Is This Something?

The first trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, due in theaters next July.

Matt Damon looks too stupid to be Shrewd Odysseus, and Nolan is doing the Industry Standard race-swapping, but... I do like most Nolan movies, and hope this is good.

How about some superhero slop? Some people are knocking the Supergirl trailer because the character is apparently a nihilist party-girl. I don't think that's necessarily a bad move because, 1, who cares about Supergirl, and 2, you need to differentiate your heroes from each other. If Superman is a golly-gee optimistic boy scout, it isn't a bad call to make a being with his exact same powers and nearly his exact same costume the opposite of Superman.

Ethan Van Sciver also justifies the take, reasoning that, unlike Superman, Supergirl actually lived through the destruction of Krypton and thus is scarred by the episode. Superman, on the other hand, was sent to earth as a baby and didn't know of the destruction of Krytpon until he was told about it as an adult. (I should note that Supergirl was born before Superman, but, due to time dilation shenanigans over the long trip to earth, arrived later than he did and is now younger than he is.)

Here's my take: I don't care if it's a good take or a bad take. I'm so over this.

But now here's some more Slop Superhero Content: Wonder Man. They did a race swap on Wonder Man which I don't care about because, get this, literally no one cares about Wonder Man. The character was invented for purely cynical reasons -- it was practice back then to steal another company's IP by just flipping the gender of a character. Thus, Marvel created Wonder Man just because DC was making some money with Wonder Woman. (And Stan Lee created She-Hulk because he knew that someone, likely DC, would create a female Hulk if he didn't do so first.)

If you never heard of Wonder Man, don't sweat it. He's a D-list team member on whichever Avengers team needed a spare body in the 80s. He was one of those characters I would actively avoid by not buying a comic if he was on the cover or if I knew he was on the team. Like Captain Mar-Vell or Quasar or a dozen other generic Superman-derivatives.

Wonder Man also seems to be yet another attempt to make a superhero show for bored women. It seems to be a workplace comedy set in Hollywood where all the jokes deliberately undermine the conceit of superheroes. This is all silly stuff, ha ha, do you get it?

I mean, yes, I get it, and that's a fine thing for nerds to joke about amongst themselves, but it's a bad idea to make mockery of the concept of the superhero a central theme of actual superhero medium. The suspension of disbelief is like a soap bubble. It takes very little to burst it.

I've said this before: I've hated this trope since they did it to death during Roger Moore's run as James Bond. It's hard to enjoy the fantasy of the superhero spy when the makers of the movies keep screaming at you "This is all stupid and you're stupid for liking this."

I think they put this crap into movies to appeal to Filthy Casuals, who went into the theater agreeing it was all stupid nonsense, and enjoy seeing the movie itself confirm that it's all stupid nonsense. These Filthy Casuals might even be in the theater under protest, dragged to the show by their boyfriends or husbands. The problem is, that only barely appeases the Filthy Casuals, whose business you don't need and wouldn't get if not for the social obligation to go out with one's male partner, and it actively alienates the actual fans who business you actually do need.

Anyway, I also do not care about this. I care less about Wonder Man than I do about Supergirl. At least Supergirl is an older character which, to my conservative mind, makes her more of a cultural artifact worthy of some limited respect.

I finally saw Weapons over the Thanksgiving weekend. It's pretty good. The first half is a grounded and realistic movie about what would really happen if a bizarre tragedy -- an entire class of 11 year old students, save one, running out into the night for no reason to disappear completely -- struck a town. Angry and desolate parents lash out looking for answers and scapegoats.

And this isn't even done in a heavy Message type way, about Us being the Real Villains After All -- it's just what would really happen. You can hardly blame the bereft parents.

I was kind of dreading the second half because I knew there would be a monster and the monster part would ruin the weird-but-realistic tension and mystery of the first half. But it's pretty good. Instead of giving you a plausible explanation, which they probably realized was impossible, they go in the other direction and hit you right in the WTF? button, and it's a pretty square hit.

If you're not a horror fan, I would skip it. The first half is a tense and well-done weird drama without any gore -- just dread -- but the second half does get bloody and disturbing.

Seen anything worth recommending?

posted by Ace at 04:40 PM

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