Last night, I took my son out to a revival of the…classic? Yes, let’s say classic, for a given value of the word…1980 ‘Flash Gordon’ movie. I was enjoying the heck out of it, as I do every time I watch it; the movie hits that exact sweet spot of camp and sincerity, where everyone knows what they’re doing is silly and they exaggerate all their performances but at the same time they’re treating the silliness of the material with respect. (My kid loved it too, although I was surprised to remember just how scary some of those scenes can be to a ten-year old.)

But as I was watching it, I started to notice that…well, look. There’s no way to be watching a film right now about a tyrannical, capricious madman who has grown decadent with a lifetime of power, treats women as playthings and concubines, and has an equally jaded and debauched daughter that he has a…complicated…relationship with, and not think of the current political climate. I found myself picturing Donald and Ivanka at the inauguration, watching the protesters, and Ivanka asking, “Why is water coming out of their eyes?” With Donald, of course, responding, “It’s what they call tears. It’s a sign of their weakness.”

Likewise, I’m pretty sure that Donald and Melania’s wedding vows actually included the line, “Do you, Donald the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, take this woman Melania to be your Trumpess of the hour?” “Of the hour, yes.”

I’m not quite sure where everyone else fits into this prophetic scenario, though. Klytus seems to be pretty obviously Pence. It’s just possible he could be Bannon, but I don’t think Bannon’s that calculating. Kala is obviously Kellyanne Conway. Which would make Prince Barin…Jared Kushner? Definitely all the rulers of the kingdoms of Mongo are prominent Republicans who are being played against one another to keep them from uniting against Trump, but I’m not sure you can assign any particular role to any particular Prince. If nothing else, I just cannot fucking picture Paul Ryan shouting, “Representatives…DIIIIIIIIVE!” (But I can picture them responding to a request to team up against Trump with, “‘Team up’? What does that mean?”)

Of course, this is tremendously illuminating in terms of what it means for Trump’s plans for America. “…they won’t be the same human beings. They’ll be more docile. Tractable. […] Let’s just say they’ll be satisfied with less.” (I don’t know if the earthquakes and tidal waves will be literal, but given Trump’s stance on climate change I’m not yet willing to rule it out.)

On the other hand, it looks like there’s a distinct possibility that Mike Pence will be impaled on a bed of spikes sometime in the next four years, and Conway will literally melt. So we’ve got that to look forward to.

What does all this mean? I’m not sure. But if the quarterback for the New York Jets decides to run for President in four years, I’m voting for them even if it seems like political suicide. Because it’s not suicide, it’s a rational transaction.

(Also, if Trump does get re-elected, he probably shouldn’t do any appearances right in front of a big picture window. Just sayin’.)

Hello friends. It’s Justin again. Today, I want to talk about something else.

Who are the villains in the Indiana Jones movies?

Most people would probably reflexively answer—and I would too, if you sprang the question on me—“the Nazis.” This is sort of funny because now, fully half of the Indiana Jones movies don’t have Nazis at all. (And if Spielberg carries through with his threat to make a fifth one, there will presumably be more entries without Nazis than with.)

But of course, when we say, “I am a fan of the Indiana Jones movies,” what we usually really mean is that we love Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and we are very fond of the bits of Temple of Doom that are not actively irritating or offensive, and you take the aspects of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that you are feeling charitably about at the moment and sprinkle those on top.

So the two movies most of us agree are the solid “good ones”—Raiders and Last Crusade—both notably have Indiana Jones fighting the Nazis. There are the many German soldiers that serve as generic cannon fodder in fights and chases, and both movies have a lead Nazi officer who is nominally in charge of things but is really just there to look imposing in the uniform and armband. (Do you remember those characters’ names? I don’t.) Raiders also has Toht the Gestapo agent, who is the film’s sinister lead henchman in the manner of Jaws or Oddjob from the world of 007.

But none of these characters are what I would call the proper “villain” of the movies—the primary antagonist, the top-billed enemy, the “main bad guy.” Not necessarily the bad guy Indy fights, but the bad guy Indy talks to. The one you want to see get it in the end. In Raiders, the primary antagonist is Indy’s old rival, René Belloq, the French archaeologist who is helping the Nazis recover the Ark of the Covenant. In Last Crusade, this role is filled by Walter Donovan, the American businessman and philanthropist who is secretly working with the Nazis to recover the Holy Grail.

To put it another way, the primary antagonists in the Indiana Jones movies are not Nazis, but Nazi collaborators.

This is a distinction, notably, that both characters insist on themselves. Indy asks Belloq when he plans to hand over the Ark to “your boss, der Fuhrer,” and Belloq says, in a somewhat dismissive tone:

“All in good time. When I’m finished with it.”

He sets himself apart here, you see. The Nazis want the Ark because they think it will make their army invincible. But Belloq has his own individual motivation—he wants his “radio for speaking to God” —and when he’s gotten what he wants out of it, he is quite happy to hand over whatever remains to the Nazis. When talking to the officers, he refers to Hitler as “your Fuhrer,” not “my” or “our” Fuhrer. He sets himself apart; in his mind, he is not one of them.

Donovan makes this point at even greater length. As before, Indy accuses his enemy of being a Nazi—a “stooge,” at that—to which Donovan replies:

“The Nazis? Is that the limit of your vision? The Nazis want to write themselves into the Grail legend—take on the world. Well, they’re welcome. But I want the Grail itself, the cup that gives everlasting life. Hitler can have the world, but he can’t take it with him. I’m going to be drinking my own health after he’s gone the way of the dodo.”

Like Belloq, Hitler and the Nazis are merely a means to an end for Donovan. He does not seem to think very highly of them; in the long term, they will be gone and he will endure. For now, they are merely the ones with the resources he needs and the power he needs, and he will use them to achieve his own objective. The rest of the world, by his own admission, is just collateral damage. Donovan seems a bit more ruthless than the occasionally squeamish Belloq, but at their core, they have the same belief that they can work with the Nazis without becoming Nazis themselves. I do wonder if this was an intentional choice on Spielberg’s and Lucas’ part—the idea that there is evil in the world, but that allowing said evil to work for you while looking the other way is a unique, perhaps even more insidious evil in itself.

But of course, in both cases, this is proven to be a delusion at the end of their respective movies. Belloq may consider himself apart from the Nazis, but he dies standing over the Ark at the head of a trinity with Toht and The Main Nazi Officer Whose Name You Don’t Know. While Toht comes to perhaps the most gruesome end of the three, Belloq’s exploding head is the most brutal; everyone remembers Toht’s melting face, but Belloq is the death they save for last. Perhaps because it is the most satisfying?

Donovan comes to his own special-effects-heavy end, aging into a skeleton and crumbling into dust after drinking from a false grail. But when the dust blows away, it exposes the Nazi insignia that Donovan must have been keeping on his person all this time. In the end, I suppose, the film reveals him for what he truly is and not what he thinks he is.

So let’s say that you (or more likely, your friend who sent you to this webpage and is dragging you to the Doctor Strange movie, or maybe the Google search algorithm that directed you here) want to get a quick handle on what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is before you go see the movie that’s coming out in a few weeks’ time. And because you only have so many hours in the day, you want to do it without watching thirteen movies in a row. You basically need a quick summary of everything that happened that you can read on your lunch break, something that will let you know what’s going on without having to watch everything at 1 1/2 speed just to fit it all in and winding up convinced that ‘The Avengers’ is a Benny Hill sketch.

No problem! Gotcha covered. Read on! (Oh, um, spoilers for the Marvel movies, but really at this point you should not be able to complain about spoilers for any of them except possibly Civil War and that’s way down at the bottom so you have no excuse.

Iron Man: Tony Stark is a rich douchebag who makes money selling bombs, but doesn’t feel guilty because he doesn’t drop them. Then he gets captured by terrorists and forced to confront the consequences of his actions, and also to build a cool suit of power armor to escape. (The suit also keeps him alive because he got shrapnel in his chest.) He comes back and decides to be nice to everyone while using his power armor to stop bad guys, which ticks off his business partner who hired the terrorists to kill him. Business partner builds his own power armor, they fight, Tony wins and announces to the world that he. Is. IRON MAN! (Stinger: Samuel L. Jackson shows up and says, “Hey, wanna join my superteam?”)

Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner is on the run from military man “Thunderbolt” Ross because he tried to recreate the ultimate super-soldier (HINT HINT!) and it instead turned him into a big green guy whenever he gets angry. He’s hunting for a cure but that isn’t going so great. A British guy offers to help the government catch Banner in exchange for some of that sweet sweet super-soldiery goodness, but it goes bad and he becomes an even crazier big green guy. Banner turns into the Hulk to defeat him, then goes on the run again. (Stinger: Tony Stark tells “Thunderbolt” Ross, “You know I’m way better at this superhero stuff than you are, right? I’m part of a superteam!”)

Iron Man 2: Tony Stark is having a crazy bad week. His dad’s friend’s son is trying to kill him because he (the son) thinks Tony stole the Iron Man design, the government wants him to turn over the plans to the suit so they can make more, his business rival Justin Hammer is trying to steal his designs, and oh by the way he’s dying from heavy metal poisoning because the suit has to be plugged into his chest to keep his heart going. After Samuel L. Jackson and a cool superspy named the Black Widow (who’s been posing as his new secretary) give him a pep talk, he busts Justin Hammer for espionage, invents a new version of the suit that doesn’t kill him, blows up his dad’s friend’s son, and tells the government (in the form of Garry Shandling) to fuck off. (Stinger: Samuel L. Jackson’s right-hand man, Phil Coulson, finds out that a big weird hammer is in New Mexico. HINT HINT!)

Thor: All the Norse gods are real and they’re aliens from the planet Asgard and all the Frost Giants and stuff are more aliens. Thor, who’s nice (but hot-headed and kind of dumb) gets tricked by his brother Loki (who’s a manipulative little shit) into picking a fight with Frost Giants, so Odin takes his powers away until he learns how to control his temper and exiles him to Earth. Thor, having learned all the wrong lessons, picks a fight with the government to get his hammer back (which is where his powers are) but it doesn’t work because he’s not being good yet. Odin takes a nap and Loki decides to send an Asgardian killer robot called the Destroyer to kill Thor, but when Thor risks his life to protect ordinary people he gets his powers back and wrecks it. He and Loki fight and Loki winds up cast into the void, fate unknown. HINT HINT! (Stinger: Thor’s scientist buddy is invited by Samuel L. Jackson to study a weird super-science artifact called the Tesseract. He agrees…but he’s being mind-controlled by Loki!)

Captain America: The First Avenger: FLASHBACK TIME! Back in the 40s, ordinary guy Steve Rogers signed up to test the original super-soldier serum that Bruce Banner was trying to replicate. He becomes Captain America, and hangs out with his best friend Bucky and Agent Peggy Carter and Tony Stark’s dad to fight Nazis. Meanwhile, a Nazi super-science dude called the Red Skull, who took the same super-soldier serum but got his face melted off because he’s bad, and his sidekick Arnim Zola, decide the Nazis are probably going to lose and form a secret super-science cult called HYDRA. They use the Tesseract that Samuel L. Jackson will later ask Thor’s buddy to study to power their death cult, and Cap fights them. Bucky dies…apparently (HINT HINT!) and Cap defeats the Red Skull but is frozen in the Arctic for decades until Samuel L. Jackson finds him.

The Avengers: Loki shows back up and steals the Tesseract. He also brainwashes Hawkeye, who showed up in ‘Thor’ but didn’t do anything, into helping his evil plan to help a bunch of aliens called the Chitauri take over the world. Samuel L. Jackson knows this is bad shit, so he gets Black Widow, Hulk, Iron Man and Captain America to stop them. They capture Loki, just as Thor shows up to do the same (there’s a big fight because they don’t know Thor is a good guy but it’s all cool) but they don’t find the Tesseract or Hawkeye or Thor’s mind-controlled scientist buddy. Loki tricks the heroes into fighting each other and escapes in the confusion, and opens a big space portal above Manhattan for the aliens to use. The Avengers shut down the portal, recapture Loki, free Hawkeye and Thor’s buddy, and return the Tesseract with Thor and Loki to Asgard. (Stinger: The aliens were really working for an even worse alien named Thanos!) (Additional Stinger: Everyone eats shawarma!)

END PHASE ONE!

Iron Man 3: Tony pisses off a crazy terrorist called the Mandarin, but it turns out he’s not really a terrorist. He was hired to act all terroristy by a company called AIM, which is testing out another super-soldier serum called Extremis that can drive people crazy and make them explode as a side-effect. (The Mandarin’s bombings are really just people exploding.) Tony defeats them and oh by the way he gets surgery to fix his heart, but it doesn’t make him feel better because he was so freaked out by the killer aliens over Manhattan that he’s sure are going to come back and kill everyone and he doesn’t know what to DOOOOOOOO!

Thor: The Dark World: There are more aliens like the Frost Giants, but these are Dark Elves and they’ve been hiding for millions of years waiting for someone to find a super-science artifact called the Aether that they can use to unmake the universe because they believe it was really just a bad idea all around. Thor’s girlfriend Jane finds it. She gets superpowers but it’s killing her, and also elves are trying to kill her and she’s just basically having a bad week. Thor and Loki team up to stop the elves after they kill Thor and Loki’s mom, but Loki is killed…apparently (HINT HINT!) Thor defeats the elves, saves Jane and tells dad Odin he’s going to go live on Earth and be a superhero, and Odin’s like, “Sure, fine, whatever.” but it’s because he’s really LOKI IN DISGUISE! (Stinger: The Aether and the Tesseract turn out to be part of a family of super-science artifacts, and the Asgardians pawn it off on a weird alien dude called the Collector because It Would Be Bad to put them too close together. The Collector wants to do just that, though, because he’s a collector.)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Captain America is working with Samuel L. Jackson and his superspy group SHIELD, but SHIELD is acting all creepily authoritarian and Cap’s not down with that. They get worse after a mysterious assassin called the Winter Soldier kills Samuel L. Jackson… apparently (HINT HINT!) and Cap goes AWOL with the Black Widow to track down the Winter Soldier despite the orders of cool nice dude Robert Redford who takes over. Surprise surprise, Robert Redford is a bad guy, SHIELD has been thoroughly infiltrated by HYDRA thanks to decades of diligent work by Arnim Zola, the Winter Soldier is a brainwashed, cyborgized and cryonically preserved Bucky, and in just a few days SHIELD is going to bring the ultimate pre-emptive strike on line and kill everyone in the world who would even think about opposing their agenda. But Samuel L. Jackson isn’t dead so he and Cap and Black Widow and their new buddy the Falcon (an ex-soldier with a suit that lets him fly) defeat HYDRA, kill Robert Redford and Emile Zola, and free Bucky although he’s so spooked he goes on the run. So does Samuel L. Jackson, because SHIELD is kind of FUBARed by HYDRA and he needs to go undercover to make sure that he can root out all the bad guys. (Stinger: Some of the bad guys are using Loki’s magic staff to make new superpowered people!)

Guardians of the Galaxy: But fuck all that, let’s go to space for a caper flick! Star-Lord, a human who was abducted by aliens and raised in space, is stealing a MacGuffin that’s also wanted by crazy space terrorist Ronan. Ronan is working for Thanos and his two daughters, Gamora and Nebula, because Thanos has promised to help Ronan kill all his enemies (which is pretty much everyone) if he gets Thanos the MacGuffin. But Gamora is sick of her crazy dad and wants to double-cross everyone and sell the MacGuffin and use it to fund a new life somewhere way the hell away. So she goes to steal it from Star-Lord, then they both run into bounty hunters Rocket and Groot, and there’s a big fight and everyone gets locked up in jail. They break out with the help of a revenge-crazed alien named Drax who wants to kill Ronan, and go to sell the MacGuffin together to…the Collector! It’s part of the same family of super-science artifacts as the Aether and the Tesseract. But the deal goes bad and Ronan steals the MacGuffin. He realizes it’s a super-science artifact that he can use to get his killing done, and double-crosses Thanos. There’s a big fight, and the heroes stop Ronan and give the MacGuffin to a group of space police called the Nova Corps for safekeeping.

Avengers: Age of Ultron: Okay, back to the HYDRA guys using Loki’s staff to create supersoldiers. Turns out that the magic staff is actually just a cool staff, and all the real power is in the gem in the middle…which is, all together now, a super-science artifact with unimaginable power. After the Avengers stop HYDRA and get it, Tony Stark decides to use it to create Ultron, a robotic protector of humanity that will keep everyone safe from the aliens he just KNOWS are out there…but it goes very wrong and the robot decides to wipe out the human race. He steals the stuff he needs to do it with the help of the supersoldiers HYDRA created (Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch), but they betray him and join the Avengers, who stop Ultron with the help of Tony’s second attempt at a robotic protector of humanity known as the Vision, although Quicksilver dies. Oh and by the way it’s around here that Thor goes, “Gee, isn’t it kind of funny that all these super-science artifacts keep turning up? It’s almost like someone is looking for them!” Thor goes to find out what’s up with that, Iron Man goes off to figure out why he’s so messed up in the head about aliens and is doing so many stupid things, and the Hulk just goes off somewhere, leaving Cap in charge of the Avengers. (Stinger: The guy looking for them is Thanos!)

Ant-Man: Oh and by the way there’s this dude Hank who has a shrinking serum and he doesn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands so he hires an ex-con named Scott Lang to steal it back from an evil corporation. Which he does. And Scott becomes Ant-Man.

END PHASE TWO!

Captain America: Civil War: After sulking for about ten movies, “Thunderbolt” Ross comes back and says he’s sick of all these superheroes cowboying around and causing massive property destruction and being totally ineffective, because that’s his job. He forces the Avengers to submit to UN authority, and Tony Stark comes back to tell everyone they should do it because he can’t be trusted and so neither can they. This rightfully causes a big argument, which would probably not be enough to sustain a whole movie so we get a guy named Zemo who hates superheroes because Ultron killed his family, who frames the Winter Soldier for killing the king of Wakanda (a country that only exists in the Marvel Universe) to draw him out of hiding. Everyone thinks Zemo’s doing this because…well, no, everyone thinks the Winter Soldier really did it, except Cap because he’s loyal to his buddy, and Cap thinks Zemo did it because the Winter Soldier knows where a whole bunch more Winter Soldiers are kept and he’s not quite free of his brainwashing so Zemo can make him tell. And also make him kill people. Cap decides to help the Winter Soldier, and gets a team together to find Zemo. But Iron Man gets his own team together, and they have a big fight. Everyone gets captured except Cap and the Winter Soldier, and Iron Man chases them down by himself without telling anyone because he’s starting to suspect that Cap was right. BUT…it turns out that Zemo isn’t after more Winter Soldiers. He’s after proof that the Winter Soldier killed Iron Man’s parents so that he can get Iron Man and Cap to fight. They do, their friendship ends, and Cap and Winter Soldier break out the rest of the rogue Avengers and go on the run. (Stinger: The Winter Soldier goes back into cryonic sleep in Wakanda until he can get his shit together!)

Now, it’s debatable how much any of this will have to do with Doctor Strange, because supposedly he deals with all the weird shit that the Avengers don’t even know about. But just in case you need to know any of it, now you know it!

*looks around* Well, what do you know, they didn’t change the locks on me…!

Hello, citizens. My name is Justin. If you recall (and even if you don’t), I used to write about comics and stuff here, way back in 2009-2010. Do you remember when Conan O’Brien was hosting The Tonight Show and people were losing their damn minds about James Cameron’s Avatar? This was the cultural climate of the time during which I communicated important thoughts to you about Superman and the Dark Phoenix Saga, and also a small number of made-up facts about Beck.

Anyway, since we last spoke, I have had two children! There is a boy and a girl; the older one is six, and if you do the math, you will find a clue as to why I stopped blogging. There came a time when I had less disposable income to spend on comics and less time to spend reading them—and even less time to spend writing about them. I buy a few things here and there and keep in touch with the comics world by reading stuff on the usual comics news sources, much in the same way that you might follow a baseball team in your fine local newspaper without ever actually watching a game.

But I still think things about comics and feel things about comics, and every now and again I find I still want to talk about comics. However, my wife is pretty uninterested on the whole subject, and my son is not yet old enough to understand what I mean when I tell him that Jim Shooter was one of the best damn things ever to happen to Marvel, yet in the end he left them no choice but to ride him out on a rail in 1987. And so, I thought I would maybe start sharing these thoughts with you again.

Much has happened in the world in the past six years. For example, a terrifying madman is running for president! Have you heard about this? I will spare you the details because I want to talk about superhero comics, so you can perhaps draw your own parallels between the current unpleasantness and the Vote Lex 2000 storyline. (I still have my pin!)

Anyway, let’s talk about the big things.

DC rebooted its entire line, and then five years later wrote a kind of a narrative apology for doing so. I wish that DC Comics wasn’t so gosh-darn insecure about its superheroes. That’s what I think it comes down to, in the end. They have these characters that everyone knows and everyone loves, and yet they feel they constantly have to apologize for them. “You know, now that you mention it, maybe the kids who made fun of me for reading comics were right, and it is dumb that Superman wears trunks on the outside of his costume. Sorry it took us so long to get rid of them. By the way, do you think he should have been Superboy? I think he should have been Superboy and hung out with the Legion; sorry we got rid of that bit of history all those years ago. But on second thought, let’s do it over now and say he was never Superboy again. Sorry.”

They try so hard to convince you that Aquaman is cool. But don’t you already think Aquaman is cool? And if you don’t, is Geoff Johns going to change your mind by telling you, “No seriously, he really really really is, actually”? But anyway, All-Star Batman is neat and people seem to be cautiously enjoying Rebirth. But if sales go south again, I hope they’ll look at their characters and say, “Well, here are some things that are really neat about this character, let’s play around with them and bring them to the forefront,” rather than convincing themselves that Wonder Woman would sell like hotcakes if only they changed these three things about her origin.

Marvel made a bunch of movies that fans, critics, and non-fan audiences liked. Let me admit something to you: when Marvel announced their intention to make a series of individual movies that would feed into a combined Avengers movie, I was like 90% certain this was not going to happen. The deck, at the time, seemed pretty stacked against the idea. If any of the movies leading up to it had bombed, the whole thing would topple over, and then there’s the whole matter of figuring out how to make an Avengers movie itself. And then they got Joss Whedon to direct it, who at that time had a bit of a reputation for having projects fall apart on him.

But First Avenger was great (I’m kind of iffy about third act, though) and Thor was winning enough, and then Whedon came along and made it look like making an Avengers movie is the most obvious thing in the world. For real, you guys, Avengers was the real deal, the superhero movie you always wanted to see but which conventional wisdom told you could never be. Conventional wisdom, as it turns out, was wrong. I was wrong. And now the barriers are down and Spider-Man can show up in a Captain America movie that has Giant-Man and Iron Man and this all seems about right.

By contrast, DC made a movie that has Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman in it that I have no interest in seeing. Friends and family can scarcely believe this, but it’s true. Understand, it’s not so much that I am refusing to see this movie on some kind of principle, or because I took some sort of nonsense loyalist oath to Marvel movies. It’s just that every single thing I have read or heard or seen about it has told me, “You will not enjoy this on any level.” Even Suicide Squad I have a morbid curiosity about; I will possibly rent it. But Batman v. Superman…I’m not a professional critic and I don’t “owe” DC or Marvel anything. Why would I bother spending what little free time I have on something that looks so frustrating?

That said, DC has a bunch of TV shows on the air that have their problems but are so thoroughly charming that they overcome them. I don’t mean for this to be a backhanded compliment. Charm is important; possibly the most importing thing in adapting a superhero comic. Grant Gustin isn’t playing any Barry Allen I recognize, or even Wally West, but he’s really good at playing whoever this guy is who calls himself the Flash, and Jesse L. Martin’s Joe West has become one of my favorite TV dads of all time. Supergirl is very uneven and is totally hampered by having to hang around the DEO. (Did CBS think that their audience couldn’t handle a genre show that had no procedural element to it?) But Melissa Benoist is terrific and embodies everything you like in Supermythology. I’m curious to see if the move to the CW will allow a bit more of the “Can you believe they’re doing this on TV?” feeling you get from seeing King Shark or Gorilla Grodd on The Flash.

Marvel has made a push for diversity that people, by and large, seem to have accepted. When they announced Sam Wilson was going to take over as Captain America, the first thing I thought about was that eventually Steve Rogers would be back, and how was that going to look? “Well, thanks for holding down the fort, Temporary Black Replacement, but White Original is back!” But instead Marvel has decided…they are both Captain America? And Peter Parker and Miles Morales are both called “Spider-Man” and nobody much seems to mind? I wouldn’t have thought to go that route, but darn it, it’s working.

I have a sneaking suspicion these characters are being primed for the movies, which, if true, is clever forethought. Robert Downey Jr.’s not going to be able to be Tony Stark forever, and recasting the role risks a sort of George Lazenby Iron Man, but maybe you could transition the franchise to Ironheart if she turns out to be a hit? We’ve seen a proof-of-concept that audiences will accept a female Thor. Maybe this seems cynical, but sometimes the best way to get diversity advanced is to find a way for it to make it profitable, so I can’t complain.

There’s a lot more I didn’t cover (ComicBookResources redesigned their website in a way that made me sad!), but it was six whole years, and anyway, there will be time enough to talk about other things. I realize my little overview here looks a little harsh toward DC and pretty praising of Marvel. But would it surprise you to learn that I have trouble really connecting with Marvel books these days? And that this is not actually Marvel’s fault? Tune in next time, True Believer, for The Reason Why.

Everyone loves a good fan theory, right?

…um, right?

….can we just pretend they do, for the sake of my introductory spiel, here?

……..so some people on the Internet really love a good fan theory, while others are indifferent or unaware of them, and still others find them tedious and annoying. There are plenty of famous/infamous ones out there, like the Pixar Timeline, or Jar Jar Binks being Supreme Leader Snoke. But there are some fan theories out there that have gotten a little less traction. Let’s look at a few of them, shall we?

All of the extras in ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Independence Day’ are the same people, but the two stories don’t take place in the same fictional universe. They’re just crowds of gawkers who travel from one reality to another to watch crazy-ass shit happen.

Al Leong plays the exact same role in each of his movies, a wise and benevolent member of an alien species who has come to Earth to teach us universal peace and harmony. Unfortunately, they introduce themselves through their race’s traditional peaceful gesture of leaping into frame, brandishing weapons, and screaming loudly, and so are constantly gunned down by action heroes without a second thought.

‘Adventures in Babysitting’, ‘Home Alone’, ‘Mrs Doubtfire’, and the first two Harry Potter movies are all directed by Chris Columbus.

The peddler at the beginning of ‘Aladdin’ is really just making up the whole story to get you to buy his crappy merchandise, and Disney cut the scene at the end where ushers come into the audience pestering you to part with a little extra cash for some tchotchkes.

‘Highlander 2: The Quickening’ is a sequel to ‘Highlander’. (This is remarkably unpopular!)

John Cusack’s character in the disaster movie ‘2012’ is a time traveler, having come to 2012 from 1408 without having aged more than a few years.

All of the Marvel movies are linked in a variety of subtle ways, with characters such as Captain America, the Black Widow, Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, Hawkeye, Thor, the Winter Soldier, and Nick Fury reprising their parts as “Easter Eggs” for the attentive viewer.

Soylent Green is actually made from people.

Will Smith pretty much plays the same part in every movie he ever did. (A similar fan theory exists regarding Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

Deckard is actually a telepath who can project his thoughts, but only in an unconvincing monotone.

’28 Days Later’ was originally written as a bleak, post-apocalyptic sequel to the film ’28 Days’, but after Sandra Bullock was recast as Cillian Murphy, they changed the character’s name.

Radagast the Brown was supposed to die in battle at the end of the third Hobbit movie and be reborn as Radagast the White, but Paul McGann was unavailable due to other filming commitments.

All of Pixar’s movies exist on my DVD shelf.

‘The Shining’ is really a movie about a hotel caretaker that goes insane and tries to kill his family.

‘The Abyss’, ‘Cyborg’, ‘Day of the Dead’, ‘Howard the Duck’, ‘Earth Girls Are Easy’, ‘Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome’, ‘Terminator’, ‘Real Genius’, ‘Night of the Comet’, ‘Short Circuit 2’, ‘Cocoon’, ‘Altered States’, ‘Back to the Future’, ‘Enemy Mine’, ‘Cherry 2000’, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘The Garbage Pail Kids Movie’ are all works of fiction created in the same decade and filmed for public consumption to varying degrees of critical and commercial success. And you can’t prove otherwise.

And we’re back! Phil recaps not just the episode this time but the entire season, reminding us that over the course of eleven previous legs, the happy sparkly friendly Tumblrvinstagramchat generation was gradually whittled down to perpetual bickerfest Dana and Matt, barely competent but adorable and lucky Sheri and Cole, and five-leg winner Tyler and Korey. Who will win the million bucks? Let’s find out!

continue reading "Amazing Race 28, Episode 12: “The Only First That Matters”"

For those of you who haven’t seen it, ‘Civil War’ was a great movie. It was an incalculably vast improvement on the comics, with characterization that felt more grounded in the previous movies and less crammed with Millar-esque swerves for the sake of swerves (part of this is that much of the genuinely despicable stuff that Tony did in the comics is off-loaded onto Thunderbolt Ross, who’s already a well-established asshole). The action sequences were great, the story worked in a whole bunch of characters and events without seeming overstuffed, and in general it made everyone look over at DC and say, “On your left.” And it made me want a very specific Marvel movie, which for the sake of avoiding spoilers for ‘Civil War’ I will put behind a cut.

continue reading "I Want This Soooooooo Bad"

And we’re back! Phil helpfully reminds us that last week’s episode was mostly about the Double-U-Turn, plus a heaping helping of fetch-and-carry, and that it resulted in the final exit of the Frisbee Boys. We’re down to the Final Four now, and the nice times are over. Right?

continue reading "Amazing Race 28, Episode 11: “That’s Money, Honey”"

And we’re back! We begin the episode with Phil’s reminder that Rachel had a hard time lugging around buckets of water, while Brodie had a hard time putting a kite together. Brodie and Kurt escaped elimination by the skin of their teeth, but it’s a sobering reminder of just how much Kurt has carried the team…and how he can’t do that anymore.

continue reading "Amazing Race 28, Episode 10: “Monkey Dance!”"

As I have previously mentioned, the one bright spot about the existence of the otherwise extremely uninspiring and uninteresting ‘Batman v Superman’ movie (really, I remember having huge misgivings as soon as the project was announced–Zack Snyder, talking about DKR as his inspiration, feels like it could be the dictionary definition of “toxic masculinity”) was that it held the potential for some truly wacky studio hijinks. After all, the movie looked like it was going to tank, at least by the standards of Hollywood blockbusters…

A word about that, for everyone saying, “Hey, it made $850 million, why is it being called a failure?” It’s being called a failure because different standards apply to Hollywood blockbusters. These things are designed, through merchandising, product placement, synergistic endorsement deals and aggressive promotion, to make back their money even if the film is basically just two solid hours of Arnie flipping the bird to the screen and shouting, “SUCKER!” in an Austrian accent every few minutes. (Spoilers for ‘Terminator: Genesys’!) It is very hard for them to actually lose money, because so much of the money is made before the film hits theaters–‘Phantom Menace’ would have been profitable without selling a single ticket–and so much more of the money is made before the reviews come out. These films are not judged on the absolute money they make, but on the money they make relative to each other, because their job is not to make money. Their job is to make the kind of obscene, world-shattering money that lets studio execs throw $50 million at some crazy vanity project sight unseen because they’re making ten times that per extremely reliable Avengers movie and have money to burn. On that scale, BvS has failed. ‘Ant-Man’ did better in its fourth week than ‘BvS’ in its fourth week. You do not want to be the guy who makes a Batman/Superman movie that makes less than ‘Ant-Man’.

OK. So the point is, all I was really hoping for is that WB execs would lose their shit and we would get some entertaining panic. Would they dump Snyder overboard like a hot potato? Would he give great snippy bitchy interviews where he blamed audiences for not getting his vision? (I’m still holding out hope for that. If there’s one thing I can say about Snyder besides the fact that he’s a shitty director, it’s that he’s incredibly thin-skinned and holds grudges with reviewers that he works out every time he does a press junket. He’s still holding court on ‘Sucker Punch’, ferfucksake.)

Instead, we get Seth Grahame-Green quitting the ‘Flash’ movie. Now, I can’t say this would have been a great movie–I loved the hell out of the book of ‘Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter’, but he hasn’t been able to translate his skills into movie-making quite yet and it’s distinctly possible that this would have been a big whiff. (Especially since this would have been his directorial debut, and giving someone a huge summer blockbuster as their first movie even though these things have damn near broken guys like Sam Raimi and Joss Whedon seems like its own category of fascinating train wreck.) But in terms of whose vision I’d rather see in the DC Murderverse, it’s an untested Seth Grahame-Green over Snyder any day.

And now James Wan is talking about ditching ‘Aquaman’. And while…look, I cannot stand ‘Saw’, okay? I absolutely think the final twist is the kind of irredeemable bullshit that makes me want to throw things at the screen, an infuriating and unearned “gotcha” that makes no sense and requires six billion coincidences that the killer can’t possibly arrange all to fall in a very particular way for the movie not to literally end on Page Two of the screenplay. (“Hey, I found these keys stuck in the drain! Let’s just go!”) I cannot stand this movie and I will gleefully spoil it for strangers on the grounds that it is better for you to not watch the movie than feel like you wasted two hours on it. (The killer is the guy on the floor. He’s not really dead. Yes, it’s bullshit.)

But that’s all the script. The direction in ‘Saw’ actually makes a movie about two guys stuck in a room all night compelling. It’s impressive work. James Wan has a solid and impressive body of directing behind him. If WB is backing Snyder, whose biggest hit is now over ten years behind him and wasn’t written by him in the first place, over Wan, this is going to be less “fun trainwreck” and more “oh. oh, that poor man. oh god, his wife is crying, and she’s covered in blood, and…is that her blood? is that her husband’s blood? oh god, they had a cargo flat full of adorable baby lambs, and they’re squealing, they won’t stop squealing, there’s just so much pain….”

I’m hoping that doesn’t happen. I’m really hoping that the backstabbing and panic leads to good movies in the end, rather than good movies being shitcanned in order to double down on the Snyder vision of a Bat-boot stamping on a human face forever. Because this, this thing of interesting and creative people fleeing the DC movies like rats leaving the sinking ship? Not actually what I was hoping for.

And we’re back! Phil starts the episode by reminding us that Kurt and Brodie managed to beat a camel in a bike race and still needed to use the Express Pass, thanks to Brodie’s poor performance at Roadblocks, while Sheri and Cole got so badly lost that they were briefly concerned that they had departed Dubai altogether. Luckily, they were saved by a non-elimination leg, but we have to be pretty much out of those by this point. Which bodes ill for somebody…

continue reading "Amazing Race 28, Episode 9: “Salt That Sand!”"

I feel like I should say something, as the site’s resident “Doctor Who” fan, about the casting of Pearl Mackie. The problem is that I will then have to expand out, “Um…good, I guess?” into a full blog post. But with that said, here goes.

I have no feelings on Pearl Mackie as an actress. Looking over her brief IMDB entry, she has done nothing that I’m personally familiar with on film or television. It sounds like she’s done some stage work, which I’m unlikely to have seen from Minnesota, and some radio work as well, but the name definitely does not ring a bell. This isn’t anything unusual, though, as I hadn’t heard of Matt Smith either prior to his casting and Jenna Coleman was just a name too, as was Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill and really most of the names on the show except for Eccleston. That’s because I’m not a casting director and I don’t get to root through stacks of glossies and CVs and then do auditions and find awesome people that nobody’s ever heard of. So I’m going to assume a good job was done from the brief clip shown, and make up my mind further when I see her first episode.

That said, I have a theory based on the clip that I’m really hopeful about–I don’t think she’s from the present-day. Her outfit is very 80s, right down to the Nagel print t-shirt, and the Doctor says that they need to go back to the future because 2017 needs them. Assuming this is filmed for a 2017 debut, the Doctor may well be using her frame of reference in describing 2017 as the future.

That excites me. I’ve felt for a while now that the one thing the new series needs to do so very badly is to get out of its comfort zone when it comes to companions; with the exception of Donna, who was very well-received for that reason, the predominant model for companion has been “young, gorgeous woman from an era contemporary to broadcast”, with their family members and significant others appearing as a sort of tertiary supporting cast. It’s been sort of a case of “roll off the old girl, roll on the new girl,” and I think that was something you could rarely accuse the classic series of. I’m hoping that we’re going to see someone from a different time period.

And not just a different time period–I have a strong hope that Bill’s name and the choice to cast a biracial actress (and not to de-emphasize her race–she’s not being asked to straighten her hair or anything dreadful like that) will signal that she’s going to break that mold a bit, even if the opening shot is of her running hand-in-hand with the Doctor in a slightly cringe-inducing way. I’m not saying that she’s going to be gay or bi just because she’s not dressing frilly and she’s got a masculine nickname, but if she was, that would be by no means a bad thing for the show.

Basically, I think I’m saying, “Could we please get Season Ten so I can get to know the new companion, please? Because I’m cautiously optimistic about this one, and I’d like to find out how awesome she is now.” Which is a bit more enthusiastic than “Good, I guess?”, so maybe writing out my thoughts in a whole blog post was a good idea here.

And we’re back! Phil starts us off with a reminder that last week in Georgia, everyone stabbed themselves, then danced until one team (Scott and Blair) finally keeled over dead. Or at least eliminated. On with the Race!

continue reading "Amazing Race 28, Episode 8: “I Have a Wedgie and a Half”"

And we’re back! Last time, as Phil reminds us, everyone went through Armenia looking for the Express Pass, which went to Kurt and Brodie while Sheri and Cole avoided elimination only due to a conveniently timed double leg. We rejoin the action with them sprinting to catch up…which isn’t that hard, because everyone’s leaving on the same train for Georgia (the former Soviet Republic, not the home of Dragon*Con). I’m not entirely thrilled with a double leg that includes a huge bunch, but on the other hand we’re treated to Blair pretty much going straight to Kurt and Brodie’s compartment and hanging out there, possibly for the whole train ride. Could this romance, which started out like Romeo and Juliet, end in tragedy? Let’s find out!

continue reading "Amazing Race 28, Episode 7: “Welcome to Bloody Fingers 101”"

While it does, unfortunately, appear that Warner Brothers has not responded to the mediocre performance of ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ with any kind of interesting panic (although Marvel is amusingly enough flaunting their confidence in ‘Civil War’ with a preview screening in twenty-five cities a full month in advance to build positive word-of-mouth), there’s certainly been a reaction among DC fans. It’s fair to say that this is probably the most divisive movie since ‘Phantom Menace’, and pretty much for the same reasons.

Basically, there seem to be four groups of fans. The first are fans that didn’t like the movie, and are arguing that it was an artistic failure so profound that they’re actually hoping it fails, so that WB will be forced to go back to the drawing board and re-envision their plans for the slate of DC movies. The second group are fans who didn’t like the movie, but see potential in the DC Expanded Universe and are hoping it succeeds even though it was bad because they want an Aquaman movie, a Wonder Woman movie, a Cyborg movie, et cetera. The third group are people who really liked the movie and want more. The fourth group just didn’t like the movie, and don’t really care about the box office one way or the other.

As with any fan schism, there’s a lot of category confusion going on. The second and third group claim that the first and fourth group don’t actually exist–anyone who says they didn’t like the movie is probably a Marvel fan who’s just shit-stirring DC fans because they’re afraid that DC will suck away money and goodwill from the viewing public, supplanting the Marvel Cinematic Universe and ending Marvel’s dominance at the box office. The first and fourth group assume that anyone in the third group is actually in the second group–to them, it’s unimaginable that anyone could like the movie, but they are willing to believe that people would lie about liking it because they’re terrified that if BvS fails, they’re looking at another eight years of the occasional, desultory Batman or Superman reboot before anyone even looks at the second or third tier characters in the DCU.

In actuality, all four groups have their points. It seems pretty clear by now that Zack Snyder is who he seems to be; if you haven’t liked ‘300’, ‘Watchmen’, ‘Sucker Punch’, ‘Man of Steel’ or ‘Batman v Superman’, you’re probably not going to be surprised by his next film. A DC movie universe guided by his vision is only going to appeal to his fans, and people who don’t like that can point to the slightly more heterogeneous style of Marvel and say that there’s another way to do this. And DC won’t do it as long as they’re making money. That doesn’t mean they’re “Marvel fanboys”, it means they’re DC fanboys who aren’t getting their needs met.

The second group is right in suggesting that a lot hinges on the success of BvS. Warner Brothers are not going to throw a ton of money at ‘Cyborg’, especially not a version of the character who isn’t recognizable to the existing fanbase of “Teen Titans Go!” fans, without some sort of assurance that the overall DC brand is going to be enough to draw audiences to the theater like the Marvel brand did for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ‘Ant-Man’. A failure of the big tentpole movie threatens to collapse the tent, and WB already has a pretty damn shaky record of giving a fuck about fans to begin with. (*cough* Jonah Hex *cough*)

The third group is right in saying that they like the things they like and shouldn’t have to be ashamed of it. If you enjoyed ‘Batman v Superman’, you get to be happy about that. Nobody should ever have to apologize for liking a movie. Full stop.

And the fourth group is right in saying that they have just as much of a right to dislike the movie–they should not have motives imputed to them, they are still DC fans even if they don’t like it, and it should be possible to discuss the film with fans without being the subject of angry, defensive rants about how they’re ruining the franchise. (This was also common with ‘Phantom Menace’–the people who liked it would get a bit intense in their discussions sometimes, simply because they wanted more ‘Star Wars’ and didn’t like hearing negativity around it. It also happened with the ’96 Doctor Who TV movie.)

But one thing all four groups need to keep in mind is this: WB doesn’t care what they think. I don’t mean this in a mean way, but the fact of the matter is that the dedicated fanbase of Batman and Superman just isn’t enough to sway the studio’s opinions no matter how many tickets they buy. The Batman comic sells about 100,000 copies a month. Superman sells about 38,000. Even if you assume no overlap, all those fans buying one hundred tickets apiece to the movie are only going to move the needle to the tune of about $138 million. Given that we’re talking a billion dollars as the metric for success, it’s unlikely that fan opinion matters nearly as much as the opinion of the general public in terms of box office success and future films.

So please remember, before getting violently angry over ‘Batman v Superman’: Your opinions are irrelevant. No, wait, that came out wrong. Remember that it’s not a life or death matter when you try to convince someone to see or not see the movie, and try to keep this particular schism, at least, to a polite discussion.