Blackmoor Vituperative

We watched “Incredible Hulk” (2008) and “Avengers” (2012) last night, as part of our attempt to watch all of the recent(ish) Marvel movies in the chronological order of the events in the movies. The Hulk movie was slightly out of order, because it took me a while to track it down — it’s not on Disney+, for some reason.

I enjoyed both movies. Hulk is an incredibly straightforward plot: Army general psychopath finds Hulk, attacks, people get hurt. Army general psychopath finds Hulk again, attacks, people get hurt. Army general psychopath finds Hulk a third time, attacks, people get hurt. I think professional wrestling has more complicated plots than that.

Avengers went the complete opposite direction. I think they based the plot on a quote from the philosopher Didactylos: “Things just happen. What the hell.” It did have a couple of scenes I love, where Black Widow uses people’s vanity and arrogance against them (and let’s face it — people that vain and arrogant are men almost all of the time), and gets them to start monologuing. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

It also has one of my favourite scenes of ordinary people defying power. (You have seen it, even if you’ve never seen the movie — it’s a meme. “There are always men like you.”)

And it has perhaps the most painful description of humanity I’ve ever heard. “They are unruly, and therefore cannot be ruled.” Because “unruly” is a two-edged sword.

“Unruly” means standing up to fascists, sure. But it also means storming the capitol building because you believe the lies of fascists. It means refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated because of ridiculous conspiracy theories. It means ignoring the effects that human activity has on the planet, while the world slowly burns.

I think we could afford to be a bit less unruly.

Oh, and “Captain Marvel” (2019) is better than I remember. I still think Brie Larson was hilariously mis-cast. Her acting style is incredibly subtle — and they cast her in a superhero movie. But it’s a pretty decent movie, and the supporting cast is great, even the kid. I think my expectations were just too high the first time I saw it.

Just watched the first episode of Titans. It’s an interesting take on the characters. Sort of a dark, low-budget alternate universe interpretation. It’s better than any of the trailers and promo material made it look. Even their version of Starfire is actually pretty interesting, despite the liberties they took with the character.

On one level, I wonder why they bothered calling this “Titans” when the characters are so different from their comicbook and cartoon counterparts. It’s the same thing I wonder about Star Trek Discovery. It’s not a bad show, but it’s so clearly not Star Trek — why bother trying to piggyback on the Star Trek name?

But I guess that answers my question. Even though they are pretty good, these shows wouldn’t have a fraction of the viewers if they didn’t have a recognized name plastered on them.

Update: Up to episode 7, the one where the bad guys are precognitive and the good guys are morons: two of my least favourite superhero tropes. The show is paused and I am debating whether to just stop here and add this to the growing list of genre TV shows I stopped watching midway through the first season.

Update: I gritted my teeth and got past the dumb part, and it got a bit better. This was the worst episode so far. Most of the show has actually been pretty good, so I’ll keep watching it.

In general, I think this is an interesting “alternate universe” take on the Teen Titans.

Incidentally, you know what this episode felt like? It felt like the suits didn’t like the way the show was going, and forced the writers to make a detour. The same shit happened to the 2007 “Bionic Woman” remake.

Suits, man. 🙁

Update: They’ve done a much better job with Hawk & Dove than they did with Cloak & Dagger. I bailed on Cloak & Dagger after six episodes, and I would not have gotten that far if I didn’t love the comic and kept hoping the show would get better.

Update: Episode 10. I’m just of kind of rolling my eyes at it now. It hasn’t gotten any better since things took a suckward turn at episode 7. I’ll let it play out while I am working, but I won’t be looking for a second season of this, if there is one.

Final update: And I’m done. That’s 11 hours I’d like to get back. Re-watching the Teen Titans cartoon would have been a better use of my time.

I am not a fan of Deadpool, the comicbook character. I think he makes any comic worse with his appearance. However, I have enjoyed the two Deadpool movies more than the last several non-Deadpool Marvel and DC (and Star Wars) movies.

Does that seem right to you?

Tonight’s entertainment was “Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut” (2009), which is basically the Director’s Cut spliced with a bunch of cartoons. I have two thoughts about this. First, it’s a good movie, and as far as I know, it’s the only good movie Zach Snyder has ever directed. Second, the cartoons added nothing, so if you have a choice between this and the Director’s Cut, choose the Director’s Cut.

It’s really hard to “promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate” when what you used to love (Star Wars, Star Trek, Mystery Science Theater 3000, mainstream superhero comics, etc.) has been turned into crap by people squeezing every last dime they can out of it.

sigh… But I’m trying. I really am.

Watched the Captain America movie from 1990 last night. You know, it really wasn’t all that different from the 2011 film. Yes, the 2011 film is better, but the 1990 film hits a lot of the same beats, and it has a good cast. It’s a lower budget film, but it’s certainly not a bad film. I haven’t seen it since I first saw it at the theatre in 1990 (YES, I DID), but to my surprise, I still like it. It still tickles me that the Red Skull’s minions are all beautiful young Italians.

FUN FACT! Darren McGavin plays an American General. The World War 2 era younger version of McGavin’s character is played by Bill Mumy. Danger, Karl Kolchak! Danger!

What the whole “sexism/harassment in gaming/conventions/comic shops” looks like to me…

Someone, we’ll call them Chris, says, “We need to do something about these precipices with no railings. People keep falling — or getting pushed — over the edge, and other folks are just standing around while it happens. If you see someone on the edge of a precipice, don’t just stand there: give them a hand. And maybe put some railings around these things.”

Then a handful of people show up wearing “RailingHate” t-shirts, shouting, “This is anti-precipice liberal hate speech! Precipices are not a problem!” And they start pushing people into the chasm.

Chris is horrified, and a little confused. “Seriously? You just pushed someone over that precipice!”

But the RailingHate crowd shouts, “That’s a lie! They dated a guy whose cousin worked across the street from a company that once made signs for a railing company! It’s a huge conspiracy!” And they push a couple more people over the precipice.

Chris says, “What are you doing?? Are you insane? Why are you doing that? Stop! Please stop!”

Meanwhile, the RailingHate crowd is grabbing people and tossing them into the precipice, while shouting, “There is no need for railings! No one is falling into these precipices — they just want attention! It’s all about ethics in building design!”

It’s the most weird, demented, surreal thing I have ever seen in real life.

Or to put it another way: “Eschew petty criticisms.”

I posted a comment on a YouTube video this morning, “helpfully” pointing out that the alien in Alien (and sequels) is a xenomorph, not the xenomorph — that any extraterrestrial encountered in that film’s universe is “a xenomorph”. It occurred to me that this is the modern version of telling people that Frankenstein is the scientist, and not the monster.

And then it occurred to me how incredibly annoying it is to be around someone who talks like this, pointing out petty errors or inconsistencies in movies, comics, or TV shows. I don’t care if Nightcrawler has face tattoos in the comicbooks. I don’t care if The Purple Man looked or acted anything like David Tennant in the comicbooks. I don’t care if Gal Godot’s Wonder Woman costume looks like the one in the comics.

And even if I do care a little, listening to that sort of thing annoys the hell out of me. So I am going to try, from now on, to not be someone who says that sort of thing. If I like a TV show or a movie, I will say that I like it, and I’ll say what I like about it. Other than that, I’m going to try to keep my mouth shut.

Superman reminds some kids how Americans are supposed to act.

A friend who has daughters shared with me this article about a guy who bought a Justice League board game to play with his daughter, only to find out there that there wasn’t a single female superhero in the game. Seriously?

I find it baffling that there are so few female characters in superhero movies, and that those few seem to get left out of the merchandising so often. I assume that women who like superheroes like female superheroes, and I know that guys like female superheroes (Black Widow was the best thing about the second Iron Man movie). So who is it at these marketing companies that keeps making the bone-head decision to drop Wasp from the Avengers but keep Hawkeye (a character so lame that he’s become the poster-child for ostensibly sexist comicbook art, overlooking the fact that any art with Hawkeye in it looks ridiculous), or to leave Gamorra out of the Guardians Of The Galaxy merchandise? We, the people who buy this stuff, totally dig the female characters (for different reasons maybe, but that’s okay). So who are the idiots in board rooms saying, “No, no, no! We can’t have Supergirl or Batgirl or Power Girl or Wonder Woman or Black Canary or Batwoman or Jade in this movie/game/poster/action figure set, that’s just crazy talk!”, and why are people still listening to them?

The board game story has a more or less upbeat (if not entirely happy) ending. Even so, the whole thing mystifies me, it truly does.