TRANSFORMERS 2: WHAT THE FUCK

DON'T FORGET: YOU PEOPLE ASKED FOR THIS

What happens when an auteur known for his excess is given all the money in the world and nobody ever thinks to tell him “Michael, I don’t think that’s a good idea?”

You get Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Transformers 2 has to be the most expensive film ever made, right? Considering how many things blow up and how 99% of the film is a special effect (including Megan Fox). It’s so expensive that everything is rendered in a gold hue. This is a 24-karat movie.

And don’t act surprised that it happened. All of us gave money to movies when we paid to see the first one, and sequels nowadays do nothing if not escalate matters. If there was a scene in Transformers where Michael Bay shot a minority point blank, the sequel would have had Michael Bay orchestrating the extermination of an entire race.

Remember, we gave him permission because we paid for the first one.

And I don’t even like the Transformers all that much.

FULL DISCLOSURE

Let’s be honest here: Transformers is a stupid movie based on toys. Oh, and there’s a cartoon or something. I hated the first one, for all I wanted was robots and explosions -- not robots hiding behind trees from easily crushable parents and a Spielbergian treasure hunt. The night I saw it, a friend of mine exclaimed it was the best film he had seen in a long time. I quickly turned around, left the theatre, and drove home alone.

Transformers 2 is about 30 to 40 minutes way too long. If you cut out some of the boring human parts in the latter hour of the film, I’d call it the best thing ever. As it is, I might still call it the best thing ever. Not the best movie ever, mind you. The best thing ever.

PAINTING OVER THE POSTER

Michael Bay’s best film is Bad Boys II. It’s where he perfected his cinema of excessive overindulgence, with a car chase that uses cadavers as obstacles hurled at our heroes and a third act that involves Martin Lawrence and Will Smith invading Cuba. I’m not joking. There’s some semblance of a plot (about drug dealers or something), but Bad Boys II is almost exclusively about set pieces, quips, and a complete disregard for all we hold dear. It’s so over-the-top that it’s clearly the work of a mad genius with a disregard for things like the three-act structure or emotion or even humanity.

Transformers 2 is even above that.

I cannot tell you what Transformers 2 is about. I don’t know who the new villain is or why he wants to blow up the sun with a laser hidden in a pyramid. I don’t know why Optimus Prime is the only robot that can defeat Robo-Pharaoh. I don’t know how a chase scene that began in a college moved to a torture scene at a warehouse and suddenly ended with a fight scene in the forest (you see, it’s like nature versus technology!). I don’t know what’s so important about all those weird symbols that Shia LeBeouf sees or why he doesn’t want his robot car to come to college with him. I don’t know why Tyrese or Josh Duhamel or even John Turturro are even in this movie.

None of it. Makes. Any. Sense.

When you give Michael Bay so much money to make a two-and-a-half hour film, don’t be surprised that the suburban family house explodes because it’s full of transforming kitchen appliances or that there’s a completely unnecessary scene where the mother accidentally eats pot brownies and goes apeshit. Don’t be surprised when the elderly English Transformer farts and a parachute POOFS out of his ass or when the family dogs are humping then the doghouse explodes. Definitely don’t be surprised when the tiny sidekick Decepticon starts humping Megan Fox’s leg or that there are like SIX sidekicks and five of them are ridiculous stereotypes. This is where Michael Bay’s perverse interests lie and giving him more money means that he just ups the ante on all of it.

There’s a scene where Shia LeBeouf is stricken with A Beautiful Mind and starts scrawling weird alien symbols all over his dorm room. His walls are adorned with posters of movies and half-naked supermodels. Which poster does he begin to paint over?

Bad Boys II.

SOME OF US STILL VIEW THE WORLD THIS WAY

Imagine you were born in -- Jesus Christ -- 1997. Kurt Cobain and Biggie are as irrelevant as classic rock. You never saw a good episode of The Simpsons. You’ve never known what it was like to grow up as an American feeling relatively safe under Clinton. Nay, while you were relatively conscious when planes flew into the World Trade Center (but you didn’t understand it) and as you rose through the ranks of elementary school, the adults kept talking about terrorism. Being a 12-year-old, you like robots and explosions and Spider-Man. Your cousins are probably getting limbs blown off in the Middle East (whatever that is) and you don’t really know why except that your parents and teachers tell you it’s for your freedom. Meanwhile Jack Bauer is punching Muslims on television. You just got your first hard-on and look on the internet for porn when Mom and Dad are asleep. All you know about other races is what you’ve seen on TV -- rap videos, sitcoms, those boring political dramas your parents watch. You stayed up late without your parents noticing and watched Species on the Sci-Fi Channel. All the while everything is a bomb waiting to kill you. Technology is a mystery. Even cars. What do you know? You can’t even drive yet.

Now you see Transformers 2. A film where household appliances turn into missile-shooting killing machines. Where geography makes no sense because you haven’t been anywhere. Where your best friend is your car-which-turns-into-a-robot. Where even the weird Italian stereotype robot wants to fuck Megan Fox. Where a robot made of construction equipment has wrecking balls for testicles. Where there’s a Decepticon with a murderous tongue tentacle who poses as a slutty college girl with no explanation or reason. Where the black stereotype robot has a gold tooth. Where the villain has a helmet like a Pharaoh and the Sun-Destroying-Laser is hidden in a pyramid in the desert. Where the bad guy wants to destroy the Sun for completely unknown reasons except for the fact that he’s evil. Where heaven is full of robots. And it all makes perfect fucking sense to you.

I submit to you, then, that Transformers 2 is a perfect depiction of a 12-year-old’s Freudian fever dream of what the world is, oversimplified with lots of juvenile dick jokes. The line dividing reality and cartoon doesn’t exist and things just happen because the world’s confusing and you don’t really understand cause and effect yet. And surely cars can turn into robots because you saw it on TV and science can do anything.

It’s the feeling I got watching James Bond films as a kid, where I didn’t understand why Agent 007 was traveling to five exotic locales in two-and-a-half hours but I knew who the bad guy was because he sat in a chair. Transformers 2 recreates that by completely lacking basic connective tissue. I don’t know what I watched, but I know I was amazed that it happened.

LOGGING INTO ROBOT HEAVEN: THE DEATH OF REALITY AND CINEMA

My nightmares from now on will be about what Transformers 3: Megatron Unleashed: Succumb to The Doom of Your Perceptions will be like. He put Earth in debt in order to make this film. How will he ever be able to top it? Will Transformers 3: God is a Decepticon be the film that bankrupts cinema?

Why does this keep happening? Why are summer films getting increasingly expensive and longer? I await the summer blockbuster that changes the way summer films are made. What is the film that will finally doom the form and make Hollywood collectively say “No, this will never happen again.” I’m betting on Transformers 3: Cannon Robo Overdrive.

Wikipedia tells me that Michael Bay keeps having trouble introducing a Transformer that turns into an aircraft carrier. Holy shit. Suggestion for next time: make The Moon a transformer.

Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly seemingly made Southland Tales to show his distaste for traditional Hollywood storytelling by making a borderline nonsensical film that only pretends to be some kind of socially conscious Phillip K. Dickian sci-fi piece but might just be either a brilliant piece of anti-cinema or a mess of pretentious wank. Or both.

Michael Bay did nearly the same thing, but with racial stereotypes and completely unintentional.

FURTHER READING

io9 reads {Transformers 2} as “a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot,” and I’m inclined to agree.

Devin Faraci on CHUD gives an objective criticism of the film, though I don’t think the film is interested in being an entertaining summer film. In fact, I don’t think the film is interested in existing in the traditional sense. I think it’s interested in existing in the same way that a tornado is. He also digs Bad Boys II.

DRUNKEN COMICS 002: I DUNNO WHICH HURTS MORE: MY LIVER OR MY BRAIN

I’m not gonna lie, Internet: this time it was Cactus Cooler with vodka in it. We’re calling it a Motorhome Mimosa. We bought Cactus Cooler months ago and only drank a couple of them, at which point we were startled to find out that it's just orange-pineapple soda with a cute name and not actually flavored like a cactus. It's tasty, though.


You guys think cactus juice isn't widely available due to a fear of accidentally drinking needles?


ULTIMATUM 004: MY BILE IS ON FIRE

(Loeb/Finch/Bin Laden)

For those of you lucky enough to not know what Ultimatum is, let me explain it so you can feel as bad as the rest of us: Jeph Loeb writes the Marvel Universe like an issue of Spawn. David Finch draws the Marvel Universe like an issue of Spawn, but an issue of Spawn drawn by David Finch.

Either way, it’s stupid. Stupid stupid stupid I hate it so much fuck you.

The plot: Magneto has some sort of evil plan because he’s a bad guy. In the process, lots of Marvel characters get killed in gruesome ways because that’s edgy and cool and it makes for cool poses where the hero holds his fallen comrade’s body in his arms like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold. This pose is LAME.

Page 6: Dormammu binds Doctor Strange in his own belt-scarf; Strange’s head swells and explodes like a John Carpenter flick but his body is left relatively intact. It’s a really sickening panel.

Yes, everyone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic book where a head a sploding is not entertaining, but off-putting.


Page 12: Nick Fury: It’d help if there were a ROSCOE’S on this Godforsaken planet.

Yes, everyone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic book where, amidst a planetary crisis, a black person bemoans the fact that he can’t get any chicken. Is this a fucking Jerry Bruckheimer movie? Goddamn.

A couple panels down: Nick Fury: I was wondering when you bungholes would show up.

Yes, everone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic book where a grown-ass man uses the word “Bunghole.”

Pages 19 - 20: Angel goes solo to attack the bad guys. Sabretooth bites off Angel’s wings and immediately gets an arrow in the eye.

Yes, everyone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic book where a shirtless Fabio thought he could take on the megalomaniacal bad guys all by himself and nobody questioned the stupidity of it.

Page 22: Thor-Girl lops off Magneto’s arm. Magneto’s reaction: “!”

Yes, everyone: Jeph Loeb wrote a comic wherein a Holocaust survivor makes a Metal Gear Solid reference.


Jeph Loeb is ruining comic books and we’re all letting this happen. We're the Germans who elected Hitler.

I’m not even talking about superhero comics. The ACTUAL MEDIUM is worse for Ultimatum existing.

Jeph Loeb's other recent atrocity was Ultimates 3. Read why Ultimates 3 #1 is the worst comic ever published by a major company.

SECRET SIX 009 & 110: MORE LIKE SECRET SEX

(Simone/Scott)

Secret Six is a sexy comic -- the only superhero comic that battles Uncanny X-Men in sexiness. I’ve talked about it before and I shall talk about it again. It’s sexy. Sex sex sex.

Issue #9 is a Battle for the Cowl crossover.

Fuck!


Despite this tie-in nonsense, it’s a great standalone issue that doesn’t require very much knowledge of a crossover I don’t care about. All you need to know: Batman died, everyone’s wondering who will take up the mantle. This issue also features an appearance from Nightwing, who for some reason has billy clubs like Daredevil… why exactly? I hate Nightwing.

Issue #10 is less fun, as its mostly sets up the next story arc, with the Secret Six working for slave traders, but it certainly makes for good drama. It also reveals how reader can continue to root for our “heroes” -- the villains have to be a hundred times worse.

Funny thing about Secret Six: it’s a comic where our “heroes” throw the heads of henchmen through windows to scare other henchmen, but this is acceptable and welcomed. Ultimatum, however, is a comic book where Doctor Strange’s head explodes, and it is largely unacceptable and vomit-inducing. Why is that?

We can attribute this to the fact that Ultimatum is a stupid, stupid comic and Secret Six is one of the best non-Grant Morrison superhero books being published today -- it’s entertaining and well-written with characters that jump off the page and are infinitely lovable despite the reprehensible things they do.

Sad state of superhero comics: the characters of Secret Six are more alive than other superhero characters -- they bicker, have sex, make mistakes, and backstab one another left and right. They’re more human than the Justice League of America… yet they’re the villains?


DEAD RUN 001: SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE PROBABLY

(Cosby/Nelson/Biagini/Romero[Uncredited]/Miller[Uncredited])

Review of the first four pages of Dead Run #1:

Dead Run is an exciting, fast-paced cars-meets-corpses comic where the Road Warrior jams a cigarette into the eye of a Zombie Barbarian (Zombarian?) as he runs it over. Badass.

The strongest part of the book is the expressive, frenetic, anime-inspired art by Francesco Biagini. Never before has a zombie motorcycle gang looked so runoverable or so stickcigarettesintheeyeable!


Review of the rest of Dead Run #1:

When this inevitably gets optioned by a Hollywood studio I’m going to be very very cross.

AIR 009: JUST TO GET THE TASTE OUT OF MY MOUTH

(Wilson/Perker)

See? I’m being diverse this time. Only two superhero titles, one whatever-the-hell-Dead-Run is, and one proper comic book where the only person who wears tights is a ballerina.

[Too bad I sobered up and forgot to finish this. I’ll do it utterly sober, totally rambling, and two weeks late. Fuck.]

Vertigo books worry me. Have you seen the monthly sales charts? Have you seen how much these things sell? Scalped will probably last because it’s got overwhelming support from critics and those readers-in-the-know. Ditto Northlanders and DMZ. The franchise books (Unknown Soldier, Madame Xanadu, House of Secrets) aren’t going anywhere until low sales decide they need to (see: Human Target). Fables is currently the longest running book, and people love it. The Unwritten might enjoy the same success. We’ll see.

Hellblazer, however, will never, ever go away.

Which leaves Air, which I assume is too weird for most readers to get into. It doesn’t have the immediately overt fantasy trappings of, say, Fables, but it’s not as real-world and gritty as Scalped. How do you even explain Air to someone? Fables is “All the fairy tale characters are real and interact with one another,” Scalped is “a crime drama taking place on an Indian reservation,” but what of Air? It’s about a flight attendant with a fear of flying who is caught between a terrorist organization and some mysterious good guys… or so it seems. Also, she’s capable of traveling between dimensions. It’s such a hard sell, and Vertigo’s other hard sell, Young Liars, has already been canceled. Is Air next?


I don’t remember what happened in the previous installment (my own lack of reading comprehension, I assure you), but #9 feels like one of those winding down episodes that you’d see at the end of a season of The Sopranos or Mad Men. There’s not a whole lot of adventure or excitement except that our heroine, Blythe, is carrying a device to hand off to the good-guys-who-might-be-the-bad-guys.

Air is about many things: religion, geography, technology, transdimensional aeronautics -- with post-9/11 concerns slathered all over -- but it’s also about airline travel (“airport hijinks,” as G. Willow Wilson herself deems it). This issue returns to that form as Blythe solves a fairly mundane airport problem (compared to previous issues) via lucky synchronicity and suddenly remembers that the world is a big complicated place where serendipitous things happen -- using the micro to see the macro.

Air is a good comic that’s shaping up to be a great comic. Wilson’s a bit of a newbie to the form professionally and each issue of Air is another installment of an artist honing her craft. Let’s be patient. It’s only nine issues in, for God’s sake.

It seems like Air’s been getting mixed reviews all over the place, which makes me wonder if we should rate a Vertigo book on the same standards that we rate a G.I. Joe comic. Do we praise a Transformers comic as being “okay for what it is” yet trash something more ambitious like Air for its failings? Does one of the few comics with a non-exploited female hero deserve a bit of a pass on principle? We need more Airs, and less… everything else.

COMIC STUDY 001: NORTHLANDERS #17 (Wood/Lolos)

I’M A SUCKA FOR THEM MOJITOS

Read the first issue of Northlanders here.

Jesus Fucking Christ -- I just HAD to get drunk and talk about a bunch of superhero comics (and The Unwritten), didn’t I? Why didn’t I down a Mojito and wax on about American Virgin, Chris Ware, and the validity of minicomics? A startling lack of mint leaves in the house, for one thing.

Don’t worry, though: I’ll make up for it right now and spend an entire blog post talking about a single comic: Northlanders #17 by Brian Wood and Vasilis Lolos. It’s a Vertigo book about Vikings. I haven’t read any of it until now but critics and readers rave and this particular issue has been buzzing on the ‘net as a great little standalone issue.

Also, this one’s about two Vikings beating the mead out of one another.

Sounds like it was worth three bucks.

HINT: I HATE buying single issues.

HINT: I also realize that single issue sales keep books I like from getting cancelled.

HINT: I STILL hate buying single issues.

HINT: Can we please change this shit?

Oh, right. The cover.

[Takes break to search Google photos of cool, refreshing Mojitos. Finds a recipe for Mojitos and makes a solemn vow.]

MJOLNIR’S GEOMETRY OR “I THINK I JUST THREW MYSELF INTO AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS”

The cover of Northlanders #17, “The Viking Art of Single Combat,” perfectly represents the interior.

First of all, proof that a lack of background does not equal bad art*. Imagine how busy that would look if there were mountains and Valhalla and guitars behind the sharp object swinging.

*See also: Katsuhiro Otomo

You’ve got two blood-spattered Vikings about to SMASH CLANK CRUNCH one another, beautifully rendered by Massimo Carnevale, which I assume is not his real name but an awesome nom de comik. If it weren’t for the warm-yet-muted palette, it could easily be an awesome ‘70s four-color Jim Aparo cover or something. On its own the cover’s fine, but what really makes it great is the layer of diagrams describing every detail of this one action pose -- the pivoting torso, the trajectory of the sword, the weight of the axe.

There’s a lot to look at, just on the cover. You can go over every detail, every arrow, line, and label in the diagram layer, or just step back enjoy the two figures about the tear one another in half.

Ditto for the interior.

It’s almost a representation for the scripted creation of art itself. We writers can put all this Alan Moorish detail into what goes into a single panel -- how many lights are on in which building, what constellation it’s meant to represent, the number of sweat drops on a character’s forehead directly proportional to her distress, whether her unders are matching colors (and what this says about her personality as expressed through her lifted eyebrow) and by god! This is art and it’s serious business! Can’t you see how much choreography went into this scene! Do you realize how much research we put into getting every detail of the period correct?

Meanwhile the reader will just glance, think “Cool” (if you’re lucky) and turn the page.

And you know what? The artist did MOST of the work there. Stupid writers, claiming all the credit.

You, see, that diagram is a script -- essential to building the art below (okay, let’s just pretend even if it isn’t). Remove the diagram, and you still have the art and a cool cover. Remove the art, and you have a bunch of arrows and lines. Still, it represents the art, and that counts for something, right? It took a lot of work for someone to think about. And write down. And tell someone else to draw.

THIS is why aspiring comic book writers outnumber aspiring comic book artists.

NOW LET’S READ THE DAMN THING

There are three ways you can read Northlanders #17. I suggest you go through each way and enjoy a different experience each time.

You can follow along with me if you like.

#1: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF PUNCH VIKINGS AS TOLD TO ALEX HALEY

Let’s read just the words. Yes, you can do this. Mostly. It’s harder than it seems. A good comic has art that draws your eye. This is a good comic, of course, but try not to look at the pictures. Just this one time for me.

Look, I even drew arrows so you can follow along. I don't do that for just anyone.

The captions don’t hold up incredibly well by themselves, nor were they meant to. They have more substance than the diagram stuff on the cover, making for a conversational account of feuds and Viking life. They fare best when they’re not specifically commenting on what’s going on in the panel. When they do, they really need the art. They were written that way, so it’s unfair to judge thus far. The point of this is to realize how the words and the pictures interact, anyway.


#2: PUNCH VIKINGS: THE NEW ADVENTURES

This one’s the easy part: just look at the pretty pictures and maybe the word balloons, since there are only a few, most of which are ejaculations: “Fucker,” “Argh,” and so forth. Those play more a bit more directly into the story than the captions do.

Ah, how easy it is to read through a comic and pay minimal attention to the art. Let’s rectify this oversight right now.

POW BAM ART SWOOSH! This thing reads FAST. How incredibly awesome is Vasilis Lolos’ art? Really incredibly awesome, right? He brings this wonderfully kinetic manga sensibility that feels like Brian Lee O’Malley gone all ugly.

My favorite part is how Lolos depicts motion. His sword swings and punches disappear in motion blur via thick speed lines. It’s not bad art -- they just move faster than he can draw them.

Lolos loves his jagged lines. He uses them for everything in this issue: as motion lines, to create impact bursts -- he even makes sound effects with them!

To evoke another Western mangaesque creator published by Oni Press, I get the same feeling from Lolos’ art that I get from Corey Lewis -- nosebleed-inducing freneticism. Pray he continues to get work.

#3: PUNCH VIKINGS IN STEREO


Okay, let’s try reading it like a real comic. Y’know, the kind with words and pictures that interact even though the words and pictures in this issue only sort of indirectly interact.

Here’s the basic premise: two Vikings from feuding clans duel while the numerous caption boxes give us the background of the fight, some Viking quotes, and details the finer nuances of two Vikings CLANG CLANG CRUNCHing one another: the incident that made Egil Sleggja turn from a dick-waving warrior into a morose punchbastard, the rules they no longer follow, and the usefulness of a dagger.

It’s a bit of a struggle to read, as the captions demand a pacing that clashes with the hyperkinetic art. The drawings beg to be read swift as a shot arrow but the captions want you to take your damn time. It’s for your own good, you know.

It’s a ripping good fight comic, this issue, but it’s so much more than that. The narration gives us reason. Why fight for your lord? What’s at stake? Why not retreat? It seems banal the way I put it but it’s a consideration most of us with our cushioned seats and our newfangled “recorded music” don’t think about. We Americans have a volunteer army that can fight our battles. Our landlord can’t make us go raid the neighbor’s house. I can drink tea and write about a comic book and dream about cool, refreshing Mojitos.

While you might argue that the narration Claremonts (yes, that’s a verb) the whole thing, you might also be wrong. It supplements and enhances the art, yes, but it’s also essential to the book’s enjoyment. This is best seen in the ending of the story. Reading just the art, it’s a bit of an abrupt ending. The battle reaches its climax, and that’s the end. A sad, pastoral scene with birds flying around and bodies in the sand. The narration, however, provides a final quote gives it meaning: this is the end of the story for these characters, but not the end of the story at large. It’s unsure about the future -- a question mark at the end of a mere vignette within the epic of humanity. Like the ending of Battlestar Galactica*.

*This is not up for discussion.

LETS TALK ABOUT OUR FEELINGS OR “THE ANNOTATED PUNCH VIKINGS”

I don’t necessarily think that this comic was meant to be read each of the three ways (especially not the second), but the execution of the issue allows for a study of the interaction of text and art. The script needs the art, but does the art need the script? Not necessarily. Granted, Northlanders is a writer-driven series and without the script the art wouldn’t exist, but gimme a break -- I’m making a point here.

Inevitably, “The Viking Art of Single Combat” is a fierce little fight comic (oh, the PUNCH KICK CLANG!) with a smart use of the narrative captions that enhance rather than muddle the story. Too often do comics simply use them as less-fun versions of thought bubbles (I’m looking your way, Justice League of America) or (to a lesser extent these days) describe what the art is already doing (I’m looking your way, Claremont/Byrne-era Uncanny X-Men). Jesus Christ, I wish I could make comparisons that aren’t superhero books.

Lately, I’ve taken to skipping captions entirely, at least in superhero comics*. They’re largely irrelevant and big fluffy wastes of the reader’s time. Imagine a Jackie Chan movie where you suddenly get audio commentary from Jackie’s brain every fight scene**. Who cares what Nightwing has to say during this particular brawl? Who cares what Nightwing has to say ever? Who cares about Nightwing***?

I say thee nay. I care about Vikings.

*I’ve also lately taken to skipping most superhero comics entirely, but that’s what a tangent sounds like if this weren’t at the end of an essay.

**Actually, this sounds like a great idea. JCVD better watch out.

***Devin Grayson and Chuck Dixon excluded.

Drunken Comics #1: For You I Do This

I drink a salty dog (with vodka, not gin), read comics, and wax wax wax:

THE UNWRITTEN #1: WHAT IS IT WITH COMICS AND BORING ANALOGUES

Marvel proved with Squadron Supreme back in the ‘60s that you can use characters you don’t own if you create an approximation of the character you intend to steal. Watchmen did this in a smart way by having characters that only vaguely resembled the characters Moore was trying to evoke and ultimately felt starkly original because he’s a brilliant writer. Warren Ellis did this in The Authority by making the Batman and Superman characters gay lovers. They soon flourished and are themselves distinct except when crappy writers are on the book.

The Unwritten, on the other hand, uses obvious analogues of Harry Potter… why, exactly?

The premise of The Unwritten -- kid grows up as the inspiration for his father’s fantasy novels, may or may not be a fictional character come to life -- is brilliant. For some reason -- and the script acknowledges this -- it’s a total rip-off of Harry Potter complete with sidekicks and the anemic Max Shreck villain.

My only hope is that there’s something to the derivativeness. Imagine you find out you’re a fictional character. Someone dreamt you up on a typewriter. How would you feel if you were also unoriginal?

It’s an existential issue Peter Milligan would explore, but Peter Milligan isn’t writing The Unwritten. Maybe Mike Carey will address it. Don't screw this up.

Regardless, you should buy the first issue of The Unwritten because it's only a dollar.

ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VS HULK #6: SCREW YOU WILLINGHAM

It’s just occurred to me: Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk -- with its harems and in-half-rippings and its delectable Gammahulksex -- is exactly the kind of comic book that stupid Bill Willingham warned us of in that ridiculous column about “superhero decadence” that I made fun of. Quite frankly, I don’t give a shit about morality and fictional characters as role models. I want Wolverine saying things like “So help me God, I’ll turn you into coleslaw, you green bitch” and “I’m a mutant… I’m on humanity’s shit list.”

Bring it on.

My favorite part of Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk is the Hulk/She-Hulk sex. Not only is it appealing in a strictly base pornographic way (HELL YES MONSTERS FUCKING), but the sexuality of a character like She-Hulk is something that warrants examination. She’s Amazonian in a way that Wonder Woman is not (for a Warrior Princess, Wondie’s kind of delicate and feminine, huh?), and her skin is GREEN. GREEN. She’s a muscley nonwhite woman, yet she’s got serious staying power. I attribute it to latent homosexuality amongst fanboys.

The penultimate page is laid out in a 4-tiered, 12-panel grid. Funny thing about 12-panel grids -- they’re economical in that you can put a ton of information on one page (Part 3 of The Dark Knight Strikes again uses like 24-panel grids) but there’s something mechanical about having 12 panels of repeating size and shape.

Look at Panel 1, wherein Hulk grabs Nick Fury. Why is this presented in the same manner as a talking head (Panel 9) and Nick Fury mounting a horse (Panel 11)? If anything, the physical threat to the character should be bigger than a bunch of panels of people talking.

Unless you’re doing an Alan Moore circa Watchmen thing and giving every frame of the book the same treatment (and thus making the REALLY big moments matter).

Also, the last line in the issue is pretty funny.

THE LAST DAYS OF ANIMAL MAN #1: AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED PETER MILLIGAN SAID THE LAST WORD ON THIS ONE

My basic rule for superhero comics: if I’m not interested on Page 1, I’m not interested in reading the rest of it.

I was not interested on Page 1 of The Last Days of Animal Man.

Flipping through it, however, the art stood out. What initially bugged me about Grant Morrison’s brilliant run of Animal Man was how Chas Truog’s interiors never quite held up compared to Brian Bolland’s covers (I've sense gotten over this silly bias). Chris Batista’s linework seems an attempt to appropriate Bolland’s style, but a lot of his character renditions evoke Kevin Maguire -- the master of facial expressions. I’d love to see him on a quality book.

I gotta say, though, that the design of the villain on that page is so lame that it HAS to be intentional.

Anyone else noticing this trend of DC hiring older writers to work on weird fill-in stuff? You’ve got Len Wein on Justice League of America, Jerry Ordway on Justice Society of America, and Gerry Conway on Last Days of Animal Man. This isn’t a point, just an observation.

CROSSED #5: SHIT’S FUCKED UP

The Zombie Craze in comics is on its way out in favor of incessant Obama covers. People still love The Walking Dead, but that’s because it’s a quality book. My hypothesis is that most zombie comics suck because they pull their punches. To write zombies you have to be not only a total bastard, but a sick fuck.

Guess why Garth Ennis is the perfect candidate to write a zombie comic.

Ennis is less interested in sociology and psychology as Robert Kirkman is, but he manages to out-mean 28 Days Later not only in zombie violence, but in human atrocity. Wisely, he has his infected people talk, and they say the most heinous things imaginable.

Crossed #5, unlike previous chapters, is mostly character interaction and minimal actual violence. Oh, right: also, Garth Ennis is capable of restraint when he wants to be.

Garth Ennis is a mean man.

UNCANNY X-MEN #510: REKINDLING THE FLAME OR

I know Matt Fraction’s Uncanny X-Men is great because CBR’s Hannibal Tabu hates it. He hates everything good and proper and always gives glowing reviews of Transformers comics. He is what’s wrong with comics.

Uncanny X-Men is what’s right with comics.

Ignore that it’s a superhero comic with a painfully convoluted history -- or is that the appeal of X-Men? No it isn’t, I say. It’s about pathos and identification and everybody loves Wolverine. GRAAR SNIKT SNIKT

Fuck that, you don’t need to know anything about the X-Men to enjoy this. You’ve got the super-X-headquarters under siege. You’ve got a chick with a purple energy mind knife! There’s a chick with six arms! And swords! Beast drinking a coffee! Wit! Cyclops doing stuff!

Also, Greg Land’s art is a bit dynamic than usual. He’ll be a great artist yet if we keep making him render fight scenes. And stop swiping from magazine covers. Models = maybe not the best source to base human characters on.

Thanks Matt.

Television: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

I've seen quite a bit of important/interesting television the past few days. Now I want to talk about them.

I'd talk about Kings, but the damn thing is two episodes in. Let's wait until I have more to say about it, shall we?

DOLLHOUSE: OKAY, HERE'S THE BIT YOU'VE BEEN BEGGING FOR

Remember when you heard that Joss Whedon was making another TV series? Remember all the expectations and preconceived notions you had about it? Remember how you thought of how much you loved Buffy, Angel, and Firefly?

The disappointment with the first episode of Dollhouse is pretty well-known. It promises a formulaic "mission of the week" style show, as glossy and lifeless as the mindless Dolls it employs -- more CSI: Miami than Firefly.

While increasing numbers gave up or cried betrayal with each episode, I insisted it was getting better. Each subsequent episode had a bit more personality, more focus on the non-dolls, more overarching plot. Still, it was an episodic "mission of the week" show.

With Episode 6, "Man on the Street," we're finally given the show we deserve. The promos promised the usual bits to make sure we watch: "Things will never be the same" in "an episode you'll never forget" and the like. Turns out the promos did not lie. There aren't any "mission of the week"-style proceedings. Instead, there's lots of Tahmoh Penikett, the cuddliest superhuman on television (except maybe Greg Grunberg). Patton Oswalt as a billionaire entrepreneur in a role with a surprising amount of poignancy. People find out things and expectations are blown apart. It's good television.

My knee-jerk reaction is to say that something like this should have been the first episode, but I know better than to listen to my knees (see: my piece on Battlestar Galactica below).

Whedon has deemed the first seven episodes as "The Seven Pilots," meaning that each one has to sell the challenging premise of the show to keep people watching. However, this episode is a break in the formula of the other episodes; it almost needs rigid structure of the previous episodes to qualify it. With an established formula, the break in this episode is all the more powerful.

Better yet, with each new episode we watch the show come alive and display more personality -- just like the dolls.

Clever move, Joss. Why did I ever doubt you?

BREAKING BAD: METH-HEAD IN THE MIDDLE

Five episodes in, and I already know what Breaking Bad is about.

It's about the human body.

Walter White lives a relatively healthy life style. He doesn't smoke, nor does he drink very much. He's depicted eating veggie bacon for breakfast. Despite all this, Walter has lung cancer, an atrocity of the body where cells just rapidly grow without rhyme or reason, an unfortunate glitch in the body's programming. Cells meaninglessly dividing to no end whatsoever.

His wife, Skyler, is pregnant. Cells are rapidly growing in her as well, but these cells are focused, meaningful: They make up a human being.

Their teenaged son, Walter Jr., has Cerebral Palsy. His mind is as sound as a teenager's can be, but his body requires the use of crutches.

Walter's brother-in-law, Hank, is a DEA agent -- a job that requires the control of the substances that people put in their bodies. He's bald and carries a huge beer gut, but is more vigorous than the milquetoast Walter, who is thin and has a full head of hair.

Jesse Pinkman is a stoner burnout who poisons his body with various kinds of smoke and booze. His body is ruined, his brain can never truly recover.

Together, Walter and Jesse cook crystal meth, that awful drug that makes your teeth fall out and sucks away the very joie de vivre from its users. Walter, being a Chemistry genius, creates the purest, most potent form of crystal meth.

When they kill a man, Walter decides that the best method of disposing of the body is dissolving it with hydrofluoric acid, which can eat through glass and metal. Jesse, in preparing to lug the corpse up the stairs, tries to convince himself it's only a piece of meat.

The disposal juxtaposed with flashbacks of Walter in his younger days trying to figure out the elements that make up the human body, only to come up short by a fraction of a percent.

Bodies in a state of destruction creating something that destroys other bodies.

Is AMC the new HBO?

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: SORRY, YOU WERE ALL WRONG

It's weird to think of the praise being heaped a show called Battlestar Galactica, considering but a few years ago the brand was known for being a cheesy cash-in on the Star Wars craze. Admit it.

The reimagining of Battlestar Galactica, however was something completely different. More than just a space opera, it was politically relevant and full of wonderful grays to make us question our characters at every move and, more importantly, make the characters question themselves. It asked hard questions about human nature and even the nature of God(s) while giving us military intrigue and the occasional space battle.

Now it's over.

Eschewing vagueness (okay, mostly), Ronald Moore and his writers brought us everything we could want in a Battlestar Galactica finale.

We have a definitive final battle with the Cylons -- a last-ditch effort for the crew of the Galactica and for the ship herself. And it's exciting. More than a space opera adventure trope, the big final battle felt exactly that: big and final. Much of the series was spent on outrunning Cylon forces and dealing with human politics on the run. The brilliant final space battle was the show's gift to us for sticking with them for four seasons. Because so rarely did it happen, it had maximum impact on the viewer. This was going to be it.

And, most importantly of all, we were given an ending.

Spaceships being a trope of speculative fiction, I always figured that the best way to subvert audience expectation would be to have the fleet arrive at Earth in our past. I imagined our reluctant heroes crash landing in one of the Thirteen American Colonies or enslaving the Hebrews in Egypt and giving the Greeks the names that have become myth -- Apollo, Athena, Hera -- those fearful gods that were so unmistakably human in their actions. Made sense.

Then they found Earth a desolate, smoking ruin, uninhabitable due to radiation. They had created their own Cylons and died for it. A brilliant twist in the quest for Earth. If Battlestar Galactica had ended there, it would have been truly cemented as the ballsiest show on television. On a medium known for being just filler necessitated by the need for commercials, Battlestar Galactica would have been remembered as a miserable, nihilistic thing: the tragedy of living in a world without the simplicity of The Force.

Ronald Moore had other plans for us, however.

He gave us a concrete ending: they find Earth, the real Earth, a fresh, unsullied planet where the indigenous humanoids haven't even developed a proper language yet. Pretty much the ending I predicted. It was not making me feel vindicated, but disappointed. I wanted my expectations subverted.

I didn't have enough faith, it seems.

For a moment, I thought I was being given what I feared: a Chariots of the Gods? ending where the Stone Age Spacemen use their technology to help advance the Earth humans -- an explanation for our existence today.

That's what they did. Sort of. Our heroes decide to shed all semblance of technology and start anew -- a tabula rasa for humanity. They disperse around the globe and send their spaceships into the Sun.

This whole thing ends perfectly: a nice little crane shot of William Adama looking out over creation.

But it's not over.

150,000 years later, the world is as we know it today. What we spent the whole series believing were the delusional manifestations of Cylon Number Six and Gaius Baltar are revealed to be something else and, Greek Chorus-style, muse about the nature of the supernatural deity and the trajectory of humanity. If humanity keeps creating artificial intelligence only to have it blow up in our faces and decimate us, what is the point of this never-ending cycle? Will this iteration of humanity break the cycle? We're only in the early stages of artificial intelligence, after all -- not quite near the technological singularity yet. What comes next? And what of God (who apparently doesn't appreciate that name) what are Its plans? An important question, as characters have been talking about The One God since the first episode. Why hasn't He/She/It/They broken the cycle? Is it even possible? Where are our answers?

It's an awkward epilogue to the series, more important conceptually than it is well-executed. But fuck it, I don't care about execution. I care about ideas. That's what Science Fiction is bloody about.

As a conceptual device, the epilogue is a brilliant move -- after seemingly answering all our questions, the show reveals that the big questions remain.

Imagine the series ending with the lovely crane shot of William Adama, having achieved his goal of finding humanity a home. It's a false ending. It concludes the characters, but not the story. It is a space opera ending for a show that is only ostensibly a space opera. It's the bloody Ewoks dancing around a fire, celebrating the love -- yub nub!

It's the perfect conclusion for William Adama, the black-and-white steadfast Captain of Humanity. I wouldn't be surprised if the original series' Adama had the same characterization. Like Rorschach, he's a simple character whose significance is qualified by his situation. When he's faced with betrayal, moral grays, and failure, he falls apart. He gets drunk and sputters on the floor of his quarters. For him to accomplish his main goal and then to sit and relax in his newly found Promised Land is the happy ending for him. From there, we know he lives out his days quietly in Paradise.

If I were given that ending and nothing else, I'd be sorely disappointed, with nothing to say about such a neat and tidy -- not to mention utterly, deceptively false -- ending. I'd think "What a nice ending. I'm going to watch The Prisoner now."

Salon's Laura Miller has this to say in her criticism of the ending:

They were racing around in a spaceship fleeing killer robots, yes, but the ambiguity of their circumstances made them so much more like us than 99 percent of the people on television. It made them seem so real. When they got their answers, they became finally and irrevocably fictional.

I agree... to an extent. They get their answers, yes, making them fictional (once the whole thing turns out to be a take on Creation, they kind of have to be -- they've served their purpose) but we don't get our answers.

Adama, Apollo, Starbuck, Helo, Athena, Hera, Tyrol, Baltar, Six, Tigh -- they're not the main characters of the story. The human race is.

Hence, the importance of the epilogue. Humanity is thriving, for now... but on what path are they headed? What is its destiny? It's a mystery.

It's not a question you can glean from the ending of the main narrative. What we get from that is the Spacemen landed on Earth... and made us! How wonderful. The End. Fade to credits.

No. It's not the end. It's a false ending.

They gave birth to us, but what happens next? We're still around. The story continues, the ending unknown.

The epilogue puts a firm question mark over the face of humanity -- a move perfectly in tune with the rest of Battlestar Galactica.

Tybalt Be Trippen

In college at the University of Florida, I was in this club called Student Upstart Films, where we had the best intentions of making student films and sometimes actually succeeded in making them. It was a rewarding club because I made friends and collaborated creatively and blah blah blah.

Every summer the club would hold this project called Upstart Global where every participant would write a script, trade them to shoot, and then trade the footage to edit. When done correctly, it would be this great collaborative effort and we'd see how other people interpret our work. It's a great idea for a project... if everyone follows through. They did not.

I was given a script from a former Upstart member who was living in California. The catch? It was written by one of her students. And it was a modernization of Romeo & Juliet. Hoo boy. I had written a half-baked post-apocalyptic love story that read like someone watched a few too many Wong Kar-Wai films and in return I got the inane writing of the 9th grader.

I did not despair, though. Okay, I despaired a little and then realized that I should shoot the thing as straight as I could and it would be the funniest thing I've ever done. It was indeed the funniest thing I've ever done, and the most effort I ever put in one of my movies.

Eventually, I handed over to my friend Natalie Andres to cut (after the person who I was assigned to give it to backed out on the effort), and the cut was done in 24 hours with Pixies songs as music cues -- a hurried thing to prepare for the public screening. Yeah, they showed it in public. Considering the work I did for it, I had to do my own cut.

Rewatching it today, I cringe at some of my technical faux pas, but a lot of the comedy makes up for it. At least, I think so.

Now I take a some time to praise the actors:

Particularly, I'm a fan of Adam Bowers' performance as Romeo, who for some reason I decided should look like Fabio.

Valerie Jones, one of the better actresses at UF, takes it as seriously as possible, and it's even funnier for that.

Bob O'Linn plays Tybalt. He's not a regular player in our collective work, and it's a shame he never came back for anything else, because he's really good, especially because of his accent, which evolves from hood to redneck in the span of a couple of scenes. It's beautiful.

Rafael Gaitan does his best/worst Tony Montana impression to play Juliet's Dad. Poor Asia Johnson has to contend with that kind of powerhouse performance, and she's pretty successful.

We can never forget Shaun Spalding as Mario, whose hilarious sprint away from danger might be the bit of footage I rewatched the most times.

Then there's my good friend Kevin McMurtrey, who splits his acting prowess in two to play two characters because I couldn't secure an actress to play Romeo's Mom.

For some reason I had the incomparable Chris Heck in a thankless role as Romeo's Dad, which is a shame, as that kid's got star power. It's okay, though: I made an entire short about trying to kill him, so I repaid the debt. In blood.

That guy who plays the English bobby really sucks, though. So does that Narrator.

Right. So here's Tybalt Be Trippen. Enjoy, despite the poor video quality (YOU SCREWED ME AGAIN GOOGLE VIDEO):

WATCH WATCHED WATCHES WATCHING WATCHMEN

(do excuse the weird blurry images below... I couldn't get the thumbnails to look right, so just click on them to see the nice full-size versions... gimme a break, it's nearly 2am)

LET’S JUST CUT THROUGH THE B.S. RIGHT HERE

For the purposes of this blog post I’m going to forgo any discussion of the book’s “sacred” meaning to me except that I’ve read the book a couple of times and I go between two positions on it: either it’s an awesome story of 1980s pessimism disguised as a grim little superhero comic (among so many other things) or it’s overrated and precious thanks to all those cute little devices Alan Moore thought clever at the time and that immediately sent him running away screaming. Or both. It can be both. Watchmen is a lot of things, isn’t it?

Now we have a movie people are abuzz about and “Watchmen” is the word on everyone’s lips; even people you’d never expect to be talking about it. Isn’t it lovely? Stop complaining.

To be honest, I don’t know what I expected from the film. At worst? Probably just some worthless mimetic thing like Sin City -- I like Sin City, but it’s the same exact fucking thing as the comic, so what’s the point save for the exercise of exact adaptation? At best? THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE, of course!

What did I think? I left the theatre in awe; I loved it, and it loved me back. It cradled me in its arms and touched me, both appropriately and inappropriately. It taught me things about my body and soul no anatomy class or spiritual advisor ever could.

All for ten bucks.


HERE’S WHAT I THINK OF WATCHMEN

A realization: at surface level, Alan Moore’s deconstructive theme of “These people run around in tights and punch people -- they must be severely fucked up, right?” seems a bit juvenile. Shocking he never tried to do a comic wherein Batman buggers Robin in the Batcave.

Good thing Moore has other things to say: Watchmen is full of mediations on existence, apocalypse, politics, and the general doldrums of the 1980s along with his meta-commentary on the way mainstream comic books are clogged with superhero books and precious little else.

That’s the wonderful thing about Watchmen. That’s why it’s wildly popular and went on to influence everyone who read it (for better or worse). Its ambition and complexity set it apart other superhero books and even some non-superhero books. You can read it a dozen times and notice something different each time.

You might even see a different book each time depending on what you choose to focus on. Look at the surface and it’s a ripping good superhero murder mystery/character study. You can see it as a meditation on the illusion of duality in morals. You can see it as a big dark comedy (as I did the last time I read it). Or you can just see it as paper with ink on it, for use as toilet paper in the imminent wasteland that will be The New Depression.

THEY SAID IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN

“Unadaptable,” my ass.

Fanboys need to stop acting like Watchmen is bloody Finnegan’s Wake. It’s a comic book with a plot you can describe between sips of coffee: superheroes have become illegal (see: The Incredibles) and someone’s mysteriously killing them (see: And Then There Were None, Friday the 13th). There’s some moral complexity (see: every noir ever made), relationship issues (see: Love Actually), a few people get punched (see: most movies), all leading to a climax where everything changes, followed by a denouement. The End.

Watchmen is not some impenetrable tome. Its only difficulty is that it meanders for like eight issues (granted, it’s some great meandering) before suddenly remembering there’s a plot to address.

Despite Alan Moore’s intentions, it’s not so contained within the comic page that it cannot break out. Now, Understanding Comics, that’s unadaptable.


IN WHICH I DISMISS MOVIE VS. BOOK CONVERSATIONS BY HAVING MY OWN

There’s nothing more insipid than discussing superficial differences between a book and a movie. To point out that the comic book Nite-Owl’s costume looks like a big puffy owl and that the movie Nite-Owl’s costume is a slim rubber bodysuit is irrelevant and obvious fanboy hatewank. Now, once we realize that the change underlines Nite-Owl as the obvious Batman homage he always was (Blue Beetle is only a fraction of the character) and puts the comic book’s meta-narrative about superheroes into a cinematic context, the discussion becomes far more interesting. Not what, but why.

An adaptation is pointless unless it brings something new to the work and interacts with the source material. My favorite example is A Clockwork Orange. The complete version of Anthony Burgess’ novel (with the ending that the US publisher originally omitted) has a completely different opinion on the matter of mind control than Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation, which omits the positive ending in favor of the shock ending of the penultimate chapter. Whether or not Kubrick even knew about the missing chapter (he did), its omission creates a dialogue between the book and the film due to its basic ideological disagreement.

What does Zack Snyder’s Watchmen do differently from Alan Moore’s Watchmen? “Different” in a way that is meaningful and worthy of discussion, I mean.


HERE’S A SEMI-TANGENT TO SET UP THE ANSWER

Slow motion: the point of contention for critics of Zack Snyder’s films.

I know you can’t do slo-mo in a comic book. One of the ongoing debates in comics scholarship is the portrayal of time in comics. Obviously, it depends on a writer and/or artist’s intent, but panel size is a good indicator.

Let’s keep it basic by talking about an action scene:

Imagine three pages, nine panels each, of average sized panels in sequence of a pair of Cyberninjas engaged in in hand-to-hand combat (stay with me on this). This establishes a rhythm for the reader to follow.

Now imagine those three pages followed by an epic two-page spread of one Cyberninja expelling a devastating laser beam from his fists and frying the other Cyberninja. The two-page spread disrupts the rhythm. It wants your eyes to take in the panel longer.

How do you do this in cinema? Slow motion. Okay.

People just think that’s Zack Snyder’s style: “annoying” slo-mo. It worked for 300 because most of Frank Miller’s big battle scenes are rendered in big panoramic spreads. Also, because they’re fucking awesome.


NOW HERE’S THE ANSWER

What does it do for Watchmen, besides apply the general rhythms of comic book panels to cinema?

Alan Moore’s Watchmen doesn’t spend a whole lot of time on action scenes. He’s placed his characters well into the real world, where capes get caught into doors and fights aren’t stylized and choreographed. Most action scenes to occur within Moore’s nine-panel grids and aren’t given splash pages or anything to put emphasis on them. Moore, a writer utterly sick of superheroes (yet one who insisted on continuing to write them for nearly 20 years after what should have been his last word on them), intentionally makes his characters un-super all the way down to their actions. Except Dr. Manhattan, but he’s an anomaly, so he doesn’t count.

Zack Snyder’s Watchmen doesn’t spend a whole lot of its nearly-three-hour runtime on fight scenes, either, but when it does, it’s a stylized affair with choreographed kung-fu and slow-motion. You may complain, but this is the language of cinematic superheroes. And I’m going to be honest: the action scenes are exciting.



What’s my conclusion? Watchmen the comic book is anti-superhero and Watchmen the movie is pro-superhero.

That sounds problematic to me, but I’m pro-superhero and I like Watchmen the comic (though I tend to agree with the book’s genre criticism). In fact, many of the people who love Watchmen are pro-superhero. After all, it influenced every superhero comic that followed.

Perhaps these people ignore the superhero criticism and take it as just an example of the superhero genre to deal with moral complexity and real-world grittiness. This was, of course, not Moore’s intent, but how much does author intent matter? Go read some Roland Barthes.

And perhaps this is assisted by the absence of the Tales of the Black Freighter segments that make up the comic’s most obvious meta-commentary.



IN WHICH I DISMISS THE SQUID VS. NUKES DEBATE BY ADDING TO IT

It’s the one bit the hardcore fanboys are complaining about.

Here’s why they’re wrong:

The big alien vagina monster is a fantastic expression of the psychosexual underbelly of superhero comics dropped right on top of New York, home of Spider-Man and every Marvel Comics superhero that Lee, Kirby, Ditko, et al saw outside their window. It makes for those devastating full-page spreads in the opening of Watchmen Chapter 12.

It works in the comics because in a superhero comic there’s always a chance of alien invasion.

Name one major superhero movie with aliens in it. Superman doesn’t count. Nor does Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, because you didn’t see it.

In a 1980s where everyone fears nuclear apocalypse from 
Russia and there’s a big blue naked pseudodeity called Dr. Manhattan blowing up people and giving them cancer, the ending of the film makes waaaay more sense than dropping a squid monster on New York City.

In this respect, Watchmen the film improves on Watchmen the comic book.

There, I said it. Now shut up.



WE CAN ALL AGREE THE BEST PART OF WATCHMEN

Everyone agrees: the credits sequence. Snyder did a similar thing in his Dawn of the Dead remake, showing the zombie apocalypse in full force via news headlines and archival news footage repackaged as zombie rampage, but his use of it in Watchmen blows his previous effort out of the water, to use a cliché that only makes me pleasantly think of of the climax from Jaws.

Sure, the film begins with a kung fu fight scene (like most films should -- let’s be honest) and manages to segue that into a history of the latter half of the Twentieth Century rendered in visually dense freeze-frames, accompanied by the music of Bob Dylan.

Let’s point that out: a big budget “mainstream” superhero movie begins with Bob Dylan. I don’t care that “The Times They Are a-Changin’” is obvious. It’s still brilliant.

Funny that we all think the best part of Watchmen the movie was an original Zack Snyder idea and nothing Alan Moore came up with, eh?


NOW HERE’S THE TRICK

It’s all a joke, as The Comedian says. That’s the bit the fanboys don’t realize, and that’s what Snyder gets:

Watchmen is a dark comedy. Blackest of the black. Darker than anything Garth Ennis could dream of.

Just look at the first page of the comic:

It opens on a joke. The panel-camera zooms out from the ground to a high-rise window and suddenly all the gravitas is deflated with an abrupt, mundane declaration. It’s a bit that I kind of regret isn’t in the movie, but Snyder does other things to clue you in.

The music cues are key.

He sets the climactic (heh) sex scene between Silk Spectre and Nite-Owl on the Owlship to “Hallelujah.” While that song is the most cliché song you could possibly use in a film, here’s what sets it apart:

1. Watchmen uses Leonard Cohen’s original version -- at this point a myth on the level of the Loch Ness Monster hidden beneath a sea of covers.

2. Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” plays over a scene of superheroes having sex in what basically amounts to The Batmobile. Then the Batmobile ejaculates fire. This is very funny.

It’s all ironic. The Comedian’s funeral is set to the most overtly depressing song on Earth: “The Sounds of Silence.” When Rorschach and Nite-Owl fly to Ozymandias’ Antarctic base for a final battle, Hendrix’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower” plays. I question the placement of this one, but suddenly we have Nena’s original German version of “99 Luftbaloons,” the ultimate bit of irony: a upbeat-sounding syth-pop song about nuclear destruction.

Then there’s the aforementioned “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” a mellow folk song that plays over a montage of superheroes getting killed.

It’s hilarious, and not in that “Frank Miller’s The Spirit” way. I mean it’s legitimately, intentionally funny.

Then there’s the very end. The damage has been done, the world is grasping at peace, and there it is, in a basket in the offices of the Conservative nutjob rag The New Frontiersman sits Rorschach’s journal. Cut to black and My Chemical Romance channels The Sex Pistols in covering Dylan’s “Desolation Row.”

The story leaves it to the reader to decide whether the entire effort has been in vain. Snyder has decided that Rorschach’s journal has ruined everything. “Desolation Row” is the exclamation point at the end of the joke.

Also, I really love My Chemical Romance. Shut it.




OH, THIS JUST RUINS EVERYTHING, DOESN’T IT?

History repeats itself. In the ‘80s Batman and Watchmen ruined superhero comics because creators all took the wrong examples from them and we got Spawn and all sorts of grim rubbish where superheroes kill because it’s an edgy, mature thing to do. Now, in cinema, The Dark Knight and Watchmen will no doubt convince studio execs that “dark” superhero stories are the way to go.

Not that there’s anything wrong with “dark” when we’re talking about Daredevil and Batman. But when it comes to bright sunny things like Superman and the Fantastic Four, it’s a horribly painful shoehorning motion.

Then again, maybe we need to define “dark” as “immature attempts to legitimize geekstuffs by making them ‘adult.’”

We don’t want our superhero movies to be “dark.” We want them to be GOOD.


SOMETHING VAGUELY RESEMBLING A CONCLUSION

I love Watchmen the movie. Granted, I need to see it a multiple times to truly appreciate it, but it’s a dense, rewarding film that doesn’t just feel like someone acted out the pages (see: the first couple Harry Potters, Sin City), but rather grows into its own experience while still feeling like the book it came from.

What do YOU think?

EDIT #1: See Mxy's comment on this post to explain the greatness of what I refer to as meandering.

EDIT #2: My friend Jesse Arost had this to say re: the Squid vs. Nukes debate:

I disagree with you about the ending. The threat of the Doc is comprehensible and even, eventually, actionable. The threat of the squid makes no fucking sense, and yet it happened.

I think the movie ending works, certainly--but one of my favorite parts about the comic is Moore's suggestion that the only way out of a perfectly logical Armageddon is... Read More total, manifest absurdity.

Personally, I love the absurdity angle he brings up, which gives me a new appreciation for the squid. Keep the comments coming!

Just another shameless plug

Up on Spectrum Culture is my review of Just Another Love Story.

Here's the opening paragraph, just for you:

Just Another Love Story is a film about a man who pretends to be someone else because he is unhappy with his own painfully domestic lifestyle. This masquerade should raise questions about that nature of identity and whether one can really become someone else and what tolls a double-life can take on a person's psyche. Maybe I read too many Peter Milligan comics, but those themes are far more interesting to me than the way Ole Bornedal uses the story as a mundane exploration of domestic anxiety. A guy is unhappy, so he cheats. Yawn.

Also up is a mini-festo on storytelling disguised as a review of David Gordon Green's Undertow by yours truly. I'll spare you an excerpt.

In other news this week:

HOLY SHIT FINAL CRISIS

Every other comic I've read this week has suffered in comparison. I'd love to write a piece on it, but bloggers like Mindless Ones do it way better than I could.

More than just plugs!

I've just finished (the first draft of) a screenplay. Can't divulge any details, but I can link you to my contribution to Spectrum Culture's article Five Years Later: The Best Films of 2003. It's really the next best thing.

This time I write about the brilliant Kill Bill Vol. 1 and base my entire blurb around a pivotal line of dialogue.

Extra features: my best films of 2003 list:

10. Bad Santa
9. Triplets of Belleville
8. Lost in Translation
7. American Splendor
6. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
5. 28 Days Later
4. Angels in America
3. Kill Bill Vol. 1
2. All the Real Girls
1. Hulk

Yes, Hulk. Shut up, it's way more interesting and daring than your stupid The Dark Knight.

Anyway, to make this post not a plug for other places, I'm going to talk about some recent comics of note:



Air #6:

I could not explain to you what Air is about other than that our protagonist is a flight attendant with a fear of heights who stumbles onto some big conspiracies. You're just going to have to read it for yourself. I'm not entirely sure I understand Air, but it's interesting.



Amazing Spider-Man #583:

The inaugural Obama cash-in issue (notice how I used the real cover and not the stunt variant), in which we're treated to an incredibly touching self-contained story by Mark Waid and Barry Kitson about Peter Parker's relationship with Betty Brant, notable for being Spider-Man's first girlfriend and my personal favorite, being a cute brunette. The Obama back-up story is pretty tacked-on and I shall not discuss it any further (I'm a fan of the big O, but c'mon).

REALIZATON: My favorite Spidey stories of recent years have been the romantic one-offs. A couple years ago there was a great little annual by Matt Fraction all about the relationship Peter Parker and Mary Jane.



Astonishing X-Men #28:

Warren Ellis probably writes his superhero books in his sleep (read: passed out when his body refuses to metabolize his steady supply of Red Bull and Whiskey) and devotes his waking hours to stuff that actually interests him. Regardless, his X-Men is better than most, featuring his trademark sardonic wit and fantastic art by Simone Bianchi that makes Astonishing X-Men look like something that would appear in Métal Hurlant.



Captain Britain and MI: 13 #9:

That this book hasn't been cancelled yet is a miracle. Let us pray it goes on.

Dark Avengers #1:

If I ran Marvel Comics, I would visit Mike Deodato and Salvadore Larocca in the middle of the night and threaten them with a pistol to never, ever draw a character to look like a celebrity ever again. It was bad enough that I had to deal with Deodato's "Tommy Lee Jones as Norman Osborn" in Thunderbolts, but now that Osborn is running around in modified Iron Man armor drawing him like Tommy Lee Jones is just stupid.

Also, I really hope Brian Michael Bendis utilizes Marvel Boy in a way befitting Grant Morrison's original comic. Marvel Boy was always a great millenial update of the Merry Marvel tradition: mean, anarchic dickheads with superpowers. It's more than a little disappointing to see the promise at the end of Marvel Boy unfulfilled.



Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3D #2:

Anytime someone tells me that Superman is a lame character, I want to give them the entire 12-issue run of All-Star Superman. Now I sort of want to give them Superman Beyond 3D, though it's nowhere near as accessible.

Here's how good this is: I read this comic in the middle of the night, alone in my room, with all the lights out, and I'm convinced it really happened.



Final Crisis #6:

Ignore the ignorant fanboys: Final Crisis is great. Go read it.

Batman: "Gotcha."

Brilliant.



Ghost Rider #31:

This book is better than it deserves to be. I have two hypotheses about Ghost Rider. First is that Ghost Rider works better as a painting on the side of someone's van than it does as a comic book. Jason Aaron, creator of the fantastic Scalped and current writer of Ghost Rider, has proven me wrong in this hypothesis. However, he has proven me right in this hypothesis: the worth of a Ghost Rider comic is directly proportional to the amount the titular character appears as the flamey-skull biker vs his non-flamey alter ego. This issue features a Green Lantern Corps of Ghost Riders, one of whom rides a fucking shark. Therefore, it is awesome.

Hellblazer #251:

We need more Peter Milligan comics. He's a great 1990s Vertigo writer who only seems to get work these days doing small freelance work for Marvel (Submariner: The Depths, some random Moon Knight one-shot). His Hellblazer debut won't set the world on fire, but it's solid and hopefully an indication that Milligan will be doing more comics for Vertigo (where he did most of his best work).



Mighty Avengers #21:

A nice little member recruitment issue/character study of Hank Pym. It might just be his costume, but Ant-Man might be one of my favorite Avengers (if I really had to choose). Based on only this issue, Dan Slott's run might prove to be better than Brian Michael Bendis' run, which petered out as soon as Frank Cho stopped drawing it.



Uncanny X-Men Annual #2:

An entire issue dedicated to Emma Frost, who has become one of the most fun X-people to read, as she pals around with The Hellfire Club and Prince Namor the Submariner. Because it's written by Matt Fraction, it's even better than it sounds. The art by Mitch Breitweiser and Daniel Acuña don't hurt, neither. Timothy Callahan points out in his Comic Book Resources review that it's "a prime example" of that superhero decadence that Bill Willingham objects to so much, and Fraction proves that decadence is a wonderful thing.

Okay, let's talk about The Spirit

Okay, I'm late to the party on this, but let's face it: I'm lazy about updating my blog. You're just going to have to live with that if we're going to make this relationship work.

I'll make this quick, and then throw the conversation over to you.

The Spirit is a mess.

There's no denying that. However, with any artistic mess, it should at least be an interesting one. I think The Spirit might qualify as an interesting mess.


Some things I didn't like:

Green Screen

Frank Miller learned the green screen technique from Robert Rodriguez on the set of their Sin City. Unfortunately, it appears as if Miller learned nothing else.

Hideous Visuals

The film gets off on the wrong foot with the SINK-FU fight scene. It feels more like Gabriel Macht and Sam Jackson throwing props at one another in a dark soundstage than a knock-down-drag-out fight in the swamp.

The tone

Are you Will Eisner whimsical or Frank Miller hard-boiled? I'd have loved to watch a film that captured the look and feel of a Will Eisner comic, but Frank Miller's attempts at lighthearted humor fall flat.

The Spirit feels like a guest star in his own movie.

I never really understood what The Spirit is. Superhero? Detective? Guy in a domino mask who fucks a lot of chicks (according to the trailer)? This movie doesn't help.



Okay, now some things I liked:

Gabriel Macht.

He's surprisingly good when the movie doesn't make him do the grumbly Frank Miller thing. If someone wants to make a more "faithful" version of the thing (worked for The Punisher), consider keeping him on board.

Select cast members.

Sarah Paulson (who irritated me on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) works rather well as The Spirit's will-they-or-won't-they girlfriend (someone put her in a pulp period piece immediately). Dan Lauria, the dad from The Wonder Years, is wonderfully surly as the commissioner.

Then there's Scarlet Johanssen as The Octopus' bored assistant, Silken Floss, who assists Sam Jackson in his evil schemes to pay for college. Shaun Spalding remarked that he wanted a movie entirely about that character. I'm inclined to agree.

The bits that feel distinctly Frank Miller.

It's no secret that I love Miller's style in all it's pulpy machismo glory. The Spirit has lots of that: the tough girl with the gigantic gun, the violent, dark humor. If you're going to put Frank Miller at the helm of a movie, I'd hope the final product would be done in his style. Only problem is that doing it to The Spirit feels... weird. I'd have rather Miller done something original and left The Spirit to someone else.

NAZIS!!!!

The bright red filling the screen in an otherwise dull gray movie. The absurdity of Sam Jackson in a Nazi uniform. Proof that Scarlet Johanssen should star in a remake of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. It's the best scene in the movie.

Discuss.

The Unborn: not a Japanese re-make(!)

My review for The Unborn, the new David S. Goyer teen scare movie, is online at Spectrum Culture.

In retrospect, it's maybe a teensy bit better than I admit to in the review (the scene I describe below is actually pretty freaky), especially in the face of all these J-horror remakes, but I think it's worth a watch for the film's gender politics.

So here's a sample:

Insects are ubiquitous, in life and in The Unborn. Our protagonist cracks open an egg for breakfast to find a gigantic bug in it. In the restroom of a dance club, the same bugs spill out of the toilet (and a strategically-placed glory hole) as giant, grabby insectoid legs burst through the walls. When the demon takes over her boyfriend, spider legs emerge from his mouth as a furry little monster attempts to birth itself from his face. Bugs are not only inherently icky, but used as a frightening intrusion of masculinity upon femininity.

I keep promising that article on The Spirit, but I haven't really the drive. Someone convince me it should be written.

In Which I Publicly Call Bullshit on Bill Willingham

Fables -- one of Vertigo’s few remaining long-running ongoing series and heir to the Sandman throne of beloved fantasy comics -- is a pretty good comic book, albeit one I lost track of after 12 issues or so. Fables creator Bill Willingham identifies himself as some manner of conservative, and really, there’s nothing wrong with that. You can probably read Fables and not get a sense of his politics, unlike, say, Dave Sim, Judd Winick, or Frank Miller. It’s not incredibly hard to enjoy work by someone who you politically disagrees with -- I love Rome and John Milius is a… well, just go watch Red Dawn and you’ll see what I mean.

In a recent editorial, Willingham decries what he calls “Superhero Decadence,” which he defines as:

...the slow but steady degradation of the American superhero over the years. The ’super’ is still there, more so than ever, but there seems to be a slow leak in the ‘hero’ part . . . Old fashioned ideals of courage and patriotism, backed by a deep virtue and unshakable code, seem to be… well, old fashioned.

Willingham provides few examples of this so-called “degradation,” presumably out of fear of calling out his contemporaries. He keeps it safe by criticizing Superman Returns (yawn) and, in what seems to be an attempt to drain all his credibility, cites Mark Millar’s tongue-in-cheek use of Captain America in The Ultimates as a POSITIVE example. He even goes as far as, in a foolish moment of self-congratulation, gushing about his contribution to “progress” by having Robin parachute into Afghanistan -- never mind that dropping an unarmed teenaged vigilante into an active war zone is retarded. Also murdering his credibility are the article’s commenters, irritated with all the non-white characters in their comics and confident that Belgium doesn’t produce any comic books.

Near the end of the editorial comes his vow:

From now on, when I write within the superhero genre I intend to do it right. And if I am ever again privileged to be allowed to write Superman, you can bet your sweet bootie that he’ll find the opportunity to bring back “and the American way,” to his famous credo.

There’s really nothing inherently wrong with his desire to return to the old model of the superhero as a boring, incorruptible cypher (except that it’s boring), but to claim to the masses it is the “right” way and to urge his fellow writers to do the same is idiotic. And for him to publicly announce it like he’s the only person who decided not to write a grim-and-gritty superhero comic is not only foolish, but a little late. The trend of making “realistic” superhero comics has been around for nearly 25 years, and you’re just now taking a stand?

Where were you when Batgirl was crippled and violated? Where were you when Superman died or Batman broke his back? You’ve stood idly by while writers with evil intentions struck terror into the hearts of fanboys by raping their childhoods.

Let’s face it: the 1990s are over, Image Comics has moved on, no superhero’s addicted to drugs, nobody reads Spawn anymore, and everybody hates Frank Miller. The trend is changing.

It is this paragraph that I find most offensive:

...not all comic stories are about superheroes. Comics are a medium, not a genre. There’s still plenty of room for gray areas, stories of moral ambiguity, and the eternal struggle of imperfect people trying to find their way in a bleak and indifferent world. I plan to continue all of that and more in my Fables series. But for me at least the superhero genre should be different, better, with higher standards, loftier ideals and a more virtuous — more American — point of view.

Now the beast rears its ugly head: it’s about patriotism. Huh?

So let me get this straight: if every superhero comic had the same exact strict adherence to morals, virtue, and patriotism, they would be “better” than non-superhero books?

Who is Willingham trying to inspire? Kids don’t read comics. People that do are approaching his age and look to comics for the same thing that they do with Hollywood blockbusters: entertainment. I look to art for entertainment, ideas about the world, inspiration for my own work, and a good laugh -- not patriotism and “lofty ideals.”

Maybe he’s right. Prominent writers like Dave Gibbons, Mark Millar, Neil Gaiman, Paul Cornell, Grant Morrison, Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, James Robinson, Paul Jenkins, Peter Milligan, and Warren Ellis should step up and make sure their superheroes act more American. Be more patriotic, people.


It’s not just the writers, though. Artists like Adi Granov, Jock, Darwyn Cooke, Renato Guedes, Frank Quitely, Ed Benes, Kaare Andrews, Ivan Reis, Bryan Hitch, and Marko Djurdjevic need to make sure their renditions of our favorite superheroes soar majestically, unwavering in the patriotism they share with their artists. Because, you know, all these people are American.

Funny that his description of “imperfect people” in a “bleak and indifferent world” sounds like every Marvel Comics story ever written. I guess they’re not superheroes because they’re not shining examples of morality and virtue like Superman -- who, by the way, was only originally conceived as a villain. As a hero, he was a New Deal Proletarian Hercules who fought social injustice in the Great Depression -- not Muslims and Commies.

Comic books are pop culture, which reflects -- guess what -- the culture. Superman fought slum lords in the Great Depression. Captain America (and just about everyone else) fought the Nazis and Japanese in World War II and nobody complained. Now, with rampant fear of terrorism and an unpopular, seemingly never-ending war that none of us could agree on to begin with, we’re stricken by cynicism, confusion, and moral ambiguity. We don’t pretend to live in a world of black and white absolutes anymore, so why should our “popular” fiction?

To demand on the planet Earth that an entire genre adhere to stupid simplicity is delusional. Imagine if someone said this about cinema in the 1970s: “Too many blacks, Chineses, and criminals. Where’s Gregory Peck?!”

Let’s not forget that superhero comics were the love child of pulp fiction and Greek mythology, both full of violence and questionable morality (especially Greek mythology, where God regularly comes down to father illegitimate children and the love goddess is born from another god’s castration), long before Seduction of the Innocent and the Senate hearings of the 1950s forced them to clean up their act.

Also, remember the last time comics had a specifically American point of view:



So, for the sake of concluding this (and not ending my little rant with racist images), I’m going to counter Mr. Willingham and vow to write whatever the hell I feel like writing (and I hope YOU do the same, too). If my characters (superpowered or otherwise) need to be drug-addicts with questionable morality, so they shall. If they need to be shining beacons of hope and virtue, they shall (albeit sparingly). Nothing should ever be put on a pedestal (especially not superheroes, for God’s sake), for idolatry leads to fanaticism -- evil, deluding, constricting, stifling fanaticism, strangling the fun out of life in favor of “correctness."

Just look at what Beatlemania has done.

REVIEW CAVALCADE

Oops! I went on vacation with limited internet access. It happens sometimes. Now I've got 10,000 e-mails to answer and loan sharks breaking the legs of my family members and associates. Good thing they started on the ones I don't like.

To tide you over until I get everything back in order, here's links to a bunch of crap I did for Spectrum Culture. Please read them and shower praise upon me, for I need it to blossom into a fully-realized human being and not the withered, hateful troll I am today.

FIVE YEARS LATER: THE BEST CDs of 2003, in which I write a pseudoliterate blurb about Her Majesty the Decemberists which, upon repetitive re-listening, is an awesome album that we all should be ashamed about ignoring in favor of the other ones. Here is a not-incredibly-literate sentence from that blurb:

No songwriter has read as many books as Colin Meloy has, and no (living) band sounds quite like The Decemberists.

I am not a music critic in the same way that many Pitchfork writers are not music critics. The difference is that I don't claim to be one, so my prose can be as purple as I want.

Some exclusive behind-the-scenes content: My Best Albums of 2003:

10. Super Furry Animals - Phantom Power
9. Grandaddy - Sumday
8. Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
7. The Decemberists - Her Majesty the Decemberists
6. Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastrophe Waitress
5. The Postal Service - Give Up
4. The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
3. The New Pornographers - Electric Version
2. Nada Surf - Let Go
1. Blur - Think Thank

Sure, that list is incredibly mainstream indie, but I love all those albums.

Here is my incredibly vaugue opening paragraph for my review of In The City of Sylvia. Did I love it? Did I hate it? Read the review to find out!

It's easy to forget that film is a visual medium before it is anything else. A screenwriter can whip up an engaging plot, fully developed characters, and enough high drama to bring moisture to Clint Eastwood's stubbly desert of a face and still find her name attached to wretched piece of cinema if the director lacks the vision and style needed to make the film literally worth watching.

I will spare you the mystery of guessing the outcome of my review for The Wrestler, because you should already know that I thought it was awesome without me telling you. But here's an excerpt:

The answer is yes.

That should pique your interest as you wonder just what the question was.


Let us assume you know nothing of the film Adam Resurrected, because I knew nothing about it until I was forced at gunpoint to watch it and write a review. I will tell you little about it here so that you can go read it on the site.

Okay, stop whining. Here's a blurb:

In the film's present, Goldblum makes the asylum's Nazi-like head nurse bark like a dog and roll around on the floor before taking her from behind.

Yes, you read that correctly. Unless you didn't, in which case I recommend taking a deep breath and rereading that sentence slowly, catching all the secrets that you didn't on the first pass.

I'd say to expect original content shortly, but I really want to keep you guessing. It's how I make you love me, right? That's what girls taught me, at least.

Promise I may not keep: I shall write about Frank Miller's Will Eisner's The Spirit. If you haven't seen it, please do because HOO BOY.

Review: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

Currently up on Spectrum Culture is my review for The Day the Earth Stood Still. Here's a snippet:

The world's about to end due to alien threat, buglike nanomachines are eating everything human in sight and nobody's getting even remotely cross with one another. As Kathy Bates (the obligatory pigheaded Secretary of Defense) denies Jennifer Connelly the chance to talk to alien Keanu Reeves out of destroying the world, I found myself getting frustrated -- not because it's just so obvious that Connelly is the only person who can save the day, but because Jennifer Connelly is so calmly adamant instead of telling Kathy Bates to fuck herself. To complain about a lack of humanity in a story about how human life is worth saving is not a good sign, is it?

Commentary: I never saw the original Day the Earth Stood Still. Not out of disinterest; I just haven't bothered to check it out yet.

I was all set for a nice 10:30am screening at a theatre within a relatively sane driving distance on a Tuesday. It would have been a lovely start to the day: walking around the outdoor mall, sitting through a painful film again (read: Australia), getting a falafel pita at the food court, and looking at pretty girls I don't have a chance with. Too bad I woke up AT 10:30. To make up for it (and boy did I feel terrible), I made 25 minute drive on a Thursday night to see a movie I was kind of dreading.

On the bright side:

1. Press seats make you feel special.

2. The Wolverine trailer looks kind of good. At least cinematographically (hint: not a word?).

3. The Watchmen trailer: still a thing of beauty. Shut up, it looks fabulous.

4. IMAX does not improve crap.

Not that they need the traffic, but CHUD.com's review of The Day the Earth Stood Still is even more venomous than mine.