Superman: Birthright - Who IS Superman?

Superman...... If I were to say that his origin story is somewhat confusing, I'd be giving the understatement of the millennium. The essentials haven't changed; Superman is still Kal-El from Krypton, sent to Earth from an exploding planet by his parents Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van. He crash-lands on Earth in Smallville, Kansas, discovered by Johnathan and Martha Kent, a couple incapable of having children. Raised as Clark Kent, he eventually is told that he is adopted and shortly after graduating high school, shown the spaceship he crash-landed to Earth in. After graduating from college, Clark becomes a reporter at the Daily Planet in Metropolis and dons the guise of a superhero, clothed in materials found inside his spaceship. Named Superman by reporter Lois Lane, he fights against such villains as Lex Luthor, Braniac, and General Zod while fighting for the values of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Now, you may have noticed a few details missing in Superman's origin story. Is Jor-El important? Why can't the Kents have children? When and why did Superman develop his superpowers? Why does Superman pick that symbol on his costume if he didn't name himself Superman? Why did he wait until graduating college to become a superhero? What kind of man is Lex Luthor? Is Kal-El really the last Kryptonian? All this becomes subject to interpretation, unfortunately.

Back in the 80s, an event called Crisis on Infinite Earths changed the entire DC Universe. It was decided that there were too many alternate realities and too many versions of the same character that were all valid. All realities were combined into one Earth, mostly utilizing the back-stories of characters from Earth-1, the Silver Age Earth. A big decision was also made, to tweak Superman's origin story to make him the sole survivor of Krypton and have no Kryptonian supervillains. Superman's personality, extent of his super-strength, and reason for becoming a superhero were all changed. The limited-series that was published to be the new definitive origin of Superman was Superman: Man of Steel by John Byrne. Probably the biggest change that Byrne made was turning Lex Luthor into the CEO of Lexcorp and victim of very early male pattern baldness, rather than being a mad scientist who used to be friends with Superboy until he accidentally caused a lab experiment to permanently bald young Lex Luthor.

Although Man of Steel was Superman's "definitive" origin, there were a few things that people took issue with. Most notably, these things were making Krypton into a dystopian society, sending Kal-El's fetus and amniotic sac in the spaceship so that he would literally be born on Earth, and changing Clark Kent's personality even when "in-disguise" to the point where Lois Lane was far more interested in Clark than in Superman. After Man of Steel was written, 3 notable TV shows were made that took elements from that comic, but also kept aspects of Superman's Silver Age origin story, made famous by the Superman films: Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Superman: The Animated Series, and Smallville. None of the shows shared a common origin story, none shared the same origin for Lex Luthor, none kept the same interpretations of Ma and Pa Kent, none shared any of the "nitty gritty" details as-before-mentioned.

3 versions of Superman; very alike, yet very different

When WB announced that another Superman movie would be made, Superman Returns, DC Comics decided to commission Mark Waid with writing another definitive origin story for Superman. This new origin story would be called Superman: Birthright. Birthright, written in 2004, takes multiple ideas from the 3 television shows made since Crisis on Infinite Earths. To answer the various "nitty gritty" questions asked previously, the Birthright answers are:

• Jor-El is a scientist, but he is not a council member as seen in previous versions.
• Martha Kent is infertile, rather than being too old as seen in the Golden and Silver Age versions.
• Superman developed his superpowers almost immediately upon landing on Earth, but did not have the full extent of his powers until he was a teenager.
• The reason he has superpowers is because Kryptonians develop superpowers while under yellow sunlight and Earth's comparatively low gravity, as seen in the Silver Age and Man of Steel versions.
• Superman picks the "S" shield because it is the symbol of Hope in Kryptonian history. Previous versions made it the El family coat of arms.
• Clark Kent decides to become a superhero after seeing how helpful he can be to the world after stopping a very violent situation in Ghana from escalating. Beforehand, Johnathan Kent tells young Clark that before he decides to become a superhero, he needs to first get an education and see the world.
• Lex Luthor is still the CEO of Lexcorp, but he spent some of his youth in Smallville as part of his slightly psychotic plot to become world famous for contacting alien life while being from a podunk town. After failing in his experiment, causing his house to burn down, his father to die, and permanent hair loss, Luthor blames the entire town of Smallville, saying he will be the only thing to ever come out of there. Luthor promptly erases any record of his ever being there.
• Kal-El may not be the last Kryptonian, the Phantom Zone is stated to exist. Shortly after Birthright, the Kara Zor-El interpretation of Supergirl was re-introduced to the comics.

So the big question is, does this "new" origin story work? The short answer is Yes, but it's still not as clean and easy to follow as Lois & Clark or S:TAS. The long answer is No, because unlike Man of Steel, Birthright borrows so heavily from the recent television versions of Superman and introduces only 1 new idea, whereas Man of Steel was an incredibly original idea when it was written. The one new idea that Birthright introduces is that Superman has an "aura vision" and can see the life forces of living beings. Because of this, he decides to become a vegetarian. While I believe that no one should be a vegetarian unless their religion demands it, the reason I don't like Superman as a vegetarian has nothing to do with that. Under Earth's yellow sun, Superman is given so much energy that he does not need to eat or sleep ever. As said ever so eloquently by Clark Kent during the animated series, "A good meal sounded great right about now. Not that I needed to eat, but old habits die hard." Superman eats and sleeps because quite simply, they're old habits and he chooses to continue doing both on occasion. There is no reason whatsoever to make a guy who voluntarily eats into a vegetarian.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! Ever since Infinite Crisis, Man of Steel and Birthright are BOTH considered canon! Yeah! How fucking confusing is that!? To possibly address some of these, oh you know, HUGE problems, DC commissioned Geoff Johns in 2009 to write ANOTHER definitive origin story for Superman! Yeah a THIRD version! Superman: Secret Origin recently finished its 6 part series, and it is more or less a straight rip of the Silver Age version of his origin. Fan reaction has been incredibly mixed since Secret Origin creates an origin for Superman that directly contradicts previous Superman stories that are all still considered canon... which Birthright does as well. To put it simply, Superman has 3 official origin stories as of September 1st, 2010. Whether or not DC decides to ever just flat out make a statement about Superman's origin remains to be seen, but you can be guaranteed that Christopher Nolan's upcoming Superman film will cause DC to do something to Superman's origin AGAIN.

Seriously, how many origin stories does Superman need?

My Favorite Movie of 2000: American Psycho

2000 was what I like to call The Year of the Comedy. Even serious movies like American Psycho had a humorous tone, something that made it really stand out to me. American Psycho is the story of Patrick Bateman, a business executive in the middle of the 1980s. Bateman is absolutely obsessed with his public image, waking up extremely early every morning to exercise, take "exfoliating" showers, shave as close to his skin as possible, pluck his eyebrows, and planning his day and evening wear for the day. The film is narrated by Bateman, never once admitting that his daily routine is insane, because as we see once he gets to work, all of his co-workers act exactly the same as him.

If the daily routine wasn't insane enough, Bateman and his "friends" start comparing their business cards. Bateman notes how some of his friends have incredibly inferior cards for many reasons, whether it be the color, texture, font, and text placement. Being confident that his business card is the most attractive, Bateman whips it out and is pleased when he gets the response he expected. Right as his card has been observed with everyone, an executive named Paul Allen that Patrick hates with a passion, mainly for constantly being confused for him, walks into their meeting and whips out his business card. While Patrick and the others have mild reactions acknowledging that Paul's is clearly the best card of all, Patrick's narration goes absolutely crazy over how much better Paul's card is than his. He notes every single intricate detail about the card and how his own card cannot even begin to compare. To the audience, this entire sequence has been evidence that Patrick Bateman is absolutely insane because everyone's cards are almost identical to each other.

Bateman eventually invites Paul Allen over to his apartment after a night on the town with their "friends" where Patrick plans to kill Paul. He is tired of constantly being confused with and compared to Paul, noting that he works hard on his image so he doesn't get confused with anyone else and stands out. Patrick begins his prep to killing Paul in what is probably one of the most hilarious ways I've ever seen someone get killed. I can't spoil the entire process because it's one of the most iconic moments in film of the past decade. I will leave this image however, probably one of the most remembered frames of the entire movie.

One of the defining moments of the '00 decade in cinema

After killing Paul, Patrick steals his apartment and tells everyone that Paul is on vacation in Europe. No one seems to care that he's gone, noting how unlikeable he is. Bateman proceeds through the rest of the movie taking advantage of people confusing him with Paul Allen by impersonating him to get into exclusive restaurants and buying hookers using Paul's name. Eventually, Patrick realizes that his frumpy secretary is in love with him, so he takes her out as well. While he debates killing her, he can't bring himself to do it. One night, he invites his secretary and a hooker he frequents over to his apartment in order to have a threesome. At the end of the night, he becomes very physical with them and is (off-camera) a very aggressive practitioner of S&M. Later on, Patrick invites back the same prostitute along with a new one and decides to kill them both in a pretty gruesome, yet hilarious way that I can't spoil.

Patrick begins killing people left and right, stuffing a stray cat into an ATM, and tries to escape to his apartment while on the run from the police. Meanwhile, his secretary discovers his calendar/day-planner is full of doodles immortalizing his kills of Paul Allen and the prostitutes, imagining killing his secretary and having sex with her decapitated head, and other fantasies. Patrick calls his lawyer and confesses to killing Paul Allen. His lawyer says that that's impossible because he just had dinner with Paul in London last night. After Patrick rushes back to Paul's apartment, he finds it for sale and the bodies of the hookers he killed missing. Patrick goes to work the next day and everything appears to be normal, but the movie ends before we see if Paul Allen showed up to work that day or not.

The big question of the movie is whether or not Patrick hallucinated killing people. The big moral question of the story though, is the behavior of yuppies and business executives in the 80s, when the original novel was written. Although we see Patrick Bateman is clearly psychotic, aren't his friends and fellow employees just as psychotic for having the same behavior as him? One of the other themes of the film is identity. Patrick goes to incredible lengths to be as unique as possible, but he is constantly being confused with Paul Allen, despite working hard to not be like him.

The reason I liked American Psycho so much compared to the other movies that came out in 2000 was because it seemed that year was filled with nothing but comedies and/or trash movies like Dracula 2000, Mission to Mars, and What Lies Beneath. 2000 was also infamous for featuring one of the worst movies of all time, Battlefield Earth. Probably a close second for my favorite movie of 2000 was Traffic, a film starring Michael Douglas as the Drug Czar of the U.S. fighting drug trafficking while dealing with his own junkie daughter. The film will probably be most remembered as being the film that won Best Supporting Actor for Benecio del Toro at the Oscars. Today, American Psycho has become a cult classic for its open-ended ending, the manner in which Bateman kills people, and the theme of identity. This movie and The Machinist would help Christian Bale eventually win the starring role in Batman Begins.

My Favorite Movies of the Decade

I'm going to review my favorite movies of this past decade, from 2000-2009. My tastes in film are quite varied as evidenced from the movies I've seen and which ones I ended up liking the best from that year. So as not to clog this blog with nothing but movie reviews, I'm going to review 1 movie per week from my favorites list. Here are my favorite movies of the past decade:

2000: American Psycho
2001: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
2002: Orange County
2003: Bad Santa
2004: Team America: World Police
2005: The 40-Year-Old Virgin
2006: Little Miss Sunshine
2007: 300
2008: The Dark Knight
2009: The Hangover

My favorite movie of the decade is Little Miss Sunshine. Some of my reviews will also focus on how movies in general were that year and whether or not it was a hard decision to pick my favorite movie that year.

Superman Returns (And Then Fades Into Obscurity Again)

The successes of X-Men and Spider-Man had re-ignited the superhero genre and set the path for WB to restart the Batman and Superman film franchises, hopefully simultaneously, in order to prepare for a Wonder Woman and Justice League movie. In a particularly notorious move, WB hired the director of the first 2 X-Men movies, Bryan Singer, to write the story and direct the next Superman movie. Singer's story idea was seen as brilliant by most, make a sequel to Superman II while ignoring the existence of Superman III and IV. Something that WB, film critics, general audiences, and worst of all, Bryan Singer himself had all failed to realize was that Crisis on Infinite Earths had automatically deemed the version of Superman seen in the previous films as horribly out of character, extremely overpowered, and having very little to do with the Superman from the comics.

Singer, WB, critics, and the general audience didn't really care about how Crisis on Infinite Earths forever changed Superman because Superman II was going to be getting a sequel that wasn't going to be campy. Comic book fans, like myself, were incredibly worried that Bryan Singer's Superman was going to be less of a Superman movie and more of Singer just fapping to Richard Donner's cut of Superman II and poorly handling the Jesus metaphor of Superman that Donner loved. In the end, the comic book nerds were right. Critics either highly praised the movie for being the "true" Superman III or they panned the movie for having so little original ideas that it had to be a sequel to a 25 year old movie. Although the film was a financial success, most people felt the film was very boring, having very few action scenes, and most people despised the plot idea of Superman having an illegitimate son with Lois Lane.

Amazingly enough, the problem with Superman Returns is exactly the reason why comic book geeks were avoiding the movie: it followed the canon of the Richard Donner Superman religiously and incorporated absolutely no ideas from the comics. Although to most people it would seem arduous to name every single thing wrong with Superman Returns as far as comic book canon is concerned, I'm gonna do it anyway!

• Ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths, Kal-El thinks of Clark Kent as being his true persona and generally identifies more with being an Earthling rather than a Kryptonian.
• The depiction of Krypton continues to use Richard Donner's version, one that did not exist in the comics until the very recent Superman: Secret Origin limited series.
  
• Lois Lane is continued to be portrayed as a star reporter with extremely poor spelling, something that is traditionally never depicted in the comics except to be a reference to the movies.
• Lex Luthor is continued to be portrayed as a super genius with no money obsessed with the idea of getting rich off of real estate by destroying areas of the world to make the price of seemingly worthless areas of land skyrocket, a depiction of Lex Luthor only ever seen in Richard Donner's story. Ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths, Lex Luthor is depicted as the CEO of Lexcorp, essentially being the Metropolis version of Bruce Wayne, but a crooked businessman not afraid of striking deals with terrorists and making a profit off of people's misery. Luthor was even elected President of the United States at one point.
  
• Jonathan and Martha Kent are still depicted as being old enough to be Clark Kent's grandparents, rather than being in their 30s (or 20s according to Birthright), upon finding Kal-El in his spaceship. This has since been retconned by Secret Origin.
• Jonathan Kent died while Clark was in high school, something that was again, only depicted in Richard Donner's story. In the comics, Jonathan Kent only died recently, totally unrelated to Superman's origin story.
• In post-crisis continuity, Superman did not develop any superpowers until he was 17, something completely ignored by Singer. In the silver age, Kal-El had his full range of superpowers immediately upon landing on Earth.
• Superman's powers are far too strong, even compared to the silver age version of Superman that was capable of literally juggling planets. At the end of the movie, Superman is able to throw a continent MADE OF KRYPTONITE outside of Earth's orbit, all while having a knife made of kryptonite stuck in his torso.
• Kryptonite's effect on Superman is completely wrong, it's as if Singer remembered the existence of kryptonite at the last second. In all previous depcitions of Superman going back to 1938, kryptonite is lethal to Superman and has an effect on him that causes such weakness that he can barely walk and can be killed by an average person with their fists. Singer's interpretation causes no pain to Superman, kryptonite solely nullifies his superpowers very slowly. The effects are so slow that Superman can lift a continent made of kryptonite.
• Probably the most controversial decision of the movie, Superman has a child with Lois Lane. The very idea of Superman being able to have children with Lois Lane is preposterous, they're not even from the same planet, it is only a coincidence that Kryptonians resemble homo sapiens.

So with all these departures from Superman's character, it should have been fairly obvious that Superman Returns would flop, right? Well unfortunately, the only people who cared about the characters being portrayed correctly were comic book readers. The time-bomb was ticking and it finally exploded when people saw the acting in the movie. Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth were completely flat, Kevin Spacey was essentially just impersonating Gene Hackman, and James Marsden as Perry White's nephew seemed to be inserted just because Singer wanted to steal Cyclops away from the story of X-Men 3.

I can count at least 5 things wrong with this picture

Although financially a success, no sequel to Superman Returns has been made because quite frankly, it just sucks. It was recently announced that WB decided to give Christopher Nolan the rights to produce a new Superman movie that would reboot the franchise, similar to what he did with Batman Begins. It remains to be seen if the new Superman movie will feature any returning cast and whether or not it will be an origin story. Most people are hoping that it is NOT an origin story because most people are very well versed in Superman's origin story, or at least 1 version of it. If the movie does end up being an origin story, I believe it MUST follow the canon created by Secret Origin so that DC Comics does not create another version of Superman's origin in 5 years again.

The X-Men Trilogy: The Most Important Superhero Movies of the Past Decade

In 2000, the alignment of stars was just right. 20th Century Fox put faith in Bryan Singer to direct and David Hayter to write the first live action film adaption of the long running comic, X-Men. Stan Lee originally wrote the X-Men to represent the struggles that minorities were going through during the civil rights era in a way that children could understand by using superheroes as a metaphor. Since then, people have used mutants to also symbolize homosexuals as an oppressed minority, hated just for existing.

To comic book fans, it was an exciting possibility to finally see a superhero movie about a large group of superheroes rather than just a single hero. Another exciting prospect was the display of visual effects, such as Cyclops' optic blast, Wolverine's regenerative abilities, Storm's weather controlling and generating powers, and Magneto and Jean Grey moving objects with their minds. To the studio and non-comic book fans however, making X-Men was seen as an incredible risk; the last superhero movie made was the infamously horrible Batman & Robin. If X-Men was not a financial AND critical success, the entire superhero genre would probably never again be touched.

The first X-Men movie was a major box-office success the summer of 2000 and opened the path for many more superhero movies to made. Because of X-Men's success, Sony/Columbia finally had enough confidence to produce a Spider-Man movie, something that had been stuck in development hell since the early 90s. It was seen that not only could Spider-Man's powers all be accurately depicted on screen, but the movie could also be taken seriously and not be horribly campy like Batman & Robin. Warner Bros. on the other hand, was still not confident enough to produce the 5th Batman movie, its working title at the time Batman Triumphant. Despite no new Batman movie still, an X-Men 2 was already on the road to being made.

X2 (billed commercially as X-Men United since September 11th was still fresh in most people's minds) was released in 2003 with about equal reviews and financial success as its predecessor, but comic fans absolutely relished in an almost perfect display of a typical comic book plot being condensed to 2 1/2 hours AND getting positive reviews from most movie critics. The fan reaction from X2 coupled with Spider-Man's unbelievable success finally led to WB green-lighting a 5th Batman movie, at this point decided to be a reboot of the franchise to be called Batman Begins. WB also decided to green-light a new Superman movie after the franchise had been stuck in development hell since Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, hoping that WB and DC Comics could now compete with Marvel in both comic book sales and movie ticket sales. It was fairly obvious given the ending of X2 that a 3rd X-Men movie would be made. Unfortunately, there would be some setbacks on the way.

X-Men: The Last Stand was released in 2006 with a change in director and in screenplay writer. While X-Men and X2 were both directed by Bryan Singer and mostly written by David Hayter (also known as the voice of Solid Snake), X-Men: The Last Stand (also known as X3 and X-Men 3 for short) was directed by Brett Ratner, most famous for directing the Rush Hour movies, and written by Zak Penn, infamously known for re-writing Hayter's X2 script and writing Elektra. Although X3 was an overwhelming success to the point it actually out-grossed a previous movie in the trilogy, one of the few trilogy movies to succeed in that, it suffered from incredibly mixed reviews from both critics and fans. Because of the mixed reviews from fans and critics, Fox decided to not pursue making X-Men 4 and instead make a prequel to X-Men, detailing the origins of Wolverine.

Each of the X-Men movies are incredibly important in their own ways. The first marked the resurrection of the superhero genre, the second allowed superhero movies to be taken seriously, and the third showed other film studios that sequels should not be continued just because the franchise makes money. Even though X-Men Origins: Wolverine was made, it was only done because the studios and fans were far more interested in exploring Wolverine's back-story rather than continuing the story, especially if Zak Penn and Brett Ratner were to have their way.

I Hate the Celtics, But I Hate Doc Rivers More

"They still have not beaten our starting five. Our starting five against the Lakers' starting five has a ring. . . . We will be back strong and Perk will be there next year if there's a Game Seven."

There are so many things wrong, stupid, and unbelievable about that quote. For starters, the Lakers DID beat their starting five during the regular season. Secondly, the starting five that the Celtics beat to win a championship ring did not include Andrew Bynum or Ron Artest. Thirdly, Rivers is implying that the Celtics can make the NBA Finals again with their current team that only added Shaquille O'Neal to their roster and lost Rasheed Wallace to retirement.

Doc Rivers is one of the most overrated and egotistical coaches in the NBA. Of course, many people will try to put that label on Phil Jackson, but he's simply egotistical, not overrated. Jackson has 11 championship rings to back up how good of a coach he is. Doc Rivers has ONE ring and so-called "analysts" will claim he's a better coach! I'm sorry, but the last time I checked, a coach's worthiness is based on their postseason win-loss record, rate of getting to the postseason, and amount of championships won. ESPN is already trying to hype the Miami Heat as the team to beat this season, but their team has no bench whatsoever, a proven to be ineffectual coach, and only 1 proven winner. Just because Lebron, D-Wade, and Bosh are on the same team doesn't mean they will even make it to the postseason. Everyone knows that the Lakers are the true team to beat!

Spider-Man 3, A Lesson in How Not to Make a Movie (Part 2 of 2)

See this image? This is how the black symbiote suit is SUPPOSED to look like. The movie version's black suit is one of the laziest costume designs I have seen in my life. All they did was take the original costume, paint in black, and slightly alter the spider logo on the front. DOES THE SPIDER LOGO IN THIS IMAGE LOOK SLIGHTLY ALTERED? NO! IT'S COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! There's no webbing on the costume at all! Spider-Man's webbing doesn't even come out of the same place in this costume! That was my initial reaction to seeing the first trailer to Spider-Man 3 all those years ago. My opinion of the black-suited Spider-Man in the movie remains about the same, just with less Caps Lock. The New Goblin has one of the worst designs I've ever seen in anything, he looks like a ninja snowboarder pretending to be the Green Goblin. The costume designs are only the beginning of problems that Spider-Man 3 had.

Sam and Ted Raimi's screenplay is just all over the fucking place. The story is essentially split into 3 uneven acts. The first act is mostly about the origin of the Sandman and detailing how wonderful Peter Parker's life is compared to how it was in Spider-Man 2. The film starts off strong, showing Peter and MJ in love and Peter getting ready to propose marriage and the Sandman's sympathetic character is shown early, telling the audience he only steals because his daughter is dying of some disease and he and his wife don't make enough money to afford the medical bills. So far, this is a good movie. Pretty early on however, the film goes to shit with the origin story of the Venom symbiote. A meteor crash lands about 10 feet away from Parker's motor scooter and out of the crater crawls the symbiote, which attaches itself to the license plate. I wish I were kidding, but this is all the Raimi brothers could come up with. Yes, the symbiote is from outer space, but even the horrible 90s cartoon show gave a more impressive origin in the symbiote causing John Jameson (an already established character from the last movie!) to crash land his latest space shuttle mission and Spider-Man rescuing him, only to find black gunk stuck on his costume.

The "New Goblin" later attacks Peter and we have a completely pointless CG action sequence that serves just to waste Sony's money and have Harry hit himself on the head, causing him to have magic "short-term amnesia" so he conveniently forgets that he is the New Goblin, that his father was the Green Goblin, and that Peter is Spider-Man. In my film class we used to call this a DEUS EX MACHINA. That's right, a deus ex machina device before 1 hour has passed in the movie. I can already see this movie is going to disappoint.

Shortly after the deus ex machina, the Sandman's origin FINALLY finishes and he gains his sand super powers from again, a deus ex machina device. Off he goes, and the plot decides to become even more confusing as it seems that every fucking character in the movie gets their own private storyline that isn't allowed to intersect with anyone else's. Too many new character are introduced and they're all characterized completely wrong. Gwen Stacy is portrayed as just some dumb blonde who is Peter's lab partner in school, Captain Stacy is given fewer lines than the reporters at the end of the movie, and Eddie Brock has become a paparazzo rather than an aggressive staff photographer for the Daily Bugle. Around this point, every new character has been introduced and Act 1 is over. So far, the movie is worse than Spider-Man 2, but still better than the original movie.

Act 2 essentially opens with Peter receiving a phone call from the NYPD requesting him and his Aunt May to meet with the police captain of the local precinct, Gwen's father. Captain Stacy informs them that RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON SANDMAN IS UNCLE BEN'S KILLER LOL THE POLICE ARE USELESS RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON. After this, Peter becomes obsessed with listening to police reports and trying to find where the Sandman is to get his revenge. Spidey ends up staying up way past his bed time and falls asleep in the most unrealistic pose of all time. While asleep, the symbiote from way back in the beginning of the movie melds with the Spider-Man costume and causes it to change to an all black outfit. Parker seems to go kill Sandman and proceeds to become more and more of an insufferable douchebag while Harry recovers from having that deus ex machina pulled on him. While Peter becomes more of a giant jerk... you know what, I really can't continue writing this shit, it makes me want to go find Sam Raimi and ask him what his fucking problem with Venom is. If some terrible cartoon from the 90s can write a more compelling storyline, then that's a serious problem you got there Mr. Raimi. The movie continues to be horrible and somehow manages to get progressively worse unless Aunt May is in the scene.

By the end of the movie, anyone who has half a brain cell left has gotten 20 IQ points dumber for watching this piece of crap and deaf from having to listen to such a godawful soundtrack because Danny Elfman couldn't stand Sam Raimi and Sony hired a new composer. Things are not helped at all by the incredibly cheesy, corny, campy, etc. shot of Spider-Man running in front of the American flag before going off to fight the bad guys and saving Mary Jane. The moment the movie truly jumps the shark however, is when the New Goblin shows up to help Spider-Man by blowing up a large section of the giant sand-monster that the Sandman has turned himself into. 2 seemingly random kids (whose acting skills are shown to rival The Room's Tommy Wiseau) saying probably the worst Shark-Jumping lines ever, "AWESOME!" and "WICKED COOL!" OF COURSE, these 2 terrible actors are played by Sam Raimi's 2 young sons.

Although Spider-Man 3 was far more successful than 1 or 2, critically it was a disaster and many moviegoers acknowledged they were not interested in a 4th movie by Sam Raimi. Raimi's original plan for Spidey 4 was to use the Vulture out of all of Spidey's incredibly large rogue's gallery. Luckily Raimi is out and a whole new writing, directing, and acting crew will be taking over for a reboot of Spider-Man....

Spider-Man 3, A Lesson in Generational Gap and Executive Meddling (Part 1 of 2)

You are tearing me apart, Sam Raimi!

When Spider-Man and X-Men were originally released in theaters, the last superhero that was made was Batman & Robin, one of the worst films in movie-making history. After Batman & Robin, it was deemed that superhero movies were too silly or unrealistic to be profitable, taken seriously, or made for any excuse that could be found. X-Men was highly successful and was well-received by the critics; it literally opened the path for a whole new batch of superhero movies. While some superhero movies were notoriously bad, like Daredevil and The Punisher, other movies like Blade, Spider-Man, and Batman Begins were made that took the superhero genre seriously and encouraged audiences that were not familiar with comic books to take them seriously as well.

Up to this point, most people's exposure to superheroes were the Superman movies and TV series, the Adam West Batman show, the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman show, The Incredible Hulk show, and the 90s Batman movies. Seeing so many superheroes being taken seriously confused Gen-Xers who were used to the idea of comic books being silly and a thing of the past. The growing so-called "Generation-Y," or "MTV Generation," or Nintendo Generation," however, demanded more serious superheroes and hated the idea of comics being campy like the Adam West Batman or the Superfriends. Because of this generational gap in the view of how superheroes should be portrayed, it was inevitable that some directors and/or writers would eventually conflict with each other (sometimes on set!) over the direction of a particular movie or character. Thus is the story of Spider-Man 3.

After Spider-Man, expectations were incredibly high for Spider-Man 2 or The Amazing Spider-Man, its original working title, not just from a profitable standpoint, but a critical one as well. Spider-Man was the best reviewed superhero film since Tim Burton's Batman and people expected the sequel to be as good, if not better. Director Sam Raimi and screenplay writer Alvin Sargent delivered in spades and gave us (at the time) the greatest superhero movie of all time. Making even more money and having even better reviews than the first movie, it was fairly obvious this team would return for Spider-Man 3. By this point, fans had seen enough of the classic Spidey villains and wanted to see a fan favorite, Venom. Sam Raimi hated the character, despite never having read a single comic about the character.

Raimi's original plan was to make a film about the Sandman and Harry Osborn taking over as the Green Goblin. Sony Pictures knew how marketable Venom was and pushed for Venom to be the sole villain and to scrap the idea of using the Sandman. Alvin Sargent was a devout Spider-Man fan and eventually convinced Raimi to include Venom, or at least the origin of the Venom symbiote. In Sargent's original screenplay, Sandman would be the main villain with Spider-Man donning the black symbiote suit and Green Goblin II playing a more minor role as somewhat of a recurring villain that constantly tried to ruin Peter Parker's life, very similar to his original role in the comics. In the end of the movie after the defeat of the Sandman, the symbiote would leave Parker and transfer to Eddie Brock, an ex-reporter from the Daily Bugle whom Parker had helped get fired. This would set up the events to Spider-Man 4 where Venom would be the lead villain and Green Goblin II would either meet his end or turn a new leaf. Fans of the Spider-Man comic liked this idea, especially with the concept to re-imagine the Sandman as a more tragic figure and letting Venom get his OWN movie to fully develop his complex character.

Sony and Sam Raimi however, hated this idea. Raimi, Tobey Maguire, and Kirsten Dunst were not committed to a 4th Spider-Man movie and as such, wanted Venom in the 3rd movie just in case the 4th movie either never happened or to avoid cast replacements in an ongoing storyline. Sargent was forced to re-write his script to include Sony's and fans' demands for Venom and Raimi's demands for the Sandman and Green Goblin II. In the end, Sargent actually quit because he deemed it impossible to write a coherent script with 3 main villains and would only stay on if he could cut down the number of villains to 2. Sony and Raimi relented and eventually the writing job was given to Sam Raimi himself and his brother. One of my biggest pet peeves is writer/directors because they can essentially change the script whenever they feel like it and make fans' expectations either incredibly fulfilled or hopelessly dashed. By the time the Raimis had finished their edited screenplay, Green Goblin II was renamed the New Goblin, Sandman became Uncle Ben's REAL killer, and Venom's appearance in the movie would be less than 20 minutes. The shit really wouldn't the fan until the 1st trailer for Spider-Man 3 was released.

To Be Continued in Part 2

Crisis in Celebrity Voice Acting

Crisis on Two Earths has a bit of a complicated story behind it. A few years back, the DC Animated Universe was in full swing and the show Justice League was a major success. During Season 2, the episode "A Better World" aired. "A Better World" was about the Justice League meeting an alternate universe version of themselves, the Justice Lords. These alternates were exactly like them except they had different costumes, were 2 years ahead in the future and had decided to take absolute control of Earth and had by their point in time, killed Lex Luthor. The episode was well-received and went on to inspire the main storyline of Justice League Unlimited's 1st 2 seasons. In reality however, the creators of Justice League wanted to do a story about the Crime Syndicate of America, a truly evil group of supervillains who were all twisted versions of the Justice League. At the time however, DC was not willing to give the creators of Justice League the rights to using the Crime Syndicate characters. Between JL and JLU, one of the writers wrote a script for Justice League: Worlds Collide, a direct-to-video movie about the Crime Syndicate and explaining the origins of Wonder Woman's invisible jet, the reason for expanding the Justice League, and why the Watchtower had become fully staffed. The idea was trashed, again, because they could not secure the rights to the Crime Syndicate characters. After JLU finished airing, they finally secured the rights to the CSA characters while they started making the DC Animated Universe movies. Using the script from Worlds Collide, they finally produced the movie they wanted and they decided to use celebrity voice actors, something that Bruce Timm and his guys had used successfully with Superman: Doomsday, Wonder Woman, and Justice League: The New Frontier.

This time however, the celebrity voice acting falls completely flat. Billy Baldwin is one of the worst voices for Batman I've ever heard, Mark Harmon seems to have no idea what he's reading as Superman, and Gina Torres has little to no interest in the plot as Superwoman. The 2 voice actors who DO shine however, are Chris Noth as Lex Luthor and James Woods as Owlman. Both take their roles very seriously and understand the plot (or are pretending very effectively), something the other big names don't. Unfortunately, like most animated movies with big name actors, the professional voice actors do the BEST job. The animation, as usual for a Bruce Timm production, is stellar and is pretty flawless. The story takes one tiny concept from Crisis on Infinite Earths that slows down the action considerably, but it's pretty harmless and doesn't tremendously affect the overarching plot. In the end, this movie should be considered CANON to Justic League and Justice League Unlimited, but it is NOT required viewing.

Overall Score: 3 James Woods noses out of 5
While Superman and Batman are pretty groan-worthy in the voice acting department and the writing is pretty lazy, the movie in general is pretty good. It's certainly the weakest of the DCAO, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Check it out, just don't bother with the blu-ray edition.

Brett Favre Gets Sacked the Fuck Up by Patrick Willis

One of the biggest (or most ad nauseum) news stories in football this past off-season was whether or not Brett Favre would return to the Minnesota Vikings as quarterback. While the Vikings and ESPN were concerned about whether Favre would return or not, other teams actually didn't really give a flying fuck and built up their teams to be better and stronger. This past Sunday, my 49ers faced the Vikings in a preseason game. Last year, the Vikings beat the 49ers on the last play during the regular season. Although many claimed this was one of many games that proved the Vikings were Super Bowl contenders, many did not give the 49ers credit for basically controlling the entire game and losing on a miracle play. Well, the 49ers got their revenge on Sunday by taking Brett Favre out of the game after only 4 plays, with this beautiful sack from Red Jesus, Patrick Willis.



I never get tired of watching Patrick Willis sacking people's precious QBs. Honestly, I could watch that clip for days on end! Maybe this season Willis will put another QB out of commission again!

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1-4

Last year, DC Comics ran a crossover event called Final Crisis. When DC Comics gives the name Crisis to something, it's supposed to tell you BIG changes are coming. During Final Crisis, Darkseid attacks the Justice League and it all comes down to one last man, Batman. Over the years, Darkseid has pissed off the Justice League to such extremes and demonstrated just how evil he is to the point where Batman decides he will break his rule of not killing anyone. With the help of a literal god-killing bullet, Batman shoots at Darkseid while at the same time, Darkseid fires his Omega Sanction eye-beam at Batman. Right before the Omega Sanction hits Batman, he lets loose the most epic line in the past decade, "Gotcha." Darkseid dies and Batman's body has been fried to the point of being a skeleton in a Batman costume. Superman rages at the sight of this and the Justice League mourns Batman's death. But on the final page of the Final Crisis comic, we see a shot of Bruce Wayne in a cave in prehistoric times...

Over the next few months, it is revealed that Darkseid's Omega Sanction does not actually kill people, it causes various effects of Darkseid's choosing. In this case, Darkseid transported Batman to prehistoric times and switched his body with that of a clone Batman. Darkseid stole many of his memories and also caused Batman to jump forward in time bit by bit until he arrives in the present and will supposedly cause a major disaster. As of this writing, the comic series Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne has 4 issues, with 2 more waiting to be published. Each issue covers a different time period and a different style Batman. #1 is Caveman Batman, #2 is Puritan Batman, #3 is Pirate Batman, #4 is Cowboy Batman, #5 is Noir-Detective Batman, and #6 is Modern Batman. Throughout his time traveling, Batman has a common opponent, the immortal Vandal Savage, revealed in one of his "past lives" to be Blackbeard. Ever since Batman arrived in early Gotham Town in the Puritan days, Bruce Wayne has also interacted with one of his ancestors, while deliberately leaving clues to the future as to his location in time and space. The cause of this has also perpetuated a Bat legend in Gotham that is being passed on.

In the mainstream comics, the time-space locations of Bruce Wayne reveal the shape of a bat, showing that Bruce Wayne seems to have some control over where and when he will next arrive. Grant Morrison has a story to tell about Gotham and the Wayne family, but issue #2 was definitely the most lazily written. It seems to me that Morrison wanted the various incarnations of Batman, but was forced to include a Puritan Batman for some reason. Overall though, I'm liking the series and I always love stories about Batman working with limited technology or showing to others his incredible detective mind. The next issue takes place in Gotham City's past, quite possibly around the time Batman's parents were murdered.....

RoBW #1:     5/5
RoBW #2:     3/5
RoBW #3:     4/5
RoBW #4:     4/5

Scott Pilgrim vs The Moviegoing Audience

What better way to start my blog than to post about a movie that combines several of my interests? Scott Pilgrim vs The World is a movie based on a comic book that takes place in a world that functions like a video game. I have two very divided opinions on this movie, and as such, my overall review is a solid C.

As a movie-going enthusiast, the film has an incoherent plot and logic that is never explained whatsoever. Scott dating Ramona and FIGHTING for her makes absolutely no sense. Ramona admits to dumping every single one of her exes and makes no bones that Scott could easily be the 8th evil ex, but she comments that he's the nicest one she's dated so far. Ramona is not likeable at all and the only thing interesting about her is she changes hair color "every week and a half." Scott would be much better off continuing to date Knives, who although incredibly attached to Scott, has much more in common with her than with boring Ramona. Scott would even be better off with the drummer of his band and ex-girlfriend, Kim Pine. The logic of Scott and Ramona's relationship makes absolutely no sense.

As a gamer, the story plays out like most video games that do not have strong plots. Scott's friends have no admirable qualities on the surface but are incredibly loyal to him, his girlfriend fawns over him non-stop and seems to be incredibly perfect for him and Ramona, the "abducted princess", gets with him in the end simply because she LOOKS the most interesting. The movie is rife with video game references that any gamer between the ages of 15-30 would easily be able to understand and laugh at. Even Scott and Ramona's relationship is very similar to Mario and Princess Peach, being one that makes absolutely no sense. Their world functions exactly like a video game and to a gamer, their world makes perfect sense what with getting points for defeating enemies, leveling up and getting more powerful weapons, extra lives upon getting enough points, bars that deplete upon going to the bathroom, etc.

As of this writing, Scott Pilgrim is in 10th place at the American box office. Speaking as a movie buff, this makes perfect sense. Michael Cera is an incredibly poor choice to play Scott Pilgrim. He's not believable as someone with the capability to defeat Ramona's 7 evil exes nor is he believable when he "is a jerk" to Ramona during one conversation. Ramona is cute, but Knives is much cuter and suits Scott's personality much better. To the average moviegoing audience, Scott Pilgrim is just a nonsensical film targeted towards Gen-Y and no one else. Speaking as a gamer, I already know that mostly everyone who wanted to see this movie already saw it by pirating it or at free screenings. Anyone surprised by how poorly Scott Pilgrim is doing has no idea how the 15-30 age generation, dubbed either Generation Y or Generation MTV, typically watches movies. That being said, anyone who grew up with MTV and/or Nintendo should watch this movie even if you hate Michael Cera. You will not regret it. Anyone younger or older than 15-30 will not understand this movie AT ALL.


Overall Score: 3 evil exes out of 5
It's not a bad movie, but it's not fantastic either. As I said before, if you are outside the 15-30 year old range, you're probably not going to get this movie. If you do, you're either an incredibly immature adult or a little kid with way too many retro games. Please, for the love of god see this movie if you're 15-30 years old. The movie needs love and it's trying to love you.