Supergirl + Flash...Dawn of Cuteness?

Alright, so it happened.  I hope to God you guys watched it.  If you haven’t, check out CBS Access or CBS online and see if you can grab it real quick (an hour of your life you won’t regret) and come back because we are going into some serious spoiler territory here.

I don’t often do reviews of stand-alone episodes, but this is different.  This is one of my absolute favorite shows, the Flash, teaming up with the gang from Supergirl.  This episode worked on a lot of different levels.  First of all, if you are like me and only have a tenuous relationship with Supergirl (ie. I’ve watched one, count em one episode so far) this episode served as a great jumping off point as during its events it re-established Supergirl’s premise.  In many ways I came into this show like Barry did.  I’m unfamiliar with the scope of the Supergirl Universe so I really get to know these characters roughly the same time Barry does and he serves as a great entrance point for new watchers.  Like Barry, it doesn’t take the audience long to get up to speed as to who everyone is, at least their fundamental roles on the team.

Secondly, this episode came out less than a week after Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice broke a few box office records, and before Marvel’s Civil War epic due out later this summer.  That said it actually serves as a big refreshing gulp of wholesome in a sea of hero vs hero media.  Barry and Kara have personalities that naturally click with each other.  Grant and Melissa’s personal and professional history helps in this as well, but ultimately the actors have just this fantastic chemistry with each other and that shines through the whole episode, so much so that I rather wish this had been an hour and a half long episode rather than the standard 48-50 minute running time.  That certainly would have ironed out a few problems.

So what’s the story?  Well roughly around the same time Silver Banshee is coming into her power set and attacking people at CatCo (still sounds like a pet store-terrible name) Kara is knocked unconscious by a sonic blast and hurled out of a window when she is saved by none other than The Flash.  Realizing they both have powers, Barry and Kara get to talking, discovering that Barry has traveled here from Central City, and an entirely different universe.  Barry is looking for what his people call “Earth 2” to have a final face off with a villain named Zoom, but for more of that go see The Flash.  Seriously watch it.

Barry hooks up with Team Supergirl in an effort to find a way back to his universe, but while they are doing that, Silver Banshee springs Livewire from jail.  Both have a hate for Supergirl, and Livewire isn’t too fond of Cat Grant either, so they team up to bring down the cheerleader of steel.  Thinking she only has to contend with Livewire, Supergirl enlists the aid of the Flash (who is more than willing to lend a superfast hand) and they go to face the villain with absolutely no battle plan, despite Barry’s suggestions that they have one ready.  Supergirl is confident that with their combined powers they’ll make short work of the villain and is understandably surprised when Silver Banshee shows up to tip the scales.  Receiving a beat down, Barry suggests a strategic withdraw, and the two regroup to assess the situation.  During this time Kara shares some of her recent personal struggles with Barry who can actually relate to those very specific situations.

Real quick, its important to understand that Supergirl is still in season 1, so the titular character is going through her rookie year while Flash is already well into season 2, so he’s been there and done that, and a testament to Barry’s personality, rather than be jaded by his personal experience, he’s willing to serve as a pseudo mentor to Kara.  He understands exactly what she’s going through, more than anyone else in her world can.  He explains to her that some of the problems she is going to deal with can’t be handled by powers, only time, trial, error, and experience.  He relates to the fact that they are both used to dealing with conflict by falling back on their powers, but that can’t always be the answer.  This exchange, I think was probably the strongest moment in the episode and for both characters.  Barry is finally serving as the mentor figure, when he’s had so many mentors in his time, and he’s learning that when you teach, you learn and when you learn, you also teach.

Kara is receptive to his advice and they soon discover that Livewire and Banshee have kidnapped Kat and taken her to an open park.  There they plan to publically execute her if Supergirl and Flash don’t make an appearance.  During this very brief battle Supergirl puts herself in harm’s way to save a helicopter, while Flash is knocked out on top of a roof (so glad you were here to help buddy).  This turns public opinion, which had waned from Supergirl, back into her favor as the citizens come to her aid and actually defeat the villains for her.

Flash and Supergirl say their goodbyes as they do an impromptu race to get Barry home.  Kara later meets up with James Olsen and finally kisses him, only for him to turn into a brainwashed zombie and wander off with apparently everyone in the city as they are being controlled by Kryptonians.

Let me back up just a bit: James Olsen.  Oh I love what they did with James because he was always the coolest kid in school, and he knew he had Kara’s heart, and never had to work for it, but seemed to keep her at a distance.  When Barry enters the picture and the two instantly click you quickly see James starting to get jealous.  Again, Barry and Kara’s personalities naturally mesh, and they can relate to each other on a lot of levels.  Plus Barry has an impressive skill set to go along with his amazing powers.  He’s super smart and very likable.  Which starts to piss James off, and Mehcad Brooks pulls this off perfectly.

Now let’s look at a few negatives of the episode.  The fights feel very short and anticlimactic, which is why I think this would have been better served as an hour and a half episode.  I say hour and a half, because I think if you pushed this to a two hour episode you would have drawn it out longer than the content would allow.  Giving it an extra thirty minutes however could allow for extended fight scenes and a chance for Supergirl to really earn the city’s trust again.  A lot of that felt very rushed, but it could also indicate that the city wasn’t that mad at her after all.

I’ve heard complaints that it didn’t seem like the Flash had a lot to do here, and he didn’t, but Barry Allen did.  Barry Allen worked with the team to track Livewire, and Barry Allen mentored Kara.  This was really more about characters than it was about spectacle.  Even Winn trying to talk Silver Banshee down, that was more about character development than the actual fight inside CatCo.  Character development is really where Supergirl shines, but it could take a few lessons from the Flash in beefing up its fight scenes a bit.

One of the challenges with any Super(noun) property is that you have to balance the powers with the character and that’s not easy to do on a weekly television budget.  Flash allows a little more room to cheat because you can always have his powers do something without actually needing to show it.  A gust of wind and a sound effect and you’ve planted in your audience that the Flash did something.  Supergirl can actually use this trick too, but I think it doesn’t because that’s a very “Flash” thing.

Kat Grant is still annoying.  I don’t like her, but that’s the character.

So overall, everyone did an amazing job in their roles.  I would love to see Kara show up in Central City, I think that would really shake up some dynamics there.  The fights felt a little neutered, but that’s kind of in keeping with the show.  Hopefully we’ll see more of this kind of cross-company team ups.

Thanks for reading.

Quicksliver: Days of Futuer Past

Because I just can’t let a meme be a meme…let’s talk about the Quicksilver scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past.  You know exactly the one I’m talking about, and if you don’t, here’s a meme to jog your memory.

 

Got it?  Okay, because it started to come up in discussion about what exactly happened to the guard in the above picture.  At first I speculated that Quicksilver’s finger tap probably translated to getting hit with a baseball bat, but I tapped into my education in physics and forensics and now I’m going to change my answer.  Quicksilver’s finger probably translated onto the guard’s face like a bullet.  Let’s get our numbers straight:  From the time Charles shouts “No!” at the start of the sequence to the time normal speed returns, it’s about 1 minute 27 seconds, or a total of 87 seconds.  It takes Charles about 3 seconds to say “No!” so Quicksilver is moving about 29 x’s normal speed.  If you take into account the average human’s between 15-20 miles an hour.  Meaning Quicksilver is running at 435 to 580 miles an hour.  We can safely assume that since this is Quicksilver we’re talking about, we can keep our numbers to the upper end of this, so for calculations sake we’ll say 580mph.  As always I’ll spare you the math and we can safely say he’s traveling 850 feet per second (fps).  That speed, by the way, is the average speed for a bullet fired out of a revolver.  Most commercially available handguns fire rounds between 800 to 1000 fps, depending on the quality of the ammunition.

The obvious argument is that “there’s nothing saying Quicksilver’s finger was moving that fast…” but there is.  He was running when he tapped him.  In fact there’s argument to say that he was traveling even faster than our calculations because he himself was shown in slow motion.  The finger tap would have translated into force at a downward angle, like a bullet, that would have sent kinetic energy through the man’s jaw, probably shattering, and possibly connecting with him with enough force to break his neck.

Yes, Quicksilver may have actually killed that man, but not just that man.

Remember all those guys he reposition into funny poses?  Those guys were tensed up, preparing for a firefight with one of the most dangerous mutants on the planet.  Flex your arm really quick and try to force it to move with your other arm?  There’s quite a bit of resistance there.  Quicksilver basically would have shredded muscles and tendons forcing those guys to move like they did, not to mention applying “speed of bullet” force to them, like making one guy punch himself.  Or how about the guy he gave a wedgie to?  His pelvis is probably broken now, not to mention what it did to his more tender parts.

So yes, half of these guys are going to the hospital, with a few probably going to the morgue.

Maybe they should have let Magneto and Wolverine handle it?

God Lifts UP, its People who Drag You Down.

It’s been a while since I posted anything faith based in a blog, but a situation arose for a friend of mine that I think bears addressing.  I won’t get into all of her story, if you know her then you probably already know the basics, but her story is just that, her story.  You want to know, let her tell you if she deems you so worthy.

There was one particular comment during the whole thing that caught my attention and it addressed sexuality and sin and, indirectly the concept of shame and it got me thinking: What kind of being did God initially intend us to be?

To better understand that, we need to look at what affects occurred after the fall from grace.  Going to Genesis 3: 7-10 “7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.””

We get from this passage that the immediate negative effects of disobey God is the introduction of sin into the world and with it death.  God didn’t intend for us to die, that wasn’t in the blueprints, but it’s a result of the corruption that sin brings.  But death is a pretty far off concept for Adam and Eve at this point, who live for several hundred years past this event.  No, the immediate result of this action is the feeling of shame.

Shame is a very useful tool of evil minded people and entities.  Shame, guilt, regret are all things that weigh us down as people, and if you are weighed down you can’t soar to the heights God has prepared for you.  Think about it.  Don’t you feel heavier when you are replaying your most embarrassing moment in your head, when you think about all the problems you’ve caused, all the strife going on in your life?  You do, there is an almost tangible weight holding your heart down, like…chains.

The chains of guilt, shame, and regret are very real, but they can be shed.  This is one of the points of Christ coming to Earth and walking among us, and why his actions are still being talked about two thousand years later.  His actions are an embodiment of what God wants his relationship to be with us.  To understand that, you need to look at who Christ was among the most.  He hung out with the…sinners.  The people who society shackled with…wait for it…shame, guilt, and regret.  He did that to shed them of these chains, to bring them to the heights God wants them to ascend to.

At absolutely no point in the Bible does Christ expect his followers to be perfect.  In fact, its their imperfections that he appreciates, because with your own issues comes and understanding, an empathy with people who are dealing with similar issues.  You know who make the best counselors?  The people who have walked through the same fires as you.  God knows you are a work in progress, because He’s the one doing the work.  He’s bringing you to a point where He needs you to be and its faith in Him that allows us to let Him do His work.

Regardless of what you have done or what you are going through, He’s always with you and he wants you to shed those chains of shame and guilt and regret.  Does that mean you’re going to suddenly be this perfect being?  Absolutely not.  You are going to stumble, and there will be opportunity for shame, guilt, and regret to come back.  That’s life.  But you have to make a conscious choice to let that weigh you down.  When the world looks at you and says “I’m going to spread your dirty laundry all over the place.” You look back at it and say “Okay.” Because God already loves you for who you are, and nothing the world says is going to change that, regardless of your sin.

And let me cover one other thing before I close this off:  What exactly constitutes a major sin?  Did you break up a marriage?  Did you cause someone to turn away from God?  Did you kill someone?  I don’t mean metaphorically, I mean actually directly kill someone.  Because I hear a lot of people talking about how certain types of sexuality are sins and, frankly Christ was remarkably quiet about that.  Yes the Old Testament talked a lot about how men should lay only with women and so forth but that’s when Israel was a very small nation and you got more Israelites by making babies.  Back then homosexuality was basically treason.  By the time Christ came around, this was not a problem and his ultimate silence on the matter makes me believe that was probably no longer an issue.  He wasn't exactly subtle by saying "Love is the most important thing." 

I think, as long as you aren’t violating someone’s human rights or causing deep psychological (or physical) scars you’re probably ok.

Anyway, hope that helps.

God bless.

Jim Gordon is Bad at his Job…

 

It’s right there in the title, and I mean it.  Jim Gordon is not a good policeman.  Let’s jump off with the series that chronicles his eventual rise to police commissioner, “Gotham”.  This is a detective that isn’t very effective.  Sure he starts with that white-knight thing going, the one incorruptible cop in all of Gotham, and he has a really good start, but then cracks start appearing in his veneer.  As the cases escalate in craziness, he starts going more and more to the local criminal element for help.  On more than one occasion he sought out aide from Fish Mooney and Cobblepot.  His relationship with Cobblepot has been, without a doubt, the worst for his credibility, but to make matters worse, he double-crosses Penguin.

Regardless of what I’ve said in the past about Batman’s tactics, there is one indelible truth to the man.  He doesn’t double cross.  Even when he’s had to team with his own villains, he never does it at a compromise to his own integrity, and he never lies to them about the terms of their “cease-fire”. 

And it’s not just in the series “Gotham” where this is evident.  Throughout the various incarnations (with the exception of the 1960’s where it’s apparently acceptable to have a masked vigilante do your crime fighting) the very fact that he associates with Batman and allows him to operate within the city compromises his integrity.  Batman as a vigilante cannot affect an arrest regardless of the circumstances.  Any time he stops a purse snatcher or a jay walker, never mind anything higher, that case cannot be admissible in a court of law.  In order for these cases to stick, some serious blurring of facts has to happen.  Gordon didn’t eliminate the corruption of the police force, he just tweaked it.

In the Nolan Trilogy, Gordon is aware of the ethical challenges in associating with a caped lunatic, however this is taken a step further in “The Dark Knight” when he covers up the facts surrounding the death of Harvey Dent and allows Batman to take the heat for Two-Face’s crimes.  This was at least addressed in “The Dark Knight Rises”, but the failure in that instance is that Gordon is still unethical.  He may have been unethical for the right reasons, but if he’s supposed to be the last ethical man in Gotham, he’s failed in that effort.

In the Tim Burton films he ends the first film allying himself with Batman, and the second film basically endorsing violent crime every time the Bat-Signal is lit.  I won’t address the Joel Schumacher films because, as I said in a previous blog, they are just 1966 Batman with a modern spin.

In the famous animated series, he again has to compromise himself in order to work with Batman and condone Batman’s methods.  Other police officers are seen as heels or bad because they look down on this relationship, but as law ENFORCEMENT personnel, they should look down on it.  It’s a violation of public trust to say that these crimes are bad but this crime is okay.  His hand-shaking with Batman make Bruce Way the most successful violent criminal in Gotham’s history.

Well, that’s all I’ve got.

Have a great day.

 

1997's Batman and Robin: A Second Look...

Hello I’m back!  After a devastatingly long hiatus, I’ve returned to give my totally unsolicited opinion about something nobody is really talking about any more.  As ya do on the internet.

But given that we are but a stone’s throw from Batman returning to the big screen via “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”, I thought I’d take a minute to talk about one of the less than reputable moments from the Caped Crusader’s movie career.  That’s right, a film so polarizing you either love it or…well you probably hate it.  1997’s “Batman and Robin”.

Taking place in what we are to assume is the same cinematic universe as Tim Burton’s films, this particular film stars none other than George Clooney and Chris O’Donnel as the respective dynamic duo.  Giving them an assist is Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl and filling in the roles of villains are Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, Arnold (get-to-da-choppah) Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, and Robert Swensen as Bane.

There is a lot wrong with this movie, and you don’t even have to be a fan of the comics to find it.  The acting was phoned in at its best, a crime since all of these actors are actually really talented, and the characters were dumbed down from literally every other incarnation.

Well, hang on…ANY other incarnation?

Part of what irked fans of the franchise, myself included, was that we remembered quite fondly the Michael Keaton films, and even gave a pass to “Batman Forever”.  Watching the Val Kilmer/Jim Carrey film again, one can see the signs of where the franchise was going, but hind sight is 20/20 after all.  Yet somehow we were expected to swallow this neon/black light circus as being part of the same “reality” that had a man electrocuted down to a charred skeleton and an umbrella twirling nightmare trying to kill children.

But that’s if you are trying to link all four films together, which you probably shouldn’t.  How it makes sense in my head is that “Batman” and “Batman Returns” is an adaptation of the comics of the 1980’s whereas the Joel Schumacher films are in fact re-imagining of the Batman series of the 1960’s.

If you take these two specific films away from the context of the franchise as a whole, and put them alongside the 1960’s television series, they match up remarkably well.  Suddenly you see that George Clooney isn’t playing Bruce Wayne/Batman, he’s playing Adam West playing Bruce Wayne/Batman.  Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy would have worked perfectly with Julie Newmar or Burgess Meredith, but not the Catwoman and Penguin of the film franchise.

I think if you give the latter two of the films another shot in that light, you might find that…they honestly won’t be any better, but they will make a lot more sense.

Even if you can’t find it in your heart to accept them as they are or in this new light, look on this bright side:  It came out along with “Steel” and “Spawn”, forming the unholy trinity that effectively killed comic book films and forced Hollywood to actually put some thought and effort into these properties.  This wouldn’t be rectified until 1998 when “Blade” came to theaters and reminded audiences that films based on comics could be awesome.