I Don't Like Hanging Out With Nerds

...or, "How Time Corrupted the Nerds."

I remember being a kid in the late 90s and early '00s and getting picked on for being something of a nerd. It was already starting to turn over, though, with the culture becoming more and more mainstream the older I got. It wasn't like I got beat up for liking Batman. I got made fun of here and there and sometimes, occasionally, it was because I had some sort of nerdy stuff around, but more often than not it was just because kids are fucking rude and they would grasp for any straw. So maybe I'm not the be all, end all of experience here, but I'm doing this anyway just because I'd love to say that being a nerd doesn't seem like all that proud of a thing now.

Honestly, I don't even like hanging out with nerds anymore. I think too often, that turns into a pissing contest of purity. You say you like a thing and then some idiot has to chime in with “YEAH BUT DID YOU SEE THIS OTHER THING? IF NOT THEN I JUST DON'T SEE HOW YOU'RE A REAL FAN!” And it's like, Jesus, turn it down, buddy. It's just a movie. Not like we're at the Conference of Nations here. If I like a thing, that just means I like it. Not looking to join the fucking debate team here.

And in recent years, with the ballooning of Marvel, Star Wars and Disney into a grotesque blob devouring everything in sight, it's hard to be sympathetic to this kind of aggro fan posturing. It's cool to like the stuff, I've enjoyed some of it, but at some point you're also basically getting pumped up and angry defending the 1% of entertainment. You're basically like “don't be so mean to this untouchable billionaire behemoth!” This especially applies to Star Wars. Jesus, the bitching I've heard and read about these new movies, you'd think they had paid for these people's housing and food needs for years.

That isn't even the worst of it. You hear worse things from women who try to enter the nerd kingdom's gates. Awful tales of sexism. And I'm glad I don't have to suffer the annoyances of any minority trying to wade into the public discourse. Just look at any time Marvel or DC tries to introduce a new incarnation of a character who's black or a woman or gay. Online, things have gotten perilously toxic at times, such as the 'Gamergate' fiasco that really showed how awful and toxic these people were, sending death threats, screaming misogynist garbage.

Nerds got to the top and then proceeded to act like the exact people they hated, discriminating and pushing people around. One thing nerds love is a quote from a nerdy movie used in some other context. So for me this whole thing is like when Harvey Dent said, “You either die, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” The whole predicament is basically the story of so many “I'll show them” nerd fantasies. We all had 'em, the whole idea of “they're making fun of me now but I'll get rich and punish them someday,” but it's become a reality for some people. There's a NYT editorial that goes into this with more finesse than I could, about people like Elon Musk. There's a dark side to every kind of person, and any ideal is somewhat corruptible, unfortunately.

I get how it happens. Nerd-dom is basically just liking something in a real, intense way. You don't just watch or read or play the thing passively, but actively consume, sucking up every morsel of information like Kirby from Smash Brothers (see, another reference). A lot of the time, that kind of devotion comes with a loneliness or something missing in real life, and a lot of young teenagers have that because life is tough to put together when you have almost no autonomy. But most of us grow out of that and become productive and well-rounded adults, to some extent anyway.

But some people don't grow out of it, and that portion seemed to grow more vocal as the internet got bigger. They turned their loneliness and social ineptitude into a weapon. Who knew how they'd gotten there? They just never seemed to click with real life. Never fit in. I guess we used to laugh at people like this for being fat Star Trek cosplayers who lived in their mom's basement. Now, I guess they're the same people, except they're angrier through a lot of time spent behind a screen reading conspiracy theories and getting angry at 'PC culture' for leaving them stranded in the dust. But the world has never been totally fair and at some level, if you're born into a first-world country to a family with money to afford the internet for you to read those conspiracy theories, you have to take some responsibility.

So I barely ever even refer to myself as a nerd. I enjoy a lot of 'nerd media' and don't care if people know it, but I stop short at calling myself one. I don't like the context anymore. I think it's given birth to some toxic shit.

And honestly, with the proliferation and mainstreaming of nerd culture, what do bullies even make fun of kids in school for anymore? Is it back to race, socioeconomic class, the simpler stuff of days of yore? I dunno.

The Fantastic Four (Unreleased, 1994)

With the impending release of Marvel's gargantuan Infinity War spectacle, it's kind of hard to believe there was a time when superhero movies weren't these million-dollar blockbuster productions with huge actors signed on for years at a time. But there was! And while the Tim Burton Batman and the 70s Superman were viable successes, they were outliers and didn't blow up into a huge trend like we have now. The Fantastic Four from 1994 is a film that was never even released and can be legally watched on YouTube just like you're searching for a Kendrick Lamar video or something. And it's, uh, really something.

Director: Oley Sassone

Starring: Alex Hyde-White, Rebecca Staub, Jay Underwood

IMDb

Co-written with Nathan.

The history behind this thing is that, apparently, Executive Producer Bernd Eichenger wanted to retain the rights to the characters before they expired, so he had to have this at the 11th hour in 1994. So he teamed up with famous producer and director Roger Corman and they ended up putting this movie together, full of a bunch of actors you've never heard of.

It wasn't required that it would be released, just that it existed. And though some people like Stan Lee claimed it was never intended to be released, Eichenger and Corman denied that and claimed that it was. But if you believe the myth, essentially, this is an entire movie with a full cast and crew made just so some guy could make other Fantastic Four movies. Wow. If you ever needed a reason to feel worthless... there you go.

The thing is, it's not even too bad of a movie! Sure, the budget looks pretty low and the effects are goofy as fuck, but it wasn't like this was the top of the crop in terms of that for 1994. The acting isn't bad at all and the story is honestly pretty standard for these kinds of movies.

You get Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom, the latter of whom surely had the most punchable name in school and got beat up all the time, driving him to science. They try this wacky experiment as a comet is passing by, but I guess their numbers were off and Victor gets horribly burned and electrocuted. Whoops! I hope the kid from Species III still gets to do his stupid experiments and the science lab isn't a martyr to this cause now.

Years later, Reed recruits these two random people who lived near him, Sue and Johnny Storm, to go into space and try to do the experiment again. Because they would totally let him do this after his first experiment left one guy maimed. How did he even get to do this at all? What coke-addled executive let this yoohoo go into space again? And it just makes sense to take two random, un-trained people in space, because why would I want ASTRONAUTS going on my super cool science mission? Fuck expertise! Give me amateurs!

But it doesn't work, because a hideously deformed man wearing a monocle and a fedora, called The Jeweler, breaks in and steals their magic jewel thing from the spaceship, which was apparently the only thing keeping them from being fried and their genes rearranged. He replaces it with a replica of the same jewel, you know, just the kind of thing you carry around!

So then they get shot out of the sky and crash-land in a random field, somehow coming out mostly unscathed and with no major injuries. They did get superpowers though, which Reed is mostly nonplussed about. He's just like “yeah, whatever, guess we'll see what happens.” Never even an iota of concern even as the other three are all freaking out. I guess the thought of taking Sue to bed is his main concern.

They get taken in by a lab run by Dr. Doom, who sits on a throne surrounded by flaming pyres and speaks in constant community-college-Shakespearean tones. It's pretty goddamn silly. It's obviously Victor, who was presumed dead by Reed but apparently spent his time after being burned turning into a supervillain with his whole lab and trying to blow stuff up. But Reed didn't know. It's crazy to me that these guys were friends and then after the accident, he's just like nah, I'm not telling anyone where I am, WORLD DOMINATION TIME!

Meanwhile, the Jeweler guy plots to kidnap this blind girl, because I guess he's so delusional that he thinks the reason he can't get a date is because of his looks. How silly! It's because of his shitty personality. I can't even believe they're doing a 'kidnapped woman forced to be a bride' plot. What is this, the fucking 1960s? They do it later with Dr. Doom, too. It's like why not make the same dumb, cliché mistake twice in a row?

And it's so surreal every time this Jeweler character is on screen, because the music gets all campy-goth-style like a musical and he talks like an even worse Shakespeare imitator than Doom does. It's really like they took this character out of a whole different movie and put him in this.

Ben gets mad and ends up leaving, fearing he'll never fit in, as back in the 90s, giant orange rock men just weren't accepted by society. He just kind of wanders the city and it doesn't take long for him to run into the Jeweler's weird underground society of deformed-looking people, feeling that this is the only way I guess. My favorite part is that the others don't even try to find him. They're in the middle of making up a name for themselves, the Fantastic Four, and making costumes! But finding one of their actual team members that make up the 'Four'? Nah, fuck that! Who cares if we have to turn it into 'Fantastic Three' and spend money doing that?

Through some more convoluted events, they find The Thing and then end up fighting Dr. Doom. Doom fires a laser to destroy New York City, motivated no doubt by its obscene rent prices. Johnny does the whole Human Torch thing and the CGI here is actually gorgeous in how silly it is – it turns basically into an early computer game animation, and it looks amazingly silly. But it is a bit endearing. I bet they put as much work into this as people nowadays do on Marvel movies.

Okay. That might not be true. But I'm sure it's true compared to the writing in a DC movie.

That's Fantastic Four, ending with a shot of all of them coming out of a church after a wedding – they're all married now! Or maybe just Reed and Sue. Oh, and Ben and the blind girl he saved from Doom/Jeweler, too. Because I guess saving a girl means she is yours as a prize! People can be prizes! Isn't that great?

That's the movie though. It's silly, it's utterly ridiculous, the budget was clearly low... but it ain't bad. I've seen worse. I mean, most of this is pretty average so far as writing goes. It may be full of cliches and dated bullshit, but I'll take it over any non-Wonder Woman DCEU flick any day.

Image copyright of its original owner, we don't own it.

Comic Con Trailer Reviews

Man, I've been absent for a few weeks. What can I say? I got busy with other shit.

First, a word of praise for Comic Con and MegaCon and other such things... it's amazing how large and viable geek culture has truly become. This is not going away like we thought. The things we grew up with, all the comics and movies and games, are an integral, powerful force for the culture we've crafted as adults. It's part escapism, sure, like anything – but it's also just the way we've let these characters and stories define us. Fiction can resonate long and wide in the human mind. And none more than that which we grew up with, that which we saw in the formative years.

So it's pretty fucking cool.

Here's some thoughts on the various Comic Con trailers, but not all of them, just the ones I cared about. I didn't bother watching the Kingsman 2 or the Thor Ragnarok ones because I've already seen other trailers for those films, and I also don't care about Star Trek or some of the various TV shows displayed. But there was some interesting stuff I saw...

JUSTICE LEAGUE

Who says there's no money in using millions of Hollywood dollars to recreate playing with your action figures as a kid? I guess this could maybe not totally suck. Hopefully? I dunno. If you had told me that “maybe it won't suck” was the highest aspiration I'd have for a fucking Justice League movie 10 years ago, I would have been extremely depressed. This still mostly just looks like a mish mash of too many random new characters to be good. If DC would quit trying to outpace and outmatch Marvel, maybe they'd make better films. It doesn't help that every line spouted in this sounds like an Ad Lib for action movie trailers. You could play this for a blindfolded person and they wouldn't know what movie it's for.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 2

Holy shit – now this looks good! I was unsure where they'd go after the first season. Apparently where they were going was even more awesome shit. I am loving the Halloween ambiance and the weird, Lovecraftian monsters and imagery. These characters and this story are some of the best original stuff on TV right now. If you were concerned about how good this Halloween season would be, well... be concerned no more.

THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 8

I love The Walking Dead like I love a child that sometimes screws up really badly and has to spend the night in the slammer for a DUI or public disturbance. This trailer for Season 8 looks pretty good, although it appears to be every inspirational Rick Grimes speech ever rolled into three minutes. And yeah, they have a weird shot at the end of Rick with a huge beard waking up in a hospital bed, like it was all a dream... yeah, I'm sure this long-running popular TV show is about to end this season with it all being a dream... sure.

READY PLAYER ONE

If our collective 80s nostalgia became some insane chimera, cobbled together with the forces of alchemy, it would probably look like this Ready Player One trailer. I haven't read the book, though I think I should, as this looks like a lot of fun. If anything, it will be very difficult to make anything else that is MORE nostalgic for old movies and games after this.

THE DEFENDERS

This looked pretty cool – basically exactly what I expected, full of highly well-produced action and lots of witty quips, but at least all of that looks very well done here. At least three of the Defenders, I'm really excited to see again. (Hint: the one I am not that excited about rhymes with Shmiron Shmist.)

And finally... the one everyone was waiting for...

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

What? How am I seeing this one, which was only a secret trailer not released to the general non-attending public? Surely nobody would ever break that cardinal rule and upload it to the internet...

It looks pretty fun. I don't know though. I am worried about the over-saturation of characters in these movies. As well made as it's likely to be, I'm just not sure it's good storytelling to cram so much shit into one movie. I guess if they can do it in a comic book, you can do it in a movie, too. But maybe sometimes less really is more. But that said, I am sure I'll end up seeing this and enjoying it for the batshit insane, colorful, jam packed spectacle it is along with everyone else; who am I kidding?

Ant-Man (2015)

Marvel has a pretty good reputation for dependable action movies these days – in fact, they're addicted to making them. Hell, I think they'd go into a coma if enough people didn't re-tweet them on Twitter about each new movie that came out. But they did have one movie that was pretty weak, and it should be obvious what I am talking about by now, unless for some reason you didn't pay any attention to the title of this review.

I'll give you a hint though: If you've ever said the words 'my favorite movie is Ant-Man,' then you may not like this one.

Director: Peyton Reed

Starring: Paul Rudd, Corey Stoll, Michael Douglas

IMDb

Co-written with Tony.

Ant Man is the kind of movie I think they'd produce if they asked the most generic human being alive to produce a movie that is acceptable – not great, not even particularly good, just acceptable. And then you took that and gave it to a robot who had never seen or talked to a human before to recreate it from memory. That's this movie. It's as unfunny, weird and awkward as you'd expect, while simultaneously also being pretty dull and ordinary.

This thing starts with Michael Douglas's scientist character punching another guy in the face for a disagreement at work – you know, one of those heated scientist disagreements that so often results in a physical altercation. Oh those rowdy scientists. Apparently Douglas is mad because they stole his formula to make people tiny. What, how does he know it's HIS formula? I mean, that's pretty self centered of him. What an attention whore.

Don't worry, he can't hurt you. He's all bad CGI to make him look younger.

Then we fast forward about 20 years to the middle of a Fight Club outtake starring Paul Rudd, who is less an actor and more of an alchemic combination of bad comedy tropes cobbled into something resembling a man. He's playing Scott, a Thief With a Heart of Gold™ who got arrested for stealing some stuff from a rich con man and giving it back to the people he conned. Don't worry – there's a scene about 20 minutes in that spoonfeeds you this information with all the nuance of a guy trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by just destroying the whole thing with a jackhammer. Exposition!

This movie represents prison like you would if you talked about a second cousin you don't see that often - vague and noncommittal. I know it's not the point of the movie, but could we have ANY effort at character development? Like at all?

But this only lasts a few minutes, because we have really important shit to focus on like the pretty racist caricatures of everyone else who isn't Paul Rudd. Like, the guy who picks him up from prison is the most stereotypical Hispanic character ever, like you'd think Donald Trump's idea of any Spanish speaking person is. His thing is that he talks in a really stereotypical way and goes on long, unfunny tangents when he's trying to convey information. Wow, what a great character idea. I'm sure glad someone's paying you to write this.

And who else do we get? A black guy whose only purpose in the movie is to steal a cop car? A European guy of vague descent who talks in a ridiculous accent and talks about his reverence for superstition in one scene while also being an expert at computers like a Die Hard villain the next scene? Wow. I guess it's progressive if you consider 'progression' to be having them in the movie at all?

Oh good, the local awful Improv troupe is here...

I just think it takes a lot of balls to write characters that most pornos wouldn't consider writing because they're too stupid and shallow. “Hmm, well, you've got a good start, but how much MORE racist can you get without getting protesters on our asses? Can you implement at least some of the stereotypes from 1950s conservative drug propaganda films before your time is up?” It's asinine exactly how bad this is – like, what, just because the KKK would still be like 'nah, that's weaksauce,' it's okay?

I guess Paul Rudd can't hold down a job at Baskin Robbins, which is a bad joke that the movie milks like hell with even worse jokes on top of it, like the manager at Baskin Robbins chewing scenery and talking in unrealistic dialogue about how cool it is that Scott stole things, but also saying they have to fire him. Yeah, convicts can't get jobs! Hilarious! A gut buster!

Ugh, ANOTHER movie in the pocket of Big Ice Cream, shoving its message down our throats...

Oh, and he tries to see his daughter at a birthday party only to get harassed by his ex-wife's new husband, a cop who seems to be so unrealistically douchey that I am pretty sure he literally has a stick rammed up his ass. Can we get a Kickstarter fund going to remove it and end this man's pain? He really is just such a douche to Scott that it comes off as hacky. Because ya know... a convict not being able to spend time with his kid, just more of that hilarity that is Ant Man.

The rest of the plot focuses around Corey Stoll's character Darren performing experiments on goats to try and turn them tiny, which doesn't work and only turns them into formless goop. I'm sure glad all this money is going toward this noble fucking cause.

We really learned a lot from this...

I guess this is what Michael Douglas's old scientist character perfected years ago, which he didn't release to the world and now Stoll's character wants to make a whole army of tiny soldiers to go and do evil shit like assassinate world leaders. They have a whole video presentation about this, like it's some sort of weird school presentation, which is kinda funny. It should really just say “WE'RE GONNA DO REALLY EVIL SHIT” across every picture in boldface lettering. Like, who the fuck was actually in charge of making a goddamn video presentation about assassinating world leaders and doing military coups?

Douglas, I guess, has the one suit he used locked up in a safe which Scott goes to burgle. He breaks into the safe and tries on the suit for no real reason except shits 'n' giggles – like, he broke in already, so why not, I guess? Then it shrinks him down to the size of an ant and we get a pretty decent action scene of him being tiny and running around and stuff. Though I am not sure why this mansion Michael Douglas lives in is apparently in the same building as a fucking night club...

I guess Douglas just likes a good time.

Also, how does he not die when he gets sucked up by the vacuum cleaner? I mean, I guess I've never really TRIED to do that. So maybe I can't criticize the movie on this part.

This is not the movie for you if you're afraid of vacuum cleaners at all.

Then we get a bunch of lame scenes of Scott waking up in Douglas's mansion, where he and his hot daughter live. They also have an army of ants in there that Douglas can apparently control, so he has them guard the bed Scott is in so it's almost like he's a prisoner there – if he steps off the bed, they'll sting him I guess. Except then that turns out to be pointless as he gets out and there is really no threat to him – so, whoop-de-do I guess.

Then there's a bunch of training scenes with him and the daughter, who is the most boring and lame type of female character – the super stoic, badass chick who says everything in a deadpan monotone because THAT shows strength, right? The only type of strong woman is the kind who never experiences emotion because she was probably created in a laboratory as a domesticated robot to deliver quips. I mean, what kind of woman ever has emotions, or a personality, am I right? Oh, she fires back blandly sarcastic quips to literally everything Rudd says? Yes, exactly how real people talk. And in this movie about a guy who shrinks down to the size of an ant, THAT is what I am most worried about for realism, yes.

Her wanting to cause Paul Rudd pain is the only believable part of her character.

Oh, what's that? You didn't think we had enough scenes of forced, dull fucking family drama with the daughter and Douglas shouting about how they didn't really love one another and a whole bunch of other stuff that makes me fall asleep? The movie has you covered.

Then there's a lot more bad jokes, stiff and unrealistic dialogue and lame stereotype characters as the climax clunks along. They stage some plan to break into the lab and I guess Stoll is so far gone by this point that he just ends up dressing up in the suit and going full on supervillain like, immediately. Wow. I dunno why THAT was his first choice, but one thing is clear, and that's that this lab really should do better background checks and mental health analyses on these people before hiring them.

Who, aside from gun sellers in the US, could look at this and go 'yes, this is a mentally OK man'?

Because this is still so cliché that it borders on parody, Stoll goes straight to the house of Scott's kid and threatens his family. How would we have any conflict if we didn't make it super personal right away? I mean, there's NO other sources of things a villain can do that are evil.

But to be fair, this is actually a good scene, and one of the only ones in the whole movie that actually works – I like the silly stuff they can do with the shrinking fight scene, like when they knock stuff over, it falls over with the weight of a mountain in their eyes. But then they show it just looked like some little thing falling over in the regular world:

It's really just one of the only scenes that actually works for the movie's sense of humor – why couldn't they have put this kind of effort into the characters and dialogue? Visually, it's good. Though I think the world could have done without this giant Thomas the Tank Engine and the mutant giant ant... I mean, is this like what the 1950s-era horror films predicted would happen? Jesus.

I guess there really is no price too high to give kids nightmares in this movie's universe.

That is pretty much the end really – we get a few more scenes of things winding down in a happy way, and I don't really care. That's Ant Man!

I guess a lot of people like this, and that's fine – sometimes that many people ARE just wrong. I dunno. I just find it really dull and bland – the writing is bad and the characters are weak when they're not outwardly idiotic stereotypes that come off as vaguely racist. The plot is dime-a-dozen origin story stuff and there's really nothing of interest about any of this except for the wacky scenes where he shrinks down to ant-size. So I guess I'm saying, if the movie was just a 10 minute short film with only those scenes, it'd be okayish, so long as they cut out literally everything else in the movie.

Oh well, at least it's better than Batman vs Superman or Suicide Squad; because those are good standards to have!

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.

Cinema Freaks Live: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Colossal (2017)

There may be SPOILERS in this!

The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Black Widow and Sexism

The new Avengers movie is out, and people are angry about stuff again – more specifically the character Black Widow, and whether or not her portrayal is sexist in the movie. So, is it? Well, let's talk about that.

For those of you not in the know, I'll try and sum up peoples' problems – basically, in the movie, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) have struck up a romance between films. The first thing we really see Black Widow do is touch the Hulk's hand and help him turn back into Banner. A lot of her role in this movie is interacting with Banner. There's one scene where the two have a conversation about how they can't have a normal life together, because they can't have kids.

Now, I'm not one to try and presume anything about people with such vastly different life experiences than me. If you thought this was a sexist portrayal and they could have done it differently, I'm fine with that. I just didn't see it that way.

The thing nobody is saying about this is that Black Widow before this was a pretty generic character – she was the stoic badass tough chick with very little else to her. I know Joss Whedon wrote some great tough chicks in Buffy, but they were full, three dimensional characters, with worries, fears, individual thoughts and realistic personalities. To me it always seemed like Black Widow was just a cardboard cutout of a character, although Johansson did a good job portraying her especially in the second Captain America flick.

Now, in this new one, she does kinda have a character – she's in love with Bruce Banner. And no, a woman character being in love with a guy is not the only way to show character. But the way she acts in this movie is refreshingly honest and down to Earth for a Marvel flick. You can believe her character and you feel sympathy for her, as cheesy and simple as the romance is – it works. I can see why people think it's sexist for a female character to be based solely around being in love with a man, but frankly, Bruce Banner doesn't have any other plot in The Avengers 2 besides being in love with her, either. It goes both ways.

If it were a much older movie and Banner was portrayed as the uncaring, stoic, manly-man character who was complex and full-bodied, while Black Widow was portrayed as a wishy-washy emotional female, then I'd probably be on the other side of the argument. But as is, it's just a fairly decent portrayal of two people caring about each other.

The one scene people are complaining the most about is when Banner says he can never have a normal life, have kids, etc. She matches him and says she can't have kids because she was a trained assassin and they sterilized her. The line is “you still think you're the only monster on this team?” It comes off to me as two people trying to relate to one another and connect – it was fine. Some people, I guess, thought that scene suggested Black Widow's character was only wanting kids, etc – stereotypical, cliche woman stuff, which seemed sexist and outdated to them.

What people overlook in all of this is that being in love and wanting kids and everything IS realistic, and it can make for a good, interesting story. It brings out the softer sides of characters – in a superhero flick, that's pretty important. While some writers can certainly come off as sexist by not fleshing out their women characters enough, I think Whedon did it fine within the constraints of Marvel Studios' ridiculously anal-retentive control game over their movies.

So what exactly is the root of the problem here? I just think sometimes people can take their eye off the ball – they make it more about politics than about character, and their sight can be a bit too narrow. A lady can certainly have a love interest and her character can be sad when the guy is in trouble or whatever else – that's a human emotion and it adds depth. Trying to make it so women can only be tough, bad ass, stand-alone sirens of war who don't need men is just tipping the scale too far in the other direction from the old cliché of the weak-willed, subservient women characters of the 60s and 70s. You've got to have a medium. At some point, you just have to quit worrying about it and write the best character you can.

There's also the Internet mentality of “well, if you're not X, you must be Y” - like, if Whedon didn't write the most complex, individual, independent and unique woman in a movie ever (every time he does something, too), he's a misogynist – like it can only be one or the other. There's just no grey area with the Internet, and in everything in real life, there's tons of grey area. People aren't just one thing or the other. Not everything has to advance the same single agenda or else it's the opposite of that agenda. That's kind of a childish way to look at the world.

If you're only writing one type of character, chances are, you're a bad writer. Women, like men, can be sensitive, they can be tough, they can be easy to anger or they can be chill and relaxed – they're human beings, and a good writer pays more attention to the human emotion of a character rather than trying to fill a quota by making X number of characters whatever personality type.

And it's a tough thing to really balance out and measure – how do you balance out the expectations of an audience that wants equality, but with so many different ideas of how to do it? You also have to take into account that, with a movie like this, where a lot of kids are watching - some of them young girls - you need to have a good role model type of character. It's a sensitive issue, and I can see why people want to talk about it and debate it.

There's obviously a problem in Hollywood with having good, well written ladies in the movies. There are some, especially when you get down to more independent films – it's not an epidemic or a total void of quality. But in terms of real mainstream, well done female heroines, we could definitely always do better. So if that's your argument, well, I don't have a problem with that – just put away the torches and the pitchforks on Whedon. I mean, damn, he isn't that bad. 

And listen - everyone, and I mean everyone, is allowed to have some opinion on this. Our personal experiences shape our viewpoints on everything, social issues, politics, etc. Some people, women or men, may see the movie as sexist or whatever else, and maybe they're not entirely wrong. But do you have to shut people out who disagree with you? Feminists telling a bunch of straight white dudes to shut up are just as wrong as misogynistic assholes telling women their problems aren't big deals - they're all wrong. Just, fuck, don't be a dick about it. You don't have to have a final, line-in-the-sand answer to every question. Sometimes viewpoints are still evolving and you don't have to be sure of everything.

With that said, though; yeah, we really do need a Black Widow stand alone movie. Get on that, Marvel, you bastards.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Dear Hollywood: Stop Planning Ahead

Movies in the last few years have become a little too homogenous for my liking. It seems like every single movie coming out – at least during the summer blockbuster season – is some kind of sequel, remake or adaptation of something else. Now, this is not something new to any of you reading this blog or most moviegoers who have been awake for the last half-decade – I'm not becoming Captain Obvious on you here.

But I do think something has to be said for the sheer level of planning ahead Hollywood is doing with these – it isn't just that they're making these superhero sequels, book adaptations and spinoffs of popular franchises, but that they're also planning them ahead of time to ridiculous amounts more befitting of a tiger mom planning out her four-year-old's doctorate degree years and years in the future.

You want proof? Well, how about the fact that the new film based off the Harry Potter spin off book Fantastic Creatures and Where to Find them will actually now be MORE THAN A TRILOGY. Keep in mind the original book was like 80 pages and served as a fun little extra add-on to the main series. And now it's going to be like six more movies. If we're lucky.

Look, I get it – people love Harry Potter. I remember reading the books as a kid and have very fond memories; they were great books and they got me more interested in reading books when I was young. That's fine. I know people love the movies too; that's also fine – go wild and love them more than anything if you want. Obviously the movies had to be made as the books were so successful and people wanted to see the characters and events on screen – that happens any time a book gets popular; I have no problem with that.

What I do have a problem with is the absolute ridiculous lengths this is being taken to with this new series – more than three movies for an 80-page book? Are you serious? That's insane. They didn't do it this way back in the 80s. Notice how we didn't get a trilogy for each segment of the Back to the Future movies explaining how the various alternate timelines came to pass. There was no Indiana Jones prequel trilogy where we got to see three movies of him as a kid learning to jump off shit and lash with a whip. Though, honestly I hesitate to say that, as I'm afraid of what might happen next.

It's just too much. The best stories aren't great because they never end and have spinoffs made about minuscule elements of the story – they're great because they end at the right time. The traditional story arc is a beginning, a middle and an end; not a beginning, middle, end and then a billion little side-stories, anecdotes and addendums attached on and forced on the population like a kid who won't eat his veggies with his mouth held open. That's not a real story; it's just not being able to let go of something at the right time. It's no different than a shitty TV show dragging on for twelve seasons long after everyone's done watching.

And it's quite insidious how they hook you in – the persisting argument in favor for these endless spinoffs, rehashes, sequels, is that they're showing us something we need the answer to, or that they're showing us the backstory of something. It's a quite devilish marketing ploy that's really just a thinly-veiled excuse to keep making money – oh, we need to explain this one thing from the original series, so we're throwing billions of dollars and plenty of talented actors, backstage guys and more to GIVE YOU THOSE EXPLANATIONS. Never mind the buckets of money pouring into our pockets and the general dead-eyed cynicism of the rest of the public. It's to answer our questions!

I realize I'm kind of in the minority on this, but I'm going to say it: The best stories don't need tons and tons of explanations. If you can't draw us in with your characters, world-building, plot twists, social commentary or whatever other elements you wanted to convey, and you have to explain pages and pages of exposition and facts and tidbits and then go on to make prequels where you explain your explanations...you probably need to re-work your narrative a little bit. If you can't convey whatever you need to do in your beginning-middle-end story arc, you probably don't need to be making money in Hollywood. But alas – they are anyway.

Aside from that, do good stories need EVERYTHING explained? Can nothing be ambiguous or left to the imagination? I'm not saying everything has to be a Lynchian escapade into the depths of the soul and have all kinds of artsy abstractions, I just think there's something to be said for the power of mystery and of telling a story over explaining every minute detail. The whole matters more than the cogs and gears that make it up, if you know what I mean. Get an emotional message across, and have a point to what you're doing. Then worry about explaining the technical details. But that's just me. Apparently some see it differently, and that's your own prerogative I guess. But even so, there comes a point when explaining and more explaining is just a bad storytelling form.

On the other hand of this two-forked road to hell we have DC and their upcoming “I wish we were as cool as Marvel” attempt, also known as Batman vs Superman. I'll also accept for the name “We forgot what was cool about The Dark Knight and instead accentuated its worst elements.” The Dark Knight was great because it finally gave us a comic book movie that took itself seriously, and no I don't mean in the way that it was gritty and violent. I mean it was serious in that it was an actual movie. It took characters we loved from a different medium and worked them into a real movie with those characters in adapted roles because Christopher Nolan actually understood that film is a different media than comics and you don't need to have everything exactly the fucking same all the time.

These days, you don't really get that. I dunno, but I get the idea a lot of these comic movies are seriously afraid of the batshit "HOW DARE YOU CHANGE A THING FROM OUR HOLY TEXT" crowd on the Internet, because comic movies since then have never reached that same level of cinematic quality. As good as some of the early Marvel movies got, there was always a pervading safeness to them, where it just felt like the sole purpose was for the audience to go 'hey, there's that character I liked! There's that thing I wanted to see happen!' Maybe some people feel differently, but that's kinda what I keep getting from those films.

They have a shitload of other superhero tie-ins set up for the next six years until 2020 – well, bravo. You guys do realize we don't really need every single movie to be lined out for us, right? I mean goddamn. You're already sitting on a ton of money. It's not like peoples' interest will wane if you don't shovel the information down our throats every damn day. Just chill the fuck out!

This whole thing is just out of hand as well because, as many before me have said, WE DON'T NEED THAT MANY SUPERHERO FILMS. Do you guys really think peoples' favorite movies lists are going to be comprised in 15 years of just Marvel and DC adaptations? I wouldn't be complaining if these films were made by genuine fans who just wanted to convey the story, but for the most part, these movies are made just to keep the conveyor belt moving to make more movies after that, whether it's sequels or 'collaboration' films like Avengers or Justice League – that's the only reason they're doing all these separate films, which is a shame because I'm sure under different management, we could get some really gripping and powerful stories out of them. If you're a huge die-hard comic fan, you could probably go further than me here and list off some of the emotional conflicts, drama and social messages that could possibly be tackled, which DC will definitely not do and we'll deservedly hate them for it.

Marvel tends to fare a little better on this aspect, as their films are at least entertaining enough to watch in theaters – but even that is going to wear thin, and probably pretty soon. They got lucky with Guardians of the Galaxy being such a fun, emotional movie, but I just don't think they can keep it up for much longer. People are going to get tired of these films. The comic geeks will stick to their comics and the casual fans will start to move on and go “hey, I really feel like watching a nice drama or a gripping detective mystery.”

"Hmmm...on second thought, Pride and Prejudice sounds good about now!"

It's just the endless stream of sequels and connections – yes, it was an interesting idea, but it's too much now. It's overcooked. There are too many options and people will get burnt out. If you're just making movies that will only exist so you can make more movies, it becomes a cannibalistic process. There eventually won't be any reason to go see more, because you'll just be worn the hell out of all of it. Superhero films are reaching the oversaturation point. It's coming fast, and soon the bottom will drop out and the whole thing will be fucked. Nobody really wants THAT many big-ass movies full of explosions and guys shelling out witty quips. It might sound great at first, but just like that time you ate too many of your grandma's fudge brownies and then spent the rest of the night moaning on the floor in the bathroom – you'll soon find it wasn't what you wanted. It was too much and you got sick of it.

I started this thing weeks ago and more shit keeps coming out that I feel like I could add to it. A Toy Story 4? Really? Granted, the other three are near-flawless kid's movies, so logically I should be excited, but...the third one was such a fucking perfect ending. Why make another? You can end on a high note! It isn't too late! You can still cancel the project before it goes too far down the rabbit hole!

Granted, this is the only part of this article I'm going to say might turn out OK. I mean, yes, I would've rather it ended with the third one. But maybe, just maybe, there's a chance it could be okay - despite my worries of it turning into another sequel-marathon down the road...

I guess really it all boils down to one thing – are these movies going to be good? After all, that is the main consideration when talking about any kind of art – does it succeed at what it wanted to do, and is it quality? It may be presumptuous of me to say so, and some of you may not agree, but I'm going to say no, they probably won't be – at least not as good as any one of them individually might've been, if it was made purely out of a love for storytelling, moviemaking or anything else.

The movies I mentioned in this article, for the most part, are being made just to continue shoveling out more movies after them. They're machinations in a conveyor belt, not integral, impassioned stories. With the sheer volume of crap just lined up to come out years and years from now, planned out as meticulously as a trip itinerary for a busy lawyer, is ANY of it going to have even a little bit of a point to it? Any slightly good ideas in these movies will be lost in the constant static-noise of the rest of them all cluttering up the box office every week. They already have so many big plot elements and events planned out that there won't be any room for actual creativity in the process. Where's the spontaneity, the twists, the original creativity that directors and actors will get to bring to the table? It's incredibly telling that Idris Elba, while working on the last Thor movie, called the process “torture” while he would've rather been working on a more personal project.

But alas – this is just echoes in the wind. What I've said here won't change anything in the big picture. That will have to be left to Hollywood once this whole thing blows up in their face.

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