk it) when they racebent the lead everyone was screaming at how woke and progressive it was... except that they didn’t wanna hear/didn’t want to discuss the fact that the only reason they did that (imvho) was that they adapted seven books in one movie, cut the female disabled character who’s also mentally ill who’s actually black in the original canon and since they didn’t want to get called out on having done that, they racebent the lead so they looked progressive, but do we really think that doing that rather than adapting the actual black character they had which would have required at least some effort is more progressive? idk but I think it’s not. anyway: i’m all for people pushing for this, but they need to be coherent. in the sense that for all I don’t agree with clint eastwood’s political views, if you watch gran torino where the protagonist becomes friends with his vietnamese hmong neighbor, all the hmong characters were actually cast from hmong actors and if you look at interviews online with hmong people about that movie the opinion is that even if the script could have been better for some of them, they were delighted that he cast from their community and didn’t cast from another asian ethnicity that for any producer would have meant the exact same thing because figures if producers gaf about accurate casting when it comes to that. but like, hollywood won’t gaf about that until people are vocal about needing good and specific rep and not just generic ‘as long as it’s X it’s fine’;

that also goes for wanting more movies with minorities having a role - hollywood will go for giving minorities roles as long as it gives them good money/clout, but it won’t care for good movies about minorities or minority actors having good roles until people are vocal about it and/or it means money loss if they do it wrong;

(caveat: this obviously excludes actors from minorities whose work transcended that - meaning, for example will smith gets cast 85% of the time based on part and not on his skin color because he’s uber famous and he made his name in a specific genre and so on, but like we’re talking about the people who made the Upper Level of Superstar Hollywood)

anyway tldr: hollywood american movies were always 95% made for the money and reflect what they think the audience wants to pay for, which means that if hollywood producers think that people want fake woke movies then they’ll give them the fake woke movies.

this also goes hand in hand with the other problem I mentioned ie that people don’t watch movies that aren’t recent so hollywood can get away with pretending to be original when it’s actually not. now since we don’t wanna diss anything, i’ll mention a movie I actually did like *drumroll*... joker.

or, to specify what I mean:

tldr, I thought that joker was a very well-executed and planned and shot movie which had a good idea and went down well on it and was basically the batman movie nolan dreamed he was doing with the black knight and whose point was telling you that a sick system that abandons the weakest people in it (poor, mentally ill etc) and mocks them as if it’s their own fault that they aren’t better than that eventually breeds chaos and hurt and crime and it’s the fault of the system/the people in charge who don’t see it. now: that’s the least original idea in existence and I’ll go on it in depth later. except that..

when I go look at recs especially from american media, there’s a polarization between ‘OMG THIS INCITES VIOLENCE IT’S HORRIBLE IT’S DANGEROUS’ and ‘OMG THIS IS A NEW MASTERPIECE I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT BEFORE GROUNDBREAKING AMAZING NO ONE EVER DID IT BEFORE’, which to me is imvho showing very clearly where we have the issue;

as in, issue one: OMG IT INCITES VIOLENCE BLAH BLAH it’s the oldest excuse in existence that has been disproved over and over and it’s just another proof of how puritan/calvinist is the viewership because the point is not inciting violence, it’s showing that as stated not giving a fuck about people who need help means growing discontent that then explodes... which again, you don’t need to read freud’s theory about the masses to know that if the majority of the population lives in shitty conditions you get revolutions;

issue two: the only original/innovative think joker has going for itself is that it’s a movie that has a way wider audience than usual *and* an actual comic book/genre film to discuss the aforementioned issue going in depth into it and not sugarcoating it. but other than that... the deconstruction of the hero/villain in a corrupt world was already in watchmen if you want a genre movie and there have been endless others pointing that out except not that mainstream (because again everyone knows what batman is and who’s the joker, watchmen is a lot more niche), the spectacularization of THAT THING on television was already in network that came out in the year of the lord 1976 and the entire movie was basically an homage to taxi driver when it came to how it was filmed/structured and I guessed 95% of what was gonna happen in the first fifteen minutes. it’s nothing groundbreaking whatsoever, but apparently everyone thinks it is because they haven’t seen either of the above movies or any other that predated this one;

now, joker is a movie I actually liked so I don’t see the lack of originality as a bad thing because that wasn’t the point, but like just to say one, hearing people say that mad max fury road was revolutionary feminist action movie and nothing else ever happened before it when there have been four alien movies before, the valid terminator movies (one and two obviously), kill bill and so on, as in stuff that existed in the eighties was honestly meh because I did like MMFR but again it was hardly groundbreaking (maybe it is for this decade and for other reasons but not for the plot). now, both of these are good movies, but like....... 95% of nolan’s movies are hailed as top originality masterpieces and imvho he’s good but not that good and if people think dunkirk is the best war movie ever it’s because they haven’t ever seen an actual effective war movie (like I can’t even believe some people said it was like two hours of saving private ryan’s first twenty minutes, five minutes of SPR were endlessly better than all of dunkirk and SPR is hardly the best war movie out there), same for about anything he does. now, that’s way beyond the wokeness discourse, but the point is that if people don’t watch other movies and then think that hollywood’s performative woke stuff is peak progressive movie when it really really really is not then hollywood isn’t going to bother producing better stuff that’s both progressive and quality (which can happen I mean have we all seen philadelphia, even if that is like... not exactly mainstream hollywood and it was a risky movie to make but anyway not the problem). tldr: people need to stop acting like the last ten years of movies have been the only era in cinema where you got progressive movies because it’s not true and for one I can 100% assure you that for all its faults tied to the era, the defiant ones is a lot more seriously woke and effective when it comes to discussing racism in the US than 85% of the contemporary stuff I see.

so, idk what you meant with the original question, but imvho: hollywood will produce fake-performative woke movies until the audience contents itself with fake-wokeness instead of actual good material or until people decide to finally stop watching only blockbusters and also give money to indie filmmakers or like nonamerican filmmakers and anyway hollywood goes where the money goes.

which mean that if the activism irl doesn’t stop being performative and becomes serious and therefore automatically turns into people asking for serious rep and not the token character/plot, you’ll keep on getting fake woke movies. (also the day people stop saying GO WATCH THAT MOVIE BECAUSE IT’S WOKE without having even seen it and having read the summary on tumblr will be amazing, but that’s not the day.)

that said, since the idea behind a lot of the fake wokeness is actually right (ie: we need more women/minorities of every kind in movies or television/we need more rep that aren’t blonde blue eyed tall white guys/we need to cast ethnical minorities properly etc) we can hope that people actually grasp the message and we get more and more movies that cast people correctly or who have good rep for the good reasons and I’m all for it because that is a good thing. fake wokeness is not.

but anyway: hollywood stops being each single trend it is when that trend stops selling. that’s your answer. and until we all think that the oscars are top cinematography choices in existence, it’s not gonna happen.

to end it all: no one is obliged to watch hollywood movies. actually, it’s highly advised to spend your money on either foreign movies or indie movies or independent movies or riskier projects rather than hollywood blockbusters if you don’t want fake progressive stuff also because those movies usually gaf about the issues they touch and if they get money maybe it means more of them get made.

and this was my rant, idk if that’s what you wanted to hear but I guess that’s what I had to say on the topic.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #janie rants #movies for ts #joker for ts #idek #long post for ts #Anonymous #ask post

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the-desolated-quill · 5 years

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Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

#quill's swill #quill's swill 2018 #worst of the year #review #opinion

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memorydragon · 6 years

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ATTN: SuperBat shippers

I’m not really one of you, so forgive me if this has been mentioned before or if it’s well-known in SB circles. However, I have seen nothing about it, and I’d always meant to write up something on it, so while I have your attention, let me talk about something that is relevant to your interests.

Now, I have no idea if this was in the script, or if this was Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL being Cole Porter fans, but let’s talk a bit about When Bruce Met Clark and Night and Day was the underscored theme.

Sadly, the film only gives us a bit of the lyrics, just enough to get the Night and Day imagery if you’re unfamiliar with the song. But me, going into BvS watching it in the theater for the first time, not even gonna lie, I burst out laughing when I heard the song, because the Ship was Strong with that one. Like, I can’t even. I still laugh every time I watch the movie, because the Strength of Shipping is just so fucking real.

It’s not just that BvS put a love song there (which they absolutely did). BvS put a song about obsession there. Because that’s what this song is about, complete obsession.

Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom tom When the jungle shadows fall Like the tick, tick, tock of the stately clock As it stands against the wall Like the drip, drip, drip of the raindrops When the summer show'are is through So a voice within me keeps repeating You, you, you

Here we have the opening of the song, which was omitted in the movie to go straight to the more well-known parts of the song. But this part of the song is all mostly one relentless note. You’re getting repetition, not just in the words like beat beat beat, tick tick tock, drip drip drip, but also with the same note.

Obsession is repetitive and relentless, which is exactly how both Clark and Bruce were about each other in the film. Bruce was, ever since the Battle of Metropolis, angry over the lives lost and getting angrier. Everything you see him do in the movie is to get the Kryptonite. Honestly, I don’t have to go too in depth on the extremes of his obsession here, because that’s fairly extensively documented elsewhere, I’m sure. The movie was really not subtle on this part.

Clark, on the other hand, refuses to give up on the Batman article regardless of what Perry says. He doesn’t listen when the woman says “Only people scared of him are people that got reason to be.” When he’s talking to Perry, he absolutely privileges one point of view over the other. He’s just as obsessed with taking down Batman as Bruce is with taking down Superman. Remember, Lois was not there to stop Batman from killing Clark. She was there to stop Clark from killing Batman.

So yes, I burst out laughing because honestly, they couldn’t have found a singular more perfect song for the ship in this movie if they tried. But let’s continue on with the lyrics.

Night and day You are the one Only you 'neath the moon Or under the sun Whether near to me or far No matter, darling where you are I think of you Night and day

Like, It’s only you. While there are some lovely scenes between Clark and Lois, and teasing hints of WonderBat in BvS, the movie ultimately isn’t about those relationships. The movie is about how two people hated each other so much that they nearly ended up killing each other. Strong hate is a very high emotion. And let’s face it, Enemies-to-Lovers is absolutely a thing that I know people are interested in. And I’m pretty sure without looking there’s probably some hate sex fics written for five minutes after that scene. That and Bruce’s bondage-y dream sequence, but that’s another matter entirely...

Day and night Why it is so That this longing for you Follows wherever I go In the roarin' traffic's boom In the silence of my lonely room I think of you Night and day

Sadly, Clark’s thoughts in his lonely room were more about the media perceptions of him and Bruce’s were about giant bats eating him in his nightmares. But one can make quite a case for Bruce the rest of the time being focused on the White Portuguese.

Night and day Under the hide of me There's an oh such a hungry Yearnin' burnin' inside of me And it's torment won't be through 'Til you let me spend my life Making love to you Day and night Night and day

And this stanza was really why I burst out laughing, because as a Cole Porter fan, I do know all the words to this song. Because this ‘torment’ is exactly what Bruce and Clark are feeling for each other, albeit with more hate than love at this point. It’s a burning yearning to fight each other, either through words or fists.

Like I said, guys. I’m not really one of you. I prefer to go Shiploose and fancy free in DC fandom, when I’m not having Trinity queer-platonic-ing feels all over the place. But like, Respect. The person behind this musical feat is honestly a hard core shipper, and I respect that. Like, you got your ship song in there and it’s perfect and brilliant, and I respect that level of shipping and the new levels the movie reached because of it. So this is for you, SuperBat shippers.

And if you don’t believe me, have this scene from the De-Lovely movie. Obviously, this song was meant to be gay af.

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#Bruce Wayne #Clark Kent #SuperBat #Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne #Meta and things #I finally did it #The meta is sadly not as majestic as the song #but ah well #feel free to ignore me if this is already a thing in SuperBat fandom

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jamesnelsonart · 6 years

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Batman: White Knight Review

Folks, I can’t always let you know when a comic is bad. I don’t have the energy. A lot of bad comics are created every day, and to catalogue the reasons why Action comics issue 724342 didn’t appeal to me would be an exercise in futility and pain. No, when I see a bad comic usually the most it’s guilty of is being boring or not making a lot of sense and maybe the art isn’t put together very well. So I just ignore said media if I don’t like it. Maybe I’ll joke about it a bit with friends, but why spend my life on such things? You already know where this shit is going-- I’m about to break my code here. Every now and then, I discover something uniquely bad. It’s bad in a way I never could have even considered. It’s bad in a way that demands my attention, and I simply have to think about it, and then share my pain with others. That comic book is Batman: White Knight, and boy does it blow.

It’s honestly hard to tell where to begin with this review because if you think about any bad part of this book for more than one minute you’ll immediately be reminded of another bad part that relates to the first bad part, and so on and so on. It’s an interconnected network of bad. A true spider web of shit, full of parts all intersecting into an intricately dumb design. A painstakingly-made pyramid of poop, with each brick being laid as the foundation for something even worse than what came before it. I suppose I should start with the premise and work my way down from there.

What if, and hear me out here, what if the Joker became a good guy? And Batman… get this… was a bad guy??????? That’s the whole gist of Batman: White Knight. The white knight in the title is Joker, because he is a very pale dude from that chemical bath he took in his origin story. So that’s the premise. You understand the title. Now usually in superhero comics a shake-up like this might last for about a year before a return to the status quo, but White Knight takes place in an alternate universe, so write/artist Sean Gordon Murphy has the opportunity to make some big changes that will stick since there’s no worry about it impacting the main DC universe. Characters have the potential to die for good or change permanently here, and with the idea of the Joker becoming good you could get a pretty wild story here with some twists and turns. So why the fuck does nothing happen in this story!? Oh sure, this is a comic so actions do indeed occur. Events take place across a series of panels as they do in all sequential storytelling… But damn, this comic is a whole lot of nothing! It positions itself as a big shakeup, Batman as you’ve never seen him before! Only, it isn’t. This story is the safest fucking thing I’ve read disguised as an edgy, you-didn’t-see-that-coming, no-one-is-safe story. In some ways it’s funny, kind of like that Joker. But the only joke here is that I wasted my time reading this shit.

The story starts with Batman pursuing the Joker in his Batmobile, causing tons of property damage and hurting some innocent bystanders. Nightwing and Barbara are with Batman and are upset that they can’t reel in his dangerous impulses. Batman chases the Joker into a pharmaceutical factory where the Joker does his Joker speech. You know the one. The speech every writer ever feels that they have to write for the Joker, as if it adds something to his character. The Joker speech basically has the Joker go on about how he and Batman are polar opposites blah blah blah and how the Joker, in his own twisted way, has some affection for Batman and then Batman will be like NO and punch him or something. Hey, subtext works a lot better when it, y’know, remains subtext and not outright actual text. So Batman gets real riled up here and force-feeds the Joker a ton of pills while someone films him doing this and posts it on the internet. This combination of pills makes the Joker not be psychotic anymore (this is dumb as hell, but the rest of the comic is way dumber so you’d be surprised how the lowered standards allowed me to just roll with this) So this Batman is a pretty rude guy, being down with needless violence, and about as smart as a sack or bricks, but it’s an alternate universe, right? Characters are supposed to be different. Yeah… about that-- when doing an alternate universe it helps to have your universe be well-defined. This is especially important if it’s already similar to the main DC universe. The reader is left unsure as to what has or hasn’t happened in the past. Did the Joker ever commit any mass murder in this timeline? We don’t really know. The Joker has had a lot of incarnations so it’s kind of important to know how evil he is if he’s gonna become a good guy. If he’s committed numerous atrocities then I can understand a lot of peoples’ skepticism to him being good guy. Or was he some guy throwing pies at peoples’ faces and defacing property? Already none of this shit makes any sense if you stop to think about it but I have to keep going or this review will never get around to bashing the important stuff, like everything else about this book.

So the Joker’s mental stability is restored (which somehow also changes his bleached-white skin and green hair back to normal, those pills must have been wild) and he becomes a super-genius and decides to fight Batman’s brutality, and by extension the Gotham Police Department’s brutality. He’s done telling jokes now, he’s now the Woker(ok he never gets called that, but it would’ve been funny if that happened). And with his genius intellect unrestricted by his unstable personality he is now free to… sue the city. Damn, that’s exciting. I feel I should stop here and say there’s a reason the Joker is a fairly static character, and that’s because he works perfectly fine as a clown with a Batman obsession who does crimes and has some good zingers. Those are the interesting things about him, so when you remove all of those traits you’re left with a pretty boring character. What is the Joker without any of his personality or Joker-ness? Just some guy. And that guy is the protagonist of the story now… great. The other characters don’t fare much better. They all act extremely stupid, wildly out-of-character, or perform actions that conflict with prior information the reader has been given about them. Batman does no detective work, largely having the plot fed to him by other characters and falling into every trap imaginable. He can only ever react to situations. Harvey Bullock is deriding Batman for brutalizing the Joker and seems very anti-police brutality, yet later is arresting a black activist, blatantly escalating a situation where there was no violence. Barbara Gordon is hanging out chatting with Mr. Freeze (who appears to be a nicer guy in this continuity) and spills the beans about her secret identity, then is shocked to realize that she’s been wearing her Batgirl costume, thus revealing her name! Why is she so dumb!? Why on earth would she want to talk to Mr. Freeze in her civilian identity, huh? They were in the Bat Cave when this happened, so suit or not, it’d be pretty obvious that the girl in the Bat Cave is Batgirl. What the fuck? See what I mean when I say it’s hard to know where to start and end with bashing this shit? I mean this was like a 2-panel thing. Everything leads into everything else because nothing was thought through or considered while writing this comic so events happen just because they have to in order to move events along, character motivation or personality be dammed. And what happens is… not much if you really analyze the sequence of events in the story. Joker gets better, sues the city, participates in a march against Police corruption/brutality and decides to run for mayor. Batman gets mad about this. Joker then discovers a slush fund that is used to repair all the damage Batman does to the city and exposes it to the public. As a mayoral candidate, Joker proposes using this slush fund to instead heavily arm the police. Doesn’t this kind of contradict his anti-police brutality sentiments by offering the department numerous tanks to drive around in? Ah, fuck it. I doubt any part of this is thought through or any narrative dissonance considered so I’ll just keep going. And that’s… all the Joker does. Well, he does do one more thing. He decides to start dating Harley Quinn. And if I’m gonna talk about the characters, I mean REALLY talk about the characters, I’m gonna have to talk about Harley Quinn. Or rather, the Harley Quinn…s. Plural.

I should preface this by saying it’s pretty clear Sean Gordon Murphy is a fan of Batman the Animated Series. It is good, so who can blame him? What gets weird is he inserts a ton of TAS-centric stuff into White Knight in a way that feels arrogant. He knows what is best for Batman, no one else. So why do I feel this way about his writing here? Because the Joker goes home and is greeted by a Harley Quinn who is like “Wow, can’t wait to have tons of sex and kill a ton of people with you again! My favorite hobbies are not wearing a lot of clothes, staying evil, and being an unpopular New 52 redesign!” Then the revelation comes, the OLD Harley Quinn shows up in her TAS jester outfit and derides the new one as a big tiddy bimbo (not joking about that, her dialogue is actually deriding her for having large breasts and not being a good role model lmao) and says that she will resume her relationship with the Joker now, because he respects women (you really gonna do Poison Ivy like that? Smh). As we all know, when you think an abusive partner has changed, you should definitely restart your relationship with them. This has never, ever backfired in the history of the universe. But back to the point-- in fairness the New 52 Harley did suck, but I don’t know why this whole thing is even in the story. Haha, I’m joking! I know why! It’s because Sean Gordon Murphy probably realized that he needed an antagonist to make some action happen because the story was clearly going nowhere! So the new, unpopular Harley goes off and swears she will return the Joker to his bad self, calling herself “Neo Joker”. So how does someone with no resources or notable skills become the antagonist? Well don’t worry, the entire cast is very, very stupid and their agency is null and void, so if something needs to happen for this story to move along, it just happens.

Earlier in the story for the Joker to discover the slush fund he had to get the rest of the Batman rogues gallery to do it for him by stealing documents on it out of some building. How does he get every criminal in Gotham to do this for him? By inviting them all over and serving them drinks with bits of Clayface mixed in. You see, Joker used the Mad Hatter’s mind control tech on Clayface so it stands to reason that if you ate some of Clayface’s clay then the mind control would work on you by extension! It only sounds stupid because it IS stupid. I also gotta ask why the entire rogues gallery would accept drinks from the Joker… he’s kind of known for not playing well with others and, uh, frequently poisoning people. But again, these characters need to be dumb for the plot to happen. So Neo Joker discovers the control module thingy because the Joker just left it around (I assume the mind-controlled villains were just shitting their pants in the days leading up to this since they were all stored in a warehouse) so now she gets a villain army. And then she gets a giant freeze gun to use on Gotham City because in this universe Mr. Freeze’s dad was an ex-Nazi who came to America and built that and left it underground. No maintenance required after sitting around for decades, this baby’s ready to blast! So while all that was happening Batman went to jail, Joker let him out to help him with dealing with Neo Joker, and Alfred died. That might sound like things that happened, but let me be clear: nothing happened. Nothing happens this whole comic. Things appear to happen, but that is not the case, that is camouflage. Sure, Alfred dies, but Mr. Freeze starts helping Bruce, so one old man is replaced with another. Actually this is an upgrade, Mr. Freeze knows way more science shit so this new model is great! Batman is finally jailed for flaunting the law but then Joker releases him and reveals that he found out that Batman had been paying for the property damage fund, not the taxpayers! So Batman was a good guy all along! He was just being a brutal dick because Alfred was dying so it’s all in the past now. So if Batman was good all along then what was the fucking point of this comic? The premise is good Joker vs. evil Batman, until it isn’t. What was the point of ANY of the first part of this dumb ass book? But the reader isn’t supposed to think about that. To distract from the fact that there was apparently no conflict at all the Neo Joker starts making threats with her big freeze gun and villain army. So Good Batman and Good Joker gotta team up with the militarized police force to take her down! Yeehaw! But. There is a catch. The Joker’s mixture of meds is wearing off and he will revert soon! The classic ticking clock scenario—as bad as everything is, this should at least inject some tension into the story, right? Wrong. Joker reverts while he’s in the Batmobile with Batman, and then he’s like “I still wanna defeat Neo Joker for stealing my shtick.” So don’t worry, he’s still on your side, Batman. I’m kind of impressed that Sean Gordon Murphy took such an easy opportunity to add some stakes to this bland comic and was like NAHHH, FUCK THAT, I LIKE MY COMICS BAD. So the police ram the villain army with their tanks and uhhh not all of Batman’s villains have super powers you know… some are just regular-ass people. The Penguin gets fucking hit head-on with one of the tanks, how the hell did HE not die? Plus they’re all mind-controlled in the first place so that raises ethical questions as to how they’re being treated since they’re not willfully being evil right now but BATMAN IS GOOD OKAY? HE PAID FOR THE PROPERTY DAMAGE FUND SO IF HE SPLITS SOME FUCKIN SKULLS THAT’S JUST WHAT HE’S GOTTA DO YOU LITTLE BIIIIIIIIIITCH. DUE PROCESS… IS FOR CUCKS. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO DIE at this point in the comic I guess. Yawn… so at this point I think they all win or whatever. The freeze ray is stopped or something. Look, this part is kind of a blur. All you gotta know is Harley marries the Joker before he totally, totally reverts for real this time and gets sent back to Arkham. Then the dumbest thing Sean Gordon Murphy has ever written happens. And I read this book, so know that I do not say that lightly.

Near the start of the comic when Batman force-feeds Joker the pills it’s stated that this was all part of Joker’s master plan to get Batman to feed him pills that he just somehow knew would cure him and this would trigger Joker’s ultimate plan of… revealing the misallocation of taxpayer dollars? And he came up with this when he was still a bad guy, right? Huh? Well guess what, fuckos? It’s time for a fucking twist. Turns out the original Harley Quinn, who is Good and Pure and Keeps Her Clothes on except when I, Sean Gordon Murphy, draw her and the Joker fucking, is the one who planted the pills at that scene, as she reveals to Batman. Mind. Blown. No, really, my mind is blown as to why Sean thought this would add anything to his comic aside from more questions regarding the logistics of how she did that. How did she know which factory Batman would chase the Joker into at the start? How did she know Batman would force-feed the pills to the Joker? You’re not really a master planner if your plan relies on a ton of variables way out of your control. Then Batman is then like “wow that’s cool that you did that. this is why I always liked you more than the rest of my rogues gallery because I know you can do good things.” Yeah that’s right FUCK YOU Two-Face. Burned-ass bitch. You think YOU were the friend-turned-enemy who Batman hopes will one day turn good again? Wrong. It’s Harley. It’s ALWAYS been Harley. Then Batman reveals his secret identity to Commissioner Gordon and says he’s gonna be a cop in a blatant sequel hook. The threat of a sequel to this is scarier than any cliffhanger. Brr!

Ughhh, and you KNOW there’s gonna be a sequel, too. This can’t just end here. When I said I had to review this comic it was because most of the reviews say shit like “a bold new direction with a much-beloved property… DC, please don’t revoke my blog’s access.” This book demands a thrashing. It deserves to get laughed at, but everywhere I looked online people weren’t laughing. There was praise! Now look, Sean can draw a pretty picture so he has that going for him. And he’s also willing to kiss up to ComicsGate, a hate group populated by unskilled whiners, so that they’ll waste their money buying his bad book with pseudo-progressive politics. But I’m not here to insult Sean Gordon Murphy. This is a review, and I pledge to keep it focused on the comic. It would be unprofessional and rude to call Sean a gutless coward, or a worm, or a hack writer who just throws references around to create the illusion of lore, or a guy who condescends to trans writers and artist who get harassed daily about how they should just befriend their harassers, or a guy who thinks his inability to stick to a narrative theme makes his work deeper, or a guy who shits on indie creators in interviews because he works on Batman and they do not. No, that would all be mean to say, so you won’t hear me saying it.

I will give the comic this much, though. If you enjoyed All-Star Batman and Robin for how absolutely wacky it was, this book might be right up your alley. It fulfills that same feeling of viewing every panel and going “What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK???” So if you like bad books, this book is for you.

#Batman:White Knight #DC comics #review #lol #The Woker

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emma-what-son · 5 years

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Anniversary Month - A Himmmm Blind Item

If you’re familiar with the CDAN blog, then you’ll know that Enty isn’t the only one who posts there. There’s also a guy who goes by the alias Himmmm who is an industry insider. This person doesn’t just write short blind item’s, but long articles exposing people. Some think it’s an actor. Some even thought that it was Robert Downey Jr, who denied it. He recently wrote another post and Emma was mentioned in it.

This is a tough one to write, simply for the challenge of not giving it away and damaging anything before it happens. It's amazing it has been kept this quiet for so long, but I'm sure it'll leak out after the Oscars. Anything this big is bound to. Like the old saying goes: "If you want to keep a secret between three people in Hollywood – two of them better be dead". No, there's no murders or deaths surrounding this film, yet. But the story it is based on sure had plenty. What I'm talking about is a movie. A big movie that will be one of those rarities that is both Oscar lure and box office success. A+ list all the way, big budgets, big talent, and every A+ list actress/actor in the industry wanting to be a part of it. The secrecy around it is unlike anything in history. They're not even using a fake name as cover, it's totally off-book. Right now, they have more attorneys involved in this project than filmmakers, crew, or elements. Maybe the first time in history a Hollywood studio has employed publicists to PREVENT people from knowing about it. They even hired social media ninjas to comb the internet to shoot down and remove mentions of it. I even wonder if it'll stay long on CDAN. I've not seen this much secrecy on a film since Jurassic Park. Even Avengers, or Star Wars Force Awakens wasn't this paranoid. So why all the fuss?

It's a porno. Yep. Uh-huh. A porno. Okay, to be fair – it's about a porno star, not an actual porno. So if you're thinking Boogie Nights or those Deep Throat – Linda Lovelace films, you're asking: So what? What's the big deal? They even have The Deuce on HBO. Why so secretive? Because comparing this film project to those is like comparing Plan 9 From Outer Space or Lost In Space to the entire Star Wars saga or Avatar. Point is that this project is so huge and prestigious that it makes the others look like a "Skin-emax" soft core indie film. Mostly though, it is because in the current social/scandal climate surrounding Hollywood these days they put the lock-down on this project for good reason. They don't want leaks leading to people accusing the filmmakers of being tone-deaf insensitive; and they also absolutely do not want to get flooded by every perv in Hollywood trying to get a part or be part of it. A single casting couch rumor on this project would torpedo it. So they've gone to insane lengths to protect it. Not long ago, this (disgraced A list director/Brett Ratner) was set to do a big-budget adult-themed project (about a permanent A list celebrity/Hefner Film) that got torpedoed over his abuse accusations. When a studio already has tens of millions sunk in a project, they cannot let that happen. Especially in high-dollar ironclad play-or-pay deals (not to be confused with pay-for-play, tit-for-tat, barter, couching, or land yachting). It's like this: This movie is about one very specific female actress who was known mainly in the 1980s era of porn. It is a biopic in that sense. But her fame was such in her time that she crossed over to more mainstream top-shelf publications, and even television interviews. Possibly the most beautiful all-American girl next door to ever have a hardcore career. If you're thinking it is (former underage porn star/Traci Lords) you would be wrong. But she's a featured character in it too. Thing is, the star of the story disappeared. Vanished into thin air after her last film. Not vanished dead, because she went on to have a different life. She went to law school, became an attorney, changed her name and had a nice family. Typical soccer mom, Sunday-school teacher, holly homemaker type. Until a few years ago when she was contacted by people who represented the last big mafia family. They were looking to sell their holdings in porn to a legit media company for big bucks. Problem is, she was one of their most popular stars and she had a unique contract in her day (which allegedly she co-wrote herself back then with her law professor). She quit and vanished from porn due to the mob taking over her porn studio, and killing many of the owners of it. Years later, turns out she was owed millions in back royalties – and her contract was still legally enforceable. The legit media buyers wouldn't proceed without her signature on a new contract; or her accepting a settlement; or…her death certificate. Yep. The mob had to either pay her or kill her. Which was tricky to do, because even if they found her – the FBI still wanted to bring her in as a witness against the mob hits of her bosses. Then it got ugly for her, and turned into quite a ride. Turns out, she lived and prevailed. Using her brilliance instead of her body. But it was one hell of a bumpy ride. Best of all? It was ALL TRUE. It resulted in the FBI actually getting plea deals with mobsters; clearing 30 year-old mob hit murders; and solving money laundering cases worth tons of money globally. The legit media company got the old porn library titles and reaped a billion from it. And it all really happened. She also got her money, and peace. It's one of the best scripts to come through Hollywood in decades, and has an amazing role for the lead actress. Best of all it includes life rights, and the lady ex-porn star's willingness to promote it. It is a package that includes documentaries, media stories, and specials. The studio that bought it agreed to use cross-promotion synergy from many of their media divisions to tell her story. In any era of the entertainment industry it would be a welcome change for such great material and a big project. But, as you all know – this isn't any era. It is a very sensitive era, especially telling women's stories, porn stories, and having lots of sex and nudity on a project. If the project isn't done right, in the right tone with the right people? It'll be destroyed before it ever opens purely by social media, rumors, and speculations from knee-jerkers who will attack it without any idea of it. That has happened or nearly happened many times in the past. So the conglomerate/studio who is producing it has set up a massive legal, security, and IT security team that would rival a government's. Everything to do with the project is kept on off-line isolated secure computers. Nothing is allowed to be taken in, or out. They do not even let the team working on the movie bring in mobile phones or devices. An entire 25% of the studio's legal staff are devoted to this one project. Clearing rights, contracts, and mostly NDA's that would make an intelligence agency jealous. The punishment for violation by actors? So severe and massive that it would basically blacklist and possibly bankrupt not just the actor, but their agents and managers. It's that extreme. But few would risk that anyway, since even (permanent A list mostly movie actress/Meryl Streep) has supposedly offered to do a small role in the project for scale just to be part of it. Somehow, I don't think they want her for the lead. Of course, nothing is totally foolproof or totally private. When the studio (they have wide ranging entertainment industries/Warner) first pre-emptively gobbled up the rights to it a year ago, they originally did it with this star (disgraced former A list mostly movie actor/Kevin Space) in mind for the older male lead. Whoops. Then when this company (disgraced A list director's company/Ratpac Dune) got slammed in scandal, the studio had to find a quick co-financing partner. Whoops again. So they shared the project with a few select investors. They too were subject to the legal lockdown but the studio needs them more than they need the studio, so not much threat there. Interestingly, one investor stepped right up and wrote the studio a blank check because the project is so good. Recently, the investor swallowed up the entire project, buying the rights from the studio, and has threatened to take it to (a studio that owns a theme park/Universal) is this studio doesn't shape up. The producers got the best director (A lister who had a very good 2017/Christopher Nolan) for this project. As picky as he is, he jumped at this project. He's not known for his heartfelt movies, but with this script and his recent hit (Dunkirk) he's given wide berth. He's one of the few that could be trusted with this material, and do it proper without risk of any problems derailing it. The studio used this project as bait to try and lure him to other projects (his old project/Batman), but he won't commit to those. Meanwhile, the studio and director have held semi-formal casting sessions very, very, very secretly. Every actress is told to bring an attorney or manager; a studio attorney is present; a female casting director; and every meeting is video recorded. All because of the "casting couch" temptations – not by the director, but by eager actresses. Also due to the adult nature of the story, and the fact that it will have reams of nudity and sex. This will not be one of those PG-13 movies about sex, it'll be very true to the script. This actress (A list mostly movie actress who worked with the director before/Ane Hathaway) already said she'd do anything for the lead; as did (foreign born A- list mostly movie actress/Marion Cotillard), and (foreign born B+ list mostly movie actress who was barely old enough to drive when that gross French actor had sex with her before casting her/Melanie Laurent), and (A+ list mostly movie actress who is an Oscar winner/nominee/Jennifer Lawrence), and (A list mostly movie actress who is an Oscar winner/nominee/Jessica Chastain). It's crazy, but only one of those even has a shot at the lead. Even (former A+ list mostly movie actress/America's sweetheart/Sandra Bullock) and (foreign born A- list mostly movie actress who had a franchise back in the day and could use a career boost/Emma Watson) have told their agents to get them auditions. Actresses who "never read" or audition are jumping at it. These actresses are offering to work for scale, do anything required onscreen, and sign unprecedented promotion agreements. This actress (foreign born A list mostly movie actress who is a recent Oscar nominee/Margot Robbie) has already auditioned for a supporting role. Funny enough, this actress (former A list singer/number one box office star in a different country/Jessica Simpson) auditioned for the same role. I don't think it'll be a fair fight to see who wins that one although I can see the box-office appeal of the latter's scenes being a big draw. I've heard (A-/B+ list mostly movie actress who was married to a celebrity offspring/Diane Lane) has given one of the best reads thus far. For male leads, this actor (foreign born A+ list mostly movie actor/Christian Bale) has said he too would waive his fee, and possibly return to a franchise for the studio. Guess he's getting pumped up for it. Meanwhile, it's said (permanent A list mostly movie actor who started in television and had a nice run there/George Clooney), and (permanent A list mostly movie actor despite his relatively young age/Leonardo DiCaprio), and this actor (permanent A list mostly movie actor who has made a ton of money in a superhero franchise/Robert Downey Jr.) have all agreed to audition and read. I cannot tell you how unusual that is. It is one of the rare times lately when the material really seems to be king (and not how many toys you can sell – although toys related to this movie sure wouldn't be sold in Wal-Mart). During the hoopla around the Golden Globes, many A+ listers were fighting the urge to discuss the project though they knew the others knew. Sort of like a secret club. Many actresses used it as a cover story to happen to be in town at the same time auditions were ongoing. Likewise, during the coming Oscars week, the director and studio will be wrapping up major casting under the same cover of people all being in town. Yes, it is that big of a deal. I personally cannot wait, and hope it comes off without a hitch. We probably won't have to wait too long. Any project with that much heat will get a quick greenlight. That's the sexiest thing of all. Especially if you're producing it.

#blind item

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dccomicsnews · 7 years

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Welcome to the latest edition of DCN Cosplay Spotlight, where we talk to people in the wonderful world of cosplay. This month we had the pleasure of talking with a member of the DC Cosplayers East and the Philadelphia Avengers, the Dark Knight of PA!

Check out our interview below:

DC COMICS NEWS: Batman is arguably one of the most popular, well-known superheroes to ever exist. What is it about this character, for you, in particular that made you want to create a cosplay?

DARK KNIGHT OF PA: Batman has always been a part of my life. The first comics I remember seeing when I was a child were Batman comics. The 60’s Batman series and the old Filmation Batman (and other DC characters) were also on TV every day. I was drawn to the character for many reasons; the costume, the absence of superpowers, the gadgets, the Batmobile, etc.

DCN: With Batman being such an iconic character to so many people, do you find there to be a lot of pressure to portray the Dark Knight in a certain way?

DK: I don’t really worry about that. I think everyone has their own vision of what Batman should be. I just show my vision. I have several variations of the Batsuit, and none of them are 100% comics or movie accurate, and that is intentional. Personally, I always prefer the oval emblem over the plain bat on the chest. I also prefer an all black or gray and black suit. Even though the first version of Batman I ever saw was gray and blue, the blue never made sense to me. Have you ever seen a blue bat?

DCN: How long have you been cosplaying? What was your first ever project?

DK: I was cosplaying before cosplay was a word! My first custom Batsuit was back when I was about 5 years old… many decades ago. My grandfather put it together for me. Back then, Halloween costumes were the old Ben Cooper things. A plastic face mask with a rubber string, and basically a plastic poncho that had an image of the character on it. My grandfather took an old Ideal Batman “helmet”, which was a hard plastic version of the bat cowl that covered my whole head. He painted it black, because even at 5 years old, I insisted that blue had no place on a Batsuit. He made a black bat cape for me by cutting scallops in a large black sheet. He modified black rubber boots to look the Batman boots, and added scallops to black leather cowboy gloves. The bodysuit was dark gray flannel pajamas with an oval bat emblem attached (made from cardboard and glued on). He also got black trunks for me, and somehow made a yellow utility belt from a leather belt and pouches scavenged from somewhere. I wish I still had pictures, but the Polaroids were lost many years ago. Years later, in 1989, I bought all the Morris pieces licensed for the Batman movie, and started customizing. So, I have been constantly modifying Batsuits since 1989 and wearing them for parties, cons, and other events.

DCN: What has been your favorite cosplay project so far?

DK: Costume wise, probably my Batman Inc suits. I really loved that costume in the comics and I wish they kept using it. But, the “New 52” ruined that (among other things). Group project wise, working with DC Cosplayers East to do a Justice League International group for a con and meeting the creators of JLI. We also did a fun photo shoot and got to recreate the “one punch” scene. Most of my favorite pictures are recreations of comic book panels.

DCN: How long did it take you to create this cosplay?

DK: It’s a constant work in progress. Every Batsuit I wear is the result of everything I’ve learned since 1989. I am currently working on some modifications to the newest suit that will probably take a month or two. As soon as that is done, I’ll probably come up with other things I want to change and the process will continue.

DCN: What is it about cosplay that calls to you?

DK: I love bringing comics to life. I remember being in first grade and the teacher asked us what we want to be when we grow up. My answer was “Batman”. Now, being around other people wearing superhero costumes is like living a childhood dream and at the same time bringing a smile to others, especially the children who believe they really are meeting Batman.

DCN: Do you have a favorite memory or story while cosplaying?

DK: I can’t pick just one. So many people (both children and adults) have been so excited to get a picture with me, talk to me, or just shake my hand. Seeing the joy in their faces makes all the time and money spent on Batsuits well worth it. I frequently do events at Ontario Street Comics in Philadelphia (the best comic shop in the world, and the comic shop that a scene from ‘Unbreakable’ was filmed in) and there are several families that show up every time I am there. I can look back at pictures from the past few years and see the kids growing up. When I talk to these people each time I see them, they make me feel like I am part of their family.

DCN: You were recently nominated as the “Favorite Philly Celebrity” in an “A-List” competition. Tell us a little about this experience, how it came about, and what it has meant to you.

DK: That’s a bit of a surprise. It started with Ontario Street Comics, which has been voted the #1 Comic Shop on the list for the past 5 years. I was nominated late in the competition. I think voting began on October 16th and I was nominated a month later. I really didn’t expect to get many votes, but within a week, I was in the lead! Results are hidden now, so I have no idea who will win. I don’t expect to win, I don’t consider myself a celebrity, but it was nice to see so much support from so many people in such a short time. I really appreciate it, and it has encouraged me to get out and do more events.

DCN: Outside of cosplay do you have any other interest/hobbies?

DK: JUSTICE! And also comics, movies, pretty much all things geeky.

DCN: How do your friends and family feel about you cosplaying? Are they supportive?

DK: Most are supportive, even if they don’t understand it. My youngest daughter has been Batgirl at many parties and conventions with me. She really does a much better job than I do. She is amazing with kids, and always puts a smile on their faces. She’s a natural!

DCN: Do you have a pet peeve when it comes to cosplay?

DK: 1.) I’ve only seen this once or twice, but it really burns me up. If you are in cosplay, and a child wants a picture with you, say YES! I don’t care what else is going on, what panel or photo shoot you are on the way to, take a moment and give that child their wish. You are representing a hero, act like one. Yes, I know this can lead to another child and another pic, and slow you down more, but it’s worth it.

2.) Nitpickers – if someone has the courage to get out in public in a home made, or store bought costume, don’t bring them down. Not everyone has the time, patience, skill, or money to make a “perfect” cosplay. Some people are just starting out and don’t have the experience… encourage them, don’t put them down.

DCN: Do you have any cosplays you will never do? And if so, why?

DK: Never say never, but I doubt I will ever do a cosplay that includes guns. I know there are many characters where guns are a part of the character (Punisher, Deadpool, Deadshot, etc) and I respect those characters and the cosplayers that choose them as a character, but it’s just not for me.

DCN: Why do you think cosplay has become so popular in the last few years?

DK: I think all the comic movies and TV shows that have been so popular for the past several years have called attention to the characters. Social media, and the internet in general have given people easy access to pictures of people cosplaying these characters, online tutorials on how to create cosplays, and access to buy costumes year round. There was a time before the internet when you could only find costumes and supplies in September and October, unless you lived near a costume/theatrical supply store. Before social media, there were message boards where people could exchange ideas and buy/sell/trade costume items. This made things easier, but you still had to know what you were looking for to find the boards, cosplay wasn’t a term at that time.

DCN: Which DC character, if any, may we see next from you?

DK: Flashpoint Batman (without guns)? Yellow or Green Lantern Batman? Or maybe Green Arrow… since he is the CW’s Batman. 🙂 I also keep kicking around a couple Marvel characters (Moon Knight and Captain America) so maybe somewhere down the line I will do those, but they just don’t call to me like the bat does.

I’d like to give a special thanks to the Dark Knight of PA for taking the time to talk with us. I’d also like to thank Ontario Street Comics for helping make this interview happen.

Be sure to check out Dark Knight of PA’s Facebook page as well as Ontario Street Comics!

DCN Cosplay Spotlight: Dark Knight of PA Welcome to the latest edition of DCN Cosplay Spotlight, where we talk to people in the wonderful world of cosplay.

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wearetakingthehobbitstogallifrey · 7 years

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I need more batman media but I don't know what to watch or where to watch it and Netflix took off Young Justice and Justice League :(:( do you have any fic recs or fun facts

A. Blogsto follow if you haven’t already followed them, the first three write FREAKINGAMAZING fanfic and the fourth creates THE BEST fanart I have literally sat and scrolled through these blogs for hours

@camsthisky (good GOSH I love her she writes so much about Dick Grayson)

@audreycritter

@preciousthingsareprecious

@laquilasse

B. RandomFics to Read (and honestly there are so many more, I just can’t think of themat the moment):

1. TheAcrobat Series

by fishfingersandjellybabies http://archiveofourown.org/works/4079917

Look anytime anyone talks about how much Dick loveshis family they’ve won my heart and soul. I especially like the Kori section.

2. Mori Shej

bydickiegayson https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12298375/1/Mori-Shej

OH MY GOSH. Ilove this story so freaking much. Ok,imagine if Jason Todd, after coming back from the dead and going through allthat stuff with the Lazarus Pit and training, goes after Dick Grayson to gethis revenge on Bruce. Except when heshows up at Dick’s apartment, ready to kill the Golden Son, he finds somethingcompletely unexpected. Jason has a lotof issues, Dick has a lot of issues (courtesy of the Blockbuster incident). I have read and reread this story countlesstimes, and I can never not cry because I love my broken sons so much. There is a lot of anger, some cursing, muchregret, and brothers being brothers. And Dick is the sweetest most protective [redacted because spoiler] and Jason has a mushy heart after all. Itcan stand as complete but I think the author is writing more? Also, either before or after, or both, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqeNxdyp5CEand listen to the song. It is my newfavorite song and CAN YOU IMAGINE DICK SINGING IT OH MY GOSH

3. the roadwill only be wide (the rain will never stop falling)

by weird_bird (2weird4) http://archiveofourown.org/works/8610391/chapters/19743343

A collection of Dick and Damian moments. So very beautiful.

4. The RobinsUnited Series, first story is Bird by Bird

by laceymcbain http://archiveofourown.org/works/2656487/chapters/5936243

…some hurt/comfort, Jason doesn’t know what the hellto do with his family, and they all insist on calling him brother. *shrugs* family feels are my drug of choice

5. Penny Lane

by @jerseydevious http://archiveofourown.org/works/11757690

Damian wants a horse, and drat I’m crying? (tbh I cry very easily over my sons…but still)

6. Sun Spot

byDawn’sEternalLight (@preciousthingsareprecious) http://archiveofourown.org/works/11748606

This fic is a quiet moment of beauty and rest for Dickand Damian. Damian draws, and Dickwatches his talented little bro. Thereis sunlight. You skin will clear andyour crops will grow and any heartache you have ever had will be healed likemagic!

C. Abunch of fics by Kieron_O’Duibhir

1. TheTill-Then From the Ever-Since http://archiveofourown.org/works/3506603/chapters/7707866

There is a problem in the Batcave, as in, youngerversions of the Batfam keep turning up. It’s absolutely fantastic, and one of my favorite things is youngerJason being SO done with his older self and calling him out on stuff and being all protective of his brothers. It gets better and better with every chapter.

2. But a Walking Shadow http://archiveofourown.org/works/4259511/chapters/9641367

Sothis story is not finished yet and the author takes waaay long to post updateson it but she has promised not to abandon it soo…It is Nightwing-centric, witha whole mess of comic Teen Titans making appearances. The author has written a lot of stories abouta world where Dick became a Talon, and in this tale Talon-on-the-run winds upon Earth-1 and Nightwing is trying to figure out who this apparent clone of hisis. Talon Dick has always intrigued me,and it is interesting seeing him and Nightwing face off.

3. All the Roofs of Uncertainty http://archiveofourown.org/works/2273208/chapters/4994631

HOLY HECK this is one of my favorite Jason Todd fanfics EVER. I love the description by the author “The onewhere Dick bleeds a lot and Jason argues with everybody.” Jason is in the wrong spot at the wrong time,ie. He finds Dick bleeding to death and is forced to save him. Tim and Damian make appearances. Jason has anger issues. That doesn’t stop him from caring. Bruce and Jason hash things out in the mostbeautiful (painful) way.

4. Wheel and Blade

http://archiveofourown.org/works/2492957

Inwhich Dick confronts Damian about his practice of taking weapons to school, andalso gets slightly distracted by the idea of living in a vardo. I love this story because it shows the bestway to parent Damian—not by telling him no “because I said so” but byexplaining and debating things like he is smart and capable.

5. I Pass the Night Watchman on His Beat http://archiveofourown.org/works/2326226

Thisis a cool one-shot of Dick and Amy, his partner on the Bludhaven police force. I freaking love Dick being a cop.

D. Okay now if you want something towatch:

1. Nightwing—TheSeries

by ismahawk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o297A1wmys0

This is THE BEST Nightwing fan film I haveever seen. I love the Dick Grayson in it—he’sgot acrobatics, sounds like Jesse McCartney (Robin/Nightwing’s VA in YJ), and is quite handsome. He fights, gets the stuffing beat out of himand keeps getting back up, has a bit of a temper, loves Barbara—perfection. Watch it, you won’t regret it. (Also Jason is there yay! I will take him in any capacity I can get. And I kinda really like the actor for Bruce?)

2. RedHood: The Series—Episode One “Homecoming”

by tenshunn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BdVSgshgFA&t=136s

My favorite Jason Toddfanfilm!!! Heavily featuring TimDrake! Look this adaption is fab, I lovethe actors and the dialogue and the fight between Jason and Tim (spoiler?) As far as I know they are trying to puttogether a second episode. Watch thevideo where Jason Todd tries to get people to donate money for it, itsHILARIOUS

3. Batman The Animated Series is on Netflix tillSeptember 1st. I’m in thesecond season and love it a lot…Alfred is so freaking sassy!

4. DamianWayne: Robins Fly at Night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS30bYjVmL4

It’s just five minutesand doesn’t have any dialogue, and it doesn’t come close to deserving an Oscar, but dang it it’s hard to find Damian stuff…and also seeing a littlekid running around in the Robin costume made me realize that there is nothing Iwant more than to see Damian Wayne on the big screen, being all angry assassinkid, and Dick Grayson capturing him in a hug…

5. Gotham on Netflix

I am pretty sure you already watch this? But if not, DO! It is AMAZING. I love it so much, especially Bruce and Alfred and Selina Kyle

E. Some things from Batman: Dark Victory

Okay I know he is a talented young acrobat and all but how the FUDGE did Dick get up on that chandelier?! the kid can truly fly (yeah yeah, the stairs probably lead up to a hallway floor/balcony that Dick leapt off of but still) I wonder how many grey hairs the kid gave Alfred in those first weeks alone

On dark days I like to remember the time bby birb Dick Grayson caved in the Joker’s cheek with a well-placed kick. My nine or ten year old son then proceeded to smash in the Joker’s teeth with a stick a few minutes later and it was amazing

You think I lied?? Nah my son Dick Grayson was cracking teeth and bones and witty puns from Day 1. Go Robin!!!

Okay so just look at this picture. Bby Dick is SO FREAKING TINY!!! also very intense. OMG Batman’s fists are as big as his first son’s head! *cue a very many feels in my heart*

F. Random things I am including because I feel like it, and they all revolve around Dick Grayson mostly because he is my fave so…

1. Apparently some official websites say that Nightwing’s martial arts specialty is Aikido. I do not think that word means what they think it means

2. “I close my eyes now for a few moments and I can see my parents riding the air current with me. Forever young. Forever strong. Their faces wide with excitement, big smiles on their faces, enjoying the adrenaline surge even more than I do. And there is one thing I am sure of … my parents would be proud of my life.” (Nightwing, Nightwing #141, 2008)

3. [Talking about Blüdhaven] “It’s a hopeless case. A lost cause. A town so mired in corruption and sin that it’s drowning … When Batman sent me here, I thought I’d solve one case and book. But then I realized … if I could make a difference here – well, that’d be something. This filthy old town needs me…. Surrounded by a dozen of my worst enemies. No way out. Nowhere to hide. The little brat was right. I do love it. (Nightwing, Nightwing Secret Files #1, 1999)

4. There once was a dumb writer who thought killing Nightwing for real would be a good idea, and he tried writing toward that end, but everybody else was like hahahaha NO

5. I used to hate when fic writers would shorten Damian’s name to Dami (kind of like how I majorly dislike when people shorten Sirius Black’s name to Siri, he is not an iPhone gosh). But then I read a post on tumblr that said something about Dami actually meaning something in Arabic, something like blood or life-blood or heart blood…I can’t exactly remember what and maybe it isn’t even true but I choose to believe it is and that Dick knows exactly what it means and he calls Damian Dami as a way to show how special he is, how much Dick loves him. Because Damian is his little brother/son and means the absolute world to Dick. And Damian, though he pretends to despise all nicknames, absolutely LOVES that Dick calls him this

#ummm I hope you haven't read all these fics yet #there are so many good ones out there #there is a tim drake one i can't remember the name of but if I find it I will add it #also I didn't really say anything about the girls #i love them a lot but somehow its the guys who i always talk about more?#sorry #also I talk about nightwing a lot #that I am not sorry about he is the love of my life #gosh def watch the nightwing and red hood films #so good #i need my dc streaming service like NOW #i kept getting distracted while writing this because I kept reading fanfic #batfam

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t-vulture · 7 years

Text

The DCEU and America's Inconvenient Truth

It's no secret that most major media outlets did not look favourably on Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Of all of the criticisms offered by well-meaning journalists, however, none has upset the fandom more than the idea that the movie's universe is too dark and cynical. Some have gone so far as to say that there are simply no heroes in the film. This confused me. My experience was, after all, the exact opposite. Even amongst the fandom, many others were scratching their heads over the idea that this universe was any more dark than it should have been. How could the experience of people seeing the exact same movie be so different?

A lot of it comes down to postmodernism- the idea that viewers bring their own experiences as they start making meaning out of the film- but as I've been looking over the fandom, I've noticed one VERY interesting thing. The vast majority of the DCEU fandom lives outside the United States. When I asked the fandom about their nationality, I found an overwhelming response from people who came from Asia, Europe, South America, Australia and Canada. Even those who identified as American often didn't identify as that alone. On the other hand, I have seen comparatively few negative reviews of BvS that didn't come from the USA.

There is, I think, a reason for this: both BvS and Suicide Squad are highly critical of the USA. It paints a side of US policy that those of us outside the US are pretty familiar with, but that some within the US would rather pretend didn't exist.

In the final scene of Man of Steel, a soldier asks Superman if he will ever work against "America's interests". Superman simply responds that he's "here to help". Please note that "I'm here to help" is not the same as saying "I will always work in America's interests". It's that response- more than snapping Zod's neck and more than the destruction in Metropolis- that sets up on of the major conflicts in BvS; that being the inherent distrust of Superman by the American public.

It's the American government that hires a madman to research ways to kill Superman. It's an American businessman who risks the entire world by unleashing a monster with the sole purpose of defeating Superman. An American everyman writes "false god" on the chest of Superman's statue. When someone who isn't the American military kills a terrorist, America becomes suspicious of Superman. Superman in these movies is a threat to the United States- a being that's faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and completely outside America's control.

In the following Suicide Squad, ARGUS' chief Amanda Waller, under sanction from the American Government, puts together a team of criminals that can be easily controlled by America. That becomes the stated appeal of the team, as exemplified when a politician asks what would happen if Superman were to "Fly down and pull the president out of the oval office". In this film, America would rather trust villains it CAN control than heroes it CAN'T.

is a point of fear for Americans. There seems to be a deep phobia amongst many Americans of suddenly no longer being the most powerful amongst its neighbours. Trump gained power partially by telling the American public that climate change was made up by China, who wanted to be more powerful than America. Obama's affirmation "Yes, we can" was an appeal to America's ability to be powerful; the idea that they cannot be stopped by anyone. Bush's war in Iraq was in part an act of saving face when terrorists with less recourses were able to evade the US military. Now the DCEU presents heroes that threaten America's place in the world. That naturally, doesn't sit well with Americans- especially when competitors are doing the opposite.

Consider the MCU by comparison. The Avengers are made up of American entrepreneur, a WWII hero, an American man of Science, A Norse God who has no real interest in America itself, a government sharpshooter and a Russian spy who decided that America's way really was better. All of these characters work alongside a Government organisation to save literally every other country in the world. Even Wonder Woman, a DCEU film which was highly praised, leaves commentary on America more or less out of the equation. It's based in the first World War, which is never seen as "America's war" and where American soldiers are viewed favourably.

I'm only offering this as a theory. I'm a fan of postmodernism, so the word "objective" doesn't enter my vocabulary when I undertake this kind of exercise. What I am saying, is that there is room to interpret the DCEU as a franchise that may be made BY Americans, but not necessarily FOR them.

#DCEU

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evilwickedme · 7 years

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I'm not Jewish but I had a question about anti-Semitism. If you're not up for the emotional labor of answering that's cool but I saw a post that compared seeing the Wonder Woman movie to supporting facism and that seemed wrong to me, but I'm not sure I know enough about the nuances of the situation to express why. I was wondering if you could help me understand if that's a bad comparison and why? If not I totally understand.

hey anon, great question. short answer: yes. long answer: abso-fucking-lutely. longer answer:

hell yeah, comparing seeing the wonder woman movie to supporting fascism is terrible. here are a list of posts I’ve seen in this context:

a literal blood libel on gal gadot, comparing the way she looks at chris pine to the way she might look at palestinian children before she eats them

the amount of times I’ve seen people say she supports killing palestinians because she opposes hamas, or saying she was a combat soldier, if I had one cent for every time I’d probably get a seven-digit check along with my actual paycheck on monday

comparing israel to the apartheid, fascism, or the nazis isn’t new, but hey, it’s always good to see it on my dash, ffs

so here’s why all of that is fucking bullshit.

1. we’re going to start with the convenient timing of all of this. see, you may not remember this, but gal has already been wonder woman before - in the dc film batman vs. superman. arguably, one of the worst films of all time, but she still had a relatively large part in it, appearing in at least a quarter of the movie’s scenes if not more. she also had a large part in a fast & furious movie, which I haven’t watched, so I can give no commentary on it. and in that movie earlier this year, keeping up with the joneses. all of these movies had moderate to starring roles by our favorite amazon, gal gadot. all of them went unbanned in arab countries, unprotested by palestinians and tumblr and the antisemitic left. would you like to guess why?

see, here is this movie, starring a woman, who is good, and strong, in that order, who saves the day, who isn’t sexualized, who is a goddamn hero, who isn’t joss-whedon “strong” but rather compassionate AND goddamn powerful. and imo - and other people on this agree with me - that fucking scares people.

people don’t want to support wonder woman. but since there’s nothing wrong with the movie itself - sans the car that appeared out of nowhere - they have to find something else to latch onto. and oh, how convenient, gal gadot is in this movie, and she’s jewish and israeli, so she’s double evil, let’s get people to avoid this movie that way.

to clarify, I don’t think everybody doing this is doing it maliciously. I think it’s understandable for a palestinian to not want to go see a movie with an israeli in it. especially if they’re told that gal gadot was a combat soldier who killed palestianians herself, who wanted to join and joined willingly. it’s understandable if somebody who doesn’t actually know much about the situation - who gets all their information about israel from tumblr and other leftists gentiles - hears the literal lies and antisemitic bullshit and believes it, because, funnily enough, the sjw movement has completely skipped us and many times fucked jewish people over. so again, it’s understandable. but there’s a reason the controversy is only surrounding the movie led by a woman who is actually everything tumblr claims to want - and that is plain old sexism.

2. let’s address the idf, mmkay? the idf is mandatory service for all citizens. that’s right! every 11th and 12th grader in israel misses at least a dozen days of school to go to various army bases till they decide where you’re going to go once you enlist. some people, like myself, get a special permit not to enlist - but it is very, very rare, and very difficult to obtain even if you have good reason for it - they dragged me around for a whole year, from city to city, until they finally issued me mine. not enlisting means jail otherwise. so gal gadot enlisted in 2004 when she was 18, like the rest of us, sure. but she didn’t choose to. and she didn’t join the combatant forces. she didn’t even go to the ever-popular intelligence units. she was a fitness instructor. she helped people get in shape. (sidenote: גל, אם את רוצה לעזור לי להכנס לכושר, תשלחי לי הודעה.) in addition, gal gadot is a fierce feminist, who shows up to premiers in flats cause her back hurts, who posts pictures of herself with her husband wearing no make up, who became wonder woman for her daughter.

but what about that three year old facebook post???? you mean, the one where she writes she supports the israeli troops in their efforts against hamas? people write about it as if it’s one of many posts she’s written about killing innocent palestinians. and just to clarify: that’s the only fucking post. and hamas is internationally recognized as a terrorist organization. it uses human shields and schools as centers for their activity on purpose. saying you’re angry at her for supporting her troops - as if you’d say anything like that to a retired american soldier for saying they support their troops, as if you’d dare - in the face of a battle with a literal terrorist organization - what could possibly go through anybody’s head that would make that sentence logical.

not to mention, she’s said repeatedly that she wished there was no need for the idf, that she wished that there could be peace. hey, I feel the same way. but the political situation doesn’t work like that. and so she supported eliminating hamas, a terrorist organization, and people actually hated her for it. literally what the fuck.

3. is israel apartheid or fascist? no. does it have problems with racism, and serious problems at that? hell yes. but we’re not fucking apartheid.

4. and finally: the antisemitism. because… dear god, the antisemitism. I’m going to break this down from the most “innocent” to the absolute worst.

wonder woman is white feminism - jewish. people. aren’t. white. they can be converts, or identify as white for other reasons - but antisemitism is racism against jews, aight? is that clear? the white/poc dynamic that is the common theory in america right now doesn’t work with jewish people. pale ashkenazis like gal gadot are not poc, but not white either, because white people were our oppressors for literally thousands of years, they raped us and killed us, and equating us with our oppressors is fucking antisemitic. see the first link for more detail on that.

a blood libel is a blood libel is a blood libel. for those of you who don’t know, blood libels are among the oldest forms of antisemitism. a blood libel is an accusation, specifically against jews, of killing non-jews, with little to no evidence, as an excuse to prosecute jewish people and kill them. the most common form is the claim that jewish people kill children, either to serve the devil, to use their blood for a matza or otherwise religious sacrifice, or even for fun. when searching for the blood libel I had seen - which thankfully, I couldn’t find - I found this post. this is an example of a blood libel torn apart. and just to clarify, ffs: yeah, claiming she killed palestinians and put notches on her gun is fucking antisemitic, especially when she did none of the above. it’s a classic blood libel, it’s literally garbage, and don’t fucking perpetuate it.

my personal favorite antisemitic trope is the elders of zion. saying every jewish person or israeli has connections to the people who secretly control everything!!!!! we’ve never been oppressed, we’re just pretending to be while secretly running the antisemitic media, the antisemitic american government, and of course, the ever popular antisemitic idea we run the banks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yay!!!!!!!!!! here’s a secret: gal gadot, beyond voting, has no connection to the israeli government, or to any policies it has, racist or otherwise. she’s an actress, for god’s sake.

and the worst of it. comparing israel to nazis. comparing jews to nazis. comparing the magen david (aka the jewish star) to a fucking swastika. all the height of antisemitism. people on this site so conveniently forget that the nazis targeted jews more than any other group, that we still haven’t reached pre-wwii numbers, that around half of all jews worldwide live in israel, and that, ffs, we aren’t a fascist government, we’re the only true democracy in the middle east. call it pinkwashing or brainwashing, call it whatever you like, I call it antisemitism, because we’re not fascist, and we’re definitely not fucking nazis.

and once again, I’d like to remind you that even though I myself am open to talking about my opinions cause I can’t fucking shut up, asking every jewish person to talk about israel and its actions is fucking racist as fuck.

tumblr: don’t ask every muslim person to immediately denounce isis, a terrorist organization that literally kills other muslims!!!

jews: aight, don’t ask us to denounce the only place where it’s even a little safe to be jewish -

tumblr: what???? no!!!! no way!!! here’s a jewish person, if you’re not explicitly for the destruction of israel and extremely vocal about it, you’re literal garbage!!!!

essentially.

anyway, so to summarize: yes, anon, your instinct was right. wonder woman is feminist as fuck, intersectional as fuck, and a great fucking movie which I’ve already seen twice, and not going to see it because of gal gadot, who is a literal sweetheart, makes me go:

#antisemitism #wonder woman #ww #wonder woman movie #dc #jewish #judaism #ip conflict #israel #anonymous #ask #(i have a lot of jewish memes. maybe i should make a post.)#jew tag

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hysterialevi · 7 years

Text

In the Smoke pt. 14 (Cobblebats)

From Bruce’s POV

THE STACKED DECK

“Mayor Hill has just been confirmed dead,” the news announced, “after succumbing to the numerous injuries he received during a lethal assault at the debate. Reports suggest that Bruce Wayne is responsible for the damage done, and we--”

The sound was suddenly muted, and I could see Oz staring at me from out of the corner of my eye, remote in hand.

“They talk ‘bout his death like it’s a bad thing,” Oz scoffed, taking a sip from his drink. “You did Gotham a favor, Bruce. My only regret is that I didn’t help you. Don’t listen to the media.”

I felt myself slightly scowling. “I just murdered a man, Oz.”

“No, no,” he corrected, holding a finger up. “What you did weren’t murder. It was vengeance.”

Oz leaned back in his seat, smiling to himself as he gazed at the ceiling in a tranquil-like manner. “Seriously, though. Thank you, Bruce. Hill might not’ve died the way I imagined he would, but at least both of our mums can rest in peace now. That pig got exactly what he deserved.”

Even with all the compliments, I still wasn’t able to feel the same pride Oz experienced, and stayed silent in response, surrounding my glass with both my hands.

“What’s wrong, Bruce?” Oz asked, noticing my uncertainty.

I looked at him from under my hood, biting my lip. “I just--” I let out a worried breath, “what if the drug acts up again? Sure, it was useful against Hill, but what if the same thing happens again with someone who doesn’t deserve to be hurt? What if I accidentally attack you?”

Oz didn’t seem to be as concerned. “Trust me, I’ll be fine.”

I sighed. “My point...is that the drug doesn’t care who it harms. And I can’t control it once it takes the wheel. It’s like someone else is piloting my body--like a puppet.”

Finishing his drink, Oz gave me a reassuring look. “Lady Arkham designed the drug so that it only takes effect whenever the host is provoked, or angered. As long as you can keep calm ‘round those you don’t wanna hurt--which shouldn’t be too hard--then you should be all right. And besides, you weren’t even drugged with that much. Harvey received at least twice your dosage, and he’s still on his feet.”

I stared at the floor, thinking about what happened back at City Hall. “Yeah, about Harvey...” I brought my voice to a whisper, “I think he’s losing it, Oz. I went to visit him earlier today, and things were okay at first, but about halfway through, he just...snapped.”

That hooked Oz’s interest. “How do you mean?”

“Extreme paranoia, switching his personality entirely, talking to himself as if there were another person around...it was hectic.”

He chuckled. “Huh. Sounds like he really lives up to his nickname.”

I shot him a puzzled look. “What? What nickname?”

“Dunno if you’ve heard, but some people are startin’ to call him Two-Face. Pretty self-explanatory.”

I glared at Oz, causing him to put both hands up in defense. “Hey, I didn’t come up with it.”

Before we could talk more though, we saw the barmaid hurrying up to us out of nowhere with nervousness plastered on her face, constantly glancing behind her shoulder as if someone were watching.

“Oz,” she said in an alarmed tone, “it’s the GCPD. I just got word that they’re coming here to arrest you and your friend. It’s about Hill’s death. You’d better get going.”

Oz and I exchanged looks, both of us completely forgetting about the drinks.

“What about you?” He asked. The barmaid waved a dismissive hand.

“I’ll cover for you. And I’ll make sure none of the other customers say nothin’ either.”

Oz stood up from the booth, gesturing for me to follow. “Thanks, sweetheart. I owe you.” He turned to me. “C’mon, Br--” he stopped himself mid-sentence, quickly finding a replacement, “--buddy. Let’s bail. I don’t feel like sleeping behind bars tonight.”

Bolting into a secluded alleyway, Oz and I could already hear police sirens screaming in the distance, their red and blue lights flashing on the brick walls as we delved deeper into the shadows.

Fortunately for us, the heavy rain made it harder for the police to detect our frantic footsteps, and while we hid in the darkness, I could see police officers scurrying all over the place--including Gordon--in search for their targets.

“You think someone found out you were with us?” Oz wondered quietly. I almost had to strain my ears to hear him over the rain.

“Probably. Why else would they be here?”

“I dunno, but it’s pretty pointless for me to be with you right now. Even if they don’t manage to arrest us, just seeing us together will give ‘em proof you’re working with me.”

“Are you suggesting we split up? Have you never seen a horror film?”

“Tonight will become one if the GCPD catches us.”

I sighed. “All right, all right. You go hide somewhere else. I’ll keep an eye on the police here.”

“Sounds good. Let me know if you need help with anythin’.”

And with that, Oz jogged off to a different part of the alleyway, leaving me to fend for myself. It didn’t take long for the adrenaline in my body to kick in, and before I knew it, I could feel the drug’s effects taking action again.

Not now, I told myself. Not fucking now!

But it was no use. Just like at the debate, my vision started to cloud up with a green haze, and my heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. The same voice that kept urging me to beat Hill came back, and I started to squirm in pain.

Rolling up one of my sleeves, I could see the blue veins enhancing in my arm, crawling their way through the skin like the branches on a tree. By this point, I no longer cared about staying hidden, and I paid no mind to the flashlight beams that were now centering in on me.

“I found someone!” The officer called out, aiming his gun at me. “Freeze!” He ordered. I didn’t comply. Instead, I only approached him, fearlessly sauntering towards him despite all my efforts to resist the drug.

“I said freeze!” He repeated. Still, I ignored him and continued to walk until suddenly, as if time itself had slowed down, I found myself grabbing him by the neck and lifting him into the air with an abnormal amount of strength as the policeman started clawing at my hand.

Stop! I yelled at myself. But I wasn’t listening.

Tightening my grip immensely, I slammed his head against a nearby wall, and did it again, and again, and again, blood starting to stain the bricks with every hit. The policeman fell into unconsciousness not too much later, and I wasn’t even sure if he was alive, but I still kept on going, furiously bashing him into the wall’s surface.

Suddenly however, a sharp pain pierced into my back, causing me to drop the policeman before collapsing to the ground in agony, the wet street soaking my clothes. In the darkness surrounding me, I spotted an ominous pair of white eyes glaring at me through the rain, revealing none other than Batman himself.

“...Dad.” I groaned through gritted teeth, still under the drug’s influence. He knelt beside me.

“Good god,” I heard him murmur, staring at the police officer I just attacked. “We need to get you home, Bruce.”

He reached out a helping hand, but I brushed it aside. “I’m not...going...anywhere...with you...”

Ignoring me, Batman took me into his arms and hauled me over his shoulder, securely holding me as he activated his earpiece.

“Alfred, I found Bruce. I’m on my way home now. Let me know if the GCPD ever gets too close.”

“Well done, sir. You’ll be the first to know. I shall await for your return.”

“Thanks, Al--”

Out of nowhere, a gunshot erupted throughout the alleyway and, in the midst of all the commotion, I found myself falling to the ground once again. Not too far away from me, Batman was clutching his arm as blood streamed down the limb, and across from him, I could see Oz lurking towards us, smoking pistol in hand.

“Batman!” He exclaimed cheerfully, though not sincerely. “Here to save the day as always, I see.” He prepared another bullet. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid your ‘help’ isn’t needed here.”

“Oswald. Cobblepot.” Batman said, grimacing. “What is it about this city that attracts criminal scum like you?”

Oz chuckled at that. “Gotta admit--you’ve got flair! Though, I’m gonna have to ask you to step away from Wayne junior here.”

“What do you want with him?” Batman questioned, looking at me.

“Well, you see, my old mate and I have some catching up to do,” he raised the gun at him. “And you’re kinda ruining the moment.”

“...wait...” I weakly held an arm out, attempting to stop the two of them, but no one acknowledged me. Batman got into a defensive stance.

“Over my dead body.” He growled, standing protectively in front of me.

Oz grinned, cocking the gun as he continued to stroll through the pouring rain.

“That can be arranged.”

#cobblebats #batman telltale #bruce wayne #oswald cobblepot #harvey dent #fanfic #story

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