Getting Real on Super Heroes

1.  Super-Heroes Go To The Movies

There is no argument that Christopher Nolan reinvigorated the Batman movie franchise with two of the most excellent films to come to the big screen since Blade and Superman: The Movie.  Taking out the camp and taking the character and the worlds seriously was a huge step in doing what many comic fans and insiders said they should have been doing in the first place, otherwise any franchise runs the risk of ending up with a Batman & Robin or Superman: The Quest for Peace.  Often movie makes who take on Superheroes tend to make comments that gives the impression that they spend a lot of time in yoga classes learning to place their heads right up their asses, explaining the fault of a lot of the former failed attempts at bring beloved comic heroes to the big screen.  Tim Burton comes to mind as one of those head-planted-in-ass figures.  When he was asked if he read the comic he commented, "Do I look like the type to read a comic book?"  Beetle Juice and Edward Scissorhands were such films grounded in reality that anyone in a coma could understand why the idea that Burton read a comic would be just silly.

Tim Burton aside, Hollywood began to learn it's lesson on keeping enough camp in any comic movie to make a boyscout jealous when Wesley Snipes and the Worchorski bothers paved the way with two high grossing movies grounded in super hero lore - one from a character so obscure only die-hard comic fans even knew who he was and the other movie an invention of the directors - well they invented the parts they didn't steal, that is.  X-Men hit theaters taking the ultra-popular series seriously and grossing more money then Famke Janssen has every seen in every movie she'd done before combined.  This began the Super-Hero movie explosion that in the beginning we all assumed would be a 15-minute of fame thing.  At the same time teen angst show king WB (which is now CW) decided Superman needed a new series and while the vocal minority that comprises internet whiners heaped hatred on the show and the lovely Kristen Kreuk, the show pulled in enough high ratings to make ten seasons.  The second comic boom was here and it was, in fact, televised.  Movies came and went, most made enough money to finance large nations, others were blips on the radar coming and going with the duration of UFO sightings.

2. Really Real? Really?

Saying Hollywood learned to take them seriously was half-right.  The obvious gross of your average comic-to-movie film will keep the super-hero movie coming for years, but the lesson of "taking them seriously" turned into "make them realistic" and that in and of itself is causing it's own headaches.  There may be something to the argument.  Fantastic Four went over the top Super-Hero, and while it didn't do as badly as nay-sayers wished, it didn't do the X-Men or Spider-Man or Batman bucks either.  Watchmen pretty much told the same story the comic did and was soundly beaten by Paul Blart Mall Cop.  Scott Pilgrim Vs the World was the graphic novel come life and it didn't make it didn't top the gross of today's concession stand.  (To be fair, our current deficit doesn't top the prices of today movie concession stands, but you get the idea.)  So it's an understandable argument to hold on to the idea of the realistic super hero movie. 

Batman Begins - $372,710,015 worldwide
X-Men - $296,339,527 worldwide
X-Men United - $407,711,549 worldwide
X-Men The Last Stand - $459,359,555  worldwide
Spider-Man - $821,708,551 worldwide
Spider-Man 2 - $783,766,341 worldwide
Spider-Man 3 - $890,871,626 Worldwide
Dark Knight - $1,001,921,825 worldwide

Impressive numbers, indeed.  So maybe there is something to injecting a little realism in Super-Hero movies.  After all didn't Marvel spend more then a few decades kicking DC's ass in comics when they came along and decided to inject realism and continuity into their books?

However, there is a flip side to this.  There comes a point when the argument gets more then a little stupid.   Injecting a little realism is okay, but when you start smoking too much weed in your success you begin to say things makes one wonder.  I'm talking specifically about Christopher Nolan and his take on the Batman franchise.  That weed is so good that fans, especially geeks, get a contact high and begin repeating a stupid argument without thinking about how stupid it actually is in the first place.

3.  Truth in Super Heroes.

When asked about villains many people thought the idea of a Clayface or a Mr. Freeze being in Nolan's Batman would not work because they were not realistic.   Because we have to have "human" villains in the movie to keep that "realism" flowing.  If that idea wasn't stupid enough, people went further with the idea that They can't include any references to Superman in Nolan's Batman because the idea of him wouldn't fit the realism.  And then everyone went back to smoking that bong and putting tin foil on their heads and the mothership picked them up for a trip around the galaxy.

Batman is about a billionaire, who used to be a millionaire, whose so messed up over his parent getting gunned down he puts on a suit, goes out at night and beats the crap out of criminals.  As time went on he's diverse group of villains the world has become familair with through the comic, the TV show and the various movie - the most famous of which being the Joker.  The 1960's TV show was highly popular and had Batman and comics stuck under an impression of Super-Heroes being about as clownish as Cesor Romero's portrayal of the Joker.  Not to mention the addition of Robin and an attack on comics in the 1950's, comics almost died as an industry and from the 1960's to the 1980's they were consider only for kids despite the fact that they were purchased by teenagers, adults and kids.

What made Batman a very popular character, aside from the name-recognition that came with the TV show is that in a universe of super powers he had no powers at all.  However the point is he is, in fact from a universe - or continuity - filled with super-powered individuals. Much of the same people who know Batman knows he occupies a world of super people.  A lot of comic fans think they are in a special kind of know because they believe they are the only ones who knows all the characters in the world Batman.  There a certain truth to this, but it's mostly an assumption.  Because comic collecting has always been grouped in with "Revenge of the Nerds."  What the fans of the comic forget is people generally know Batman live in the same universe as the Flash, Superman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Wonder Woman.  They know he's part of something called the Justice League.  They might not know that Starro was the League's first villain or that Green Lantern is a cop whose station house is a planet run by omnipotent smurfs.  But they do know that Batman is Bruce Wayne and Bruce Wayne lives in Gotham and Batman's main squeeze is a hot chick in a cat suit.

This is no put down on Nolan's movies, but the idea that adding a Clayface to them would be unrealistic is stupid.  The idea that letting it known that a Superman exists in Batman's world wouldn't fit the tone of the movies is equally dumb. Batman jumps off tall buildings, throws razor sharp bat shapes at people, uses his cape like a glider and wears a suit that is far from bullet proof and has a big ass cape but allows him to fight like Bruce Lee on steroids.  Just the fact a multi-billionaire can maintain the huge business interests the keeps him in his bat toys is far out there enough.  Yet, despite all of this - which, by the way, are all portrayed in the movie, the idea of a Clayface or Superman becomes too much?  That's just absurd.

As much as anyone would like to believe realism in super stories can only go but so far.  Once the hero survives a fall from 40 stories, or movies with perfect silence besides wearing a fucking armada on his body, you've crossed from realism to fantasy.  So no matter how great the Nolan films are, or how "grim and gritty" Frank Miller makes Batman, in the end he's a fantasy and in a fantasy it's possible to do anything as long as the quality of the production holds up. 

So give us a Superman, give us a Clayface or Mr. Freeze (sans the Arnold bullshit.)  Stop pretending you're being high-brow with a character that is no less real then a bloody Hobbit and pretend you have the talent to simply make it work.  I don't think that's so much to ask, do you?

Shooting Ouselves in the Foot With a Way-Back Bullet

Or, YOU KID'S GET ON MY LAWN

When you've lived long enough there are certain patterns that seem to play themselves out on a regular basis.  One of the modern patterns which manifests with the regularity of eating too much fiber daily, is the prediction of death and doom.  From the conspiracy theorist to the religious fanatic, predictions of doom come with more variety then a Halloween bag at the end of the night.  Do some research and see how many times Nostradamus has predicted some form of doom, from the death of an army ant to the fall a European Monarch.  With enough research you'll find Nostradamus to be a highly versatile predictor.  He'd make a fortune on reality TV today.

Pop culture geeks, who come in a wide variety of shape, sizes, colors and genre, predict doom almost as much as Michael Bay blows things up in his movies.   TV is dying, the movie business is dying, the comic business is dead, the internet is killing our ability to read - and so on.  Calling Pop Culture geeks self-defeating is as much an understatement as saying Lindsey Lohan might have a slight substance abuse problem. And these persistent predictions of death and doom to their much beloved Pop Culture is the culmination of years of pent up insecurity and a low sense of self worth given to them mostly by a larger society.  

The latest manifestation of this defeatist attitude comes from comedian  Patton Oswalt, in his article from Wired Magazine article entitled, "Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die" where he laments at great length about how modern day high speed information access sounds the death march for all things geek, or nerd or fanboy/fangirl - depending upon what handle you choose to place on it - culture.  Along with Mr. Oswalt's . specious POV, there are the reactions from various sights aimed at said geek culture.  From blog to message board you find a lot of fanboys and fangirls practically applauding the comedians observations.  It's no coincidence that all this agreement comes from geeks who are roughly Patton Oswalt's age - and he is 41 by the way. 

The biggest danger to geek culture in the past decade are, for the most part, the geeks themselves. Being a group with more passion and zeal then the villain on a daytime soap, they have graced the same high speed information highways, which is no longer limited to just that series of tubes that connect computers, with more vitriol the anyone on the outside could heap upon us.  Any visit to the Neworama Message board will make you feel so dirty that only a shower of Malt Liquor and Porn could make you feel cleaner.  Patton's article is an illustration of that vitriol, and the example of one of the glaring problem with geek culture - too many live with a gun perpetually aimed at their feet, and they are constantly pulling the trigger.

In days of old, we geeks were not bold and jocks were the perpectual enemy, we were represented at bottle bottom glasses wearing, too skinny and nasal challenge stereotypes whose entire purpose in life was to study math and science, fixate on games no one else would play, quote Tolkien with enough zeal to make sure the cheerleaders would lay everyone else in school but us, and only be the hero in the Revenge of the Nerd movie series.   It was a dark time when CGI was limited to half-assed sci-fi films, the best of which featured muppets chasing crystals or video games being the pathway to becoming space ship pilots.   Slasher films dominated the movie screens, Battlestar Galactica was consider anything but "good" or even low art, and the Terminator and Alien was the movie every other good genre film aspired to.   As the song says, "When I was young, I never needed anyone, making love was just for fun. . . those days are gone."

Patton Oswalt starts his semi-observational article as follows:  "I’m not a nerd. I used to be one, back 30 years ago when nerd meant something. I entered the ’80s immersed, variously, in science fiction, Dungeons & Dragons, and Stephen King. Except for the multiple-player aspect of D&D, these pursuits were not “passions from a common spring,” to quote Poe"  And he continues with, "When our coworkers nodded along to Springsteen and Madonna songs at the local Bennigan’s, my select friends and I would quietly trade out-of-context lines from Monty Python sketches—a thieves’ cant, a code language used for identification. We needed it, too, because the essence of our culture—our “escape hatch” culture—would begin to change in 1987."

Way-Back syndrome is not new.  In  fact, 40-something geeks suffer too much from Way-Back Syndrome.  Because of this, what we should be embracing we embrace with the same anger a Republican embraces a Democrat president.   For example:  When the last Star Trek TV show, Enterprise was announced, and they began to show some trailer clips, elder Star Trek fans complained that the ship looked too new, that is could not match the old Star Trek series because the special effects were better and the ship looked better then the  ship from the days when special effects amounted to wires and velvel curtain backgrounds.  It was as if they expected the show makers to drop all the new technology and go back to effects that were only good when most of America had black and white television and High Definition was still in the sperm and egg stage of being a reality.  Admittedly Enterprise turned out to be a disaster of Gigli perportions, the reasons for its failure was not because of the difference between the star ships.  However the point is that before it was known whether the show was good or not, Way Back Syndrome kicked in and Star Trek geeks were pissing all over the thing because it didn't match the old show. 

Patton Oswalt's article suffers from Way Back Syndrome, therefore is built on a foundation that forces flaws into it from the start.   Once upon a time we got around on horses, today it's with cars, planes and other forms of high speed transport.  Once upon a time business relied on what we now call the snail-mail system, today there is e-mail, video conferencing and iphones.  The old ways are gone, and until the overly predicted death of modern civilization, be it by zombie uprising or alien needing our women/water/bodies as batteries, we can not go back, and should not go back.

So what is it that threatens geek culture in our modern times?  Here's Mr.Oswalt's take:  "The problem with the Internet, however, is that it lets anyone become otaku about anything instantly. (Note:  the word otaku refers to people who have obsessive, minute interests—especially stuff like anime or videogames. It comes from a term for “someone else’s house”—otaku live in their own, enclosed worlds.)   In the ’80s, you couldn’t get up to speed on an entire genre in a weekend. You had to wait, month to month, for the issues of Watchmen to come out. We couldn’t BitTorrent the latest John Woo film or digitally download an entire decade’s worth of grunge or hip hop. Hell, there were a few weeks during the spring of 1991 when we couldn’t tell whether Nirvana or Tad would be the next band to break big. Imagine the terror!"

I am the generation after the Baby-Boomers, so in my childhood the adults railed at how TV would ruin the minds of youth and how once upon a time you never saw breasts in movies.  When I was working for New York University back in the late 1990's, a women roughly 15 years older then me said she didn't like the idea of the internet, as it would destroy social interaction between humans.  She felt that we would all become shut-ins, living in dark basements only chatting on AOL and Prodigy, never coming out to see the sun or have babies or even buy a pack of cigarettes.  It's 2011, nigh clubs are still here, babies are still being born - and made for that matter, colleges are having graduation ceremonies despite those mind-killing TV sets and people are still getting sun tans.   There are many valid criticisms to new technology, but the modern nature of said technologies is not one of them.

Wanting to keep Geek-Culture as underground as if is said to be, and  that in and of itself is debatable, is silly.  Who wants to go back to the days of Steve Urkle and pocket protectors.   That was in the day when computers were only those huge rectangles in the back of mad-scientist's labs.   Those days no one knew that one day Steve Urkle would be making 300k designing networks or owner of a multi-billion dollar media empire.  No one knew that the very things that made geek-culture underground would be the cool as hell fad that would last beyound Warhol's 15 minutes.   Once geek-culture was comedy fodder, now they have developed awesome new special effect technologies and that technology need geek culture to show itself off.  Once upon a time geek culture was a microcosmic slave to society, now geek culture defines society, it practically is society.   Instead of fighting this we should embrace it.  Patton Oswalt is wrong, this is not destroy geek-culture, it's bringing it together and making it grow.

Oswalt say that geek culture is being eroded by Etewaf- meaning "everything that ever was - available forever."  The availability of every obscure book, song and movie has somehow moved it away from that fleeting underground of jock fodder to become something anyone can get and become expert at in a weekend.  He says, "Here’s the danger: That creates weak otakus. Etewaf doesn’t produce a new generation of artists—just an army of sated consumers. Why create anything new when there’s a mountain of freshly excavated pop culture to recut, repurpose, and manipulate on your iMovie? The Shining can be remade into a comedy trailer. Both movie versions of the Joker can be sent to battle each another. The Dude is in The Matrix."

Okay, that's pretty much the paranoid way to view it.  While on the surface this sounds like a very canny observation it's little more then case for an In Treatment session that should be moderated by the ex-drill sergeant in the GIECO commercial.  It's an over inflated view t o say the least and it's bounces to the foundation of the problem, Way Back Syndrome (and let's just call it WBS from here on.)  WBS is the yellow brick road to the fairytale called "The Way We Were" - and in this case it is a very sad love story.   It's a sad old persons way of thinking, the "you kids have it so much better" trip through get off my  lawn-ville.   Artists are not produced by access to information, they are products of the times.  While they are products of their times, they define the times they are in.  Art reflects life then life imitates that art.  Just because we are not in the days when carrier pigeons were the way kings communicated doesn't mean that artist somehow suffer.   In the 1980's art took on odd forms.  People were collecting garbage and metal pipes, welding car part or using legos as a medium.  In some cases this produce abject madness, in others art - it's all subjective after all.  That was the 80's.  Decade of the A-Team and jellies, mullet rock and the celebrated rise of pop music.  Nothing in all that destroyed or even limited art.  The 1990's is a time that any comic geek will tell you seemed to sound a death toll for their favorite medium.  If was possible to go back and find the fanzines of the time you find a variety of predictions of our comics were about to die, the reasons have been restated by various websites.  Both big companies filed for bankruptcy.   And while comics do not enjoy the million dollar sales of those days they are still here and finding ways to survive.  The point is that the idea that the changes we go through as new technology opens the world to connecting in ways none of us imagined we would, it is idiotic to say that because of these changes art and imagination suffers.

In fact, the fan videos that permeate entities like Youtube are the very examples of how imagination is expanding, not stagnating.   The availability of geek culture only means that we are growing more geeks, not dying.   It means a culture once the object of ridicule is not the subject of something to aspire to.  That should be celebrated, not run from.  We should embrace the new not act like a bunch of phobics and luddites.  Most geeks from way back will describe those days with a mix of joyous memory and adject terror.  Many of us geeks were smaller then those nerd screaming jocks, being given swirlies and stuffed in locked, and in all too many cases having the crap beaten out of us   What's changed today is that what we were put down for once is celebrated today.  Super Hero movies was the stuff of stand-up, now stars practically put doing one in their contracts.  This what we have today, this is the times we live in.

Finally, Oswalt's idea that we should help geek-culture die so it can rise again to what it used to be is patently ridiculous.   The idea that the availability of all things old and new is harmful is silly.   We waited for the weekly TV show because we had no choice.  Now we can wait for the DVD set, which also give us the opportunity to pass good shows or movies to people who might not have experienced them before.   Once upon a time we would hear of excellent programs in foreign markets and hope we could see them one day on UHF or Publc Television.  Now we have the internet, cable and, as mentioned before, DVD's.  Dr. Who is not limited to shaky local TV stations that you needed a special antenna or your little brother with a wire hanger to tune into.  The bottom line is that geek culture is not dying, it's changing.   Change is good because things staying the same means a society cannot grow, and when a society does not grow it implodes.  Everything must grow, everything must mature, and everything changes.  How about we take a glass half full view of this and celebrate by letting the children on our lawns to fill the air with laughter and life, not apathy and death.