Follow up to Man of Steel Blog

So, did you ever spout some exposition about science that turned out to be completely wrong?  I did, and I'm man enough to admit it.  When one looks at the Fortress of Solitude, one sees a crystal construct built in the middle of the Artic Circle, and one naturally assumes it has to be insanely cold.  Well, probably not.

Take a look at this article: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/crystal-giants/shea-text.  The gist of it is that a location encased in crystals is actually pretty dang hot.  Insanely hot.  Causes heat stroke in the causal visitor hot.  Which, if you put two and two together, makes you realize that the Arctic Circle is one of the few locations on the planet where a crystal fortress would make sense.  Given the meeting of these two extremes, you would have a residence that's probably a pretty comfortable temperature, shrouded in a thick layer of fog.

Superman bringing Lois there with no winter clothing makes sense since the close proximity of crystals that large would keep her warm, while the intense cold of the out doors would prevent the crystals from becoming a natural oven.  The process of the heat escaping into the cold would create a large cloud around the building.

If anything, Lex Luthor and his cronies in Superman Returns should have had to strip off their heavy coats upon entering otherwise they would succumb to heat stroke.

So what does that mean to the previous blog?  Well, General Zod, now made human (shattered hand and all) probably wouldn't have died of hypothermia.  Given that he fell down a crevice, who's foundation and walls are made of closely placed crystals, would have probably died of heat stroke.  We're never given an idea of how deep these crevices are, only that their deep enough for a prolonged, echoing scream as the Man of Steel's helpless victims plummet to their ultimate demise.  Either they broke their necks and/or back on impact, or they were rendered unconscious upon impact and were slowly broiled alive.

Or, since Superman Returns portrays Superman leaving Earth shortly after having relations with Lois Lane (since her relationship with Richard White came close enough that she affords some ambiguity about her child's paternity) and Superman stayed away from Earth for five or six years, if Zod and crew did survive their fall, Zod at least starved to death, unable to climb out with a broken hand.

Would that be a deleted scene from Superman Returns, having Non and Ursa climb out of their respective crevices, pull Zod out, only to have the three die in the frozen tundra as the Fortress was shut down and abandoned.

I'm not saying that Superman is a horrible character, or that Superman 1, 2, and Returns are horrible movies.  Quite the contrary, I love them, flaws and all.  My stance is that we tend to hold Superman to a standard that has never actually been set, either by his publishers, his writers, or his creators.  Superman has generally held to the ideal that death is the last possible option, but in other instances has willfully taken a life, and not always to the benefit of the story.  Each instance was decided upon by a team of people and came from trying to tell the best possible story.  If anything, the death of General Zod in Man of Steel was one of the most justifiable instances in all of Superman's history.

Thanks for reading.

"The MULTIVERSE!!!"

Well, its me again.  If you recall a few posts ago, I waxed intellectual about the idea of DC Comics having two universe in live action media, that of the Movieverse and that of the TV Universe.  I offered up an idea that maybe the two would find a divergence point in the character The Flash.

Well, then I read this:

http://nerdreactor.com/2015/03/24/superman-flash-series/

Yeah the article is exactly a month old as of this writing, but here me out.  This could be the dawn of a very interesting day for DC's live action media.  This might be the start of something amazing, something that Marvel has tried to copy from DC's playbook but never really got right.

This could be the dawn of...THE MULTIVERSE!!!

Just imagine there was dramatic music when I said "THE MULTIVERSE!!!"

Yes, I know its a rumor and I should not, under any circumstances, get my hopes up...but a fan can dream a little.

Let me set the record straight, I love the Flash TV series.  I like iZombie, and I tolerate the Arrow, but I love the Flash. 

Smallville, I have a different relationship with.  I really wanted to love it, and I have some really fond memories of it, how it seemed to be a converging point between old and new Superman, how they brought in and fleshed out characters that had been ignored in live action media, but there was a pacing to the show that never set well with me.  I'd like to say there was a specific point where the show just went off the rails, where it jumped the proverbial shark, but there were so, so many.

I think it was a show that tried to balance sci-fi elements with teenage melodrama, and that can kind of work for say maybe four years, but then you have to let the characters grow.

Then it became a show that tried to fully embrace the comic book feel of it's source material, and I can't tell if it was desperate or lazy.  I will cite at least four instances where the show simply failed:

Proto-Justice League, Hawkman, Doomsday, and Darkseid.

If you have questions, look those up.  Sufficient to say, the show ended on a flat note for me.  I felt it had utterly failed.

But then, years later, what's this I hear?  The Flash might meet Superman...from the Smallville universe?  This could be it.  This could be the thing that makes up for 10 seasons of adequate to just plain lazy television.  The writers of the Flash clearly know how to write superheroes on a TV budget, and they know just how to embrace the comic book aspect.  So I'm down, I am with you.  If they want to do this, lets do this, but for the love of God, do it right.

Batman 1989: Thoughts...

I can’t tell if I’m just bored or if I’m just feeling starved for some quality Batman related media.  I can’t claim to be overly excited about any of the new Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice footage that came with their supposedly “leaked” trailer this past week.  Maybe I’m in a funk, I don’t know.

I do know, however, that there was a lot more unspoken in the 1989 Batman film that what we saw.  Like, why did Boss Grissom order a hit on the Wayne’s?

Yeah that came a little out of left field, but when you want some quality stuff and there’s nothing on the market, you have to sometimes go back to the beginning.

Tim Burton’s Batman tried to mark a new era in superhero films.  Christopher Reeve’s Superman back in 1978 dared to not play up a superhero story just for laughs, which was actually rather common for Superman franchises.  Even the George Reeves television show in the 1950’s wasn’t a straight laugh riot.  For some reason, up until Superman III, and one abysmal musical, Superman was always played straight.

1960’s Batman, however, was not.  For some reason Hollywood took a man wearing blue tights and a red cape more seriously than they did a man wearing grey tights, a blue cape and a bat mask.  As I type that sentence, I can kind of see why, but still, Batman did nothing to deserve that.  So Tim Burton came along and took a shot at the Dark Knight, emphasizing the Dark.  Here the Joker killed, Batman took hits, and there was collateral damage.  While Batman never out right murdered anyone, actually actively trying to save the man who killed his parents at one point, all the death’s attributed to Batman were circumstantial at best and negligent homicide at worst.  Aggravated assault which caused crippling bodily injury on the other hand, Batman was completely fine with that.

But as I was thinking about this movie, I was recalling some complaints heard about the story, even ones that I once raised myself.  Take the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne.  It’s revealed in a flash back that Jack Napier, one day to be the Joker, actually gunned them down in that alley.  People got so pissed about that.  “Joe Chill killed Batman’s parents!”

But maybe he did here to.  Remember, there was a second robber at the scene.  He’s the guy who actually takes the pearls from Martha Wayne, enters into the ensuing fight with Thomas Wayne and looks on in shock from the side when Jack guns both of them down.  Then, as Jack threatens young Bruce, the second robber calls for them to get out of there as the police are on their way.  I believe this guy was Joe Chill.

So what do we know about the crime based on the information presented in the film.  Jack and, we’ll call him Joe, did not just randomly run into the Wayne’s but rather followed them from the theatre down the alley.  They were waiting for these two very specific people.  Joe attempts to rob them, trying to intimidate them, and when Thomas fights back, Jack shoots them both.  Shocked and probably appalled, Joe calls for them to retreat.  Jack, being the psychopathic showman, gives a parting threat to the now orphaned child, and leaves. 

Let’s look at how these two men were dressed.  Nice suits, tailored overcoats, well-groomed hair, and at least one very nice hat.  These are not muggers, they are mob enforcers.  Further, we have to look at where this fits in with Jack Napier’s time line.  By the time Batman is running around, Napier has made it to second in command of Grissom’s criminal empire.  The young Bruce in the flash back looks about 11 or 12 years old, and the grown up Bruce looks about 30, which gives us about 18-19 years between flash back and the narrative proper.

For context, when Al Capone entered the employ and became the second in command of crime boss Johnny Torrio he was about 20 years old, however he had known Torrio since Capone was 14, which means in order to become the right hand man of any crime boss, you need to know that guy for a long time.  We can assume that by the time the movie starts, Napier has been Grissom’s right hand for more than a few years, possibly 8 or 9, leaving 10 years to move from enforcer to under boss, which given what we can gleam from history, isn’t that hard to believe.  Now roll the clock back.  He’s been Grissom’s hand for 8 or 9 years, and before that he had to be working his way through the ranks of Grissom’s criminal organization, meaning that at the time he shot Thomas and Martha Wayne, he was under the employ of Carl Grissom, and by association so was Joe Chill.

When you are under the employ of a crime boss, you do what you are told, and given that, we can safely connect the dots that Carl Grissom ordered the attack, if not the death of the Wayne’s.  But why?

Here too is where the movie actually fits in well with the comics, because Batman never solves the murder of his parents.  Here, he knows who, and he can connect who ordered it, but since at the end of the movie Grissom is dead and so is Jack Napier (not that we could have relied on the Joker to give us a solid account of what happened) the only other option is Joe Chill, and he’s nowhere to be seen.  After the flash back, he literally disappears from the story.

I’ve searched and searched, and for the life of me I can’t find a fan theory that addresses this topic.  So I’m going to make one, based on an early draft of the scrip.  Originally Carl Grissom was going to be mob boss Rupert Thorne, you know, someone actually in the comics.  He was going to put a hit on the Wayne’s because Thomas Wayne was running against him for a seat on the city council.  So here it goes:

Thomas Wayne was a staunch opponent of Grissom’s corruption of the city, going so far as to run against the suspected mob boss for a seat on the city council.  Grissom orders two of his enforcers, Joe Chill and Jack Napier, to track Wayne and put a scare into him.  The high priced thugs corner the Wayne’s behind the Monarch Theatre, Joe Chill just wants to intimidate them and makes it look like a robbery.  Jack sees Thomas isn’t so easily spooked and that Chill’s plan is going to not only implicate them, but Grissom as well, which could make things far worse for their boss.  Napier decides that its best to eliminate Thomas all together pulls his revolver and guns him down.  He then eliminates the next credible witness, Martha Wayne.  Seeing their young son as just a kid, he levels his weapon and gives a catch phrase to put a scare in the boy before Chill, who is shocked and horrified at what’s just occurred, hears police responding to the gun shots, calls for Jack to flee.

Back at Grissom’s, Jack is reprimanded for killing Martha.  Grissom isn’t all that concerned about the death of Thomas, but killing Martha not only makes Wayne look like a martyr, but also violates one of the tenants of early organized crime: Don’t kill them if they don’t have to die, don’t leave orphans.  Jack justifies it saying that with the Wayne’s fortune, the kid will be fine, and martyr or not, a dead man can’t hold a political office.  Grissom waves it off and reprimands Joe for such a stupid plan in the first place, gunning him down in the office and making Jack his new right hand man.

Then there is the often complained “Alfred let Vicki Vale into the Batcave.”  Oh I have heard this cried out from internet reviewers and people I personally know alike.  “Why would Alfred just let her into the Batcave?”  My response, he was probably told to.

Alfred loves Bruce like a son, and isn’t about to let a reporter, even one his charge knocked boots with, blow his cover.  When Vicki Vale came knocking, she already had a suspicion that Bruce was Batman.  Also note, he didn’t look terribly shocked when Vale entered the cave.  More of an “Oh, you’re here.” Rather than “My God, how’d you find out?”  I think when Vale came calling, she said “Where’s Bruce?  I know he’s the Batman.  Take me to him.”   Alfred probably called down to the Batcave and said “Master Bruce, Ms. Vale is here and she’s figured out you are the Batman.”  Bruce still focused on the biggest case of his life probably said “Fine, bring her down here.”

And, no, I’m not totally forgetful about “Batman Returns” where in Alfred makes a comment about upping the bat-security and Bruce quips “Who let Vicki Vale into the Batcave?” with Alfred giving a reproachful look.  The way I see it, Bruce probably feels Alfred should have been a little more stalwart with Vicki’s deduction “Batman?  That’s ridiculous young lady.  He’s just an emotionally scarred man with billions of dollars at his disposal, a top notch physique, and happens to like hanging upside down…”  Basically Bruce was just being a dick.

Its all conjecture, trying to plug up plot holes where I see them.  You might have a different opinion.

Reaction to the latest Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer

It starts off as we a speeder gliding across what looks like the desert plains of Tato…holy crap that’s a Star Destroyer!  And a wrecked X-Wing.  Gee, you never think with all those space battles those ships had to go somewhere.

Wow…that is a seriously destroyed Darth Vader helmet, and we’ll assume that’s Hayden Christensen’s career making a cameo as the charred skull.

Oh, shhh….Luke is giving narration from the third movie.  Wow, I’m not sure if that’s an upgrade to the robotic hand or if someone else is lovingly touching R2-D2’s dome.  That…that sounds a little dirty.

Who’s getting a light saber from whom?  It actually looks like Anakin’s old light saber.  The one lost in Empire Strikes Back during the fight in Cloud City.  I wonder if she found they found Luke’s hand still attached to it.  What else you got?

Hey, it’s that guy in the Storm Trooper uniform!  Is he a defector from the empire?  Is he a spy?  Who cares, TIE Fighters are shooting up the joint!  That is really a good shot of the hanger bay too.  That is a very shiny storm trooper.

So is this girl Luke’s daughter?  Leia’s daughter with Han?  Aww, she made a friend in not-storm trooper guy.

Speaking of Han, there’s the Millennium Falcon again, and Han “barely useful” Solo.  And Chewbacca!

 So I guess we can do some pointless fanboy speculation.

Han and Leia’s daughter Rey is discovering she is strong in the force.  In an effort to help her, in the face of the newly resurfacing empire, as well as a new Sith Lord, Leia sends her to Luke for training.  At Luke’s behest, he has asked Leia and Han to keep his existence secret from their children because he’s afraid that he’s turning more towards the dark side.  This explains him using the quote and deliberately not naming Leia, the girl’s mom, as his sister.

Finn, the guy in the Storm Trooper uniform is, in fact, a rebel spy whose cover was blown and thus he had to make an exciting escape from the Imperial stronghold.  This explains how he’s different from other storm troopers, as well as his apparent partnering with Rey and why he seems so frazzled on the desert planet…he just narrowly escaped with his life and probably crashed a TIE fighter in the process.

Han, finding out that Leia sent their daughter on a crazy mission, teams with Chewbacca again to go after her after capturing the Falcon again from someone who shouldn’t have it.

That’s all I got.

Man of Steel: Superman's Kill Count

Superman killed General Zod in Man of Steel.  That fact is irrefutable, I have the DVD, I’ve seen it multiple times.  This is, apparently, a big deal because Superman doesn’t kill…

Except when he does.  In the comics.  A lot.

But those are the comics, surely Superman doesn’t kill in the live action adaptations.

Except when he does.  In the 1950’s TV series, Superman (played by George Reeves) takes a pair of thieves who have deduced his identity to the top of a mountain and lets them climb down.  Being a pair of street thieves from the big city, they of course have all the mountain climbing skills of your average fish and promptly plummet to a gruesome demise.

Okay, but he didn’t technically kill him, that was negligent homicide.

It’s still homicide though.  But let’s not count that one.  In the more recent media, Superman doesn’t kill, except that time in Smallville where Clark killed a phantom zone criminal.  After he had beaten him.  After.  That’s an important distinction by the way.

A lot of this “Superman doesn’t kill” mojo seems to stem from those of us with very fond memories of the Christopher Reeve Superman films of the late 70’s and into the 80’s.  That Superman stood for truth, justice, and the American way and certainly didn’t resort to killing his enemies.

Except in Superman 2.  In that film he sent three de-powered villains (essentially humans) plummeting to their icy deaths, one of which had been thrown twenty feet across a room after having his hand shattered.  No, the official record shows Lois killing one, one accidentally jumping to death, and our colorful hero smirking as he murders a crippled man.

To be fair, there is a deleted scene from the film showing authorities picking up the criminals outside the Fortress of Solitude, but the thing to remember about deleted scenes is they are not canon.  They are removed elements of the story.

A dark moment, sure, but later movies don’t have him killing anyone…until Superman 4 The Quest for Peace.  Here, he shuts off Nuclear Man’s power source (this time rendering him as threatening as a coma patient) and then dumps his body into a nuclear reactor.  He had broken of Lex Luther’s programing at this point, he was an individual.  Maybe they could have rehabilitated him.  Nope, better to wait until he’s defenseless and have Metropolis cannibalize his body.

And for those of you who still want to cry “deleted scenes make it all better” he kills the original Nuclear Man (ie Bizarro) earlier in the film. 

At least he didn’t shove a bomb down someone’s crotch.  I’m looking at you Batman Returns.

So, when we go back to Man of Steel, did he have that many options?  When you get down to brass tacks, Superman’s options are painfully limited.  He had been struggling in his fight with Zod and just now got the upper hand, mainly because Clark has spent literally his whole life avoiding physical confrontation.  Never learned how to fight because 1) He’s been invulnerable to physical harm his entire life, and 2) One punch would destroy any human opponent.  Now he’s faced with a guy who has powers that match his own and has the skills to pay the bills in a knock down drag out fight.  Zod was genetically engineered as a warrior.  Clark grew up on a farm.  He’s not going to win this one in a straight on brawl, and was lucky to get the upper hand when he did.

We’re going to look at options on what he could have done and how, unfortunately, they couldn’t work.

1)      Clark could have put his hand over Zod’s eyes:  And then what?  Hold his head indefinitely?   Who’s to say his Zod’s heat vision wouldn’t have charbroiled Superman’s hand?  We know from the comics that Kryptonians can adjust the intensity of the heat vision, and Zod looked like he was going full blast.

2)      Clark could have delivered a coordinated strike to the base of Zod’s skull and knocked him out:  How?  When would Clark have had cause to learn that bit of information?  When would that have made sense to his character?  Again, grew up on a farm, spent most of his adult life looking for answers about where he came from, working odd jobs.  Further, lets say, for argument’s sake, that he did pick up that bit of info on his travels.  The split second he moved one of his hands to deliver this strike, Zod would break the hold and the fight would have been on again.

3)      He could have captured him:  And put him where?  The Phantom Zone generator was destroyed with the ship.  Even if it was intact, and Clark has the super smarts to fix it he would still need time.  Where do you put him in the mean time?  What holding facility on the planet is adequate to hold Zod?  The only reason the military “captured” Superman is because Superman turned himself in and willingly stayed. 

The fact is, the writers painted Superman in a corner.  I can appreciate the choice to kill Zod because he was a clear and immediate threat to the public at large and there were literally no other immediate and adequate options available.  Further, at least this time Superman killed someone and showed some level of remorse over the issue.

Thanks for reading.

Does DC Hate their Fans?

Probably one of the worst things any company, any agency can do is under-utilize it’s assets.  That is why I have dim predictions for Warner Bros./DC Comics future film ventures.

It starts with their announcement that they will be producing a Justice League film set to debut (in it’s first installment) in 2017.  Here is my concern; Since last year DC Comics, via the CW Network, has been producing rock solid live action adaptations for their characters, and while this practice started with Arrow, it really lifted off the ground and gained altitude with the Flash, starring Grant Gustin.  His portrayal of the Scarlet Speedster lends a level of credibility to the shared TV universe as well as a believability to the idea of a man who can run faster than the speed of sound.  Grant has quickly come raced (pun intended) forward as a fan favorite, and easily won the honor of being the definitive portrayal of Barry Allen.

Coupled with that, CW DC will be expanding its universe by including a third spin off series featuring Hawkgirl, standing alongside already established heroes as the Atom, Black Canary, Wild Cat, and Arsenal.  CBS, by way of Warner Bros. television has picked up Supergirl, who is being produced by many of the same people who already brought us the CW DC, so many that, while plans for a cross over aren’t set in stone, they are still open to the idea, so for arguments sake, let’s say they are in the same shared universe.

So to do a quick recap, we have: Arrow, Flash, Black Canary, Atom, Supergirl, Hawkgirl, Wild Cat, Firestorm, Arsenal, soon Vixen, and a slew of villains in the CW DC.

In the shared film universe we have Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Cyborg.

We already have a Justice League.  Yet WB is apparently going for a separation between the TV Universe and the Movie Universe with the diverging point being the Flash, who in the Movie Universe is slated to be played by Ezra Miller.

This is where my head hit the desk.  Why, why would you not cast the guy who brought a new generation of fans to the character?  These fans want to give you their money, let them see their familiar face on the big screen with a stupidly huge budget!

I can’t talk about DC’s movie ventures without at least addressing the ridiculous success of Marvel’s current projects.  Why are Marvel’s projects so successful while DC’s have been, shall we say less than fortuitous?  Because Marvel wants to bring the best possible product to the table, they want to bring a story that is engaging to fans of all ages.  Man of Steel caught a lot of flak because they went for a dark and grittier Superman origin.  While that was not necessary in the least, I can appreciate them trying to bring the Superman mythos into the 21^st century.  Who else did they try to make dark and gritty?  Green Arrow.  They called him “Arrow”, made him talk like he needed a cough drop something fierce, and let him kill people.  And the fans did not like this.  While there was enough support to keep the show going, they eventually had to change the tone of the show.  They did this by dropping the “he kills people angle” and with the introduction of the Flash allowed stories to get a little lighter.  Not too much lighter, but a little.  Shared character Felicity Smoak in the Flash episode “All Star Team Up” even commented that “Central City was the fun city, while Starling was the serious one.”

So where is this rant going?  Well, I can appreciate the desire to step things up for the block buster films WB is planning, I don’t think they should ignore what they are doing on the small screen.  Tone Superman down, make him a little lighter, let the colors of the character pop, visually and figuratively.  Batman can still be dark and gritty, and still share the same universe as Superman.  I think that will ease a lot of fans who honestly want to bring their kids to a Superman or Batman flick.

As for the divergent universes, this can be salvaged by DC’s own history.  In writing this I came to peace with the fact that TV and Movie were going to be separate.  However this can be a good thing, because every now and then DC has to have their core universe butt heads with an alternate one and call it “Crisis”.  You have established two Flashes, a character that can move so fast he can alter time or, in some cases, pop straight out of his own universe into another.  Play on that.  Let that be your big cinematic moment.  Marvel will ramp things up to Civil War, and that’s what Marvel does.  They keep you grounded in politics that happen to involve super heroes.  Let DC’s defining moment be when you rip a hole in your own continuity and their characters have to deal with the fall out of not some legislation, but their own counterparts from other universes.

I can respect DC wanting to be different from Marvel, but please follow their footsteps in one area…respect your fans.