Should The Mummy Be a Horror Movie?

Even though I’m excited for THE MUMMY (2016), I’m waiting for it to bomb, critically and financially.

The conversation leading up to this movie has been fascinating. Those in the critic community have pointed out the blandness of the trailers; that the movie seemingly can’t decide on a tone; and that it seems like a cynical, Marvel-inspired cash grab. Time will tell how accurate those thoughts are.

More interestingly, others have stated that they don’t want an action-horror Mummy movie, and would prefer a straight horror movie. While I respect that impulse as a horror fan, I’m not sure I buy it. Not when THE MUMMY (1999) -action horror with comedy elements- is still highly regarded.

From there, I’m having trouble parsing out the expectations for THE MUMMY (2016) and Universal’s “Dark Universe.” If it’s a wish for it not to be a cynical cash grab, I understand, respect, and agree with that argument, and can only hold out hope that THE MUMMY holds together despite its iffy trailers. If it’s “we only want this as a horror movie,” well… doesn’t that seem unreasonable?

Put simply, “only if it’s horror” is “I don’t want X to be Y.” and it’s an overly simplistic sentiment that has bedeviled horror for decades.

In a genre closely related to comedy, horror is all about eliciting physical reactions in viewers. That’s the point of the jump scare. That’s the point of dread and suspense. But what about when horror isn’t trying to scare you? The latter Freddy and Jason movies are trying to make you squirm and laugh with the absurdity of the gore. ALIEN COVENANT generally doesn’t use suspense and prominently displays its creatures. Is that scary? No. Is it horror? Yes.

SLITHER is a fantastic creature feature with heart, but it’s more funny than scary. CABIN IN THE WOODS starts as an effective, self-aware slasher, but it’s more interested in satirizing a subgenre than scaring. THEY LIVE is sort of an action comedy, but its implications about corporate and political control are the stuff of paranoid nightmares. Horror represents a broad range of subgenres (hauntings, slashers, body horror, etc.), but why do we keep trying to police what horror can/can’t be? Psychological horror and zombie movies aren’t alike, but both are valid. Both explore different kinds of horror, some that might not rely on big scares. Hell, ALIENS is one of the greatest movies ever made, but it toes the line between action and horror.

My point is that the Universal Monsters don’t need to be pure horror movies to be good or important. Yes, their original movies were horror, but as their titular characters shared sequels, they became horror-dramas, and ultimately horror-action movies. What else do you call it when the Wolf-Man wrestles the Frankenstein Monster?

The real strength of the Universal Monsters, to me, is less in outright terror, but in our own empathy. We can see ourselves in them. Who hasn’t felt like the Frankenstein monster, struggling for purpose and identity in a world that can seem hostile and alienating? Who hasn’t been attracted to the idea of Dracula’s seductiveness and power? Who isn’t scared of losing control of their base instincts like the Wolf-Man? The Universal Monsters are veritable Jungian archetypes for our understanding of the world, which has led to them enduring as Halloween costumes and symbols for all these years. We may not have had a true theatrical Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolf-Man movies for ages, but their derivatives are ubiquitous.

To that end, a successful Universal Monster movie doesn’t need to be a horror move in the jump-scare-gore-fest-high-tension-sense; it needs to explore a part of ourselves that’s simultaneously horrifying… and alluring. Whatever mode it takes -action, horror, drama, even comedy- it just has to be honest with itself and to the audience.

Does that mean that “The Mummy” (2017) will be a good movie just for being emotionally honest? No. It could still have poor characters, bland action, lame horror, and little overall merit. Hell, if it’s as paint-by-the-numbers as its trailer looks, it could be a snooze. But it WON’T fail by virtue of its genre.

So yeah. Action-horror. Time for everybody to start reappraising VAN HELSING.

Because that movie rules.

Wolverine and Me

Damn, am I ever excited for LOGAN (2017). Each new trailer is more impressive than the last, and I think it’s fair to say that the X-Men movie franchise is nostalgic for most, considering that it’s been going strong since the 2000s. Of course, any 90s kid will tell you that the 1992 cartoon show was better.

That was where I first met Wolverine, and damn did he help me through my childhood.

I’ve said before that Spider-man taught me that it was ok for me to be who I was, no matter what society thought. To a certain extent, Wolverine taught the same lesson, with his brash, devil may care attitude. He chain-smoked, drank, didn’t mince words, and didn’t have a problem kicking ass when he needed to. The Mary Sue pointed out that Wolverine’s behavior was emblematic of the worst aspects of masculinity: physical dominance, aggression, lechery, etc. While the Mary Sue isn’t wrong, I’d argue that its read is overly simplistic.

HOW overly simplistic is up for debate, though…

Wolverine in the 1992 cartoon and in the movies IS a messed-up guy possessing all of those vices. Having no memories and being a societal outcast will do that to you. In the cartoon show, you could set a watch by how often he flies off the handle… yet at the same time, Wolverine was a character deeply aware of his character flaws. He saw his hot temper as weakness, not a strength. He understood that he sometimes needed distance from his teammates to better understand his personal shortcomings. He understood that he couldn’t always have what he wanted, especially romantically. He was never a stranger to his feelings. For as much as Wolverine was propped up as the ultimate phallus (hilarious, considering that EVERYONE reminds him of how short he is), the cartoon show went out of its way to “emasculate” him.

Check out what happens when Wolverine goes up against Proteus:

Holy shit. There was NOTHING so mind-blowing as a kid than seeing the toughest character you’d ever known break down sobbing. Especially when bullies picked on you for that. It was ok to experience the full range of human emotions.

The ultimate lesson of the cartoon Wolverine, and even the movie version is that everybody hurts. Physical wounds, mental wounds- everyone faces times of sadness and tragedy, and sometimes it’s hard moving past those times. Yet we must.

In 1993, the X-Men comics took that a step further, when Magneto did what he’d always threatened in the movies: he ripped Wolverine’s metal skeleton out.

Paaaaaaaaain

Wolverine nearly died. By the time he stabilized, he was back to flesh and bone (claws included), and his healing factor was nonexistent. In short, he was dying. There wasn’t any sense in projecting rage -his team had done all they could to save him. All that was left was for him to put his affairs in order.

The Wolverine I knew, the one from these pages, was one of immense humanity and frailty. Once an indomitable warrior, each new fight could be his last. He had to bury his ego and accept pity and mercy from his enemies. He had to accept that he couldn’t be there for everyone who needed him. He had to accept that even he was going to die.

About 21 years later. In a completely unrelated arc, long, long after he’d gotten all his powers back and then some.

The point is, sure, Wolverine is emblematic of plenty of negative, traditionally masculine values, but he also embodies countless strengths of character, including humility, restraint, and tenderness. Considering the directions the X-movies went, it’s easy to forget, too, that Wolverine, like the rest of the X-Men, is a human (and mutants!) rights’ activist. As a child, those latter virtues meant the world to me and shaped how I’d approach good times and bad times. As an adult, I like to think I follow those same lessons.

Plus, Wolverine’s a badass, amiright?

Rewriting Suicide Squad

So there’s going to be a Harley Quinn Movie (Gotham Sirens or Birds of Prey), another Suicide Squad movie, and likely a Deadshot spinoff.

SUICIDE SQUAD (2016) topped most people’s Worst of the Year movie lists, while I thought it was just mediocre. Maybe offensively mediocre, given the racial stereotyping of Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and El Diablo (Jay Hernandez). It had a protracted, repetitious first act; the villain was worthless; it was riddled with plotholes; and the Joker was the worst ever put to film, but hey, I still thought BATMAN V SUPERMAN and X-MEN APOCALYPSE were worse.

The point is, SUICIDE SQUAD didn’t live up to the hype. It wasn’t as good as the animated movie in which they starred (BATMAN: ASSAULT ON ARKHAM). It wasn’t as good as any of the comics. And frankly, it oversimplified characters in a big way.

So in my usual way, I’d like to prove that I could’ve at least written a better version of the movie.

Now let’s be fair: SUICIDE SQUAD was reshot to high heaven, went through a gamut of 7-9 competing edits before being outsourced to a trailer company, and many of David Ayer’s ideas didn’t make it to the screen. That’ll make any movie suck. Who knows, maybe there was a fantastic version of the movie we never saw.

I don’t have those constraints, so maybe the unadulterated awesomeness I’m about to pull isn’t all that fair. ::shrugs:: Too bad.

1. Understanding the Suicide Squad
2. 

Taskforce X –jokingly named “Suicide Squad” for its high mortality rate and deadly missions– was always designed as a way to play with the minutia of DC comics. It explored the smaller, more clandestine events that normal heroes were too busy to notice. It dealt with current social politics (Terror abroad, White Supremacy at home, etc.); government interagency skull and dagger tactics; and harrowing events too morally gray for most heroes. As an 80s comic, it was EXTREMELY anti-Reagan.

More, the team wasn’t a list of everybody’s favorite villains, but  dopey villains nobody would care to see killed. EVERYBODY was on the chopping block. Here’s the rub: the writer was FANTASTIC, and he brought an X-Men-level of characterization to everybody. You CARED about the people who died, and suddenly, it wasn’t as fun to kill characters off anymore.

Here’s the point: Suicide Squad doesn’t fight the same glowy hole-in-the-sky thing that other movie superheroes fight. Instead, its job is to explore the depths of the DC universe. It also does a GREAT job at raising the stakes with death.

It’s kind of hilarious that SUICIDE SQUAD failed in all of those regards. Our version won’t.

2. Who’s on our team?

The movie had…

Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Boomerang, El Diablo, Slipknot, Katana, Rick Flag, Killer Croc,

We’ll have…

Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Boomerang, El Diablo, Slipknot, Katana, Rick Flag, King Shark, and Enchantress

Reasons:

-King Shark is a Hammerhead shark monster. That’s fucking awesome.

-Enchantress is a key member of the comic team and is a mystical version of the Hulk. Seriously, she’s June Moon, a pacifist normally, and a magical live grenade as Enchantress. She deserves better than she got in the movie.

3. But How Is Our Story Better?

We open on the fight between Superman and Doomsday from BATMAN V. SUPERMAN. It’s destructive as fuck, just like you’ve seen, but this time, we see the fight from the perspective of the military, who’s trying to intervene. Found footage style. Helicopters get lanced out of the sky by eye-lasers, others by falling debris, it’s hell.

We pull back to a secret government meeting reviewing the footage. The gist: “Superman died fighting Doomsday. How the hell can we prepare for the next metahuman attack?” In addition to the usual spooks, there’s a new intelligence agency:  ARGUS, a firm designed to monitor metahuman actions. Its head, AMANDA WALLER, pledges to get right on it.

One Month Later

RICK FLAG JR., a soldier with an insecurity complex, leads a strike team -who might as well be his family- to a secret paramilitary lab. There, they’re surprised by overwhelming technological resistance, and Flag loses his whole team, barely escaping with his life. His C.O., Waller, preps a retrieval chopper and sends an order to “assemble Taskforce X.”

Quick cuts of the team being violent:
DEADSHOT shoots people.
KATANA stabs people.
KING SHARK eats people.
HARLEY joyrides with the Joker.
BOOMERANG robs a bank.
His partner, SLIPKNOT, robs the same bank.
EL DIABLO turns himself in.
ENCHANTRESS atomizes exorcists.

Now, all the team is behind bars in Belle Reve prison, which Waller has specially designed to hold them.

Short story, Rick Flag has to lead them and he doesn’t want to. He’s mourning his team, and he doesn’t think criminals have the honor or dedication of marines, and he thinks they’ll go rogue at the first sign of trouble. He’s probably right. Waller twists his insecurity into making him accept the mission.

Anyway, mission is simple: Taskforce X is to investigate this secret lab, Cadmus, and retrieve the package therein. Expect heavy resistance. The team makes light of it, and Waller punishes them to demonstrate that they’re on a collar. They misbehave, they get an electroshock. They go rogue, bombs implanted in their necks detonate.

Meanwhile, Joker’s in Gotham City, torturing and/or murdering people to find out what happened to Harley. She’s his. She has to come back to him.

Taskforce X (eventually to be called “The Suicide Squad”) makes it to the secret lab. Before the action, Boomerang talks his partner, Slipknot, into believing the neck-bombs are bogus. Slipknot tests this and dies.

RIP, Slipknot.

Meanwhile, Joker’s getting closer, discovering that Harley’s been conscripted into Taskforce X. He tortures/kills his way to finding out why. She’s HIS to play with, not anybody else’s.

Taskforce X makes headway into the base, their personalities rubbing each other the wrong way, each getting a shot of demonstrating their personalities. Flag and Deadshot rub each other the wrong way, a thin philosophical difference being all that separates them. Anyway, the team finds the package, a huge metal cylinder that only King Shark can carry.

Meanwhile, Joker makes it to Belle Reve Prison and opens all the cells. With Waller hiding herself in a panic room, Joker discovers a little green trinket of hers…

On the helicopter ride back to Belle Reve, Taskforce X accidentally opens the metal cylinder. What’s inside?

HENRY CAVILL.

That’s right. SUPERMAN.

The crazy bastards at Cadmus cloned Superman from blood lost during the fight with Doomsday. Flag explains that Cadmus figured the best way to contain Superman was to have one of their own, and to use it to hold the world ransom.

“But now it’s yours,” Harley says.

“That’s right,” Flag says. “Now it’s ours.”

Taskforce X returns to Belle Reve and find it’s a madhouse. Metahuman prisoners are rioting, guards are laughing to death on Joker’s Laughing Gas. Waller’s in a panic room, and orders the team to contain the riot and stop the Joker. They try –fighting dudes like Captain Cold, Clayface, and Parasite– but they’re overwhelmed. Flag makes a split decision and activates the Superman Clone, who saves them all, imprisoning most of the supervillains without a casualty (LOL MAN OF STEEL). Y’see, Cadmus programmed the Superman Clone to be a boy scout… but their boy scout.

That’s when the Joker walks in with Harley around his arm. He gives a Jokery speech and mocks the Superman Clone. When the Clone grabs him, Joker sprays him with Laughing Gas.

Damn, does that ever have a bad effect on Superman Clone chemistry.

Joker, wielding Kryptonite from Waller’s office, commands “Jokerized Superman” -who he christens “Bizarro” to start killing. Flag tries to stop him– Bizarro decapitates him in a blink of an eye.

RIP, Rick Flag.

Joker escapes with Harley and Bizarro.

Waller tries to detonate Harley’s neck bomb…

But Joker has Bizarro use his heat breath to deactivate it during the flight.

Taskforce X is done. No fucking way can they handle Superman, let alone a homicidal clone of him. Waller threatens to detonate their bombs, but they don’t care. Better a fast death than whatever the Joker has planned. It’s clear that none of Belle Reve’s other inmates are going to volunteer. Still, seeing tapes of the Superman/Doomsday destruction, Deadshot steps forward. He’s got a little girl that he doesn’t want to see hurt. He’s not the best guy in the world, but he’s got to be the daddy she’d want him to be. But Amanda Waller is personally going to pay for his daughter’s schooling. The other teammates come around, each with their own demands. The straggler, Boomerang, says that the mission is suicide. Deadshot grins. “Then we’re the Suicide Squad.”

Waller flies the team for where the Joker went: Gotham City.

Damn, it’s bad. Gotham’s wrecked to shit, Arkham Asylum is split open, and the crazies are pouring out. Joker laughs his ass off as Batman, hopelessly outmatched, fights Bizarro. The clone’s just letting Batman wail on him with everything he’s got… and he’s not taking a scratch. Bizarro casually backhands Batman, sending him flying into a parked car, breaking several of his ribs and knocking him unconscious.

For a moment, Bizarro’s stares at what he’s done. His eyes change from madness… to shock. Just as he starts to question his actions, Joker gives him another snort of Laughing Gas, reigniting the carnage. Joker laughs over his new kingdom, but when Harley tries to join in, he yells her into place. This is for HIM to enjoy. She’s just lucky to belong to him.

With his telescopic eyepiece, Deadshot sees it all from the helicopter. As the Suicide Squad parachutes in, he calls the shots: Get the Kryptonite from Joker and stop Bizarro, or die trying.

They land in a war zone. They try to ignore screaming people, but El Diablo just can’t do it. He puts out flames by absorbing them, saving people. King Shark saves drowning people, despite them looking tasty. Deadshot & Boomerang save people too. By slaughtering the Arkham inmates chasing them. ::shrugs:: It’s what they do.

Meanwhile, Enchantress takes on Bizarro, her magic the first thing that’s managed to slow him down. He wades through it as she lays on the power. He weakens, falling to his knees. Katana leaps from behind, preparing to decapitate him– his eyes shoot a freeze ray, encasing her in ice in mid-air. She hits the ground, shattering.

RIP, Katana.

Enchantress  is so shocked that she reverts to June Moon, and sobs. Bizarro just laughs and flies away.

The others are fighting through Joker’s booby traps. Boomerang uses a boomerang to snag the Kryptonite from Joker’s hands… but as Boomerang cheers, Bizarro shatters the Kryptonite with a heat breath burst.

Without Kryptonite, the team is well and truly fucked. But Joker does them one better: He’s sitting on a nuclear bomb fitted with Laughing Gas. Gotham will be wiped off the face of the earth and the fallout’s going to give Metropolis a permanent case of the giggles. So, naturally, Joker laughs and orders Bizarro to kill the Suicide Squad.

Enchantress flares back out of June Moon, using her magic to try to contain Bizarro, but it ONLY slows him down. It’s just enough for the team to take turns distracting him.

Harley, meanwhile, is shocked that Joker could blow up Gotham. All her friends are there. Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Scarecrow, their hyena pets (yes, I am indeed stealing this moment from the classic BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES episode “Harlequinade.” That episode RULES SO HARD). Joker slaps her aside, telling her that he never needed any of them or her. She was just there for laughs. Harley, enraged enough to find her self respect, punches him back. Joker grimaces, liking where this is going. He draws a knife.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Suicide Squad is just BARELY keeping out of Bizarro’s grasp. El Diablo distracts him with fire. When he gets to close, Deadshot distracts him with a bullet. When he gets to close, King Shark punches him and runs, etc. It’s a losing war of attrition, and they all know it.

But Bizarro’s laughs seem to be quieting. He’s less manic by the second as the Laughing Gas wears off.

Boomerang, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found. He’s running along the outskirts, collecting fragments of Kryptonite in one hand, clutching a blowtorch in the other. He’s an idiot, but an idiot with a plan.

Harley fights the Joker: her gymnastics vs. his lethal gag gifts. Harley’s barely holding on, and he mocks her spinelessness every step of the way–

Bizarro finally catches King Shark by the throat. None of El Diablo’s flames, Deadshot’s bullets, or Enchantress’ magic can stop what comes next. Bizarro strangles King Shark to death.

RIP King Shark.

It hits the team hard. Sure he was a big shark-man, but he was THEIR big shark-man. And not that bad of a guy, once you got past the cannibalism.

Boomerang, meanwhile, finishes welding a KRYPTONITE BOOMERANG. It all comes down to the character from down under. *Sponsored by Fosters.

Joker’s got the upper hand on Harley, but just as he’s about to kill her, she grabs her mallet and swings it into his gut, knocking him down a hill of rubble and probably breaking a few ribs too. Harley stands tall over him, gripping her hammer. “I’m breaking up with you. Puddin’.” Then it hits her: “OMIGAWD, TH’ BOMB!” She runs off to diffuse it.

Joker just lays there, bleeding. His eyes roll to the side and he spots… an ice cream truck.

Meanwhile, Bizarro’s figuring out that he can ignore people’s attacks. He chuckles, tears streaming from his eyes. The Laughing Gas is wearing off, but it’s still affecting him. He wades through El Diablo’s waning flames.

Harley, meanwhile, struggles to diffuse the nuclear bomb’s countdown, Boomerang yelling unhelpful advice. “I’m a therapist, not a nuclear physicist!” Harley screams.

Just as El Diablo braces for Bizarro to grab him, someone calls out: “Hey, moron!”

Bizarro turns.

It’s Deadshot, standing in front of the people of Gotham, their terrified, bleeding faces covered in dust. Deadshot asks if this is something Superman would let happen. If Superman would ever knowingly let people suffer.

Boomerang’s poised with the Kryptonite boomerang, just in case.

Yeah, Harley adds, standing sincerely. People make mistakes all the time, but it’s how they recover from them that counts.

“THE BOMB, YOU BLOOMIN’ IDIOT!” Boomerang screams at her. “THE BOMB!”

“Oh yeah!” she says, and dives back into the wires, the countdown timer entering the single digits–

Bizarro steps past her, grabbing the bomb. “You know,” he says to them. “You’re not all that bad.”

Deadshot, El Diablo, Enchantress, Boomerang, and Harley exchange glances. They’re all pretty bad. Hell, they look it.

A tear slips from Bizarro’s eye as he hefts the bomb. “Up, up, and away,” he says.

He’s off like a shot. The Suicide Squad watches as he flies into space and explodes.

RIP, Bizarro.

A reverent moment of silence. Boomerang chuckles: “Chump.”

Harley laughs nervously, “So, umm… all’s forgiven right?”

Enchantress reverts to June Moon and punches Harley in the face. “Yep. All’s forgiven.”

Waller tells the group that the mission isn’t over. They still haven’t dealt with the Joker.

Deadshot notices the ice cream truck driving away. He casually aims and shoots at it. After a second, the truck crashes.

Waller tells him that’s not good enough.

El Diablo nods to where Batman had been laid out. Batman’s gone. “Somebody’s already on it.”

On the helicopter flight back, the team muses that now they’ve saved the city, they must get benefits. A parade, women, booze, whatever superheroes get. Waller agrees to make their cells more comfortable. But she does leave a case of beer in the helicopter for them.

“You guys,” Harley laughs. “We took out Superman!” They drink to that.

Meanwhile, Joker, battered and bloody, struggles to get himself out of the overturned ice cream truck. He mutters under his breath, swearing revenge. He’s got another nuke he’s been just itching to use. “Tell me where it is.” Joker looks up. Batman’s standing on top of the truck. He reaches for Joker–

Cut to black.

Mid-credits (fuck it, Marvel doesn’t own fanservice): Waller meets with Bruce Wayne, both threatening each other. Wayne threatens to expose the Suicide Squad -half of Gotham is conspiracy-theorizing anyway. Waller threatens to expose Wayne for being Batman and for setting up his childishly named “Justice League.”

Post-credits: Waller watches a press conference as Lex Luthor is released for prison and announces his bid for the U.S. presidency. Waller. “Looks like the Suicide Squad has a new mission.”

5. Fun, huh?

The idea here is that we make the most of the DC universe, establish lots of villains for future movies, do more with the current DCEU narrative: figuring out what to do in a post-Superman world.

It plays against tropes, the Suicide Squad lives up to its name, it makes better use of the cameos, it’s a little more streamlined, and it hypothetically better earns its emotional beats.

The post-credits also hint that Suicide Squad will be involved in political skullduggery, as they were in the classic comics. Again, this was an anti-Reagan comic, so wouldn’t it make sense for the movie franchise to be anti-Trump?

6. Lasting issues

All that said, there are a few lingering issues:

-Two prison breaks, although they’d have different feels, it may feel slightly repetitive

-ALL of the Nolan Batman movies had prison breaks, as this does.

-some will be bothered by Harley being chained to Joker for the latter half, but that’s kind of character: the abused girlfriend slowly breaking out from the abuser’s shackles.

-Waller’s sidelined at the end, but hey, she could be their eye in the sky or something.

6. David Ayer

David Ayer’s a solid director with an incredibly specific style -a style that might not be suited for broad appeal (RE: Ayer’s sexist and racist undertones). It also didn’t help that he only had 6 weeks to write a script that would be retroactively wedged into the DCEU.

That larger problem, though, is that Ayer is new to mega-budget superhero movies, and he flat didn’t have a language for it. As such, he reverted to trope. He made a movie almost wholly reliant on flashbacks and exposition when its predecessor, BATMAN: ASSAULT ON ARKHAM (a superlative Suicide Squad movie), demonstrated all that was necessary was to demonstrate character through action.

More, because these are supervillains, their adventures would probably be better-tailored to heists, assassinations, and sabotage over generic stop-villainous-plot stories. Their adventures can be small and they can get big, as I demonstrated. This could’ve been the size of a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movie, or even a FAST AND FURIOUS movie.

Despite Ayer being a fan of Suicide Squad comics, it just seems like he didn’t have the correct imagination for the job.

Sure, I may be talking out my ass, as I don’t have 6 weeks, to write a script out of this, but by the same token, had I pitched a script to Warner Bros., I would’ve read the tea leaves for what WB would probably want long term. I would’ve known that creating a “different” comic book movie had to extend beyond visuals. I would’ve known that audiences are clamoring for an honest-to-God great villain. I would’ve pitched this to follow BvS or, failing that, MAN OF STEEL, because audiences are all about continuity these days. I would’ve pitched with a sequel in mind, because studios like relative financial certainty. I would’ve pitched this exact plot, because it’s the best way to utilize the characters on screen and on the page.

But then, I just read a ton of comics and watch a ton of blockbusters.

I’m just talking out my ass.

RIP, Sadcyborg.

DOCTOR STRANGE: NOT QUITE THE MASTER OF THE MYSTIC ARTS

Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme has always been one of my favorite characters, so as you might imagine, I had big expectations for DOCTOR STRANGE (2016). With its mind-bending visuals, decent great comedy, and good performances, it’s by no means a bad movie. After that, its themes, characters, and structures aren’t as well-realized as it thinks. If you have the courage to soldier on, brace yourself for a SPOILER-FILLED discussion.

So what’s holding this movie back?

1. Triumph and Torment

Whenever I watch a movie, I ask myself “Is this succeeding on its own terms?” Thus, what is DOCTOR STRANGE trying to do? Obviously, its storytelling goal was to tell the origin of Doctor Strange as a master of mystic arts by way of a dimension-hopping magic/martial arts movie. A success, in that regard.

Thematically though, it gets muddy. On one hand, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is learning to get over himself. “It isn’t about you,” the movie says, but his final confrontation with Dormammu has less to do with that –though it is physically about self-sacrifice- and more to do with a larger understanding about time, the cycles of life and death, and more. Strange isn’t overcoming himself in this confrontation; he’s displaying his mastery and understanding of time, a fundamental force of nature.

In some key scenes, Strange dallies with time, using the Eye of Agamotto to rot/unrot an apple, to momentarily restore pages to a spellbook, and to reverse the flow of damage to Hong Kong. We’re told, in a handful of scenes, that one doesn’t use magic to disrupt reality, but to preserve it. This is the message of The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), the obsession of Karl Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the duty of Wong (Benedict Wong), and indeed, the mission  of the masters of mystic arts in Kamar-Taj.

EVERYONE talks about how important it is to preserve the natural order, and it’s a big deal when people are found in violation of it.  When Strange bungles time manipulation, Mordo and Wong warn him that there are ALWAYS consequences. But we never see consequences. It’s earth-shaking for Strange and (especially) Mordo to learn that the Ancient One has been defying the natural order, but there are no consequences until the day is saved. Even then, when Strange defies the natural order to reverse time and “resurrect” a ton of people, it’s not clear if Mordo is more reacting to the Ancient One’s affront or Strange’s. Strange’s confrontation with Dormammu revolves around perverting the natural order through use of time.

So why isn’t messing with Time a bigger deal?

As soon as Strange learns that a paraplegic “healed” himself with magic, why wouldn’t that be his continual goal in training? We see Strange act like a bastard early in the movie, but he loses the selfishness pretty quickly as he trains in the mystic arts. He displays altruism and survivalism, but little selfishness. Instead, why wouldn’t all of his training be focused on healing his hands? Channeling every new spell into his hands, continuing his muscle therapy exercises, etc.?  The Ancient One might know that Strange isn’t of pure heart, but she’s got her own agenda, dealing with incursions of a seemingly unstoppable extradimensional evil. Meanwhile, Strange’s fellow student, Mordo, might encourage his studies in time manipulation  to repair his hands, to undo the misfortune that’s come upon the world, etc. Little would Strange know, each time he uses Time magic, the dark entity grows stronger. As a result, Strange would discover that his selfishness has a price and that time isn’t a toy. There would be consequences, ripple effects, that threaten to destroy reality. He would defeat Dormammu, the dark entity, with time manipulation, but would he unlock a greater evil?

Using time as our way of exploring realities, we could see alternate realities where Strange didn’t study martial arts, where he had only empty happiness, where Dormammu wiped out reality, etc. Strange would learn the consequences of messing with time, and the value of the new lease on life he’d gotten.

Sure DOCTOR STRANGE hops around between a few dimensions and plays with fractals a few times, but this is all just window dressing for fight scenes, rather than examining our impact on eternity like in INTERSTELLAR or INCEPTION. DOCTOR STRANGE’s dimension-hopping is beautiful, but felt, at least to me, like video game levels, and somewhat interchangeable. Traveling through alternate realities of his past would make Strange’s journey much more character-focused.

2. MCU Villain-syndrome. Again.

THOR: THE DARK WORLD’S Malekith will always be the worst MCU villain, but Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson) doesn’t have much going on for him. We never see his humanity. We never see what he’s lost to make him so obsessed with stopping death. Rather, Kaecilius marches around, blank-faced, brazenly murdering people. Isn’t that in conflict? The movie opens with him ceremonially decapitating a guy, and I’m not really sure why he needed to do that. If he’d needed the blood/spirit of the dead guy for magic, that’d be something, but it’s really not played upon. It’s almost like he kills the guy JUST so we know he’s a bad guy. We’re later told through exposition that Kaecilius defied the Ancient One’s teachings and did his own thing –like Strange does- but none of this is dramatized. All of this makes him feel blank and underutilized. That’s crazy when stopping death seems like a sympathetic goal.

Kaecilus launches periodic magic attacks around the world, robbing Strange of character-development time with people  like Mordo and Wong, stunting their relationships. For Mordo, this is especially egregious, as his relationship with Strange is central to Strange’s journey and will be central to the sequel. It’d be one thing if Kaecilius was a villain worth having… but he’s got nothing to sell him.

So why not combine Kaecilius and Mordo into a single character?

This way, Mordo and Strange can grow together as students, then friends, then comrades in arms… until it becomes clear that Mordo was manipulating everything, leading to him murdering the Ancient One. Now Strange has to stop his new best friend and the dark entity Dormammu, who’s been summoned to consume the world. This way, Mordo, his relationship to Strange, his agenda, and his betrayal, have all been dramatized. If that happened, I guarantee we’d be raving about Marvel’s best new villain.

3. Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Still-Not-Supreme

In the movie, Doctor Strange arcs from down-on-his-luck-surgeon to very-competent-with-magic-guy, which isn’t bad, but why not go further? We know that the mystics of Kamar-Taj are ranked Student, Master, Sorcerer Supreme, and that apparently a basic competency with magic is all that’s required to become a Master. Strange becomes a Master midway through the movie, just like most of the Ancient One’s acolytes, and from there, his advancement ends. Even though Strange has an unparalleled mastery of magic, even though the Ancient One, the Sorcerer Supreme, dies, nobody appoints Strange to her place. Why leave Strange only as special as his cohorts? Why doesn’t his arc end with him accepting the title of Sorcerer Supreme, defender of reality? The movie doesn’t have a good reason not to end this way, and a post-credits scene acts as though he IS Sorcerer Supreme. So what’s up there?

I’m also mixed on the teleportation-creating Sling Rings. I get why they’re there –focusing powers through artifacts creates rules so you can’t make shit up. That’s screenwriting 101. But why isn’t this subverted? Why doesn’t Doctor Strange find the power within himself to create portals WITHOUT Sling Rings during a critical moment? That too would’ve been screenwriting 101. There’s license to do this, considering Strange’s exponential advancement as a sorcerer.

4. Why bother with Dormammu?

This seems a silly question, as building up the unstoppable entity is the whole thrust of the movie, but Strange’s confrontation with him isn’t special. It’s not two rivals squaring off, but a first-time meeting that, bereft of special effects, would have little gravitas. What follows is a test of wills and magic loop-holing. While that’s a classic, appropriate Strange tactic, it doesn’t NEED to be against Dormammu. Why not employ this same magical trickery against Kaecilius? Spread out the reverse-time fight scene to build to this climactic showdown of wits? Then, the threat of Dormammu can hang over the credits, only to pan out in the sequel. Using him now as a one-off makes about as much sense as making Galactus a space cloud in FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER.

5. The race thing.

Doctor Strange must’ve been a difficult adaptation, given its origins in 60s-era Orientalism. By all accounts, director Scott Derrickson struggled to make the races and genders less offensive, but sort of missed the mark. Tilda Swinton IS good as the Ancient One, but that role absolutely belongs to an Asian woman. While I respect Derrickson’s argument that it would’ve been hard not to make an Asian-woman-as-Ancient-One a “Dragon Lady,” I’d argue that James Gunn’s GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY bear little resemblance to the original characters, or even the 2008 versions written by Dan Abnett. There was plenty of license to reimagine and update Doctor Strange’s mythology, especially when urban fantasy novels provides plenty of direction. Hell, Baron Mordo essentially got a whole new personality and philosophy here.

Now that we’ve wrapped up ACTUAL issues affecting the screenplay, let’s talk about nerd stuff. These things don’t make-or-break the movie, but they’re annoying little personal preferences from a guy who’s read a few comics.

Nerd Complaints:

1. The Eye of Agamotto SHOULD NOT BE an Infinity Stone.

Man, do I ever loathe this idea. See, I’m not a fan of the Marvel universe as a whole. I love Spider-Man, the X-Men, and Marvel Magic/Horror. And I love that Marvel Horror tends to keep the rest of the Marvel Universe at arm’s reach. Making the Eye of Agamotto an Infinity Stone (the Time Gem) makes Doctor Strange a cosmic character, shrinks his universe, and limits the range of worldbuilding possibilities. After all, the Eye of Agamotto, in the comics, is an amulet literally housing the eye of Agamotto, an extra-dimensional caterpillar trickster god. I know that’s bonkers, but it’s Doctor Strange. Doctor STRANGE.

I am NEVER doing shrooms again…

2. I hate that Dormammu was a big head in the sky.

DOCTOR STRANGE went above and beyond in depicting the Dark Dimension from the comics, a place where space, time, and gravity don’t exactly apply. Given that its lord and master, Dormammu, is an all-powerful being bent on ruling EVERY dimension, I understand why he might be adapted as “mystical Galactus” (he’s out to consume every dimension instead of every planet), but doing so undercuts the breadth of lore surrounding him: Dormammu’s kingdom is literal; he’s got an evil sister who’s mystical-Lady MacBeth; his niece is the lover and student of Doctor Strange; and he commands an army of laser-shooting rock people.

Seriously.

Although Strange HAS confronted loads of giant space heads, they tended to be minor deities, never to be encountered again. Dormammu is one of -if not THE- principle Strange enemy, and he’s party to most of Strange’s personal dramas. Undercutting and underutilizing him closes the door on tons of narrative potential.

3. Why does Mordo have the wrong motivation?

I see what DOCTOR STRANGE is going for with Mordo: a radical follower with an inflexible morality, who will go off the deep end in DOCTOR STRANGE 2. His stated goal, going forward, is that there should be “no sorcerers.” Fine, but that’s the motivation of an entirely different character: Silver Dagger.

This guy has ALL the crazy.

Silver Dagger is a crazed exorcist out to slay all things supernatural. He’s a stand-in for the religious far right, the stories about him debating belief vs. morality. His backstory naturally supports that.

Mordo is, as Derrickson put it, “very arch” –as in arch-enemy. In the comics, he’s a mustache-twirler, driven only by megalomania. There are plenty of ways to reimagine the character from being a disenfranchised student of the Ancient One. The easiest example is Anakin Skywalker approach. Make Mordo a tormented guy who’s honestly trying save the world and (as his full name is Baron Karl Mordo), he’s trying to save the people of his homeland from… something. He thinks magic is the answer. However, the Ancient One doesn’t trust him. Desperate, Mordo goes rogue, bungles his attempts to save his people, and needs to be taken down. There IS a way to make him a deep character that’s in-keeping with his comic origins, but the movie weirdly wasn’t interested in that.

But as I’ve said, these last three points are just comparing and contrasting to the source material. They have no bearing on if the movie worked or not. Infinity Stones are going crammed in there whether it’s appropriate or not. Dormammu’s lore can be replaced with another extradimensional demigod like Nightmare or Shuma-Gorath. I’m sure DOCTOR STRANGE 2 will make good use of philosophical-conundrum-Mordo. Just because something’s inaccurate, doesn’t mean it’s wrong for the material.

The Doctor Is Out

Don’t get me wrong, DOCTOR STRANGE is still a fine MCU movie. I’m sure its visuals, rhythm, and climax will give the MCU a second wind. It IS entertaining… but I don’t think that it’s as successful on its own terms as it thinks it is. All that said, I hope the movie does well. Director Scott Derrickson has teased that his sequel would THE DARK KNIGHT by way of Doctor Strange, and that sounds hella interesting. My only hope would be that the creative team look hard at the common criticisms surrounding this (very polished) movie, and improve accordingly.

Until then, make mine Marvel (Studios).

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Sucks

I’m not prone to sweeping statements like this, but I’ll argue that Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the most overrated game of the previous console generation.

I realize that’s a hell of a thing to say in a console generation that also had Metroid: The Other M. But while The Other M disrespected Samus Aran and featured some of the worst writing on the planet, it was at least (mostly) fun to play. So why pick on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a revered game in a revered franchise? A game that is, on its surface, about so many big ideas like social prognostication and human singularity. After all, barring the game’s infamously outsourced boss fights, it reviewed as highly as it was anticipated, and sold well.

Then it was quickly forgotten.

I realize, too, that’s not saying much. Its sequel, Mankind Divided, enjoyed a similar flash in the pan moment before being abandoned for the next big game -as are most games- but why doesn’t it, a game with the ideas of Bioshock and the presentation of Metal Gear Solid, resonate the way those games do?

Because it’s shit.

No, it’s not without merit: the “conversation” boss fights are excellent and *should’ve* set the standard for such things, even in Bioware & Bethesda games. Its world feels lived in and complete, successfully transporting the player to a Neuromancer/Blade Runner-style cyberpunk world…

But that’s about where my compliments end.

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt a game where I’ve constantly felt the need to give writing notes. Literally everything about the game is hamfisted, inelegant, antiquated, irritating, or just straight up wrong. Some of these things can be explained by discussing how writing works and operates. Some of the issues are in terms of game mechanics.

Static Presentation

Right from the get go, I knew something was up. We walk as the protagonist, Adam Jensen, ex-cop and chief of security in a major augmentation tech firm, in a well-trod world, not unlike the opening of Half-Life 2… except that in Half-Life 2, you’re constantly immersed in action. You’re harassed by guards, you’re attacked, you have to make a daring escape… in Human Revolution (DE:HR), you’re alerted to a terrorist attack several floors below, and you’re requested to take care of it. There’s no dynamism, not really a setpiece… just a perfunctory, static feeling to it all. In this tutorial sequence, Jensen can be shot to ribbons by anyone, prompting several game overs (and Christ, get ready to memorize those loading screens). That is to say, it’s not a gentle lead-in, and doesn’t excite so much as confuse. At the tutorial’s climax, Jensen and his girlfriend are apparently murdered by badass cyborg bad guys.

It’s vital to mention here just how bad the writing and voice acting is. Jensen’s voiced by a man who ONLY speaks in menacing whispers, even prior to his tragic origin story. Most of the dialogue is clunky, purple, and inefficient. It doesn’t SOUND clean, and it doesn’t hint character or tell stories the way Bioware dialogue does, for example. Maybe it’s not fair comparing anything to Bioware, but if you’re trying to tell a prestige sci-fi story with gigantic thematic & emotional resonance, you’re standing in their shadow. Big time.

The rest of the game follows like this: endless exposition, a barrage of fetch quests, and fairly static actions within locations. Pick your favorite stealth game, Metal Gear Solid, Batman Arkham Asylum, Assassin’s Creed, Thief, whatever– they all understood if they leaned cinematic or not, and they played into it. DE:HR is attempting to feel cinematic, but is executed the video game equivalent of made for TV. Everything just feels by the numbers.

Adam Jensen: Badass Cyborg?

Jensen awakes a few months later as a cyborg, and this is where the game fell on its face again. Prior to this, Jensen had been a major tech corporation’s head of security, and apparently a badass. He returns to being head of security and apparently a badass black ops solo-mission kind of guy… except he’s completely ineffectual. Jensen’s upgrades have zero purpose and give him no new skills whatsoever. He can still be easily killed by a random minor enemy, he has trouble hacking into things, he’s not terribly strong, and for some reason, it wastes battery power for him to physically fight people.

Now I realize, part of the appeal of Deus Ex is that the player upgrades Jensen as they go, taking him from glass slingshot to wooden cannon, if you’ll follow the metaphor -but he never feels like a badass, despite his mannerisms. Enemies upgrade at the same rate he does, effectively keeping him ineffectual throughout. Issues in the game mechanics (more on that later) mean that Jensen will never be the paragon of human and machine he apparently is, creating a constant sense of dissonance.

So why are we Jensen, former cop, head of security, posturing cyborg, and all-around Mary Sue? Why are we not Adam Jensen, singularly unlucky janitor, who happened to catch a look at the cyborg terrorists, was horrifically maimed by them, and given cyborg implants by his boss to track them down? Then we’d have a reason to start out ineffectual. We’d have a reason to posture as a badass only for that to be deflated. Hell, we’d have a reason for janitor-cyborg to become badass-cyborg. We’d have a character arc. Imagine that.

It’s not like we’re losing anything, as Jensen is a blank slate. Backstory is eluded: a cracked mirror in his apartment signifying his disgust with his cyborg features. We’re told in an exposition dump that Jensen may be a test tube baby. There’s pathos in ideas like this. So why don’t we see these scenes play out? Why don’t we see scenes of Jensen trying to figure out what it means to be Jensen if that’s so important to him? Why isn’t Jensen’s physical journey married to a personal one? And I mean beyond his cliche dead girlfriend motivation. Instead, Jensen just learns that his boss is kind of a bastard -something that was obvious from the start.

Nearly every character sucks.

It’s hard to get invested in a game when nearly every character is painfully unlikable. With the lone exception of Faridah Malik, Jensen’s plucky pilot and only interesting female character, everyone is skeezy, standoffish, and without redeeming qualities. Pritchard, your hacking eye-in-the-eye exists purely to insult you, lay on the sarcasm, and presumably sniff toilet seats. Sarif, your boss, is MADE of condescension and arrogance and is very, Very, VERY clearly the bad guy. Both of these assholes are voiced by preening yuppies, who only make them less likeable.

The villains are baffling. Two of the Illuminati’s best wear ridiculous ruff collars, and as they’re women, they can’t interact with Jensen without coming onto him. The villainous badass cyborgs? What passes for their characterization is 1. A buff man with a Texan accent. 2. A slim, buff man with an Eastern European accent. And 3. A buff woman who doesn’t speak. How am I supposed to care about the villains if they’ve literally no point?

If Jensen’s mission is a Heart of Darkness-like voyage into the moral complexity of cybernetic augmentations, shouldn’t the characters reflect those moral complexities? Say what you will for Metal Gear Solid’s brand of impenetrable exposition, but characters like Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf, and The Boss/Joy resonate for being deep, complex characters who serve as facets of an antiwar thesis. You don’t forget them. Meanwhile, Jensen just has a shitty boss. ::yawn:: …But that’s still better than you can say about the minor inhabitants of Jensen’s world.

A Brave New World… of Bigotry

I’m just going to come out and say it: Deus Ex: Human Revolution is racist and sexist. On the surface, it might not seem that way, after all, the cast is a fairly even mix of races and sexes. That’s good diversity. However, after the tutorial mission, we’re taken to the slums of Detroit where Jensen fights through legions of black and Hispanic gangbangers. Then it’s off to the slums of China to indulge in some Yellow Peril. Throughout this, Jensen is constantly able to talk up and help prostitutes, or a police officer who’s going undercover as one. This isn’t third wave; it’s sexual exploitation.

Yes, cyberpunk operates on the ubiquity and criminal abuse of technology, generally in a noir setting, but it generally show’s a diffusion of races, almost to the point where ethnicity doesn’t matter. It doesn’t generally go out of its way to create horrible racial stereotypes as DE:HR does. What’s the point of this? To convey danger though xenophobia? To show that technology hasn’t bridged social bonds or wealth disparity? If the latter, the script and presentation’s doing a piss-poor job. There IS wealth disparity in DE:HR, and hints of gender inequality, but none of it is explored; it’s only there for titillation.

The same goes for its sexual exploitation. Your detective adventure doesn’t NEED to go through a brothel, concern back-alley prostitutes, or even go through a strip club. Sure, you can have sensual elements in your story, but it has to be an integral part of your story instead of just an excuse for sexual objectification. Third wave feminism in media is awesome, so long as agency, context, and representation are carefully considered.

The World Is Bugged

 

So what IS the message of DE:HR? It attempts to explore the ethical complexities of augmentations in a transglobal society, but even the minor points of this, such as transhumanism are only paid lip service through background news feeds. Effectively, the game has more to do with xenophobia, fear of the lower classes, conspiracy theories about corporations, technophobia, and masculine power fantasies. This is not the genre-defying enlightenment of Bioshock, but pure pulp, with little of value to say.

This will seem like a minor point, but it blows my mind that there are newspapers and radios in this world. Bear in mind, this is a world with tablets, smartphones, technological implants, holograms, and more. Why would there be radios? Why would there be newspapers? Why would there be any kind of differentiation between “Ebooks,” “Pocket Secretaries,” and “Electronic Newspapers?” Why wouldn’t all of these things just be on various devices? The game design answer is “so you know what to expect from objects,” but why should that detract from world logic? Why not have Jensen just scan/hack personal devices and get what he needs/wants from them? I’m not saying that EVERY cyberpunk story needs to display technological and social foresight, but bear in mind, the people designing this game are in the tech sector writing a game ostensibly ABOUT the tech sector. Shouldn’t they have ANY insight or predictions on what’s to come beyond the technophobic “augs are bad… Maybe?” Yes. Yes they should.

But is it fun, bro?

My gameplay experience.

While the above problems would damn most screenplays, the X-factor for video games is whether or not the game’s fun to play. So IS it fun? Is its stealth intuitive? Does it give you effective options for stealth and instead of stealth? Is it easy to navigate the world and select your own path? Do you feel like the badass cyborg saboteur you’re meant to be?

No.

No, I’d say not. Now I’m not invalidating those who’ve beaten the game with a flawless stealth record, nor am I invalidating those who had a good time with the game, but the game is, plainly, unintuitive.

Maybe it’s better on the PC, where you can reassign all the buttons, but why in love of God, is X your confirmation button on the Xbox 360? Why is R3 your sniper scope? Why is L1 your chest-High-wall-connection button? These are unorthodox placements and the source of great confusion.

On top of that, the controls are stiff, making Jensen feel to lurch about. There’s no oomf to the shooting controls, or to the weapons themselves, from a combination of poor sound effects, poor weapon animation, and from the fact that every enemy is a bullet sponge. Jensen never stops feeling clumsy and jerky, compared to Dishonored’s Corvo feeling spritely and elegant, or smooth and calculating the way Batman feels in Arkham Asylum.

It doesn’t help that, as eluded earlier, Jensen’s got a penchant for getting the hell shot out of him. Most regular enemies and kill him with small arms fire. Upgrading his armor barely helps. On top of that, Jensen can’t fall more than five feet without dying instantly, all of which contributing to this sense of klutzy ineptitude.

When you finally invest in aug upgrades so you can fall 5.001 feet without dying, you get a stupid canned animation of Jensen in an energy bubble, radiating electricity, arms spread out like Christ’s second coming. Why? Can’t he just tighten his leg augs or something? Everything’s got a canned animation, like the Typhoon grenade system -which just fires a ring of grenades around you. Jensen has to make a super suave pose, do a little twirl, crouch down, and THEN fire the grenades -all while the enemies are haplessly firing at you. Who was supposed to tell them that you’re in a cutscene and they’re not? All of Jensen’s melee attacks ALSO trigger a cutscene, instead of just, Y’know, playing out. Thanks, game. I WAS an ineffective robot man. Now I’m a pretentious one too. Just what I always wanted.

So what does this combined clunkiness look like in action? You’re a pretentious robot man, sneaking around an identical black-and-piss-yellow enemy base (a pallet shared by the entire game), and because you can combat roll in front of cameras without being seen, but not lasers, for no discernible reason, you get caught. Oh, shit! Time to shoot your way– oh, your bullets are ineffective and they killed you already. “Reload the last save?” The game offers, having you wait through a full minute of loading screens for the umpteeth time. What’s the point of having a ton of sci-fi weapons if they don’t allow you to consistently get out of harm’s way? I was attacked by several bodyguards in tuxedos, and somehow my minigun didn’t drop them before they killed me. Another time, I was trying to snipe my way through a difficult room, but when I Headshot a guard, his helmet absorbed the shot and he alerted everybody else. Three reloads later, I snuck up on this guy and punched him -in the helmet- rendering him unconscious. Guess his helmet was bulletproof, not fistproof.

All of this points to an illusion of choice. Sure, you can build Jensen to be a combat champ all you want, but you’re in a stealth game, and no matter how tough you make Jensen, no matter what weapons you have, you’ll always be outgunned. And despite the fact that there are multiple routes to your objectives, there are often clearly wrong routes -those with patrolling enemies- and clearly correct routes -ventilation shafts. Which are invariably hidden by a couple of the countless random boxes and crates strewn about the world. Oh, you didn’t see the vent because you didn’t think to turn over a nondescript box far off the beaten path? Hope you enjoy being Swiss cheese. Seriously, because these routes are so unintuitively placed, I tended to find them only after I’d done things the hard way.

And don’t get me started on hacking.

The definition of insanity is doing the same action and expecting different results. That is hacking in DE:HR. In this incessantly-occurring mini game, one has to take over data points, working one’s way to a target point. The problem is, every time you take over a data point, you have a predetermined chance of getting caught and failing. That is, this is a percentile, so at any single hacking point, you might breeze through with no problem, or, more likely, you’ll fail, alerting every guard to your presence. And you’ll die. This means reloading your save. Again. And looking at that damn loading screen. AGAIN. There’s no skill involved, no merit of the player, just “did you upgrade your hacking percentile to a slightly more advantageous number?” As hacking is the single most common thing you’ll do in DE:HR, this turns the game into a protracted session of save-reloading and frustration. This is without mentioning how precise the controls and feedback are in-hacking, leading you to think you’ve activated a data point when you’ve only just moved out of it. Is it worth it? When you open up doors, safes, and security systems, sure, it can be. When you open up personal computers, though…

Resident Evil popularized diary entries in games to help flesh out the narrative experience, and since then, audio logs have become staples of video game storytelling, bringing in whole new casts of characters, exploring existing themes, and creating emergent side stories which can enrich the player’s experience and understanding of the game. DE:HR has few to no audio logs but a STAGGERINGLY high amount of email chains to read. Yeah, if I’m a modern-day hacker, I might sift through thousands of corporate emails to find incriminating exchanges, but if I’m a badass cyborg in the middle of a hot zone, why is that my only option? There’s no brevity of cast here, just a barrage of samey emails saying, “Hey, I switched the password to this. Remember it, even if some cyborg guy is going to hack around it because using passwords give no experience points.” While games like Bioshock and Dishonored use audio logs and journal entries to enrich the world, Deus Ex uses email chains as one of its primary means of storytelling, and put simply: Who cares? When every Pocket Secretary just gives you unlocking information, when Ebooks just offer tepid philosophy about augmentations, who cares if a random email has anything to say? I’m sure they could enrich my experience, but I’ve only got so much time in the day.

Old Man Yells at iCloud

 

So why am I crucifying a game from 2011 when there are so many other games out there? Especially when there’s a new Deus Ex happily flouncing its truncated self across consoles now? Honestly, it seems like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is suffering from the same storytelling flaws and thematic conflations that are held back DE:HR. Acceptable gameplay in a market starved for it, but confusing social statements, poor characterization, an inappropriate RPG system… the works.

Is it a case of the games Industry learning little since the last installment? If anything, the developers learned that Dishonored ruled, so they stole a few moves from that. Is it a case of poor feedback? At the time, most of the rave reviews game from longtime fans of the series, or at least its first installment. Fangasms aren’t conducive to fixing flaws. Or am I just being overly critical? Surely someone will tell me “it’s just a game” or that they “got what they wanted out of it.” As I said before, those are valid enough casual opinions, I guess.

But do sentiments like that advance the medium? Do they help games to become more entertaining and more impactful works of art? Of course not. Criticism, especially harsh criticism, is born from love and investment and a deep desire to see things improve. I love Cyberpunk’s gritty take on the future its big ideas on who we are and where we’re going, even if it’s just as ugly as where we are now. I love how stealth games give you the satisfaction of a perfectly timed takedown, or a pulse-pounding fight out of harm’s way against superior foes. Deus Ex: Human Revolution had the potential to explore cyberpunk’s big questions in a way that was polished, intuitive, and exciting. Instead, it half-assed it, delivering a racist, sexist world of unlikable characters, a baffling conspiracy theory plot, and stilted gameplay. It has nothing to offer.

And that’s the real shame.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: HOW TO FIX IT

Even if you loved BATMAN V SUPERMAN (BvS), it’s hard to deny how divisive it was. Projected to close WAY under its projected 1.5 billion dollars, director Zack Snyder’s second shot at the DC universe failed to find an audience. But why? Some moronically claim that the movie’s philosophy and themes were “too smart for Marvel fans;” others blame the movie’s dour tone; and still others point to the movie’s atrocious script.

As per usual, I’m in the third camp. BvS wears its philosophies on its sleeve, but it doesn’t execute them in a way that’s clear or entertaining. So how could it have improved?

With damn near a page-one rewrite.

HERE ARE OUR RULES:

1. Good script notes understand a story’s goal and try to make the script the best possible version of itself. Batman v Superman wants to be a grim philosophy-fest culminating in dueling superheroes AND set up the Justice League? Sure. We can do that.

2. BvS is a follow up to the just-as-polarizing MAN OF STEEL (MoS). It too had a slew of script troubles, but everyone honed in on the ludicrous amounts of violence, property damage, and implied civilian casualties. BvS was meant to address those issues and course-correct the franchise. Our script has to do that.

3. Batman & Superman have an established comic book mythology with a worldwide following. While this doesn’t necessitate a slavish recreation (even the Marvel movies take liberties), it DOES indicate that, to one extent or another, these characters “work” and are cherished. If you’re using the characters, even in a deconstructionist sense, you NEED to be true to the spirit of their characters. Who are they at their core and why is that interesting?

STEP ONE: WHAT CAN BE CUT?

“GRRRR! I’M A BAD GUY!”

It’s no secret that the first hour-hour and half of BvS is borderline incoherent from too many plot-threads, interchangeable themes, bad internal logic, and terrible pacing. This leads to a climax that doesn’t feel like the big payoff it should and that doesn’t adequately establish why its shared continuity is exciting.

By removing segments that are confusing, contradictory, irrelevant, overcomplicated, or inappropriate for the material, we can VASTLY improve the material.

So, what’s on the chopping block?

1. The death of Bruce Wayne’s parents & the discovery of the Bat-Cave.
-Everyone knows Batman’s origin. Nobody needs this rehashed.
-It’s only there to establish that “Martha” is Bruce’s mother, which will be used as an on-its-face-stupid plot device later to connect Batman & Superman
-This is revealed to be a dream sequence, which is a piss-poor way of opening a movie. Opening with a dream sequence destroys the trust between audience & storyteller (unless the story is literally about dreams and questionable reality). This script isn’t about dreams.

2. Everything that happens in Africa and as a result of Africa. We get a stunning 9/11 re-enactment of Bruce Wayne watching the destruction of Metropolis in the wake of Superman & Zod’s fight. THAT is your Inciting Incident –the first implication of the central conflict. BvS ignores this, instead focusing on Superman being framed for murdering dudes in Africa after he saved Lois from a warlord.
-Superman has never used a gun in the series and he’s demonstrably more powerful than bullets. Why would he use them?
-The focus on Africa ignores Metropolis as an Inciting Incident, which is a sloppy choice.
-Neither Superman or Lois mourn the human loss in Africa, especially to their friend, Jimmy Olsen, who is gunned down right in front of Lois. Instead, they have sex in a bathtub.
-The African massacre is clearly there to echo the War on Terror, which Metropolis’ destruction already covers.
-That makes the African massacre confusing as to its motivation and effect on the plot.

3. The Superman Statue in Metropolis.
Half of Metropolis was leveled, and countless people lost their lives in the devastation. Superman would be an extremely polarizing figure. There’s no chance they’d build a memorial statue for him. In all rationality, they’d first try him for reckless endangerment, as the trailers seemed to suggest.

4. Every Dream Sequence.
-As established, Batman’s origin is a wasted sequence
-The “Knightmare” sequence in the post-apocalypse where Batman shoots & kills people and Superman laser-visions people to death. Countless people have been put off by the violence in the sequence, it’s not pertinent to the immediate story, and it’s baffling to non-fans.
-Flash’s cameo. Flash shows up in a dream/time-wormhole/who knows to Batman after the “Knightmare,” to warn Batman about Superman. Again, baffling to non-fans, Flash’s armor confused many existing fans, and it’s not motivated by anything in a script sense. If this paid off later (if we saw Batman send Flash back in time to warn him IN THIS FILM) it might make more sense. As it is, it’s a weird dream-within-a dream. This is not INCEPTION, people.
-Pa Kent’s “dead horse” monologue. Pa Kent shows up on top of a mountain to tell Superman that heroism will always cost lives. Beyond the fact that it’s demonstrably untrue in real life, every other living character has spouted off about the cost of heroism. It’s unnecessary. Being a dream, it further complicates the movie’s already troubled grasp on reality.
-Martha Wayne, the Demon Bat. Bruce Wayne has a nightmare that his mother’s grave is bleeding. When he touches the blood, a Demon Bat bursts out and attacks him. Is this supposed to speak to the darkness within Bruce? To his fears of fighting Superman? To his survivor’s guilt over his parents? What? It’s not a clear line to anything. It’s only there to look kewl.

5. Batman Violence.
Yes, this is supposedly the “best” Batman (I’ll always say BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, or if pressed, BATMAN BEGINS, because those have the fighting skills, detective skills, compassion, and respect for human life going for them), but he’s got a serious problem with violence. Remember, the movie says he’s opposed to Superman’s violence in Metropolis’ destruction. He has to be consistent and offer a rational alternative. We’ll remove…
-The Bat-Brand. He uses this to mark “the worst” criminals so prison inmates know to kill them. That’s not any Batman I recognize, and if fundamentally misunderstands who Batman is. He stops crime; he doesn’t perpetuate it, even indirectly. More, what criminal would go along with what Batman says? That makes zero sense.
-Removing the “Knightmare” sequence takes care of Batman murdering people. Mostly.
-Tone down the Batmobile. Yes, the Batmobile is awesome, no Batman shouldn’t be shooting people or literally monster-trucking them to death.
-Physical violence. Even outside of “Knightmare,” this Batman MAIMS people. Most of the people he fights in the warehouse won’t be walking again. Or breathing without medical assistance. He also directly killed the guy with the flamethrower. If Batman is this violent, SUICIDE SQUAD couldn’t exist in this universe; they’d all be in traction. The Joker –WHO KILLED JASON TODD prior to the movie- would be six feet under.

6. Doomsday.
Lex Luthor is one of the greatest  villains in comic books. A master genius, strategist, manipulator, he hides his villainy behind a spotless reputation as a businessman and philanthropist. Bearing in mind that in the comics he made his own anti-Superman Iron Man armor, you have more than enough to make him a physical threat too. So why bother with Doomsday?
-Doomsday is literally only there to kill Superman. His appearance alone telegraphs this, making it unsurprising to fans and baffling to general audiences. The death of Superman, cinematically, occurs too early in the franchise for this to have any emotional resonance. It isn’t earned.
-Doomsday doesn’t have any bearing on the plot prior to his appearance.
-The devastation of Gotham in the fight with him renders Batman’s anti-civilian casualties point moot. Seriously, it’s like an atom bomb hit Gotham. One-line explain-aways like “everyone in that district went home for the night” can’t cover shitty logic.
-Although Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman fight together, they absolutely do not communicate. Nothing in the fight advances any of their characters, save for Wonder Woman, who receives the bulk of her (slim) characterization here. This makes their team up against a generic villain blank and kind of boring.
-The whole point of Doomsday is the slow, growing certainty of failure and death. In the DEATH OF SUPERMAN comic, Superman makes peace with Lois and himself before knowingly giving his life to stop Doomsday. Using Doomsday as random a boss fight fundamentally misunderstands the psychology of the source material.
-That cave troll is not Doomsday.

7. “Martha”
Batman and Superman’s fight comes to a screeching halt when they realize that their mom has the same first name. This is cataclysmically stupid and has nothing to do with the multitude of previously established themes. It’s trite, easy, overly convenient, and, honestly, not very satisfying. It doesn’t even begin to address their philosophical differences, which, I remind you, are driving this story.

8. Bruce Wayne’s Training
Seriously, we’ve seen Batman kick 9 kinds of ass already in this movie. We know that he’s in peak physical condition. We don’t need to see him lift tires to understand that. More, we know that no human being is remotely a challenge for Superman. It’s wasted screen time.

9. Talking heads
Batman v Superman pays homage to THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS comic by all buy copy-pasting the talk shows that discuss the pros and cons of Superman. There are a few problems with this montage.
-This sequence was used in the comic to be political and philosophical babble. Satire meant to mock the hyper politicization of the 80s-onward and to show how far society has fallen. IT IS NOT serious political and philosophical discourse. Portraying it in this way misses the point.
-The talking heads are over a montage where Superman repeatedly saves people. This does not advance the plot in any meaningful way beyond “giving Superman something to do.”
-These people are stating multiple conflicting themes in a movie that already states multiple conflicting themes. Just because you state those themes doesn’t mean you execute those themes. Just because something’s on the screen DOES NOT make it intelligible.

10. Chasing experimental bullets
We already cut Africa, but so this is clear, Lois is kept “active” in the story because she’s chasing down experimental bullets that Lex’s mercenaries in Africa used. These bullets are meant to create a conspiracy that leads to Lex Luthor. Here are the problems:
-Experimental bullets that lead to Lex? How cartoonish and obvious can you get?
-Why the hell wouldn’t mercenaries just use normal bullets?
-Again, if this is meant to incriminate Superman, it’s far beyond his modus operandi

11. Kidnapping Martha Kent
Lex Luthor forces Superman to fight Batman by threatening to kill his mother if he doesn’t.
-Superman has demonstrated super-hearing in this script. No doubt he could find her in a matter of moments if he tried. Coupled with Superman’s x-ray vision, wtf is Lex thinking?
-All Superman has to do to prevent the fight is to tell Batman that Lex Luthor has kidnapped his mother. Instead, Superman decides to fight Batman out of chest-beating masculinity.
-Kidnapping? Really? That’s the best criminal mastermind and tech CEO Lex Luthor has to offer? C’mon…

12. The Destroyed World Engine
Early in the movie, children find a giant hunk of Kryptonite, Superman’s weakness, in the remains of one of the giant terraforming devices from Man of Steel. Why is its twisted wreckage just sitting there? Wouldn’t Superman have thrown it into space or the military have seized it? It’s bad world-building.

13. The Death of Superman
We’re not killing Superman. We’ve established that killing him in this way has no resonance and would mean nothing this early in the series. Let’s hold off until it CAN mean something after Justice League 3 or something.

14. Wonder Woman
Of all the pledged cuts, this is the only one I feel bad about, as Wonder Woman was one of the few things that audiences across the board seemed to like. She was cool, she liked to fight, she had killer theme music, and that WWI picture of her was fantastic. The problem is that she’s largely inactive when she’s undercover, having go-nowhere scenes with Bruce Wayne, and when she suddenly shows up to fight Doomsday, it feels like deus ex machina –like an easy out- for the main characters.
Yes, Wonder Woman is a major part of “The Trinity;” yes, she’s a major Justice League character; yes, we need more female superheroes; yes, Gal Gadot looked awesome… No, it wasn’t the best way to use her. No, it wasn’t her story. No, she didn’t add interesting themes to a movie that was, principally, theme-driven.
Because she was so loved by the fanbase and by general audiences, I’m willing to concede on this by saying that she can stay in the movie IF she can be given a more integral role so her appearance at the end doesn’t come out of nowhere.

15. The White Portuguese
Are you trying to tell me that Batman, the World’s Greatest Detective, the guy with a giant-ass crime-computer, couldn’t figure out the name of a boat?
Horseshit.

By removing all these things, we already have a slicker, more understandable movie that’s prepared to tell the story it’s advertising: Batman v Superman. It also has more time to investigate the heavy themes that are so important to it. While this makes the movie more approachable, it doesn’t solve some other key issues.

STEP TWO: WHAT SHOULD BE REARRANGED?

 

Next, we’ll talk about what elements could be rearranged to make the story more entertaining. As it stands, DEAR GOD, BvS is poorly paced. If it’s not taking an excruciatingly long time to reach major plot points, it’s padding itself with sequel-baiting. Some of these issues can be fixed simply by placing them somewhere else.

1. The title fight
Why is the main fight between Batman & Superman saved for the end of the movie? Up until that point, they barely interact, save for glaring and Superman trashing the Batmobile. They disagree on… something. Collateral damage? Threat to society? That philosophical difference is all the movie cares about, not the actual fight. As a result, 2/3rds of movie feels like empty build-up.
So move the fight to the first act turning point, or roughly 25 minutes in. Doing this allows you to get to the crux of the confrontation faster; highlights that Batman doesn’t have a chance; more clearly motivates him to find kryptonite; gives Lex more reason to scheme and maneuver; and gives Superman more cause to question himself and his role in the world. Doing this also allows you to have them fight more than once. The first time, Batman gets his ass kicked. The second time, with Kryptonite, it’s more evenly matched. After that, well… you get to the rest of the story.

2. “Freaks dressed as clowns.”
Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent attend a party held by Lex Luthor, where they trade barbs about each other’s secret identity, leading to Bruce making the above remark. It’s a great scene, and –cut like it was in the second trailer- it’s genuinely the best written scene in the movie. Here’s the problem: their dialogue hints that they both know the other’s secret identity, which at this point in the movie is impossible.
Move it to after the first fight. Maybe Batman gets unmasked by Superman, or Superman discovers his identity with X-Ray vision. Maybe Batman plants a tracking beacon on Superman or deduces it with keen detective skills. Hell, maybe the glasses just don’t fool Batman. The point is, this scene plays better if the dialogue is a verbal representation of their physical battle. It plays better if they know each other’s secret identity.

3. Move the Justice League cameos to the end.
Just as Batman and Superman are about to fight Doomsday, Wonder Woman watches some youtube videos of forthcoming Justice League characters –Aquaman underwater stabbing a camera, Flash stopping a grocery store robbery, and Cyborg getting fused to a Motherbox –a teleportation machine from a distant planet. These aren’t quick cuts, but long takes of each character that destroy the pacing of the movie, especially right on top of the climax. Although WB/DC is trying hard not to be Marvel, these scenes NEED to happen at the end of the movie so they don’t distract from the current movie.  As to how to improve these scenes, well…

STEP THREE: WHAT SHOULD BE CHANGED?

“What to change” in a nutshell.

 

BvS is failing so hard that some things need to be changed outright. Maybe they didn’t fit the movie’s tone. Maybe their theme is wrong. Maybe they push the movie in a bad direction. Hell, maybe they represent a missed opportunity.

What should’ve been changed?

1. The Justice League cameos
Film logic can be hard to explain to people who don’t speak the lingo. Think of a sentence that’s too long to be entertaining or easily understood. Think of a song that’s really repetitive. Think of watching someone walk toward you from over a block away. That’s how these scenes feel. The Aquaman scene goes on too long. The Flash scene is a little too staged. The Cyborg origin DEFINITELY goes on too long and has an inappropriate tone.
Maybe this should’ve been a montage? Batman or Wonder Woman looks through the secret files, and although they’re hidden camera footage, they’re arranged like a montage complete with music. Quick cuts, as much information as you need to see that your favorite characters are there and what might lie ahead for them. Aquaman stabs a camera; Flash stops a robbery and ties up the bad guy; Cyborg integrates more technology into his body or does a weapons test; Green Lantern gets his ring and blasts off into space; The Suicide Squad recruits a dangerous new member; etc.
Just showing audiences characters won’t get them excited. Showing them characters in a way that’s exciting will. Presenting information as action also gets people interested in future movies.

2. Batman’s captured criminal
So in a throwaway scene in Gotham, Batman saves a bunch of sex-trafficking victims by branding their slaver with a batarang. He then escapes the police. It doesn’t serve much purpose beyond establishing that Batman’s methods are extreme (even after what Superman did to Metropolis, it seems).
The scene could be marginally more interesting if he was taking down someone who’d appear in Suicide Squad. Maybe Batman stops Deadshot or Slipknot from assassinating someone. Maybe he books Harley Quinn or the Joker? Any of these would be a good tool for setting up Suicide Squad in a more natural way. After all, this Batman has been around for awhile. No doubt the criminals in Suicide Squad had to come from somewhere. Again, we removed Batman’s ultra-violence, so this scene no longer serves that point. Now, it’s here to establish that he can get the job done without collateral damage, and will do so at any cost. It’s also here to shamelessly plug future DC movies.

3. Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor
Did anyone like Jesse Eisenberg’s Max-Landis-as-Lex-Luthor? Yeah, Eisenberg is a great actor, but within a certain context. Not in this context. He doesn’t fit the established tone of BvS, and he’s a pointless reinvention of the character. What was your favorite Jesse Luthor moment? Him forcing a cherry Jolly Rancher into a guy’s mouth? The jar of piss? “The Red capes are coming?”
This is getting into ad hominem territory, but when Zack Snyder’s Objectivist politics became known, it almost made sense that he wouldn’t portray Lex Luthor as his comic book counterpart. The comic book Lex Luthor IS an objectivist, and someone that Snyder would probably sympathize most with. Which is probably why he doesn’t like classic Superman –a guy who does good things out of the goodness of his heart. Snyder doesn’t agree with Superman’s politics. He can’t see him as the hero against an objectivist.
So, why not cast Lex Luthor as his traditional comic book self? The objectivist, bald, physically fit, manipulative genius of business and crime? He’d be a much more threatening foe, have fewer comparisons to the Joker, and still fall within the attempted themes of people seizing power for themselves. Why not have the most threatening version of the villain?
The only excuse I can imagine for keeping Eisenberg as Luthor was that he managed to break up the movie’s monotony.
Lex Luthor can still get the Kryptonian technology from MoS’s World Engines or from Zod’s crashed ship. He can still generate a physical threat (just not Doomsday), and he can still play both men against each other. He just doesn’t have to be an irritating asshole the whole time.

4. What the characters stand for
This isn’t so much a change as a massive clarification. BvS revolves around its themes, so it’s important for us to understand in no uncertain terms what the characters stand for.
Is Batman anti-alien? Is he anti-collateral damage and civilian casualties? Does he simply want justice for the people who died in Metropolis? Does he think that nobody should have absolute power to enact justice? If so, how does he reconcile his own actions?
What does Superman want? The movie indicates that he’s grappling with his own godhood. Fine, but what does that mean emotionally? “Am I a god or aren’t I” isn’t emotive. Is he trying to redeem himself after the collateral damage at Metropolis and Smallville? Is he anti-Batman violence? If so, why is he ok killing people? Does he feel that might makes right? Is he just trying to live a normal life? Without knowing his goals, it’s hard to say what he stands for thematically. Rather, most of the movie makes him an object to be acted upon.
BvS’ Lex Luthor stands for mortals seizing power for themselves, and perhaps doing it in a corrupt way. How does that play against Batman and Superman’s themes? Is it the correct theme for him? Do we even know what Lex Luthor wants, exactly, beyond a dead Superman?
Without knowing all of these things, it’s hard to tell a coherent movie with a clear division of philosophies. We need to have a clear idea of what these differing philosophies are and how they differ before we can understand why Batman and Superman would EVER come to blows. Otherwise, we’re just aping the imagery of The Dark Knight Returns without understanding how much its Batman/Superman fight was contextualized.

5. The senate hearing
This is one of the most important scenes in the movie, and it’s wasted. The senate hearing represents an opportunity for the characters to espouse their philosophies, goals, and methods, and to highlight the conflict of the movie.
Instead, Superman gets nothing to say, everyone stares at a jar of piss, and a guy in a wheelchair explodes, killing everyone. It’s meant to implicate Superman as a murderer, but how does that happen? We know from real-world arson cases that the source of the explosion could be easily determined.
The senate hearing needs to establish Superman’s platitudes, his goals, and his methodology. Or, more simply, what does he want and how does he plan to get it? That’s how EVERY movie works and neglecting it here is a major misstep.  ESPECIALLY in a movie about themes and ideology.  More, it needs to establish how society will deal with Superman. Will it take measures to assure his cooperation? Will it demand he leaves? What happens if he doesn’t agree with their decision?

6. No Darkseid
BvS heavily eludes to Darkseid as the JUSTICE LEAGUE villain, with a barrage of imagery in Batman’s “knightmare” and with Luthor’s implications of interacting with them.
All of this is horseshit.
Sure, Darkseid is one of those imposing foes of the DC universe, but he’s not the worst. More, although he was certainly the inspiration for Marvel’s Thanos, Thanos has already been seen on the big screen a few times now. Bringing Darkseid to your JUSTICE LEAGUE movie is only going to seem like you’re copying Marvel.
Trust me, Justice League has way more villains. Vandal Savage, Eclipso, Despero, The Injustice League, The Crime Syndicate, Amazo, Dr. Destiny, The Anti-Monitor, Prometheus, Circe, Starro, Queen of Fables, Imperiex, and some of the individual heroes’ most powerful villains: Ra’s al Ghul, Joker, Mr. Mxyptlk, Lex Luthor, Ocean Master, Ares, seriously, the list just keeps going on.
Pick one that better resonates with your universe and doesn’t make you seem like a copycat.
Want more? Making Luthor the stooge of Darkseid makes him a less interesting, less individual character. He’s not goddamned Loki; he’s Lex Luthor.

7. Batman’s Age
In the BvS universe, Bruce has been Batman for a long time, however, Gotham police and Clark Kent act like he’s a new phenomena. “He operates in shadows.” Sure he does. He also pilots a plane that spews bullets and a drives a car that might as well be a monster truck. Why is Batman 50-60 years old? Why are the cops unsure about him? Gotham would’ve LONG made up their mind about him. What is the benefit of this, especially when this info is contradictory?
Because it’s a callback to THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. The other reason is that after the death of Jason Todd, Batman’s grown old and bitter, which is an excuse to have him use extreme violence.
I’d argue that his being an old man makes little sense, especially with A. how impulsive and overt he is. B. How soon the actor could age out C. How the universe responds to him.
Either he’s a relatively new urban rumor, or he’s a fixture of the city.

Ok, so by removing vast swaths of the movie that aren’t working and by reordering events to work better, we’re tentatively left with the “best parts” or “most vital parts” of the movie. That doesn’t leave us with much movie (the movie was singularly bad, and we’ve had to cut nearly all of it). That leaves our last step:

STEP FOUR: WHAT NEEDS TO BE ADDED?

 

1. Luthor kills a Bat-Villain.
Let’s go back to Batman arresting a known villain who could get inducted into Suicide Squad.
Instead, maybe he arrests one of his known-but-minor villains. Mad Hatter, Anarky, Calendar Man, etc. But, Lex Luthor is waiting at the police station, having paid off the arresting officers to turn a blind eye. Luthor talks to this villain about the injustice of the arrest at the hands of the Bat. The villain swears revenge. Luthor asks him what he’d do for revenge. The villain says “anything.” Luthor kills him and dumps the body in an alley around Gotham City, telling the police that if they breathe a word to anyone, he’ll  make their whole family suffer.
Suddenly, it looks like Batman killed that guy. Won’t Superman be pleased.
Now you have a reason for Superman to want to fight Batman –”he killed a guy”- and the conversation can’t be ended as simply as “Martha.” More, Batman having murdered a guy allows Superman to do some soul-searching –after all, he killed a guy too (in MoS). Maybe he wants to take Batman down for both for justice and because Batman represents, to him, the dark side of himself –a reminder of his failures.

2. Superman is wracked with guilt from Man of Steel.
In the events of MoS, Superman is complicit in the destruction of Smallville, the destruction of a third of Metropolis, and the murder of General Zod. In BvS, Superman acts relatively well-adjusted, his chief worries about what it means to him to be a god. There’s no sense of character growth from the previous movie and little indication that he’s learned anything from it. Sure, he saves lots of people in this, but he also saved a handful of people in MoS from an exploding oil rig.
If BvS is a response to the criticism of MoS –you bet your ass it is- Superman has to show growth as a character. He screamed when he broke Zod’s neck. That indicates a perceived failure on his part (he’s not well-characterized in MoS for us to specify what failure that is), and a wish to change/improve.  This is all the motivation we need to evolve Superman’s character into one that more closely resembles his comic book counterpart –the pinnacle of goodness of virtue, an inspiration to all of humanity in the universe to be better than we ever thought we could be. He WANTS to be that guy.
So yes, let’s make Superman wrestle with his guilt. Maybe he’s trying to save everyone in the world. He can’t let a single person die because if he did, maybe the world’s right about him. Maybe he’s a monster. Maybe he’s too dangerous to live. Over the course of the story, though, we see that this drive to save people is a natural state for him. He’s shrugging off the bad morals of the Kent family and coming into his own.
He genuinely wants to help people. And that might have to start with stopping someone who he perceives as hurting people –Batman: a person who he sees as embodying his failure.

3. The first fight between Batman & Superman doesn’t go so well.
In BvS, Batman and Superman only fight once. At the very end. That is a catastrophic mistake for a movie whose name suggests a massive battle. Their fight is brutal but bland, and their only other confrontation is just an exchange of glares after Superman trashes the Batmobile. That’s nowhere near enough.
So give us a Batman/Superman fight at the first act turning point –about 25 minutes in. For this fight, we don’t need Batman in the Frank Miller armor; he’d take on Superman with the Batjet and the Batmobile and get owned. Batman uses both of his vehicles in tandem, and they’re swatted like flies. Superman isn’t even trying. Batman pulls out all the stops, emptying his utility belt to no effect. Superman just walks through the gadgetry, lecturing about stopping Batman’s violence. He grabs Batman, pledging to make him face justice –only to be distracted by screams only he can hear. He flies off, swearing to finish this another time. He leaves Batman scared shitless. Especially because he calls Batman “Bruce.” X-ray vision and whatnot.
Of course Batman planted a tracker on Superman, which he uses to determine that Superman is Clark Kent. Or, again, maybe he just deduces it. He IS the world’s greatest detective after all.

4. Batman comes prepared for the next fight.
In the second fight (about 50 minutes in), Batman’s had tons of time to prepare. The Frank Miller armor, Sonics, missiles, kryptonite, etc. Both men espouse their stances on justice as they fight. Batman gets the upper-hand with the kryptonite. Their fight causes a building to collapse, and Superman hears people inside. They work together, barely managing to save everyone before the building collapses.
In this moment, they realize that they’re opposite sides of the same coin. Both men just want to help people, but they have very different methods. They understand, from previous deeds or misconceptions, that maybe they don’t have all the answers.
You use action to show that these two can see eye-to-eye philosophically. It’s WAY THE HELL more believable than them becoming best friends over their moms having the same name.

5. Rooftop Heart to Heart
How weird is it that Batman and Superman barely talk to each other in BvS? Just a few sentences between them could’ve solved everything.
In our rewrite, these are guys who’ve been beating on each other for about half the script. After they nearly just killed each other in pursuit of justice, they realize that they’re more alike than they could’ve imagined.
So they talk it out. Both men explore their fears. Superman laments what happened to Metropolis and Zod. He wishes he’d been stronger… That he hadn’t been so impulsive …or so scared. He’d lived so long without limits that he didn’t realize that he SHOULD have limits. He can’t let it happen again. He has to be better than himself. He has to become a symbol of something greater. Batman explores his fear of loss. His parents; Jason Todd (the Robin Joker killed prior to BvS); and his employees during Metropolis’ destruction… He can’t let anyone else die on his watch. Even if that means losing his soul.
Naturally, Superman asks him why he killed that supervillain of his. Batman denies it, and, talking it out, they realize what’s going on:

6. Lex Luthor has orchestrated everything
Through crafty words and actions, Lex Luthor has turned public opinion against Batman & Superman, and he’s manipulated events to make them kill each other. He LET Batman steal Kryptonite. He supercharged the headlines to focus on Superman’s guilt in the destruction of Metropolis. He killed the supervillain and framed Batman.
But why?
Batman & Superman work together to figure that out. Complimenting each other’s strengths, they investigate Lex Luthor’s labs, and discover that Luthor’s been experimenting with Kryptonian technology. Just as they’re about to make a major discovery, Luthor’s security system activates, immobilizing Superman with a Kryptonite beam and Batman with a Kryptonian robot or something.
Luthor gloats, explaining that the destruction of Metropolis allowed him to profit like he never had before. Real estate, construction, infrastructure, technology. After its destruction, HE was Metropolis’ savior. He didn’t have to manipulate the media to become the city’s favorite son, and he wasn’t going to stop there. With a fleet of reverse-engineered Kryptonian drone ships at his disposal, he could stage “Kryptonian attacks” all over the world, fund the militaries that defeat them, and put the Lexcorp name on every building built on the ashes.
While this plan is almost as elaborate as Lex’s “plan” in BvS, it’s far more complete and with less extraneous steps. Moreover, the goal is not “a dead Superman, because reasons,” but superiority, domination, and control. It’s not quite as simple as “take over the world,” and its gleefully disregard of human life runs directly counter to the ideology espoused by Batman & Superman throughout the script.
It’s the antithesis of their character arcs.
It’s how you craft a resonant villain.

7. Lex’s secret weapon
Lex prepares to kill Superman with a knife. Batman, ever the escape-artist, manages to free an arm and disarm Lex with a batarang. Lex panics and runs while Batman finishes freeing himself. He manages to pull Superman from the kryptonite field, but Superman’s at death’s door. That’s when a pair of massive doors open revealing:
Lex’s battle armor. A kryptonite-powered death machine.
Batman tries to sneak Superman away as Lex hunts them down. Lex uses thermal vision to track them. Superman, regaining his powers piecemeal, uses his heat vision to distract Luthor with another heat signature while he and Batman regroup. Batman’s set all kinds of traps, but they’re not stopping Lex. The battle armor is all but impregnable. Superman has a plan, but Bruce will have to trust him.
Luthor manages to get the drop on them, scattering them. Batman’s knocked unconscious. Superman, agonized, struggles to get to his feet, but he’s too weak. Lex blasts him with Kryptonite radiation, gloating in his torment. Finally, Superman goes still. Death by kryptonite exposure. Lex prepares to deliver the killing blow—
Only for Batman to rip his suit open from behind.
Superman leaps to his feet, his face covered, and he uses a grappling hook to rip the Kryptonite core straight out of Luthor’s chest.
That’s right. Batman and Superman traded places. And kryptonite radiation has no effect on Batman. With the suit’s remaining power, Luthor attempts to kill Batman. Superman casually dismantles the armor with his heat vision, talking about how no one should have the kind of power that Lex has. He’s shown that the risk of abuse is far too high. Luthor swears that he’ll get away with it. They’ll never be able to arrest him. The people of the world are still turned against the heroes, they—
Batman plays a bat-recorder, Lex’s own words damning him. Lex just glowers.

8. The Promise
Batman mentions they should probably do something about the kryptonite. Superman agrees. He laser-visions the rock, saying, “I meant what I said about power. Nobody should have unchecked power. You trusted me. I trust you.” Batman goes to the steaming kryptonite.
It’s been burned into a ring.
Superman: “If I ever step out of line… If I ever fail to be the hero the world deserves… I need you to be the hero it needs.”
Batman tucks the ring into his utility belt. “I’ll never have to.”
They shake hands.
This completely brings their arcs together in a way that’s meaningful, true to their characters, and true to the established themes of the movie. In a movie about power and responsibility (hell, nearly ever superhero movie is), both men find a proper balance. It also references the hell out of THE DARK KNIGHT, which should make fanboys happy.

9. Luthor’s fate
Luthor’s admitted to the world’s cushiest prison cell. He paid for it. It’s only a matter of time before the courts hear his appeal and he’s free again. And when he gets out… there will be hell to pay. Contacting his people on the outside, he tells them to begin prepping the Doomsday project.

10. Luthor’s secret files.
At the Batcave, Batman and Superman go over Lex’s secret files, showcasing a barrage of super-powered people. Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg, Wonder Woman, Vandal Savage, Parasite, Trigon, etc. The world’s a far bigger place than they could’ve imagined. Together, they’ll be ready for it.
Again, the timing here means it doesn’t interrupt the flow of our story.

11. Not enough for you?
Yeah, that was a little contained for a blockbuster, I guess. How about Lex escapes with his fleet of Kryptonian ships after leaving Batman & Superman to their deaths at the hands of a Kryptonian robot? Superman and Batman free each other and fly out to stop Luthor’s ships before they level Gotham? You could have the same climax described above, but with a helluva lot more action and a ticking clock. Hell, maybe Lois has been trying to sabotage these things the whole time and she gets wrapped up in the climax? Or maybe we swap Lois for Wonder Woman?

WRAPPING IT UP

Sorry, the internet ran all out of kissing jokes.

I’ve heard it said that BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE fails because Marvel’s had so many more movies to establish its world and characters. I reject that idea. EVERY movie has a chance to establish its own world & characters. BvS fails because it couldn’t be bothered to tell a concise, understandable, genre-appropriate story. It could’ve -and should’ve- been the second-highest grossing movie of all time after STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS.

You CAN have heavy themes in your blockbusters. DAWN & RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES did that well enough. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and INSIDE OUT knocked it out of the freakin’ park. You CAN tell revisionist versions of established characters to great effect. See THE DARK KNIGHT and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. You just have to understand why the characters work; why cinematic language and storytelling tenants are important; what makes your movie entertaining; and why a movie in a shared universe absolutely needs to stand on its own.

Let’s hope Warner Bros. learns their lesson.

P.S. I also wrote a Man of Steel retcon. Interested?

Spider-Man and Me

Who wasn’t blown away by CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR’s latest trailer yesterday? It looks like the payoff for nearly all of the groundwork of the MCU: Ant-Man on Hawkeye’s arrows! Captain America and Iron Man philosophically reversed! A reprise of “I can do this all day!”

And a certain cameo at the end.

I’m not prone to fangasms or going full-fanboy, but when Spidey showed up, his eyes narrowing just like they did in the comics and cartoon shows, I felt a physical surge of happiness. I couldn’t stop smiling. I was nearly crying. I was 7 years old again.

And as a 7 year-old, I had needed Spider-Man.

That’s how old I was when the SPIDER-MAN animated series premiered on Fox Kids in 1994. My Catholic school had a 1st grade class of 25 kids, and only 8 kids from 3rd-5th grade. Nobody else read comics in my class, or seemingly the entire blue-collar town. Bullies targeted me for my comic-reading and for not suppressing my emotions. The worst bully persisted until 7th grade. My 1st grade teacher was also an emotionally and occasionally physically abusive bully. My parents both worked late, so I spent most of my time alone at my grandparents’ house. I didn’t have any friends, really.

SPIDER-MAN’s cartoon debut was life-changing. Peter Parker was a nerd who, even in high school, was still bullied; had a distant, fair-weather friend; was closest only with his immediate family; was bewildered by crushes; was misunderstood by the whole world; had self-esteem issues; and had a snarky mouth that got him into trouble.

Just like me.

Spidey’s smart-alecking to villains and his giddy freedom in web-swinging cranked my imagination into overdrive. I wrote and drew my own Spider-Man comics. I stood up for myself to bullies and to my teacher to show them they didn’t run the world. I read even more voraciously, dipping into other comics. The world, or at least a small fraction of it, made a little more sense. I honestly thought if I tried hard enough, maybe I could actually BE Spider-Man.

What I didn’t understand back then, was that Spider-Man was his own worst enemy. The cartoon show didn’t hammer on the Uncle Ben stuff, which is key to his social & emotional stagnation. I thought it was ok to have low self-esteem and a martyr complex, and I went through some dark times as a grade-schooler. Bullies did bad things to me, and I thought they were my fault. Sometimes I still catch myself thinking that.

But Spider-Man was still a power fantasy for me. No matter how bad things got as Peter Parker, Spidey could still trick Doctor Octopus into walking into a magnet. He could still trap Sandman into a vacuum cleaner. He could still overcome the darkness of the alien costume. Just as Spidey got a little help from his super-hero friends, so did I from my family and the friends I’d make in middle school.

And after awhile, I didn’t need Spider-Man to feel confident. I could do it on my own, and I never apologized to anyone for it.

At the end of 8th grade, I saw Sam Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN (2002), knowing its whole plot from the novelization. It wasn’t my first time with a live action Spider-Man -reruns of the 1977 TV show had seen to that- nor was it “my” Spidey, as Raimi used 60s & 70s comics as his chief inspiration. It was, however, Spider-Man. It marked Hollywood’s slow realization that it was ok to embrace nerdy things. It marked my realization that maybe there might be something more to movies.

I’m glad that Spider-Man was there when I needed him, and I’m glad that there were so many versions of him, even in the 90s. Sure, people who read ALL the Clone Saga hate it, but its characters were great! Ben Reilly, Spider-Man’s clone, had even more trouble connecting to his friends and family. Kaine, Spidey’s monstrous failed clone, was anguished at being cut off from society. With Spider-Man as a struggling adult, it showed that not even grown ups had all the answers. Heavy stuff!

I’m happy that the other iterations exist too: Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Girl, the Miles Morales Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man Noir, Silk, and more. EVERYONE should have a character that they can relate to. “I believe there’s a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.”

And Aunt May’s advice from SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004) is why I don’t mind having drifted away from Spidey. It’s nothing condescending like saying that I grew out of him, but he’s no longer emotionally applicable to who I am or to what I need. And that’s ok. He shouldn’t have to grow up with me to be special. Because no matter what, he’s like that childhood friend from when you were too small to remember. The one that stuck by you when things were at their worst. The one whose jokes always cheered you up. The one who showed you that the world could be a brighter place.

He’ll always be Spider-Man.

As to CIVIL WAR, I obviously have a lot of assumptions at play. How do I know I’ll like this version of Spidey? I don’t. Haven’t I seen other live-action takes on Spidey? Yep. And I’ve always had mixed feelings about them. Is there extra baggage here, seeing a tonally & near-visually perfect Spidey when other favorite characters are getting reinvented and misrepresented wholesale? More than likely. After all, the last Spider-Man had water socks.

But more than that, the Spider-Man reveal was well-timed. We’d had over a year of rumors that he’d would show up in CIVIL WAR, and every day we wondered: “when will we see Spider-Man?” In the age of movie-scooping, I expected a pitiful behind-the-scenes leak, shot guerilla-style, as happened to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012), which took the wonder right out of the character. Marvel had the whole geek community waiting for Spider-Man, and somehow avoiding leaks, they delivered on their terms, revealing Spidey in all of his angsty glory. We’d been waiting for Spidey.

And maybe we didn’t know how much we’d needed him.

THE BEST BATMAN AND SUPERMAN MOVIES

Everybody’s got a list these days. Heroic Hollywood has one on the best Batman movie, but I respectfully disagree with their list and methodology. So, not only am I going to count down to the best Batman movie, I’m ALSO going to count down to the best Superman movie!

What IS my methodology? Simply put, what is, formally, the best movie, and what has the richest, most nuanced ideology. Is it coherent? Is it good? Does it have any humanity? What does it have to say? MAYBE bonus points if it’s true to the character.

Now, because there have been so many of these, we’re only going to count feature-length theatrical releases. That means none of the live-action or animated movie serials, and none of the animated movies apart from one. So, without further ado…

Let’s count down to the best of the Bat!

BATMAN MOVIES:

9. BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997)

How could this not be here? Criticized upon release for its cartoonish camp, BATMAN AND ROBIN featured the garishly miscast Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, the atrocious Alicia Silverstone, the bastardization of the then-popular Bane, and the homoerotic imagery. The real crimes of BATMAN AND ROBIN were subtler. It was structurally identical to its predecessor, BATMAN FOREVER, had no internal logic, had uneven pacing, had nothing to say about Batman or his world, and –worst of all- was an unfunny comedy. It was the wrong movie for the wrong time –an irreverently campy take on Silver Age/Adam West Batman when the world was going nuts for Frank Miller’s THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and when kids had the far superior Batman fare: BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES. BATMAN AND ROBIN’s critical failure was profound enough to kill the superhero movie for nearly a decade.

8. BATMAN FOREVER (1995)

Schumacher’s first outing of Batman is every bit as ridiculous as BATMAN AND ROBIN, but had loads more to about the man under the mask. Nicole Kidman’s Dr. Chase Meridian investigates Batman’s psychosexual elements, continually asking him if he’s got a rubber fetish; Batman and the newly introduced Robin hint at the pedastery that’s followed them since the Adam West days; the Batmobile is a straight-up phallus; and Batman woodenly says during the climax that he doesn’t have to be Batman; he chooses to be. On the nose as hell, but both are deconstructions of Burton-era Bat-films inasmuch as Schumacher’s neon aesthetics are. Don’t get me wrong, Tommy Lee Jones is miscast as Two-Face, and Val Kilmer always looks lost as Bruce Wayne, but BATMAN FOREVER’s bombast had a more coherent emotional arc guiding it.

7. THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)

If THE DARK KNIGHT was an examination of the Patriot Act and the War on Terror, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES was Christopher Nolan’s attempt to address the 99% movement, and the results are mixed. Bane’s mid-air terrorist attack is insane, and holy shit, Anne Hathaway rules as Catwoman. Thematically however, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES argues that if the 99% got their way, they’d destroy their city in a matter of days, and are only ever truly happy when they have a fascist (Batman) ruling over them. Seriously. That’s what it says thematically. If Bane wasn’t muffled, he could tell you. More concretely, the movie was overlong with two first acts, a second act that nearly wrote Batman out of the action, and had ill-advised fan service throughout the material, most infamously Joseph Gordon Levitt as John “Robin” Blake. It’s clear that Christopher Nolan’s heart wasn’t in this one, and it marked the beginning of the bad habits of his brother and screenwriter, Jonathan Nolan.

6. BATMAN (1989)

Up until BATMAN BEGINS and IRON MAN, BATMAN set the gold standard for superhero movies. Tim Burton’s gothic aesthetic lent itself perfectly to Gotham City, as did his sensibilities of a hero with talents that set him apart from the rest of humanity: Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne is all but a damaged savant, reclusive, enigmatic, and tentative, only seeming natural in the bat costume. Despite this, the movie suffers from a lack of momentum and excitement, only really getting there when Jack Nicholson becomes the Joker. His maniacal performance cannot be understated, bringing a fractured vision of nascent 90s prismatic style into black and white Gotham. Without BATMAN, no superhero fad; without BATMAN, no Batman: The Animated Series, and by extension, no DC Animated Universe; without BATMAN, no Joker craze. So why so low on the list? Again, it’s poorly paced and stretched thin until the Joker –as the Joker- shows up, and after that, the movie is entirely motivated by and beholden to him.

5. BATMAN: THE MOVIE (1966)

“Better than BATMAN?! REALLY?!” Yes. Really. Adam West’s Batman is a polarizing figure, I realize, for his campy Silver Age antics, especially when grimdark Batman is all the rage with kids today, but find for me a movie better at being what it wants to be. Batman: the Movie is an imaginative, comedy adventure with his most dangerous adversaries from the 1966 TV series. More than a screwball slugfest, it offered minor satire on the nature of politics and bureaucracies. Don’t forget, for decades, this WAS Batman, through and through. Still, your mileage on its antics may vary.

4. BATMAN RETURNS (1992)

Tim Burton took everything that was BATMAN, for good or ill, and turned it up to 11. Three show-stealing villains: Michelle Phiffer’s crazed dominatrix Catwoman-as-rape-metaphor; Danny Devito’s horny circus freak Penguin; and Christopher Walken as vaguely scarier Christopher Walken! Crazy macabre set design! Better action with Batman, the Batmobile, and the Batboat! A better romance! BATMAN RETURNS is a hallucinogenic nightmare of Gotham City, but its chief crime is overexerting itself. Penguin, though unforgettable, feels shoehorned into an otherwise brilliant revenge story between Catwoman and Walken’s Max Shrek. BATMAN RETURNS didn’t offer a character arc for Bruce Wayne, but it was unapologetically nuts and self aware. Gotta love it.

3. BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM (1993)

The only animated Batman movie to hit theaters, BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM was essentially a long episode of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, and was more competent than most live-action adaptations. In it, Kevin Conroy’s Bruce Wayne was torn between his survivor’s guilt and calling to be Batman vs. love with a woman from his past, all while a mysterious new villain is slaughtering the gangsters of Gotham City. Atmospheric, creepy, and heartfelt, MASK OF THE PHANTASM only falters in that, as a mystery, it only offers one suspect.

2. BATMAN BEGINS (2005)

I never forgave IRON MAN for copying this movie’s structure. BATMAN BEGINS is a slick, class-conscious update of Batman’s origin story, featuring top-notch acting by Liam Neeson as Henri Ducard; Cillian Murphy as Jonathan Crane; Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon; Michael Caine as Alfred; and Christian Bale as Batman. This is a movie that understands who Batman is: determined, compassionate, principled, and broken. Its training sequences have yet to be surpassed, and its pulse-pounding climax has yet to be topped in the franchise. I’d say its emotional journey and structure has yet to be matched, but IRON MAN copied it. Because it was that good.

1. THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)

Largely considered the greatest comic book movie of all time, THE DARK KNIGHT is essentially THE WATCHMEN of comic book movies in its thoughtful and pointed deconstruction of superheroes as agents of fascism, using heavy War on Terror imagery and themes such as extradition, the Patriot Act, mass trials for Mobsters (terrorists); and the looming threat of the “head insurgent,” THE DARK KNIGHT forced Batman to compromise personal freedoms to capture a villain and to lie to an entire city to protect the ruling hegemony (about Harvey Dent/Two-Face). Seriously, Zack Snyder didn’t need to make the WATCHMEN with how well this played out. What can be said about Heath Ledger’s nihilistic, anarchistic Joker that hasn’t already been said? The man gave the performance of a lifetime, energizing an already multi-layered and exciting movie.

The sun sets in Gotham only for it to rise in Metropolis! Which Superman movies fall to Kryptonite, and which triumph over evil?

SUPERMAN MOVIES:

6. SUPERMAN III (1983)

What is SUPERMAN III? Screwball comedy with Richard Pryor? An adult life high school melodrama? Superman coming to grips with alcoholism? Whatever it is, it’s barely a Superman movie. Robert Vaughn’s Not-Lex-Luthor contracts Pryor’s Gus Gorman into hacking weather satellites to destroy Columbia for not joining his coffee bean trust, then uses faulty kryptonite to turn Superman evil. Describing this slow-paced, unfunny comedy makes it sound far more interesting than it really is. Its only saving graces are Clark Kent’s fight with Drunk Superman, a strangely Whovian fight with a supercomputer that turns people into robots, and Drunk Superman hijinks like blowing out the Olympic torch and straightening the leaning tower of Pisa. Rumor has it that the executives thought that people couldn’t take Mr. Myxoptlk, Bizarro, and Brainiac seriously, so we got a “screwball drama” with Richard Pryor, Drunk Superman, and a random computer instead. Pass.

5. MAN OF STEEL (2013)

Zack Snyder makes a beautiful image, no doubt, and many of his scenes, out of context, are pretty great. I’d expect no less from a music video director. But MAN OF STEEL represents all of his bad habits: a rushed script with cliffnotes standing in for arcs; heavy-handed, mixed metaphors standing in for characters; absent emotion; imagery in the place of earned themes; bizarre treatment of women; wooden acting; and unintentional messages from poorly thought-out beats (like the destruction of Metropolis and Superman breaking Zod’s neck). The script has no emotional heart to hold it together, rendering all of its beats lifeless and unengaging. It’s deeply embarrassed to be what it is, and would rather paint Superman as a fascist like Marvel Man than actually, earnestly depict Superman. Only Henry Cavill seems to understand that he’s playing Superman, and gives it his best with what little the script permitted.

4. SUPERMAN RETURNS (2006)

The right movie for the wrong era, Singer’s SUPERMAN RETURNS is an extension of SUPERMAN I & II, innocent and optimistic, when all fans wanted was something more like BATMAN BEGINS. Or at least Superman punching things. The movie has an awkward first half with Superman stalking Lois, who’s remarried in his absence, but the rest is a passionate tribute to the Donner films with Kevin Spacey giving the performance of his life as Lex Luthor, Sam Huntington’s Jimmy Olson and Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane pitch-perfectly matching their 70s & 80s counterparts. It’s hopeful in a way many movies are not, but, even with its coherent script, it’s a little too understated for its own good.

3. SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE (1987)

Go ahead, laugh at Mark Pillow’s 80s-tastic Nuclear Man, but don’t lose sight of what a confident, solid blockbuster this is. No movie, up until BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM can claim to be such a perfect 1:1 translation of comic to film, with Superman continuing his charming on-off relationship with Margot Kidder’s Lois while fielding advances from Mariel Hemmingway’s sex-starved Lacy Warfield; to the visually perfect 80s villain Nuclear Man, a walking allegory for nuclear armament; to Hackman giving another great Lex Luthor performance; to the playful montage of Superman saving people from the collapsing Great Wall of China and from a volcanic eruption in Pompei; to its thoughtful and hopeful message about the nuclear armament crisis during the Cold War. SUPERMAN IV only stumbles in motivating its third act, by then, it’s all gravy.

2. SUPERMAN II (1980)

Superman’s relationship with Lois hold the Christopher Reeve Superman movies together, and at no point is it more clear than here. Superman/Clark Kent and Margot Kidder’s can we/can’t we romance is the most passionate and mature relationship in superhero movies to this day, so much so that SPIDER-MAN 2 tried to copy it. While Superman struggles with love, honesty, and responsibility, Terrance Stamp’s elegant General Zod, Jack O’Halloran’s brutish Non, and Sarah Douglas’ psychotic, trophy-hunting Ursa destroy their way across America, discovering their strengths and playfully toying with the populace, ultimately forcing Superman’s hand. The resulting fight is every bit as explosive as MAN OF STEEL’s climax, but with a Superman who cares about collateral damage. The only weak moment in this film is literally in its last two minutes, which undercuts the beauty of Clark & Lois’ relationship. So what if it’s light and playful, this, like SUPERMAN IV, is proud of what it is.

Whatever you do, don’t watch the Donner cut. It’s serious, sure, but it rips coherency and the emotional heart right out of the movie.

1. SUPERMAN (1978)

BATMAN may have launched the 90s superhero fad, but the legacy of SUPERMAN is undeniable. SUPERMAN RETURNS, GREEN LANTERN, SPIDER-MAN, and BATMAN BEGINS lived off SUPERMAN’s script, just as MAN OF STEEL bastardized that of SUPERMAN II. And why not, for the first of its genre, it hit every note perfectly; the forward-thinking exile of Zod, Non, and Faora on Krypton; Marlon Brando’s Jor-El’s somber farwell to his son; wanderlust and loss in Smallville with the Kents; Christopher’s Reeve’s dual performance as the hapless wimp Clark Kent and the inspiring Superman; Gene Hackman’s flamboyant, mustache-twirling Lex Luthor; the stunning romance with Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane and the beautiful night-flight over Metropolis; and the sheer wonder and optimism of Superman. It’s hard to overstate just how sterling this movie is.

But who has the best overall movie? Let’s break it down!

BATMAN V. SUPERMAN (MOVIES)

SUPERMAN III (1983)
BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997)
BATMAN FOREVER (1995)
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)
MAN OF STEEL (2013)
BATMAN (1989)
SUPERMAN RETURNS (2006)
BATMAN: THE MOVIE (1966)
BATMAN RETURNS (1992)
SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE (1987)
BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM (1993)
SUPERMAN II (1980)
BATMAN BEGINS (2005)
SUPERMAN (1978)
THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)

Let’s be real, though. The closer you get to the best of each character, the harder it is to pick the best! What do you think? Think I nailed it? Misrepresent one of your favorites? Sound off below!

SUICIDE SQUAD Trailer Reaction

UPDATED!

“You’re going somewhere very bad to something that’ll get you killed.”

Man, I’m excited for this movie.

David Ayer –who evidently pitched the adaptation of DC’s Suicide Squad (2016) himself- is a great directing & writing choice. All of his movies are dramas that dream of being action movies, and the closer he gets the straight-up action, the better. He never wants for thematic resonance, but his voice just tends toward character-driven action & violence.

And the latest Suicide Squad promises that in spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds. Let’s talk about the biggest beats.

NOTE: Technically, it’s the first trailer, but all of nerdom’s counting the leaked-then-released sizzle reel as the first trailer. However you feel like numbering it, I guess.

THE AESTHETIC

Odd note, but the sizzle reel looked as gritty and washed out as Man of Steel (2013) had. This trailer (Trailer 1) looked as vibrant and phosphorescent as the recent poster releases. It’s a bold move, considering gaudiness took the blame for Batman & Robin’s failure. That said, nothing in Trailer 1 looked eye-stabbingly bright, just eye-catching.

Going back to my comments about Ayer, I get the sense that the man’s been working up to action franchises, and he just brings his intense sensibilities to each project without diminishing what works about that genre. Case in point: Fury (2014).

Considering his purported and directorial focus on groundedness and “the real,” there had been ample speculation as to how bombastic his special effects would go. I’d personally been expecting very understated magic… just telekinesis, really, but holy hell, did the trailer ever prove me wrong. Knowing that King Shark is in the movie, I’ve gone from expecting THIS….

Still awesome, by the way

…to expecting THIS.

Which is even more awesome!

SLIPKNOT

“No, goddammit, I’m not a metal band.”

After this interview, I’m stoked to see Adam Beach’s Slipknot in action. Wondering why you never heard of the villain? Because nobody cares about him. In the comics, he’s just a guy who’s good with ropes, but based purely on the interview, Ayer’s turned a throwaway villain into a interesting character and capable assassin. It’s just a little disappointing that the trailer was light on him. Probably because the movie’s going to be a little light on him C;

EL DIABLO

My favorite character of Adam Glass’ run of the Suicide Squad comic, El Diablo is a flame-powered mob hitman seeking redemption for accidentally murdering women and children (long story). He’s got a defined Latino voice, something that Ayer traditionally handles well, and it’s not a surprise to me that Jay Hernandez’ El Diablo got plenty of time in the trailer. Hopefully he’s awesome in the movie.

CAPTAIN BOOMERANG

“Boomerang. It’s Australian for Asshole.”

How the hell did Jai Courtney’s Boomerang become my favorite part of the trailer? From screaming and punching dudes to stealing beer during the mission, I can’t wait to see more of him.

HARLEY QUINN

Any doubts about Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn are instantly vanquished. She nails the character’s personality and seems like she’ll make a great foil to the team along with Boomerang. I’m disappointed that we’re getting her New 52 origin (hence the shot of her rising from a vat in ACE Chemicals with Joker) as opposed to her classic Batman: The Animated Series origin (slowly becoming emotionally dependant and obsessed with him), but having heard that this movie has a lot to do about moving past bad histories, it may work stirringly well in context. Also, she’s pretty funny. I’m not sure what I enjoyed more: the line about the voices in her head, or her sipping tea and reading erotica.

DEADSHOT

I’m disappointed that I don’t have much to say about my favorite member of the team. Will Smith sells the character’s nihilism and action poses, but as of now, I’m just hoping for more characterization in movie. Given that the sizzle reel showed a shot of his origin story, I’m sure I’ll get it.

RICK FLAG JR.

Joel Kinnaman’s Flag sounds like a modern military guy which is interesting on a few levels. 1. His comic book counterpart is such, but suffers from a massive insecurity complex. Hopefully the movie has that. 2. David Ayer is a former Navy submariner, and Rick Flagg Jr. is the first modern-day soldier he’s written. In this trailer, Flag’s voice sounds authentic to that experience, which should be revealing. Given Ayer’s sensibilities, I’m expecting Flag to have an anti-war turn.

ENCHANTRESS

There are a few good shots of Cara Delevingne’s Enchantress in the trailer, mostly showing that she’s got an aura of dark magic, but there are plenty of other shots of her as the character’s alter ego, June Moon, who’s shown, of all things, brushing Flag’s hair. Seems like the movie will be true to the character’s schizophrenic origins.

KATANA

Karen Fukuhara’s Katana has a sword called Soul Taker which has a magical aura suggesting that it will actually take souls. This is awesome.

OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s Killer Croc… I’m sure they’ll get more of a chance in the next trailer. Waller is THE most important character surrounding the team -she runs it, after all- and it was a hair disappointing to see reused footage from the trailer. Killer Croc didn’t get much to do in this trailer apart from ripping his shirt and grabbing at a guy from a sewer (a shot similar to the animated shot of King Shark C; ). I look forward to seeing his personality.

JOKER

Honestly, I’m happy that Jared Leto’s Joker didn’t overwhelm the trailer. I’m sure he’s a huge deal as the movie’s wildcard, and he IS the most enduring comic book villain, but Trailer 1 needed to sell the character dynamic. While I’m curious to see how purportedly twisted the guy gets and whether or not he can overcome the hate for his juggalo tattoos, I worried that he’d commandeer the marketing. I’m glad that at least as of now, that hasn’t happened. Good. Save the craziness. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of it.

TATTOOED MAN

Rumor has it that Common’s Tattooed Man is behind this destruction. In the comics, he was a rogue member of the Suicide Squad who had the power to turn his tattoos into deadly weapons. His action here suggest cool things about the plot… Like maybe the main team is taking down a rogue team…?

BATMAN

Where was Ben Affleck’s Batman? Who cares! Let’s hope they save his next reveal for the second or third trailer as we get closer to August. The nod to him in the Sizzle Reel was fun, but WB/DC has to learn how to sell movies without him. Trailer 1’s off to a good start.

-OTHER COOL STUFF:

This is the first time we’ve seen Scott Eastwood in the trailers. Rumored to be playing Deathstroke, DC’s deadliest assassin, I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT WAIT to see this happen.

There are plenty of shots of helicopters in Trailer 1, notably one shooting white phosphorous. Given how many character cameos are in this (Ike Barinholtz is rumored to be playing Batman villain Hugo Strange and Common will be playing Squad perennial ‘The Tattooed Man!’), it wouldn’t surprise me if this was Brisco’s character cameo. A disturbed helicopter pilot working for Amanda Waller, Brisco named his voice-controlled helicopter Sheba after his dead daughter. The helicopter is the only place he sleeps. See? Disturbed.

Who does that glittery nuclear explosion belong to? Enchantress or Incubus? …Harley or Joker?

Who is Joker grabbing when he says, “I can’t wait to show you my toys?” Jim Parrack’s Johnny Frost? Either way, paint a crosshairs on that guy’s back.

Who are the A.R.G.U.S. agents after? Killer Croc? The Joker? Either way, a SWAT team dealing with a supervillain prison break is a great horror set up. Any reference to Aliens is a good reference.

Damn, that melted truck looks sweet…

What’s Enchantress doing in the White House?

Given that everyone is alive in the trailer, I get the feeling that we’re thus far only seeing the first half of the movie. After that, I bet we have a not-so-surprise villain on our hands.

What, surprised that characters are going to die in a movie called Suicide Squad? If you’re as morbid as I am, check out my predictions!

Love the trailer? Thought it needed to die in a fire? Think my breakdown should too?

Sound off below!

EVERY MOVIE I SAW IN 2015!

Wow, I saw a ton of movies this year! And like everyone on the internet, I’ve got rankings of them! But this is no mere mortal top ten! Not on your life! This is…

EVERY!

MOVIE!

I!

SAW!

IN!

2015!

So strap yourselves in and prepare to rage, as I surely rank one of your favorites way too low or I deify something you wouldn’t wipe your ass with!

1. CINEMATIC PERFECTION

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

You cannot overstate the greatness of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. Action-driven characterization, brilliantly realized thematic cipher characters, a pulse-pounding yet contemplative score, worldbuilding through suggestion, top tier actors at the top of their game, car chases, explosions, fight scenes, “OH WHAT A LOVELY DAY!” FURY ROAD is brilliantly in the moment, capturing the ethos of 2015: from the inequality and sexualization of women across the globe, to the suffering of the masses at the hands of the few, to the chains of capitalism, to the shackles of religion, to the horrors of war and conscription, all so a few can get a little fatter. FURY ROAD challenges us to acknowledge that it is allegorical and it demands us to take action. It challenges Hollywood, too, to recognize its own complacency in endlessly casting white leads, in endlessly rebooting and playing it safe. FURY ROAD subverts on every level and is an unspeakably good blockbuster to boot. With action sequences so perfectly executed and SO FUCKING POWERFUL, the group I saw it with still had an adrenaline high hours later. This is why we go to the movies.

EX MACHINA

Is she human? This question embodies everything about EX MACHINA. Its tense psychological thriller about Domhnall Gleeson’s Caleb trying to determine if Alicia Vikander’s Ava, a robot, can pass for human gives way to biting themes of patriarchy, feminism, neutrality, reciprocity, agency, and social structure. Oscar Isaacs’ Nathan terrifies as a brutally masculine robotic engineer and Alicia Vikander is nothing short of mesmerizing. With only her face visible, Vikander carries a myriad of complex emotions so, robot or no, you’re instantly on her side. MANY arguments can be made about whether or not EX MACHINA’s plot are at odds with its themes –which debatably take over in the third act, but EX MACHINA is absolutely the feminist movie for our times. It forces all of us to examine just what role we play in upholding rape culture, The Glass Ceiling, and the countless other social constructions that hold women back.

INSIDE OUT

Disney-Pixar knows how to approach real, deep issues by way of anthropomorphism and structure. BIG HERO 6 did it with the 5 Stages of Grief, and INSIDE OUT does it with Psychology 101. While the human story relates to the young Riley coming to grips with moving to a new town with her family, the larger story is interior and concerns her key emotional states –Fear, Disgust, Anger, and especially Joy and Sadness. What begins as a simple bad day in their office leads to an adventure to save Riley’s psyche from total collapse, framing the dissolution of her youthful innocence as an apocalypse. Understandable. Growing up feels like that. As Joy and Sadness race to save Riley from the brink, they explore her entire psyche, from her memory, to her consciousness, to even the depths of her subconscious. It posits that while emotional and psychological complexity can be hard, it’s absolutely essential to the human experience. An intellectual but accessible charming tearjerker, INSIDE OUT is an absolute must-see.

IT FOLLOWS

Writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s IT FOLLOWS is an instant classic, taking a relatable concept like venereal disease, and turning it into something (even more) hellish. Something is always following you. If it ever catches you, it kills you. The only way to get rid of it is to pass it on to someone else via sex. But if it ever catches them, it chases you again. In this way, ‘The Monster’ is more than an STI allegory, but a metaphor for the omnipresence of death and how many cope with that understanding. Shot in the urban ruin of Detroit, this is all the clearer. Beyond the mere concept, Mitchell’s expert and often experimental cinematography grips you in paranoia, making you try to spot the Monster before the characters do. It’s surreal, nightmarish, and conveyed expertly by the cast –especially Maika Monroe’s Jay, whose youthful indiscretion warps into existential torment, self-examination, and even cultural examination. What’s more, it was shot in my home state on a shoestring budget! It’s the first time I’ve been able to say, without a drop of sarcasm, “Pure Michigan.”

CREED

CREED is what happens when a master class director understands what makes a franchise great and uses its mythology to tell a similar story within its universe. An inverse of Rocky, Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed (who disappeared into the role, btw) has inherited the wealth of his illegitimate father, Apollo Creed, but wants none of it. His journey to become a boxing champion is one of self-worth and self discovery; he’s absolutely determined to prove that he’s more than an accident. That he is a valid person. Heartwrenching, to say the least. Writer/director Ryan Coogler inflects the story with a voice that’s unmistakably black and modern. Adonis’ voice and his interactions with his girlfriend Tessa Thompson’s Bianca could be nothing other than black. Given all that’s gone wrong with America in the past two years, giving the black community a pioneering spirit and true hero to rally behind is of utmost importance. Rocky was an underdog from the slums; Creed is an underdog of the mind, and his value is instantly legendary.

PADDINGTON

Forget Superman; PADDINGTON is the true immigrant story. Paddington himself is an accident-prone Peruvian bear who is adopted by an English family and undergoes constant culture shock while trying to get naturalized. Knowing that he’s a nuisance to his adoptive family, he attempts to return to Peru, all while a Nicole Kidman’s Millicent Clyde, a maniac taxidermist, is after his pelt. PADDINGTON comes to us at a time of maximum xenophobia in the world from threats at all angles. For immigrants, this is especially challenging as integrating into English-speaking white culture can be daunting, morally compromising, and even hostile. Paddington epitomizes this in the form of a sweet child of a bear, who makes mistakes in his ignorance and naiveté, but showers his adoptive family and country with his gratitude and love. It’s sincere, poignant, funny, adventurous, and optimistic, and, putting us the audience squarely in Paddington’s perspective, it’s all so very personal. I cried more times during this sweet little movie than any other movie of the year.

2. DAMN GOOD MOVIES

KRAMPUS

I’ve been describing this as “NATIONAL LAMPOON’S FAMILY CHRISTMAS meets GREMLINS,” and there really is no better comparison. A troubled upper-middle class family deals with blue collar in-laws enduring the worst family Christmas ever… until Krampus, the shadow of St. Nicolas arrives to punish them all. Featuring nightmarish monsters and in some of the most mindblowing horror setpieces ever (Jesus God Christ, the attic scene. Hell, the climax in the street…), Krampus is all about perverting Christmas iconography… every bit as much as it is about preserving them, surprisingly. It’s a testament to KRAMPUS’ script and ideology that you’ll begin the story loathing the characters, and end it hoping they’ll survive against the odds. It’s easy to dismiss these as stock characters, but each of them, like the story itself, subverts expectations to reveal unexpected depth, duality, cynicism, and hope. Gimmick slasher movies? Here’s your new gold standard.

THE MAN FROM UNCLE

This is pure cinematic joy. THE MAN FROM UNCLE filters the Cold War posturing masculinity, sexual rivalry, and barely repressed homoerotic tension –traits typical of Guy Richie movies. It’s the kind of instant classic movie that we used to die for: snappy dialogue rife with double entendres; experimental, joyful action sequences; brutal tension; sexy comedy; a wicked toe-tapping score; and standout performances from Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, and Alicia Vikander. The Cold War was a dick waving contest, and while THE MAN FROM UNCLE is a few decades too late, it makes this point hilariously clear. It’s an unforgettable work of genius, and I say, no bullshit: This was 2015’s best Bond movie.

WITCH

I wish there were more movies like WITCH –utterly unfraid to chart new genres, settings, periods, characters, themes, and ideas. Set in mid-late 1600s, a Puritan family in colonial America takes to the woods after exile from their community. There, their infant son goes missing, and they begin to suspect a witch is cursing them from the woods… if not, their daughter. Spoken entirely old English, WITCH represents the forces of regression and traditionalism as anchors and seed to our superstitions, generalizations, and scapegoating. It’s at once a horror thriller as much as it is a family drama. What’s more, it’s a textbook about gender politics, family, growing up, sexual rivalries, and religion. The only reason it wasn’t higher on the list was because I honestly didn’t think it was as scary as it could’ve been.

KINGSMAN

KINGSMAN is an on-the-nose pastiche of James Bond-esque spy thrillers –even to the point of name-dropping and trope-stealing directly, but it’s a pointed deconstruction. It’s a hyper-masculine fantasy tearing down one of the longest lived hyper-masculine fantasy franchises in all of cinema. Teenaged English Chav Eggsy (Taron Egerton) gets recruited to the KINGSMAN spy agency, where he competes against and triumphs over the privileged class, which is only a small facet of the script’s class warfare text. Hell, Sam Jackson’s Richmond Valentine’s evil plan is to murder all the lower classes out of sheer fucking spite. More tangibly, KINGSMAN is a watertight script with slick action, gut-busting dirty humor, some imaginative setpieces, and the single greatest uses of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” ever. There’s a discussion to be had about the trope reward sex by the movie’s defacto Bond girl, but that discussion is largely pointed at the institutionalized sexual objectification that we, as a people, regularly ignore.

ANT-MAN

This is everything I love about Marvel movies; human & simple. On the surface, Peyton Reed’s ANT-MAN is a heist movie about a guy who can shrink –and while that’s imaginative, beautiful, exciting, and laugh out loud funny—it’s thematically a story about parents and children. Love, regret, fears, insecurities, bitterness, and forgiveness. EVERYTHING in ANT-MAN revolves around these kind of relationships, and between Michael Douglas’ Hank Pym and Evangeline Lily’s Hope Van Dyne, they’re especially poignant. I wrote about Hope Van Dyne, thinking her sidelining deeply unfair, but when I realized that Peyton Reed created these scenes to directly address former Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter’s overbearing misogyny on the MCU, it’s clear how elegant it is. OF COURSE it’s unfair that women don’t get to be protagonists, even when they deserve it. And THAT was the manifesto of 2015 at the movies.

BLACK SEA

We don’t get many submarine thrillers, and in today’s increasingly blockbuster-soaked landscape, it’s easy to understand why. They’re about waiting. Tension. Survival. Character. Things only a movie that knows how to take its time can do well. BLACK SEA is that movie. A joint English & Russian illegal salvaging mission in the Black Sea for Nazi gold, tensions mount in the rusting sub over nationality, paranoia, greed, and sheer mania. Jude Law gives a stirring performance as Robinson, a world-weary, blue-collar salvager with nothing to lose and nothing to live for. Suspenseful doesn’t begin to cover it. By the time this white knuckle descent into hell was over, my fingers had dug holes in the armrests.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION

Ostensibly a structural remake of the first movie, ROGUE NATION’s strength can be summed up in two words: Ilsa Faust. Rebecca Ferguson’s Faust is an incredible spy who brings true intricacy and depth to a movie that might be a little paint by numbers without her. Just as FURY ROAD is a baton pass from Max to Furiosa, so is ROGUE NATION one from Tom Cruise’s Ethan to Ilsa. Seriously, I can’t say enough good about her. Featuring incredible sequences like the opera sniper duel and a cross-desert motorcycle chase (I wasn’t wowed by the plane-hanging or the water tank dive), and the interesting employment of seemingly stock characters, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION is definitely one to see.

SICARIO

The strength of SICARIO is in its duplicity. Every shot highlights a dichotomy that’s often thematic, but just as often social, which is the heart of its HEART OF DARKNESS-esque journey through the complexities of the Mexican drug trade. Emily Blunt’s FBI Agent Kate Macer is our lens into a brutal and amoral world policed by CIA sociopaths like Josh Brolin’s Matt Graver and by psychopaths like Benicio del Toro’s Alejandro Gillick. It’s impossible deny the potent undertones of double-standards and sexual violence, and to that end, the movie is brilliantly crafted. My lingering question is just how relevant those ideas are.

FURIOUS 7

As much of my list will begin to show, 2015 was the year of indulgence at the box office. “You can have candy for dinner” said the movies, “But they’ll probably give you a tummyache.” FURIOUS 7 is no tummyache. Campy, proud, exciting, sexy (for a cismale perspective), and hilarious, it expertly achieves its goals of ensemble blockbuster mayhem. What was your favorite part? Vin Diesel jumping a car between three skyscrapers? The Rock tackling a drone with an ambulance? Jason Statham’s death mobile? Vin Diesel swordfighting with car parts? Nathalie Emmanuel in a bikini? FURIOUS 7 is the kind of cinematic bliss that comes from taking your camp seriously and giving the audience what they don’t know they want, even if it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure. It’s nonsense, but damned satisfying nonsense.

3. MIDDLING FUN

THE MARTIAN

“I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.” Made firmly in the moment making the language of millennials accessible to other generations, THE MARTIAN combines the cinematography de jour of Matt Damon’s Mark Watney’s reality-style confessional booth interviews with the grandeur of prestige cinema in photographing the surreal landscapes of Mars. Plausible science fiction, it’s as creative as it is fun, and centered in humanity and optimism. Despite all this (and its all-star cast!) THE MARTIAN is still a fairly toothless experience, with nothing feeling as desperate, dangerous, or pulse-pounding as its various elements want you to feel. It’s forgettable, but you can’t help but think about it with a warm feeling in your heart.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT

Don’t get me wrong; Tarantino’s a great director and this is still a great movie, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Enough cannot be said about Ennio Morricone’s haunting score, pitch perfect over the frozen wastes. Prior to the intermission, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is a fantastic little character piece, exploring everyone’s dark and complex history, juxtaposed against how they like to imagine themselves. You have typical great Tarantino dialogue, tension, blocking, and acting, and a fantastic monologue flashback, but the story takes awhile to present itself. When it does after the intermission, we’re treated to a rushed closed-door mystery with a cheated solution, a tonally dissonant flashback, and a sudden realization that only five of eight characters were as deep as you thought they’d be, and they weren’t even THAT deep. Thematically addressing a brevy of unfortunately still relevant topics such as institutionalized racism, sexism, hegemony, and more, THE HATEFUL EIGHT IS vital and I can’t recommend seeing it enough… I just wish it was structured to better support that.

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

I wanted to love AGE OF ULTRON way more than I did, but it’s a classic example of forcing a story. This isn’t about Hawkeye’s family; it’s about Tony Stark’s hubris in creating Ultron and his relationship to it. Acting under a desire to minimize Tony Stark’s role in a story that is ostensibly his, Whedon’s disparate themes and actions without consequences leads to a third act that feels like an entirely different movie. The classic snappy Whedon dialogue and emotional stakes & consequences are still here… they’re just diluted by all the poor structure. It doesn’t help that the movie was edited to death and was forced to pointedly “set up” (a blight of modern cinema) CIVIL WAR and INFINITY WAR. Despite all that AND that that many threads had no explanation or consequences, it speaks volumes to Whedon’s skill and to Marvel’s production philosophy that it was still super fun.

SPOTLIGHT

A divisive choice, considering its Oscar push, but SPOTLIGHT felt to me like a tepid ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN. While the story of the Boston Globe revealing the Catholic priests molestation scandal pandemic  was vital and interesting, the human drama was rendered almost entirely in exposition (a huge detraction from my personal investment), nobody felt personally invested in the investigation until seemingly very late in the movie, and the stakes of publishing the story felt very nebulous at times. I know people who love this movie and felt the tension that I did not, but it just wasn’t my speed. Live Schreiber rocked in it, though.

TRUMBO

A phenomenal performance by Bryan Cranston as the titular blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, this is a historical drama detailing his blacklisting from Hollywood during the communist scare, his stint in jail, and his slow clawing back to success. Much of it falls emotionally flat because the story can’t stay on a story beat long enough for us to get invested. Featuring strong, if typical performances by John Goodman, Alan Tudyk, Diane Lane, C.K. Louis, and Elle Fanning, TRUMBO is enormously competent, but without much to say beyond “the Hollywood blacklist was bad.” Quality filmmaking, albeit forgettable.

SPONGEBOB: SPONGE OUT OF WATER

Do you like Spongebob? Would you like to see four original episodes of Spongebob stitched together, each with a different genre and goals? Here’s your movie. Your mileage on Spongebob may vary. I find him intermittently fun, but mostly insufferable. I guess that makes me a Squidward.

PEANUTS

Using a beautiful, tactile animation technique, PEANUTS has a real and present texture, making you feel like you could reach out and pull it apart with your hands. Effortlessly charming, PEANUTS the movie feels like a year’s worth of the comic strips seamlessly stitched together, with every character as you might remember from A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS. Snoopy’s WWI antics with the Red Baron provide the greatest comedy beats and the most blockbustery action setpieces in what’s otherwise a lighthearted character piece of Charlie Brown trying to befriend his crush, the Little Red Head Girl. While Charlie Brown’s misadventures are meant to highlight his goodness and compassion, the movie suffers from having little to offer subtextually and from regressive plot devices such as the Maiden in Distress and two Women as Rewards. Youthfully innocent, but it’s still a male entitlement fantasy.

BRIDGE OF SPIES

This is a spy thriller that is not a thriller, per say, and it is a courtroom drama that is not a courtroom drama, either. With great actors in a few decent roles, BRIDGE OF SPIES is family-safe on all fronts. Its condemnation of American provinciality arcs to a triumph of American perseverance and ethics; its vision of the Cold War is bloodless, save for a chilling moment at the Berlin Wall; and it has enough “good people” to root for. There are just too many characters in too scattershot a structure with too-long of a first act to feel anything more than relative passing interest.

MINIONS

In a world of Disney and Pixar animated masterpieces that bring so much more to the table than mere text, along comes MINIONS to basically entertain kids for a few hours. The Minions still make for great comedy, even in a solo venture, but when they’ve got to do double duty as semi-serious protagonists, they lose a bit of that off the cuff magic. While Jon Hamm and Sandra Bullock provide great voicing to the movie’s villains, they just don’t inhabit a world that’s interesting enough for investment. Everything about the movie –and especially those characters- is vapid posturing and joke-explaining. I’m not wild about DESPICABLE ME’s humor, but at least it was never this obvous.

THE LAST WITCH HUNTER

Buckle down for the most metal sword and sorcery opening sequence ever, featuring vikings getting THE FUCK magicked out of them— Then slouch as it dissolves into a tepid urban fantasy movie. To its credit, LAST WITCH HUNTER has some impressive creature design and CGI… but that’s a low bar for success these days. Vin Diesel is typically growly, but atypically uninteresting; Elijah Wood doesn’t get enough to do; Michael Caine is an afterthought; and it utterly misuses GAME OF THRONES’ Rose Leslie. Mediocre and uninteresting, two massive points against the sadly under-represented action/horror genre.

CINDERELLA

I forgot I saw this. Branaugh’s CINDERELLA has incredible mis en scene, one of the single greatest dresses I’ve seen in movie history (aesthetically AND thematically perfect!), and fantastic performances by Cate Blanchett and Lily James… but it’s utterly paint by numbers with absolutely no surprises and even less to say. In a world where MALEFICENT (2014) offered a credo on women’s relationships in a world dominated by the Patriarchy, CINDERELLA represents a missed opportunity to condemn female in-fighting and rivalry. Without a single song to its credit, CINDERELLA is a pale shadow of the animated masterpiece it adapted.

4. NOT SO GREAT AND MAYBE EVEN BAD
   
5. STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

Another controversial choice, but while Abrams’ love letter to the Original Trilogy may have nailed its tone while bringing a more diverse (and talented!) cast and staging a couple great fist-pumping moments, it’s script is way more miss than hit. Sure, there are great exchanges between certain characters and individual scenes work in a vacuum, but as a whole, nothing gels the way it should. It’s a greatest hits of the Original Trilogy without understand how or why any of it worked the first time. My feelings were so complex on this one, I pretty much dissected it entirely. For me, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is about as good as the prequels; there are a few great standout moments, but not enough to redeem it from its numerous flaws. In some ways, the prequels are its superior; they are at least original.

CRIMSON PEAK

I wanted to rate this higher, and there are many who will argue with me, but del Toro’s gothic horror/romance epic fails to work as a script. You couldn’t ask for a greater mis en scene of the slowly sinking Allerdale Hall, or a more perfect cast than Mia Wasikowska as the silver tongued writer and romantic, Tom Hiddleston as her ominous suitor and lonely baron, and Jessica Chastain as his venomous sister with ever-increasingly rivalry… but the story just doesn’t know what it is. Is it a mystery? Is it a horror movie? Is it a romance? CRIMSON PEAK can’t decide, resulting in a movie that’s a tepid and painfully obvious. It may be a 1:1 recreation of all the strengths and weaknesses of a Hammer horror film, but it could’ve been so much more.

JAMES BOND: SPECTRE

SPECTRE’s opening long shot tells you everything you need to know about the movie: surface-level style with an emphasis on mood, padding between beats, and gritty realism. The ensuing helicopter fight offers little in the way of real tension or excitement, and so the movie continues, jadedly hitting all the bullet points of “A JAMES BOND MOVIE,” without any real care or understanding for how they work. Christoph Waltz’ Blofeld hams it up as a Bond villain nearly reaching Dr. Evil heights. The lighting alternates between impenetrably dark and blasting white for the villain’s base. I’d call this a wash if not for the side story of Q, M, and Moneypenny, who are engaged in a Le Carre’-esque spy thriller more about the organization of spy organizations than the spy work itself. It’s clear that director Sam Mendes cares much more about these politics than he does about James Bond, which is why the “Bond story” feels so tacked on and rote. This was a snooze. …but I kind of loved Sam Smith’s “Writing on the Wall.” Sorry, rest of the world.

TERMINATOR: GENISYS

Controversial for not being lower on the list, TERMINATOR: GENISYS attempts to ride on nostalgia for a property that’s long since burned up all its goodwill. It’s every bit as mismashed, fanservicy, predictable, and unoriginal as THE FORCE AWAKENS and JURASSIC WORLD, but at least it’s tonally unified with plenty of standout beats acting as callbacks to Terminator 1 & 2. The best way to think of it is an event comic where your mind is supposed to be blown because Bruce Wayne died instead of his parents, Uncle Ben didn’t die, or whatever. Action-packed, character-driven, and with a surprisingly touching father-daughter relationship between Sarah Connor (Clarke) and her personal T-800 Terminator (Schwarzenegger), TERMINATOR GENYSIS succeeded on its own terms. Too bad for it that nobody cared. Have you seen Matt Smith’s scenes in it, though? Textbook unintentional comedy.

FANTASTIC FOUR

I like that director Josh Trank tried to make a Cronenbergian body horror aimed at millennials. With better structure, it could’ve been that and more. Instead, last-minute budget cuts and executive interference from FOX took this self-serious, gritty coming-of-age sci-fi movie, and forced it into a self-serious, self-conscious superhero movie that was embarrassed to be in its own skin. With an overlong first act, an out of place second act, and a preposterously rushed third act, it’s a superhero movie straight out of the 2000s: no idea how to best execute its ideas, and summarily misses the point of all of them. Miles Teller, Jaime Bell, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, and Toby Kebbell give it all they’ve got, and for a brief moment, you can see the mad genius this all could’ve been.

HITMAN: AGENT 47

Were it not for my uncle, I would’ve been alone in the theater. It’s obvious why. A turgid rebootquel of a poorly received video game movie from 2007 featuring none of the same cast, its most interesting feature was that it was one of several baton passes from a male star to a female star. Rupert Friend’s Agent 47 trains Hannah Ware’s Katia to be the next-greatest super-assassin. There are moments of genius in this lackluster affair -Exotic deaths and hints of a brother-sister rapport- but it’s all lost in its tedious, exposition-driven mythology and in its drivel action scenes. Someone in casting thought Zachary Quinto would make a perfect Wolverine. With liquid metal under his skin, we watched this super assassin “die” multiple times. You’d think that’d be entertaining. It wasn’t.

5. ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE

JURASSIC WORLD

Nostalgia is all apologists have to defend this mess. “John Williams’ score! An operational park! Dinosaurs!” they cry, realizing there’s nothing else to defend. The characters all seem to operate independently of one another in different movies with disparate moods, stakes, goals, and arcs. Even scene-to-scene, the movie cannot decide on a tone. Is it a sulky understated divorce drama between brothers? A snarky science thriller between researchers? A violent dino-on-man survival horror? Or a comedy between gatekeepers calmly watching oncoming, bloodthirsty pterodactyls? It’s everything and all of it abominably executed. By the time the movie was over, I didn’t feel bad for laughing at it so hard. If this is the best Colin Trevorrow can do with a beloved sci-fi franchise, I’m horrified to think what he’ll do to STAR WARS EPISODE IX.

JUPITER ASCENDING

Holy fuck this was bad. Cool, it’s space Cinderella. Too bad it’s embarrassingly bad. Mila Kunis walks doe-eyed from one scene to the next making weird, bestiality-ridden comments about wolf-man Channing Tatum. Sean Bean tries to sell being a bee-hybrid as best he can with laugh-out-loud bad dialogue. Eddie Redmayne is the only man on Earth who knows what he was playing in JUPITER ASCENDING, randomly alternating between whispering effeminately and yelling like his balls were in a vise. Give the man credit, he made something out of the role, but that something wasn’t pretty. In the movie’s defense, there’s a bizarre moment dead in the middle where Mila Kunis must go through Gilliam-esque space accounting to truly become a space princess, a sequence capped by Terry Gilliam himself wearing something straight out of BRAZIL. I dunno why the fuck it was there or necessary, but at least it distracted me from the movie’s godawful structure and painfully imagined sci-fi universe. The space dogfights were so overblown and particle-ridden, it made the TRANSFORMER movies look restrained. Next time, let the grown-ups write your script, Wachowskies.

CHAPPIE

Holy fuck, this was worse. Coupled with ELYSIUM, CHAPPIE was the one-two punch that killed Neil Blomkamp’s chances of directing an ALIEN movie and thank fucking God for that. CHAPPIE’s got an interesting premise: what if a sentiment machine chose the ghetto lifestyle rather than the generic white mentality we usually see in such films. The problem is, there’s absolutely no internal logic in the movie as Dev Patel and the members of Die Antwoord give Chappie conflicting advice resulting in actions that never seem appropriate or cause and effects that have even less logic. At one point, Hugh Jackman’s I’M A BAD GUY character pulls a gun on Patel’s I’M A GOOD GUY character in the middle of a crowded office then passes it off as a joke. Nobody bats an eye. Die Antwoord are Chappie’s unlikable caretakers and, apart from one comedic scene where they trick Chappie into stealing cars for them, they are abominable. The movie climaxes in separate sequences of urban warfare desperately aping –and pissing on- ROBOCOP, culminating in Chappie fighting a robot with a name that that Sigourney-fucking-Weaver has to sell credibly: “THE MOOSE!” Unoriginal, tone deaf, hateful, unintelligent, structureless, illogical, indulgent, pandering, and soulless, it is the absolute wrong way to make a movie about finding what makes us human. It’s an extra kick in the nuts because I LOVE transcendence stories.

So concludes my list for this year. My 2016 resolution? More indie and foreign movies!

Thanks for reading, you starved-for-something-better-to-do-masochists, you!