Batman v. Superman: The stupidest argument of all time

Apparently, you have to have qualifications before you can criticize movie trailers now.  You can't just chalk it up to taste anymore.  You have to prove your impartiality before you can speak on movies now.  I don't know where this shit started, but it really needs to stop.  The Batman v. Superman trailer was leaked over the weekend, and naturally, some folks didn't like it, but folks got mad when they dared express that online.  Like, more than usual.

We're talking about a movie trailer about a fictitious alien that wants to be friends fighting a fictitious rich guy with an inability to let go of the past.  It sounds like the plot to a Pixar movie, but people were acting like they were investigating a murder, trying to figure out the motives of people who didn't like it.  This isn't exactly serious scholarship here.  Taking on critics of this movie trailer isn't going to get you a job at The Atlantic.

It just blows my hair back when people get this serious over fictional characters, as if it's going to make a bit of difference either way.  Instead of people just enjoying the fact that we're all nerds, people are out here acting like people who didn't like it are going to block off the theaters in an act of censorship.  People are actually drawing conclusions about the characters of real, living people based on what they thought about a movie trailer.  Because, as we know, movie trailers are the modern iteration of Rorschach tests.

And the thing is, I don't think people defending the trailer really understand where the problem is coming from.  People aren't loving the way this movie is turning out (and the one before it) because it continues the Batman-ization of the DC Universe, and it was something that a lot of people could see coming after The Dark Knight came out.

See, Batman is grim and gritty.  He's tormented.  He wreaks vengeance on those who wronged him so that others don't have to suffer like he did.  Basically, this dude is broken inside and uses that to punch criminals until they're broken like him.  That formula for a superhero made Warner Bros. a billion dollars.  And because movie executives are generally unimaginative, they said, "Hey, Superman is having trouble.  Why not make him like Batman?"  You know, completely ignoring the context surrounding Superman's movies.

I mean, the problem with Superman Returns wasn't that Superman isn't tormented, it's that it was two and a half hours of washing Richard Donner's balls.  But who has time for a true examination of the issues?

And that's why Man of Steel is the way it is.  That's why Superman is morose, everything is dimly lit, and there's no sense of joy or fun in a single frame of the movie.  That's why Superman doesn't save anyone.  Superman lives in Batman's world now, and in Batman's world, you need to learn that life is shit.  

Except that's not the world Superman lives in.  Superman is supposed to represent all of those good things.  He tries to save people before he punches people.  He's supposed to inspire people to be good and do better.  He always tries to de-escalate the situation, even though he's powerful enough to turn the person in front of him into a fine, red mist.  That's what makes him Superman.  Of course he can kill everyone on Earth, but he doesn't want to.  He wants to show us a better way.  Even if he's existing in Batman's dark, depressing, basement of a world, at the very least, he needs to be that.  He wasn't, and right there is the difference in opinion on Man of Steel.

Superman fans didn't need for Superman to change.  Batman fans needed for Superman to change.  And Batman fans loved that movie.

That's why some people weren't excited to see the Batman v. Superman trailer, because they're worried that it's gonna be more of the same: A Superman that Superman fans don't recognize. And there's a huge possibility of that if the movie is based on "The Dark Knight Returns," a story that paints Superman as a government-owned bitch.  The only people who want to see that are Batman fans.  It has nothing to do with a secret love for Marvel or an inability to let go of the Donner Superman movies or any other of the silly shit I've seen thrown out there this weekend.  Maybe it just doesn't look that good to some people.  We're talking about art, not an arms treaty.

We won't know for sure until the movie gets released, but in the meantime, dial back the hostility.  We're all allowed to have opinions, and none of us need to justify them to you.

The Real Issue With the X-Men: Apocalypse Casting

Last week, Bryan Singer announced the recasting of Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Storm for X-Men: Apocalypse, and nobody really seemed to care, because who the fuck are these people?  They're like the cast of the new Fantastic Four flick, except for Michael B. Jordan. In fact, they're so anonymous that they might be the same people.  

The Storm casting did get some buzz from Storm fans, because she is once again being played by some girl who doesn't fit the Storm mold.  I get it, because everyone wants to see their favorites represented properly on screen.  It's the reason why I have decided that the Transformers movies are nothing more than a series of night terrors filled with slow-motion action shots and blurry metal shards that I can't wake up from.  Storm fans (myself included) want to see their girl shown as the powerful African leader that she is, instead of the sidekick to Jean with a white wig that she's become.  

But the really important issue with this recasting hasn't even been addressed:  We no longer have to watch Wolverine's love affair with Jean Grey that never made a lick of sense.  I assume it won't be there, because it would be really, really creepy.

See, I'm a masochist, evidently, because I've watched all of the X-Men movies.  And I watched them closely enough to realize that Wolverine knew Jean Grey for maybe a week, in total movie time.  So watching him tearfully kill Jean in the third one, and dream about her years after the fact, always made me sick.  I should have been crying, because I was the one who sat through X-Men: The Last Stand. 

That plot thread is something that is well known to folks who read the comics.  For a couple of decades, the comics teased the idea that Jean and Wolverine had a long smoldering attraction for each other, and in another world, they might have been together.  But Scott had that on lock (for reasons that continue to mystify us), so Jean would never act on it, even though Wolverine would sometimes press the issue.  

In the flicks, Wolverine met Jean, spent almost no time with her in the couple of days he tooled around the mansion, then left the X-Men for an undetermined amount of time.  He showed up back out there just in time for them to get invaded, and never saw Jean again until a few minutes before she died.  She was an evil zombie throughout the next movie, so it's not like she was in a position to further explore their relationship.  Wolverine worked hard on his chest to impress her, so her rejection forced him to kill her.  Some of this might have been made up, because that third movie was so awful, and I really don't want to watch it again.

But saying that Wolverine knew Jean for a week is being generous.  

It's kinda like in Man of Steel, where Superman and Lois have no reason throughout the movie to get together, but they still have to kiss at the end, because that's the expectation.  Wolverine is a dude who trusts no one and hasn't for decades, but he meets this girl who's already booed up, spends no time with her, but when she dies, he's suddenly so close to her that he's on the brink of tears?  And in the next movie, he struggles to kill her, even though he hasn't had a problem killing complete strangers since this trilogy started?  Even though these movies were supposed to walk their own path, Wolverine and Jean had to eye-bathe each other, because those were the times.  Even if it doesn't make sense.  

That's the kind of foolishness that this recasting gets us from up under.  Sure, Storm is still underwhelming (and probably wasn't going to be a big part of the movie, so they're just filling a roster spot), but we're just that much closer to a movie that makes sense.

A Calm, Sensible Reaction to Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor

Jesse Eisenberg is Lex Luthor, because Michael Cera is already booked.

I'm sure that's the kind of reaction that DC was expecting and I'm all too happy to give it to them.  And it's not even because I'm angry about the casting. I actually kinda like it.  I, unlike so many others, have perspective.  The perspective that comes from an reading too many comic books.  I understand that there are many different versions of Lex Luthor, and that Jesse Eisenberg fits into a few of them.  Dare I say, this casting is brave...and bold.  Please, hold your applause, because that joke was awful.

Still, you're gonna have to go through the initial shock of people saying, "The fucking dude that played Mark Zuckerberg is gonna be Lex Luthor?"

I saw a guy on Facebook that said, "Is he going to invent Facebook to defeat Superman?"  Really, that's the level of discourse DC has to face, and it's not like Jesse Eisenberg has given the fans a ton of ammo to throw back at him.  This won't go much past unfunny Facebook jokes and DC will be fine with that, because they already weathered the worst of this storm with Ben Affleck.  That was an epic tantrum, and once we got past that, it's like people couldn't really get that mad anymore.  It was like the world said, "Okay, we all know this flick is gonna suck. They really can't do any worse than this." 

And after that, Gal Gadot just got questions about her physique, mostly because no one knows who she is.  Jesse Eisenberg is just getting bad jokes, like the ones I've written just now.  It's all just been diminishing nerdrage, so we'll probably be done with this story by Monday.  No one even noticed that Jeremy Irons is playing Alfred.

I saw more outrage yesterday that Fox wants Channing Tatum to play Gambit in a future X-Men movie.  It wouldn't be a surprise that Fox was thinking about doing some more bad X-Men casting, but people were legit mad at that, I guess because Channing Tatum is too sexy or can't act or something.  As if Gambit is a character filled with such pathos that only a Shakespearean actor could capture it all.  Anyway, the X-Men flicks are filled with terrible decisions. I still believe that Halle Berry was cast because she was the only black person the producers could name.

Warner Bros. is supposed to be better than that.  Or at least Christopher Nolan is and Zach Snyder are.  And I'm willing to give it a chance, because as I've said trying to talk people off the ledge today, it all depends on what kind of Lex Luthor will be in the movie.  You got your "evil businessman" Lex Luthor (who could stomp ass), and you got your "sociopath scientist" Lex Luthor (who could not).  I think the second one is something Eisenberg can work with.  As long as he's not on there talking about being the "greatest criminal mind of our time," I think we'll be fine.

Casting black actors as white characters is cool. Just not this time.

Just a heads up, this is probably gonna get a little nerdy.

So the word is that Michael B. Jordan, a young black actor, is in the running to play Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in the next Fantastic Four movie. The Human Torch is white, so naturally, the comic book world has lost it's shit. 

Most people who don't read comics are probably like, "Good for him.  We need more black heroes."  Normally, I'd agree with those people, because I also think we need more black heroes.  Just not the kind who rhyme all of their dialogue, like they did when I was a kid.  More than that, I think we just need more positive and heroic black figures in these kind of movies.  It's important to see yourself represented in the media in a positive way.  Maybe if we had more of that, fuck ups like Benzino wouldn't be TV stars. 

I've actually written about this before, when I wrote about Miles Morales replacing Peter Parker as Ultimate Spider-Man.  Read it here, and tell me how good and smart I am.  Anyway, I explained why replacing white characters with black or Hispanic ones isn't that big a deal and won't cause the fall of the republic.  That change happened in 2011, and as best I can tell, Marvel is still in business.  If Fox goes through with casting Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm (I can't believe I haven't made a bigger deal out of his name), they're gonna keep being alright.  But I'm still gonna go the other way this time.

One of the big complaints about Miles Morales was that it felt like they were forcing a black character into that role, but that was stupid, because Marvel was killing off Peter Parker anyway.  Might as well throw a black man in there, because throwing in another white guy would be boring and expected. 

But forcing a character into a role is exactly what this feels like.

It would be one thing if it was a character like Heimdall, who was played by Idris Elba in the Thor movie, or when Kerry Washington played Alicia Masters in the other Fantastic Four flicks.  That was fine, and not because they're minor characters.  In fact, I'm cool with Laurence Fishburne playing Perry White in "Man of Steel," or Jamie Foxx playing Electro in the next Spider-Man, because making them black doesn't change the story.  You don't have to explain why this guy is black.  That's not the case with Johnny Storm. 

No, the word is that they're gonna say that Johnny Storm is adopted, and that's how his sister, Susan Storm, the Invisible Woman, is gonna still be white.  And that's the part that will bother fans the most.  They're changing the story, and not even for a good reason.  If you really want to make Johnny Storm black, then why not make his sister black, too, so you don't have to explain anything?  If you're gonna go there, then go all the way there.  Just be like, "They're black now.  And what?  Get used to it, because we're also gonna make Idris Elba the next James Bond." 

"Well, what if they introduced a brand new Human Torch who isn't Johnny Storm, but is still black?  Would that get those panties out of your ass?"  First of all, Straw Man, that was very rude.  But to answer your question, no, it wouldn't, but that's just because I don't think movies are the place for the director to experiment with "his vision."  That's how Superman became an emo stalker with bastard children.  Leave that shit to the comic books, where they can have another character come through and kill the mistake in the goriest way possible.

So just leave Johnny Storm white.  Not because Michael B. Jordan isn't a talented or even deserving actor, and not because I believe that white characters should stay white.  There will be other chances to piss off racists and bigots by trying to create a progressive comic book universe.  Like when they eventually cast Idris Elba as Iron Man.  Just let them come naturally instead of trying to shoehorn it in, like this one.