Pop Culture

2024 Concert Review

· December 21, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , , · No Comments

Earlier this week, I wrote about my family’s sojourn to the final Taylor Swift Eras concert in a city redubbed Swift-couver for the weekend. 

Seeing as I didn’t actually go to that concert, I didn’t think it would be proper to include it in my year-end review of concerts.

This time, I’ll go over the concerts I actually did attend, even if we might quibble over whether or not one of them actually counts as a concert. Since we all know the real pop star of the Happy Days set was Ralph Malph.

Don’t believe me? Look up Don Post on YouTube. He might even be more talented than Jason Mraz.

Dammit. Getting ahead of myself.

Jason Mraz

The only musical concert I actually attended this year was Jason Mraz.

Wife and I started dating in the late aughts, so “I’m Yours” was one of “our songs.” It only seemed natural that we go see him perform it live.

Our other song was by Michael Franti. Maybe we should’ve seen him instead.

Sorry, don’t want to spoil my review of the concert.

Starting out with his opening act, which I thought was an odd choice. 

It was a jam band. I’m all for jam bands. Except I like the jamming to happen at key moments throughout the show. Not be the ENTIRE show.

Like, seriously, I don’t think there was a single lyric in the entirety of their show. But the lead… um, not singer… lead player?… kept introducing different songs and claiming they were written about a thing that happened, a person she met, an emotion or whatever. But when they started playing, it still just sounded like the same old jammin’.

The… um, the person whose name was on the band… also had a tendency to mouth along the guitar riffs as she played them. Like scat singing, but with no sound coming out. Or maybe there was sound coming out but since there were no lyrics, her voice wasn’t being mic’ed.

Again, I’m all for scat singing. If Louis Armstrong starts touring, I’ll be first in line. While there, I’m might also parlay the 1969 Mets and Jets.

It turns out the opening band were actually just three if Jason Mraz’s backup musicians. I guess it saves on the expenses when the additional help is already on the payroll. Andrew Carnegie called that vertical integration. 

Then again, if Jason Mraz was looking to control costs, he might’ve thought about keeping that backup band to, i don’t know, maybe a bakers dozen? 

Seriously, his band was fucking huge. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty musicians.  I lost track because there were rarely more than four or five on the stage at one time. There are fewer line changes at a hockey game. 

He started out the concert with an all female band. I thought maybe it was a virtue signal. Like “look how un-misogynistic I am. I’m making a point that women can be musicians, too.” As if anybody would disagree with that? After all, we were seeing Jason Mraz in a glorified Indian casino. Taylor Swift is playing slightly larger venues.

It made it even worse when I was finally able to track all fifteen or so musicians and realized only six or seven were women, so the likelihood of all five starting musicians being female without it being intentional is statistically improbable. He also let the women play one more song by themselves, second from the last song, and he made a point of how phenomenal these women musicians were, before bringing the men back out for the big show ender. 

Kinda feels like the main misogynist in the room was Jason. 

And yeah, the women were great. Both the men and the women. It was an amazingly talented band. Most of them switched instruments without missing a beat.

One woman played not only keyboards and percussion and bass, but she also busted out a motherfucking sitar for a couple songs! She stole the show as far as I was concerned. Unlike those wimpy Beatles, who stopped touring when they took up sitar.

Largely because of the talent behind him, this concert was pretty solid from a music standpoint. When they did “The Remedy,” they turned it into a slower, funkier version great for calling attention to a song we’ve heard so often, and so fast, that the lyrics go by without thought. 

Meanwhile, the guy whose name was on the marquee occasionally busted out a rhythm guitar from time to time. If had to rank the musical ability of the various people on the stage, Jason Mraz would’ve been in the bottom twenty percent. 

Which isn’t a slight, necessarily. Going back to the Beatles, they weren’t the most talented musicians. George and Paul might’ve grown as their careers progressed, but there’s a reason they brought Eric Claption in for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

What made the Beatles great was their songwriting and ability to push the envelope on musical techniques. Jason Mraz has the former. Not sure if he has the latter or not.

At least I thought had the songwriting thing down. Until he told a heartwarming story that the line “I won’t worry my life away” came from a friend of his who was dying of cancer. Jason visited him and was totally bummed out, but his friend said that line and it lifted Jason’s spirits. I mean, if a guy who is dying isn’t going to worry his life away, then… maybe I can steal that line and become super popular with it. 

Tough shit, Cancer Dude.

There was another lyric in another song, I forget which one, that he also admitted to totally stealing from someone. This dude is like a walking trademark infringement. 

He’s clearly pretty enamored with this propensity of his, too. After one song, he said, “Wow, that’s such a great lyric.” To which I thought, “Oh yeah? Who’d you steal it from?’

Normally I wouldn’t be so snarky when reacting to a little in-between-songs banter at a concert I’d been looking forward to attending. But, my God, this guy had shit to say after every single song. A number of his diatribes were longer than the songs themselves. 

He’s clearly going for a particular schtick, which is “Aw shucks, ain’t life great?” I suppose life sure is great for a dude that gets millions of dollars to steal lyrics and hide behind more talented musicians. 

Not that I’m opposed to either of those things, but come on, dude, we’re paying to hear songs, not a celebrity basking in the trappings of privilege. If I wanted to hear from a life guru, I wouldn’t have needed to pay an extra Ticketmaster fee. 

Plus, I’d already seen a celebrity do a similar schtick earlier this year. 

And Fonzie did it better.

Henry Winkler

I wasn’t sure if I should include this. It certainly isn’t a concert by any stretch of the imagination. However, it was listed as a “Tour.” He played the Bay Area on a Thursday night and was doing the same  “playlist” (really more of a PowerPoint) the following Sunday in Sacramento. 

All to promote his newest album… I mean, book.

I’ve always been fascinated by Henry Winkler. First and foremost, I’m fifty years old, meaning Fonzie was everywhere during my upbringing. And unlike Jack Tripper, the other late-1970s epitome of cool, Happy Days was considered family friendly. Despite the fact that the family killed off their eldest son and then went all “Say Nothing” on it for ten more seasons. Sit on it, Motherfucker!

But then, as I grew up, I saw Fonzie taking on some very un-Fonzie-like rolls. I mean, I could maybe see an aging Fonzie coaching a college football team like he did in Waterboy. But he showed up in a random MacGyver episode as a probate lawyer. If Fonzie decided to use his charisma and charm to go the lawyer route, you know he would’ve been an ambulance chaser a la My Cousin Vinny, not a lawyer dealing with dead people’s estates.

But a mortician in Night Shift? No way Fonzie’s working with dead people unless he can hit the jukebox and bring them back to life.

It turns out that Henry Winkler is actually an actor.  

Of course, I’m being facetious. But not entirely. 

Given his first role, one might be forgiven for being skeptical of his acting. After all, Steven Segal and Vin Diesel might play one specific type of character really well, but I don’t see them turning a morgue into a whorehouse. I’m still convinced that the reason the first Matrix movie was better than the other two is that Keanu Reeves is best when his character is confused.

Henry Winkler, however, is a damn fine actor. 

Such that his most iconic role, Arthur Fonzarelli, is about as far from the real Henry Winkler as you can get.

Fonzie is all about cool, while Henry Winkler seems to be a bundle of neuroses. Fonzie is aloof, Henry is personable and empathetic. Fonzie could take it or leave it, Henry is amazed with life. 

Like seriously, how can a guy that was on every third-grader’s lunchbox in America be this humble? How can a guy who was one time at the top of the celebrity hill be so empathetic and enthusiastic about the lives of others? 

(Although, Henry claims he was never top of the A List. Fonzie was. When he showed up to parties without using the Fonzie voice, they were usually disappointed.)

I took my mom to see him speak after having given his autobiography to her for Christmas. I didn’t read the autobiography, but figured it would be a generally positive look at life. My mom said it was mainly him complaining about his parents, which, yeah, is a big part of his schtick, but usually he’s very humble and introspective about it. My mom didn’t get that on first reading, probably because she imagined it coming from an arrogant Fonzie, not an effusive Henry.

By the time his show ended, she saw the book in an entirely different light.

There isn’t a heck of a lot to the show. I wasn’t kidding when I said it was basically a PowerPoint of his life story. Hoo-Wee, that sounds exciting!

But he wasn’t just reading off the slides like my students do. They were mainly just some pictures to ground him in case he got off on a tangent. And trust me, he went off on a number of tangents.

 In fact, there were a number of times he forgot it was even there and then would have to jump forward multiple slides to get caught up.

My favorite example of this was his long diatribe about his father’s wood-cutting business. His parents wanted him to follow his father into this family endeavor. “Why else do you think we came to America than to give you this chance?” To which Henry responded, “Gee, I thought maybe escaping the Nazis had something to do with it.”

He continued on with this and various other stories about his family fighting his decision to do theater in college. 

Maybe five minutes later, he realized he was still on a slide of him as a child, so he quickly forwarded a few slides. For the most part, it was easy to see which pictures corresponded with which parts of his story. Except for the picture of the Hollywood sign, because his story hadn’t progressed to California yet. 

He took one look at it and said, “Oh. That was the only Wood I wanted to work with.” We laughed. Belatedly.

His life story revolved around the fact that he has dyslexia and therefore struggled in school. His parents called him “Dummhund,” which translates to dumb dog. Although he did graduate Emerson College and then attended Yale’s graduate school for drama. These two facts seem to counteract both his school struggles and his parents’ lack of support for his acting ability. Yale drama school might not be as selective as the rest of the campus, it’s still an Ivy League graduate school that probably doesn’t take a lot of students who can’t read.

Regardless, if I wanted my daughter to take after me in my wood cutting business, I wouldn’t be signing her up for acting school.

When his story did progress to California, it was the similar story to a lot of actors: Living on someone else’s couch, doing random commercials or sit-com walk-ons for a pittance to stave off starvation or, even worse, returning home with your tail between your legs to grovel before all those naysayers and their “I told you so”s. 

He didn’t seem to wait any tables, though. Maybe that’s more of a post-1970 thing.

We learned that Fonzie’s famous “My hair’s too good for a comb” pose was not in the script. Garry Marshall wanted him to actually comb his hair, because greasers gonna grease. Henry thought that was too cliche and asked for it to be taken out. Marshall kept it in. So Henry did what he did, fully expecting them to yell cut and have him do it over, but instead they loved it.

It might have been that scene that changed the trajectory of the Fonzie character from local tough guy to main character.

In the end, it was Fonzie who killed Chuck Cunningham. Just (probably) not figuratively.

The end of Henry’s parents stories are great. After fighting his getting into acting for so long, they traveled all around proudly claiming they were Fonzie’s parents. He’s met people all around the world with his parents’ autographs on his own glossy.

“Not bad for a Dummhund, huh?” 

He talked about discovering Marlee Matlin when she was a teenager. Her mother hoped he’d talk her out of her dreams, convince her that Hollywood is too shallow for a deaf girl to make it. Henry responded that he wished he could, but what he saw on the stage was a rare talent, a commanding presence, and it would be an absolute travesty if she didn’t follow through.

He told other stories, as well. My favorite was the time Robin Williams guest starred. He was mostly quiet during rehearsals as the part was continually rewritten. When he finally kicked into character, the rest of the cast could barely contain themselves. What Henry decided was to let Robin take over the episode, not pull a “Hey, this is MY show” and try to steal the spotlight. To just step aside and let the force of nature take over.

And to think, he did all this without stealing from a cancer patient.

It’s not surprising, then, that his whole schtick is about ignoring the naysayers and following your own path. 

Not sure that I buy fully into the message. Sure, it works for Marlee Matlin and Robin Williams. And Henry Winkler. But I’ve seen a number of really bad community theater actors who probably need to invest in an accounting degree.

And, to be fair, his message was not just to follow your dreams, but to be true to yourself. But again, that implies people are able to separate their dream-self from their real-self.

He also focused a lot in on children, feeling his parents never listened to him, never really engaged with him. He gave an example of a kid wanting to say something when you’re on the way out the door. But you take the time to ask them what’s up, they say something like, “I like green,” and instead of saying nobody gives a shit, you say, “You know what? That’s very interesting, and I have to go, but I really want to talk more about this when I get home tonight.”

I mean, I get it. But tell me you haven’t had children around forever without telling me, am I right? If we let Daughter dictate when and how we are to leave the house, she’d be a half-hour late to school every day, and I don’t care if that’s her “real self.”

Then again, I think he’s talking more about how the Baby Boomers were raised and how they raised us Gen Xers. If anything, we’ve overcorrected for this. Nowadays, a dyslexic kid isn’t put in the “Dummhund” category. They’re given an IEP that specifies they never have to do anything, ever. Doubt they’re going to learn the perseverance necessary to do auditions. 

Sometimes I’d love to treat Daughter like I was treated, allowed to range freely about the neighborhood without a GPS in sight. 

When she was born, I swore I’d never give in on Elf on the Shelf. If my dad had sworn his child would never be given something, he wouldn’t have given a shit how much it bothered me or made me a social pariah. Want to know how many elves we have on our fucking shelf? Four!

So yeah, I get that children are impressionable and an errant comment or brush-off can have a lasting impact, but that doesn’t mean we should encourage them to interrupt and hold the world hostage to every whisp of a whim.

Otherwise we’ll get another generation of Jason Mrazes.

As Hip as Vinyl

· June 11, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , , , , , · No Comments

One of my favorite things about teaching economics is how approachable it is.

Never understood why most states wait until senior year to broach a system that most five-year-olds can figure out. You have a finite amount of money (or resources) and, as a result, you gotta choose what to use it for. How hard is that?

We’ve all experienced economics our whole life. For instance, most people are willing to pay more for things with utility, or usefulness, and convenience. Products that are less useful or convenient must be sold at a lower price or else consumers will substitute in the better…

I’m sorry, how much does that record player cost?

That’s, like, just a regular record player, right? The kind we were all too eager to move on from in the 1980s when snazzy new cassette technology came out?

It must be able to skip songs like CDs. Or flip the record over by itself? Oh, I’m sure it’s one of those faux items, made to look like it plays vinyl while in reality, you plug in a flash drive with MP3s.

No? it just plays vinyl records?

Sorry, where was I? Oh right, how intuitive economics is.

When most people hear “social science,” they think history, but when you actually think about the wording, it’s the study (“science”) of human interaction (“social”). And there is no more basic human interaction than “You make a product I want. This is how much I’m willing to pay for it.”

Like, for instance, you produce a record player. If this were 1970.

You see, the law of demand says that people want to pay as little as possible for a product. Unless it’s got the hipster badge of honor, evidently. And the law of supply says… well, I guess the law of supply is in full force here, because if dumbasses are willing to pay more for decades-old technology that’s been replaced by at least three generations of improved products, then sure, I’ll make as many of those damn things as you want.

Actually, there is one economic concept that helps explain the price of record players, which is a decrease in supply. As most companies move on to produce newer, better technology, there are only a few record players being produced. The small number of customers remaining are willing to pay more for the few remaining relics of the past. Maybe there are some warmed over hippies who want to play the vinyl collecting dust on the shelf for the entirety of this millennium. 

I can commiserate. I’ve got a crap-ton of VHS tapes that I’ll never get to watch again. Sure, I’ve repurchased the movies, but dammit, Daughter needs to understand that it wasn’t Hayden fucking Christensen under Darth Vader’s fucking helmet. In fact, when I showed her Star Wars the few scenes she tuned out to were the digital scenes added in the 1990s re-releases, which look so phony now. 

Star Wars aside, most of my VHS tapes are recordings of community theater shows and a couple high school projects I made with Rian Johnson that I could probably sell for a premium. Actually, scratch that, they’re terrible. The only person willing to pay me for them would be hush money from Rian himself. 

Pretty sure I own “WarGames” in at least three formats. Even though I swap most of the movies I show in class in and out of the rotation every few years when I get tired of watching them, “WarGames” has never fallen by the wayside. It’s still, in my mind, the definitive Cold War movie that is still approachable to students today. If anything, it’s become even more relevantthe last couple years with the debates over AI. As such, I know I at least have it on VHS and DVD, and probably BluRay (which I always seem to forget is different than DVD). I’ve also purchased it digitally on Amazon one year when my DVD player wasn’t working, because now that DVD players only cost $20, the planned obsolescence on them is about two weeks. 

Yes, I understand the irony of discussing planned obsolescence in the same post as $300 record players.

A decade or so ago, I hoped the, with digital, we could get beyond repurchasing the same title multiple times, but now we’re getting into the “must purchase on different platforms.” I thought I was being proactive when I burned all the good songs off my CDs back in the mid 2000s. Except I burned them via iTunes and now have an android. And now my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive to reburn them.

To say nothing of streaming companies pulling content they already own off their own platforms. At first, I was annoyed I’d bought all those early MCU titles on DVD when they were all now available on Disney+. But at some point, they’ll pull a Mysterious Benedict Society on the MCU and I’ll be happy I have those DVDs.

Assuming I can find a DVD player when that happens.

So yeah, I get the idea of producing a few bits of obsolete technology for those still stuck in yesteryear. 

But vinyl records are still being produced. By new bands. And they cost TWICE AS MUCH as a goddamn CD. 

I discovered all this after Daughter discovered Taylor Swift. She’s ten years old, which is the proper age for a Swifite. Unfortunately, there seem to be a handful of people over the age of twelve who are ruining the situation for the rest of us, meaning Taylor Swift concert tickets are a wee bit more expensive than Kidz Bop.

Following Taylor Swift is the ultimate form of purchasing the same item in multiple formats. In addition to the CDs and, yes, the vinyl, you have to buy the Taylor’s version of all the albums she’s redone, even if you bought the original album before she re-recorded them. And you’re expected to buy the albums she hasn’t re-recorded yet, preferably in multiple formats, with the knowledge that you will be buying them again when she re-records her own versions in another year or two. But only if she stays with Travis Kelce, because if they break up, she’ll write new music and not need to release another “Taylor’s version.”

Oh, and send some Spotify fees her way, too. 

So Daughter saved up her allowance for a few months to purchase a record player. Then she wanted to buy some vinyl. 

I was sorta game, because, call me old, but sometimes I miss listening to albums as they were intended. I get tired of telling Alexa or Pandora to play some Beatles only to find they don’t know that the second half of Abbey Road is supposed to be played continuously. Nothing’s more jarring than “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” being in between “Please, Please Me” and “Here, There, and Everywhere.”

Daughter started with three Taylor Swift albums and I threw a couple Lake Street Dive albums because the whole family likes them, even though we mostly listen to them on Alexa. Haven’t been able to find Abbey Road yet, which is probably a good thing. It’s one thing to buy an album you already have on newer, better technology. It’s quite another to intentionally retrograde your version. 

The pricing of these records was where my belief in supply and demand totally shit the fan. There is no earthly reason they should cost twice, even three times, as much as CDs. At Barnes & Noble, the CD version of Taylor Swift’s Red was $18 or $19 and the vinyl was $45! And that’s Taylor’s version, where she’s getting 100% of the proceeds.

Back in the early 1990s, when they were brand new, CDs cost $15-20, while cassettes ran about $10 and vinyl was maybe a little less, because nobody was buying them. 

I remember being at a concert where the artist said CDs and cassettes cost the same amount to produce. The audience gasped. That artist, and others, were hoping to bring the price of CDs down. Instead, the industry responded by increasing the price of cassettes. That pretty much killed off cassettes, because, back before social media, people weren’t willing to pay more for worse technology.

They should’ve quadrupled the price. Then called cassettes “niche.”

Or waited a decade and used the term “vintage.”

Somehow CDs still cost about $15. Evidently they’ve never heard of inflation. Neither have video games. When I was buying piece-of-shit 8-bit games for my Intellivision or original NES, they set me back about $50. With a few exceptions, video games for a PS4 or PS5 stay mostly in that $40-50 range. The difference is that I only made $3.35 an hour back in the NES days, so I’d have to pretty much work a whole week to afford a video game. Now it’ll take me an hour. The same hour I just spent writing this blog while my students watched WarGames.

By that rationale, I could get four or five CDs an hour. But I don’t. I think I’ve purchased maybe ten CDs in the last ten years. Because even when I buy them, I just listen to their contents online, which doesn’t necessitate having the physical CD in my possession, not to mention finding something to play it on. My new car doesn’t even have a CD player anymore. 

As a result there are fewer CD shops. And fewer CD player shops. Seriously, how the hell is Best Buy still in business?

That’s called a decrease in demand. Fewer people purchase a product, fewer of the product are produced, and the price drops. Or, in this case, the price stays the same despite thirty years of inflation. 

That memo that hasn’t hit vinyl. Oh, the quantity available has certainly dropped, which makes it annoying to look for anything other than Taylor Swift, a couple of country stars, and maybe Led Zeppelin. Seriously, the Barnes and Noble had about ten copies of various Zeppelin records. Of all the questions I have about today’s vinyl customers, I really, really, really want to know who is just now, in 2024, desiring to purchase Zeppelin IV on vinyl.

For $30.

I know, I know. I sound like a broken record here.  

But hey, at least Millennials and Gen Zs will finally know what it means to sound like a broken record. My students always thought it was a good thing, referring to broken records in sports. But it’s a Michael Jackson reference, not a Michael Jordan reference. Not that they know who either of those people are. Sorry, I sound like a Taylor Swift broken record, not a Travis Kelce broken record.

Since we purchased the record player and records, wanna know Daughter’s preferred way to listen to Taylor Swift? On Alexa. Or YouTube. They’re so much more convenient.

And what is the record player doing? Sitting there on the shelf gathering dust, just like it was 1986 up in this bitch.

So sure, people, convince yourself that those cracks and hisses are “essential to the music” and pay a premium for it. 

Then go listen to it digitally.

Because you know what I’ve never heard anybody say when leaving a concert?

Damn! Why no crackles?

Wherein I Fix All of Marvel’s Problems

· May 16, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , , · No Comments

As the foremost expert on all matters Marvel, I figured I should pipe in on this new/old/revamped/softly-rebooted MCU thingamagig.

(*Disclaimer: “Foremost Expert” is an unofficial title more or less determined by comparing my knowledge of comic books to a) my family members, and b) some of my coworkers. Plus I once blogged about why female superheroes have large breasts

So the MCU has been in a bit of a funk lately. And by “bit of a funk,” I mean it’s been a heap of hot garbage that’s hemorrhaging millions of dollars on each failed attempt to regain relevance. Kevin Feige, the guy in charge of the whole shebang, who as of five years ago was seen as a wunderkind who could film a fart and turn it into a billion-dollar franchise, is licking his wounds and going to that time-honored Hollywood tradition of retreading the same old shit they’ve been shilling out for decades.

The reasons for the recent failures in the MCU can be attributed to a ton of reasons. Some people, evidently including Kevin Feige, think it’s because they’ve used up all their “a-list” heroes and actors. Others think it’s the result of Disney “going woke” and “going broke.” Add to that the effects of Covid and HDTVs on the theater-going experience, plus the desire for Disney+ to have premium content, plus the glut of entertainment options, plus Jonathan Majors’s assault trial, plus the confusing storylines because do I really have to watch Loki, season two before I see Deadpool and Wolverine?

I’m here to confidently assert that each of those explanations is wrong. 

Because, in many ways, they’re all right.

And if Kevin Feige thinks he’s going to solve the problem by giving Robert Downey, Jr. a shit-ton of money, he’s in for a rude awakening. Okay, maybe not the first time he tries that trick, but it ain’t gonna have staying power.

What everybody can agree on is the origin of the MCU’s problems, which started roughly the time between when the Avengers: Endgame afterglow left our hearts and the Covid virus entered our psyches. 

Boy, Endgame only beat out Covid by the skin of its teeth. Remember how painful that year was between Infinity War and Endgame? Imagine if Infinity War had come out in 2019 instead of 2018. Then all the movie theaters would’ve shut down before we got the resolution. And there’s no way Disney would’ve tried that “just release it on Disney+” bullshit they did with Black Widow if it was the pinnacle of a decade of storytelling. Dare I say it, that would’ve made 2020 even worse than it already was.

But I digress. Let me start with the least, or maybe most, obvious problem the MCU is facing: Endgame hangover. 

Don’t get me wrong. Endgame is one of the greatest cinematic accomplishments of all time. So much fan service, so many callbacks, wrapped up in a prefect send-off of characters we’d come to know for a decade or more. 

Can I be honest? When I was in the theater, I didn’t even hear the dialogue when Dr. Strange’s teleportation circley things (told you I was a Marvel expert) all appeared on the air, because I was in one of those theaters where everyone was cheering at the top of their lungs. 

Of course, the line, spoken by Falcon to Captain America, is “On your left,” which was what Captain America kept saying to Falcon when they were running around Capitol Mall and Cap kept lapping him in Falcon’s first appearance. 

It’s details like this that set it apart. James Bond movies (pre-Daniel Craig) were always standalones. The Star Wars trilogies are mostly independent, and when they try to self-refer, it’s ham-handed and pisses off half the audience. Endgame was catharsis.

Unfortunately, with Endgame being such an accomplishment, Disney kinda forgot what brought us to the MCU in the first place. Endgame wouldn’t have worked in place of Iron Man in 2008. Just ask DCU, which continues to try (and fail) to reboot their own comic universe with deep gut-punches of movies. The MCU, by contrast, was light-hearted and fun. But now they think all of reality has to hang in the balance for every damn movie. Endgame worked because we were vested in the characters. We knew “On your left” and “I could do this all day” and “I am Iron Man,” so we were rooting for them as much as we were rooting for Earth or half of humanity. 

In The Eternals, do we really give a shit about Ikarus or Sersei or Crystal?

(That was a test: Crystal is in the Inhumans, not the Eternals, and if you don’t know the difference, that’s the point.)

Now, Kevin Feige and the rest of the Disney brass would look at my last statement as proof that they need to bring back Iron Man and Captain America, but I call bullshit. Nobody knew who the hell the Guardians of the Galaxy were before 2014, but I guarantee that if I’d thrown Groot in my fake Eternals lineup instead of Crystal, everyone would have caught it immediately.

Before they follow this new “only big names” path, maybe they should find a single human who prefered Thor: Love and Thunder over Shang-Chi. Then put that huan in prison, because they are clearly a sociopath.

It’s not about the star power, either. Sure, Robert Downey, Jr. was always a star (albeit one who was known more for his off-screen misdeeds than any particular role), but Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth were hardly household names before they hit gold. It’s hilarious to look back on critics haranguing Disney for putting the original Thor movie in the hands of a couple of unknown lightweights named Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston. 

Never forget that Shang-Chi begat Barbie, not the other way around.

This whole “just use the major characters” approach isn’t only a movie problem. For sixty years now, the Marvel Comics mantra has been, “If a comic isn’t selling, make Spider-Man and Wolverine guest star.” The only entity more egregious is DC Comics, who seem contractually obligated to put Batman in fifty percent of their printed comics each month.

It’s why I fear Wolverine being part of the MCU now. I really, really hope Hugh Jackman retires the character after the next Deadpool movie. Not because I dislike Hugh Jackman or Wolverine, but because if the MCU gets their way, he’ll replace Stan Lee in the cameo department.

Thank God Marvel can’t use Spider-Man with impunity. If Sony ever sells the rights back, assume the next seven MCU titles will be Spider-Man and Wolverine.

Where I started to lose interest in the MCU was when they transitioned from the (allegedly) minor characters of Vision and Scarlet Witch to the (again, allegedly) major characters of Falcon and Winter Soldier. Of all the decisions they’ve made over the past five years, moving WandaVision into the pole position of the Disney+ shows, was probably their worst. It showed how groundbreaking the new format could be. Wow, we can have a time-bending, reality-bending show steeped in pop-culture with painstaking attention to detail encompassing seventy years of pop culture? Cool! 

Then they followed it up with stretching a two-hour movie into six episodes.

One thing everyone can agree on is that the glut needed to stop. I understand why Disney felt they needed a shit-ton of TV series right away. It’s hard to compete with Netflix if you’ve only got two or three properties. But, honestly, they could’ve waited more than a couple weeks in between each of those initial series. I watched almost every series, but if you put a gun to my head and asked if a particular scene happened in Hawkeye, Moon Knight, or She-Hulk, I might not be able to tell you. Unless it was in Egypt, in which case my answer it Moon Knight.

Speaking of the glut of Disney+ offerings, stop calling the cartoons part of the MCU. I’m sick of headlines saying “Iron Man returning to MCU” or “Tom Holland replaced as Spider-Man” only to find out it’s about Zombie Iron Man or Spidey and his Amazing Friends. Hell, I’m not even sure how I feeel about Deadpool and Wolverine being the only MCU movie coming out this year. Sure, Deadpool is a Disney property now, but does anyone actually feel, after seeing the first two movies, that this is a natural connector between The Marvels and Captain America: Brave New World? Even in the comics, Deadpool barely works in continuity. I worry the character will lose a lot of his appeal once he has to fit into MCU’s multiple convolusions.

I’m kinda bummed that The Marvels bombed. It was actually a good movie. So was Fall Guy, which also bombed, because somehow Hollywood still hasn’t figured out what gets people to the theaters. A lot of people blame it on Covid hangover, but theater attendance was down int he decade leading up to 2020, as well. For all properties except Marvel.

I think The Marvels is what the MCU needs more of. But not for the reasons that Disney thinks. And not for the reasons Fox News thinks. 

It has nothing to do with the movie having three female superheroes. It’s because at least two of those three superheroes are interesting, played by actors who aren’t phoning it in. It also has Brie Larsen.

Considering that all three characters have gone by either Ms. Marvel or Captain Marvel in the comics, combining them in a movie called The Marvels makes total sense. Those of us in the know realized where it was going as soon as the last name Rambeau showed up in the original Captain Marvel. 

If you haven’t seen WandaVision (or Ms. Marvel), it might feel like this was a woke shoe-horning in of three female characters of different ethnicities, but considering the MCUs bread and butter has always been characters showing up in each others’ movies, it would’ve seemd odd had Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan NOT appeared in the next Captain Marvel movie. But yeah, one of those valid complaints of the MCU is that you shouldn’t have to watch every damn property to know what’s going on. 

But if the reason you didn’t watch Ms. Marvel is because she’s Muslim, suck it up. You lost that worthless argument a couple generations ago. 

Monica Rambeau’s been in the comics since the early 1980s, she’s hardly a woke “tick the box” representation character. Was Kamala Khan? Maybe at first, although I find it interesting that she showed up around the same time as Miles Morales. The complaint about Miles Morales was “if there’s going to be a minority character, make a new one. There’s already a white Spider-man.” Then those same people complained when the Muslim Ms. Marvel was completely different than the white one. Or the blue one, which was the original Mar-Vell. 

With all that being said, Marvel Comics, and by extension the MCU, needs to stop putting “tick the boxes” ahead of character development. While I watched and enjoyed The Marvels, the entity I have no interest in whatsoever was Echo. The character of Echo is, allegedly, interesting because she is a) deaf, and b) Native American. Back story? Nah. Specific powers? Not really. Compelling backstory? Did I mention she was both Native American and deaf?

Two of the most boring Marvel characters are Hulkling and Wiccan. Hulking already has one strike against him because he is not in any way related to the Hulk. Hulk has a son, but that is not Hulkling. Instead, Hulkling is part Skrull, so he is green and can shape-shift into something strong, like Hulk. Wiccan is one of Vision and Wanda’s kids. He’ll show up in the MCU soon, I suppose.

Hulkling and Wiccan are gay and they are married to each other. So every time they’re shown, it’s some sort of date night or some other premise to show nonstop adoration between the two. They never fight, as married couples are wont to do. They never have their own agendas. They are simply in love with each other, at all times, because dammit, that’s good story-telling. Meanwhile, Invisible Woman is banging Namor every time Mr. Fantastic leaves the room for more than five minutes.

Hulking is literally the emperor of the combined Kree & Skrull empires, but somehow the only story of his that’s worth telling is that he’s married to a man and they are perfect together. Hey Marvel, it would feel a lot less like tokenism if you allowed the characters to be more than just a token.

This whole “minority characters can’t have flaws” is going to come back to bite Marvel in the ass before long. Exhibit #1: The Phoenix Force.  Historically, it takes over a character, causes them to kick-ass for a period of time, then turns them insurmountably evil before burning out. The plot of X-Men vs Avengers, one of their most-hyped (and least-payoffed) crossovers of the last twenty years, is that infects six X-Men and runs them through the whole gamut in seven issues. They solve world hunger by issue #2 and are trying to end existence by Issue #6.

Now Echo has the Phoenix Force. Let me remind you, however, that she is Native American. And deaf. If Hulkling can’t have any flaws, that applies doubly to Echo. She can’t ever succumb to baser instincts because the Woke Bible says no Native American has ever had an impure thought in their entire history. Nor have the deaf. The way you humanize someone is by removing their humanity.

And sure enough, Echo has had the Phoenix Force since 2021 and… still has it. Hasn’t saved a planet, hasn’t destroyed one. In fact, she doesn’t really do anything. She’s the same character she’s always been and the Phoenix force is just kinda there. Can’t really flare up and do its Phoenix thing as that might detract from Echo’s primary role of being a) Native American, and b) deaf.

I assume they’ll finally fix it by having the Phoenix Force leave her voluntarily to find someone who is corruptable.

But Echo being a terrible character wasn’t the reason I avoided the TV show. The MCU entities are separate from the comic counterparts. The Thor in the comics has none of the humor of Chris Hemsworth. Tony Stark isn’t nearly as charismatic as Robert Downey, Jr. And Shang-Chi? Find me a Marvel fan who knew who that character was before 2018 and I’ll find you a liar. 

But I did watch Hawkeye. It was mostly a good show. Kate Bishop has huge potential to carry the character forward, probably even better than the morose-as-hell Barton (which totally doesn’t match the way the character is in the comics). And Yelena is the single best character to be introduced post-Rocket Raccoon. And again, Yelena ain’t that big of a deal in the comics.

Most of the time, Hawkeye’s pace popped. The times it didn’t? When Echo was there. It was all Kate investigating her stepfather and Clint stuck in New York and Yelena quipping about what’s in the refrigerator. Then it’s, oh by the way, here’s Echo, dropping in like a “Very Special Episode” of a 1980s sitcom. The pace slowed down, the subject matter got serious, because Echo is not a character we are allowed to approach like every other character. We must understand that she MATTERS. 

And they decided to give her an entire series not based on feedback, not based on an objective review of how the character played out, but on a “Fuck you, racist and ableist fucks!” Seriously, Kate, who was supposed to be taking over the main character, has only shown up one more time, in a cameo at the end of The Marvels, while Echo has received an entire series and is also going to be in the next Daredevil series. So who was the main purpose of Hawkeye? 

Charlie Cox got thrown in the last Spider-Man movie because he was hugely popular and finally able to be in the MCU. Ditto with Hugh Jackman in the upcoming Deadpool flick. Loki wasn’t my cup of tea, but I get that it was quirky and had a following, so it made sense that season two was greenlit. Echo, meanwhile, was the opposite. Almost a dare. We’re gonna make a boring character and you’re all gonna watch it or else we’ll call you racist and ableist.

So I guess I can see why people thought The Marvels was going to go that route. But it didn’t.

Sure, The Marvels was little more than a torch-passing, but the torch was being passed from a stick in the mud who never really brought much to her roll, Brie Larsen, to someone who could not be a better embodiment of what the MCU should be, Iman Vellani. She steals every scene she’s in with her exuberance. She’s every bit what Tom Holland exuded in his early movies, but replace the “striving to impress” with a buttload of “OMG, this is so cool.” I know the MCU keeps looking for its next Robert Downey, Jr, and I’m not saying Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t the correct call on that, but what they really ought to be focusing on is the next Star Lord. The next Kat Dennings.

There’s a scene in The Marvels on a planet where everyone sings. It’s hilarious. At one point, Monica Rambeau asks Kamala Khan how many fanfic chapters she’s going to get out of this. But to me, the funniest line was when plot started happening, requiring the king to speak some lines instead of sing them. Kamala looks confused, but Carol Danvers explains that he’s bilingual.

Oh, and there’s a scene where a whole bunch of Flerkins (those cat aliens that scratched out Nick Fury’s eye) are eating up people in order to expedite the evacuation of a ship. Once on the ground, they’ll cough them all up like hairballs. Daughter couldn’t get over the announcements going over the loudspeakers (“Let the Flerkins eat you.” “Do not run from the Flerkins”) while I kept trying to place the background music. 

It was “Memory.” From Cats.

You won’t find that level of tongue-in-cheek in Echo.

What separates The Marvels from half of the MCU’s drivel in the past half-decade is that it’s fun. Remember fun? It used to be the number one purpose of a Marvel movie. But they ended up convincing themselves that kick-ass was the adjective they were going for. Some of their movies are both, but when you’re shooting for kick-ass and you miss, you just get bloated drivel. They learned that lesson with Thor: Dark World, but seemed to forget it by the time Falcon and Winter Soldier came around.

Iron Man was fun. Avengers was fun. Guardians of the Galaxy was fun. Even Endgame was fun, in its own way. Eternals wasn’t fun. Multiverse of Madness wasn’t fun. Wakanda Forever, ugh, don’t even get me started. 

And I can only assume Echo wasn’t fun. 

Unfortunately, The Marvels failed. Maybe they shouldn’t have released it during the actor’s strike, when the actors could actually promote it. Maybe they should’ve marketed Iman Vellani as a Tom Holland that they actually have the rights to. Maybe they could’ve marketed it as a movie with three female superheores, not a movie for the purpose of having three female superheroes.

Or maybe they set it up to fail so that they could look down their nose at all the misogynists.

Deadpool & Wolverine looks fun. I’m sure it will do well. But the next movie is Captain America: New World Order, which, if it’s anything like Falcon and Winter Soldier, will be crap. Maybe when a Captain America movie fails, they’ll realize it’s got nothing to do with the characters. 

Or they’ll just blame it on racists.

Although if Thunderbolts*, a movie led by a female who plays a minor character, does better than Captain America 4, which I think it might, maybe they’ll finally try to figure out what makes a movie good. What the MCU needs.

Wolverine vs Spider-man!

Trending in Comedy

· May 6, 2023 · Musings · , , , , , , , , · No Comments

When I logged into Twitter a little while ago, I saw that”Married With Children” was trending. The TV Show, not the state of existence. 

I’m not exactly sure how the whole Twitter trend thing happens. I rarely see what’s trending. It’s a separate tab from the newsfeed. I usually just log in to see my rapidly dwindling news feed, and only stay on long enough to get pissed off at both Republicans and Democrats (with an additional heaping of scorn toward my favorite sports teams). That only takes, what, three swipes down? 

Are there people who log in to Twitter to see what is trending? It’s not even hashtags anymore. Married with children was showing up as a three word string, not a one word hashtag. Has Elon trained the AI to read our entire message? Then why the fuck am I spending hours conjuring up my pithy perfection?

Might explain why I’ve only tweeted once in the past six month. One, my work blocks access (including phone signal), and Bee, by the time I’ve thought of something funny to say, the event’s two weeks old. People probably think I’m boycotting Elon. 

Anyway, whilst lurking but not tweeting, I ended up on the wrong tab and noticed that people were discussing a tv show that’s been off the air for 25+ years. The show was hardly trendy even when it was airing. Don’t get me wrong, it was required viewing for this high school, then college-aged, toxically masculine American dude, but it wasn’t what one might call a societal juggernaut. Had it not been one of the only properties on a new network that nobody was watching, I doubt it would’ve lasted beyond a season or two.

Doesn’t seem the type of show to get a reboot. Or a sequel, although now’s a good time to excoriate people on using those words interchangeably. Reboots and sequels are different things, people!

Sometimes it can get confusing. For instance, the “Girl” Ghostbusters (not my preferred moniker, but if I said “the 2016 version,” you’d say “which one was that?” and then we’d settle on “the girls one”) is a reboot, even though it features all the original actors (playing different roles), whereas Ghostbusters Afterlife, the more recent one, is a sequel, but it doesn’t feature the original actors. And now they’re making a sequel to this sequel, not to be confused with Ghostbusters II, the original sequel. 

The new incarnation of Quantum Leap on the other hand, keeps being described as a reboot but is obviously a sequel. With none of the original actors. Or charracters.

Then there’s the last Spiderman movie, which is… both a reboot and a sequel? Fuck it, I stand corrected. They’re the same thing. 

After a little digging, I discovered Married… With Children was trending because it was the star of the show’s birthday. No, not Ted McGinley. I’m talking about Ed O’Neill. So happy belated #77, Ed! Or Al. Or Jay. Regardless of what name you go by, it won’t have many letters. 

Not sure why someone’s old show was trending on his birthday instead of, I don’t know, his name? Then again, if his name was trending, I would’ve assumed he died. Maybe trending what someone was famous for instead of their name is that one of the algorithms Elon Musk is changing. He sure as hell isn’t decreasing the number of unsolicited political ramblings from people I don’t follow.

The trends of Married… With Children tweets on his birthday followed two general trends, the first of which is whether Married… With Children is even what Ed O’Neill is famous for these days. Modern Family would seem more relevant here in the 2020s, but oddly enough, it wasn’t trending. Maybe that’s because Twitter is populated by Gen Xers like me. Modern Family was probably trending on Instagram or Tiktok or whatever. it’s no Great Toto Divide, but no Gen Zer is going to suspend their offension long enough to admit that the former is funny.

That seemed to be what Twitter was abuzz about on his birthday. Which Ed O’Neill characer is more iconic, Al Bunday or Jay Pritchett? Married With Children or Modern Family? 

I was hoping to settle the difference by picking the show that lasted longer. No such luck. According to IMDB, he was Jay Pritchett for 11 years and 250 episodes, Al Bundy for 10 years but 260. 

Something struck me as I went down the list of pros and cons for each Ed O’Neill show. Who’s a funnier cringe-inducing child-man, Bud Bundy or Phil Dunphy? On the one hand, they’re both dorks who say inappropriate things and are utterly unaware of how they’re perceived. On the other hand… they were both born in the late 1960s or the early 1970s?

Then there’s Kelly. The first instinct is to compare her to Haley (or Alex), but Kelly was well into her twenties for a substantial part of the run, so let’s extrapolate where she was going. I could totally see her being Claire, tangentially associated with real estate because the actual realtor doesn’t know what he’s doing before taking over the family business. She might have been written as a prototypical dingbat blonde, but she was expert at getting what she needed out of people.

Peg Bundy? Please. If I have to explain the difference between her and Gloria, you’re not trying. And, naturally, how they speak to their husband, who is the same man. Interestingly, my first instinct was that Gloria was hotter, but that might have to do with the fact that I was in my thirties when the latter show came out. As opposed to my early teens, when anyone over the age of nineteen was an old hag. But looking back, the going-nowhere shoe salesman definitely married a few notches up on the hot-or-not scale.

And Ted McGinley is totally Cameron.

The more I think about it, Jay Pritchett is merely an alternate reality Al Bundy who made it out of the shoe store, who won the lottery and traded Peg in for a younger Columbian. Alternate reality works better than sequel to explain how Kelly and Bud ended up married instead of siblings. Things went right for one of them, wrong for the other. If these were soap operas instead of sitcoms, Al Bundy would sport a goatee. 

The other topic of discussion on Married With Children Trending Day, which I assume is now a national holiday on every Ed O’Neill’th of April, was how a show like Married… With Children could never be made today. I agree, but not for the reasons most assumed. 

The common belief, if Twitter mentions are to be extrapolated  to the general population, is that Married… With Children would never survive in the current woke society. Not sure I buy that. The fat jokes might not land in these “body positivity” times, but most of the jokes could easily be found in any recent sitcom. Kelly was a nympho so dumb she didn’t realize the jokes being made at her expense. Haley, anyone? Ninety percent of the early Bud jokes would be perfectly at home with Luke and Manny. 

Another successful sitcom from the past twenty years, The Big Bang Theory, also made countless crass jokes. It might seem more “woke,” because the dorks, who are often the butt of jokes in other sitcoms, are shown in a compassionate light, but they were still the butts of most of the jokes. When they weren’t mocking social outcasts, they were mocking the normies. Oh, and Penny was originally presented as a nympho so dumb she didn’t realize the jokes being made at her expense. Yeah, American sitcoms are so p.c. here in the twenty-first century.

Don’t even get me started on Two and a Half Men.

That being said, I agree with the tweeters who doubt Married… With Children is in line for a revival. But mainly because there’s little difference between it and Modern Family. Sitcoms have been recycling the same tropes for seventy years now and we’re kinda done with it.

Not just sitcoms. When’s the last time a comedy’s been the “It” movie of the year? The Hangover? By the time Hangover II came out, nobody cared.

We consume media differently these days. If I’m going to a movie theater, I want something better than the experience I’ll get at home. Special effects and big explosions aren’t as cool on my phone as they are on a big screen. Adam Sandler is.

If we’re not watching comedies in the movie theater, we’re watching them at home. Or on our phones. That means we’re not watching sitcoms. Why would I waste my time watching the rehashing of seventy year old tropes when I can just watch Lucille Ball or Redd Foxx or Jerry Seinfeld deliver them with more panache. I love me some Cheers, but damn, other than Woody and Rebecca replacing Coach and Diane, you’d never know if you’re watching an episode form season three or ten. Sometimes I’ll queue up an episode when there’s dead time in my economics class (cause, you know, it’s about running a business or something), but whenver I’m reading through the episode summaries, I’m like “Wait, which episode is that?”

Even a decade ago, sitcoms still had that “Water Cooler” quality. Not only Modern Family, but The Goldbergs, Blackish, and How I Met Your Mother (still blocking out that final season). but I think those were the canaries in the coalmine, using gimmicks to remain fresh, not realizing that those gimmicks would expose the tropes even further. I hoped The Good Place might usher in a new age of sitcoms with serialized storytelling in which the characters grow and their situation changes from week to week. Unfortunately not much has followed in its footsteps.

At least not on terrestrial American tv.

I still watch sitcoms these days. Shows like Schitt’s Creek and Letterkenny contain characters with nuance, who occasionally, but not always, evolve as a result of their extraordinary situations. 

Also, they’re Canadian.

Neither of these would make it on American tv, not least because the conversion from Canadian metric would make them show up like scrambled porn on American tv’s. Beyond that, the characters talk and act like normal people, which means they cuss. In Schitt’s Creek, the cursing is minimal and could probably be bleeped for an American audience, but man, I’d hate to hear Eugene Levy saying the “Welcome to Schitt’s Creek” billboard looks like he’s [bleeping] her right in [bleep].” If they tried to take the cussing and references to drugs, sex, and biological functions out of Letterkenny, an episode would fit in a thirty-second commercial break. 

Ironically, the two shows that prove why Married… With Children would never be made today are probably more crass and insulting than the Bundys. The various groups in Letterkenny are the hicks, the skids, the degens, and the Natives, and the show takes the piss out of all of them. The level and amount of crassness they jam into twenty minutes would make Al Bundy blush. I watch with subtitles, but still have to back up twice an episode to listen to the five jokes I missed while gutturally laughing over the first five shit references. 

Schitt’s Creek was chock full of “awww, how sweet” moments,” especially in the latter seasons, but what drew us all to the show at the beginning were at someone’s expense, often the same socially-awkward dingbats and sluts that the nascent Fox sitcoms laughed at. 

They even allow Katy and David, the resident sluts of Letterkenny and Schitt’s Creek, to admit to what Kelly Bundy could only hint at. Not only do they know when the jokes are made at their expense, they’re probably the ones making them. 

So I take back what I said. Married… With Children could still be made today. 

It would just be Canadian. 

Connery vs Craig, the Finale

· November 15, 2021 · Musings · , , , , · No Comments

I thought about naming this post “A Good Time to Die” or some other play on the recent Bond title, but didn’t want to freak anybody out. Or, worse, make you think this was a review of the late-1980s thriller Flatliners. Nice and timely.

A few years ago, I ranked the best James Bond actors. At the time, I ranked Daniel Craig two, or more precisely 1a. The jury was still out on whether he could eclipse a certain Scottish knight. Well, now that Mr. Craig has finished, it’s time to reassess my rankings.

So, you know, spoilers and whatnot ahead. The movie’s been out for a month, so if you wanted to see it, I assume you have.

But, you know, while I’m letting you think about if you want to hit the back button in lieu of forging on. Assuming you’re one who wants to wait six months to see a movie but also avoids spoilers. But, like me, you also want general reviews, so you click on the tantalizing links promising you some, but not too much, of a preview. Give yourself a few paragraphs. Above the fold, as we used to call it. I guess it’s above the scroll now. So I’m giving you a few more paragraphs before I get into James Bond’s gender selection party where he and Blofeld have a glorious three-way with Desmond Llewellyn’s reanimated corpse. Bond will come again.

Even before this film, Daniel Craig had two of the four best movies. Note, I didn’t say “my favorite,” but “best.” I’ll broker no debate nor discussion here. The four best Bond movies, in no particular order, are Goldfinger, Goldeneye, Casino Royale, and Skyfall. Okay, that was in a particular order, but it was chronological. But it should not be construed to imagine Goldfinger is better than Skyfall. 

And really, Goldfinger only holds its spot on this list if you skip the rape scene. The wrestling in the hay is fine, but then hit “forward fifteen seconds” twice and assume it was consensual. 

The fifth best movie is a tie that stretches on for decades. I could make a reasonable argument for From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, or The Living Daylights. If I wanted to be magnanimous and throw a top-ten bone to Roger Moore, it won’t pain me too much to say The Spy Who Loved Me is tolerable. (And I also secretly like For Your Eyes Only, but that admission causes physical discomfort).

No Time to Die doesn’t belong in the upper echelons, but it fits with that other group. Certainly the first one to avoid the “last movie curse” that afflicted every other Bond actor with more than one title to his name. If I were to compare it to any specific movie, it would be On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which they even acknowledge in the movie itself with the “We Have All the Time in the World” homage. More on this later when I can be sure those spoiler-free people aren’t snooping around. 

The other two Craig movies weren’t enough to supersede Sir Sean. Quantum of Solace, everyone can agree, was terrible. Blame it on a writer’s strike if you must, but it belongs squarely at the bottom of the heap with the likes of Octopussy, Moonraker, and Diamonds are Forever. Spectre was mediocre. Indistinguishable and forgettable, especially for a movie that’s supposed to reintroduce the franchise’s biggest baddie. In fact, I spent a good portion of No Time to Die wracking my brain to remember what the hell happened in Spectre, because the previous movie plays into the current movie. In fact, it’s the same Bond girl. I feel like that’s a first.

Speaking of Bond girls, Ana de Armas was phenomenal. And underused. Stop the search for the new Bond right away and just give Poloma an entire franchise. 

Under normal circumstances, ie for the first twenty-ish films in the franchise, not remembering the contents of the last movie made little difference. I’m pretty sure every Pierce Brosnan movie after Goldeneye was the exact same movie, loosely named The World Dies Tomorrow Not Enough. But Pierce Brosnan’s Bond never (are we alone now? SPOILER!) had a child with the Bond girl from the last movie. Even Denise Richards’ dingbat of a “physicist” was smart enough to be on birth control.

And okay, now that we’re into spoiler territory, let’s delve into the biggest spoiler that wasn’t even really a spoiler if you’ve been paying attention to the five-film Daniel Craig arc. Right around the time the first trailer came out, which was back in 2019 because the movie was supposed to come out in May, 2020, I made the bold prediction. If, for the first time, they were treating an actor’s movies as sequels instead of stand-alones, and if they started the run with Bond’s first mission, then it stood to reason that they’d end with his last mission. And there’s only one way you stop a guy like that from coming out of retirement. 

I mean Craig, not Bond.

Can’t wait to see how they pull the Daniel Craig version of Never Say Never Again. But I have the feeling that, whoever becomes Bond next, they’ll pale in comparison and we’ll be clamoring for just one more go. Maybe make him a zombie Bond? Or how about a clone? Blofeld held onto his DNA and….

Oh right, they killed off Blofeld, too. Then how about his good friend Felix…

Wow, they went all scorched earth on this bad boy, didn’t they. No time to die, unless you’re any Bond character outside the office with the padded door. Then you’ve got all the time in the world.

I’ve got minor squibbles with No Time to Die. Safin was utterly pointless, a throwback to the boring Pierce Brosnan bad guys. I think at least one of those guys had a messed up face, too. Not sure what the disfigurement added to the plot. The fact that he was the only survivor when the rest of his family was murdered might give him plenty of vengeance points without fucking up his face. I heard England was contemplating a law that disfigured people couldn’t be shown as evil in movies anymore. Not sure it needs to go that far, but fucking up their looks for no reason seems pointless. Unless you’re hoping for a makeup Oscar.

At least Safin’s plan to destroy the world was great. No, not great. What’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, right: Horrifying. Don’t go checking my Google history or anything. 

But seriously, poison tied to your DNA, so it can be released into a population but only kill certain people? That might be one of the most Bondian villain plots of all time. Way more intriguing than media moguls with stolen nuclear bombs. Or space lasers. 

So again, why did his face need to be all pock-marked? While we’re at it, why have Safin anyway? You’ve got the definitive Bond villain of all time in the movie already, just to kill him off? Have Blofeld break out of prison and put the plan in motion. Then the final confrontation in the pool would bring a stronger catharsis. Given their history, Blofeld seems like the one who would, upon realizing he wasn’t going to survive, would release Madeine’s DNA, thus bringing Bond down with him. Nothing about Safin’s story made me believe he’d pull the “Well, if I can’t win…” move.

The American who kills Felix also seemed bland. He’s a badass mastermind in Cuba, then only shows up one more time when he drives into a totally obvious trap. What’s the point? Combine Safin and Ash, give the denouement to Blofeld, and maybe you could’ve had a run-time less than the average bladder size.

So some good and some bad, but overall, No Time to Die hits its mark, breaeking the curse of final Bond movies (Diamonds are Forever, A View to a Kill, License to Kill, and Die Another Day are usually listed among each actor’s worst films). It works primarily because it was approached as a final Bond movie. I hope this doesn’t become a trend. Please, please, please don’t turn this into every new actor getting a four-movie arc to show his first and last missions as Bond.

In fact, maybe we could use a cleanser before we get another long-term Bond. Maybe it’s time for another George Lazenby. I’ve heard Idris Elba was in the running but he’s too old. Nonsense. Have him be Bond, but only for one movie. Then give one to Tom Hiddleston. By then, maybe I’ll be ready to invest in another long-term Bond.

So yeah, I guess you can figure out where I come down on the whole Daniel Craig vs. Sean Connery debate. It’s not entirely Sir Sean’s fault. We can do more with movies these days. Moviegoers can be expected to follow from one movie to the next. We waited thirty years for a sequel to Star Wars and were still able to pick it right up, debates over midichlorians and all.

In the 1960s, you couldn’t pull Goldfinger up on demand for a rewatch before seeing Thunderball. It’s hard to believe, but even TV shows had to be episodic, not serialized. You couldn’t expect your viewers to stay home at the same time every week and there was no way to catch up on missed episodes. 

Plus, you know, consensual sex is wonderful.

What Craig does get credit for, however, is playing the character as he should be played. No, I’m not talking about true to the Ian Fleming character (although he probably is), I mean truer to life, truer to reality. James Bond would be one fucked up individual in real life. Vulnerable and raw. The cool, quippy murderer who never thinks twice always rang hollow. Sure, that’s what was so great about him. But in the long run, Die Hard lives on longer than Commando because of how raw, how prone to mistakes, John McClain was in that first movie. All his choices had consequences. By Die Harder, he’s turned into Rambo.

Rambo, who started out as a visceral, psychological thriller about PTSD and the systemic failures for our Vietnam veterans. 

Bond pretended to go this route before. Good old George Lazenby showed a more human, more humane Bond. Complete with his new bride dying at the end, with the final line of, “We have all the time in the world.” It’s almost like they could’ve had a grittier Bond fifty years ago, but opted to go full schmaltz, first by ruining Connery’s legacy then prat-falling into the lap of Mr. Moore.

In the end, I don’t know if Daniel Craig is the “Best” Bond. Lazenby is still the only one who never had a bad movie. Think about that before you poo-poo my idea of having a few one-offs before giving the keys to the franchise to another relative unknown.

What Daniel Craig represents now, though, is the definitive Bond. He’s played Bond’s entire career, he’s shown us beginning and end. He lost a lover, he lost an M and ushered in a new (acknowledged) one for the first time in the franchise. And in the end, he sacrificed himself for the world, as we knew he would. Just didn’t expect it to happen with his daughter’s stuffed animal on hand.

Prior to last weekend, when I closed my eyes and imagined a generic Bond, when I read something from Ian Fleming or John Gardner or whoever the hell is writing them these days, he was still a lanky brunette with a comically long gun barrel, speaking with a Scottish brogue. Now he’s a gritty blond with piercing blue eyes.

But seriously, regarding Flatliners. Kiefer Sutherland in a trench coat? Really?

Why I’m Skipping The Eternals

· November 5, 2021 · Musings · , , , , , , · No Comments

For the first time in a long time, I’m not planning on seeing the next Marvel movie in theaters. 

Really, I don’t think there’s a Marvel movie I’ve set out not to watch since the Incredible Hulk, which precedes the MCU but is still somehow counted in it. And nobody who had seen the original Hulk, with its horrible opposite of uncanny valley CGI, was hot to see if Ed Norton could pull it off. We were pining for the return of the quality special effects of Lou Ferrigno.

With The Eternals, however, I think I’ll take a pass.

Granted, I don’t actually see them all in the theaters, but the intent is always there. Sometimes real life gets in the way. Wife and I can’t coordinate schedules. To say nothing of a child who probably doesn’t need to see half the superheroes dissolve into dust. 

Or maybe she should see it, based on the Halloween costumes in our neighborhood. Are this many kids really watching shows like the Mandalorian? Sure, Baby Yoda’s cute and all, but I’m steeped in forty-plus years of Star Wars lore and even I found some serious snoozefest episodes. I can barely get my kid to watch anything non-animated. Not to mention the violence.

And was that kid dressed from Dune? I feel like I have to watch it three more times just to figure out what the hell’s going on. Are you telling me this eight-year-old figured out the entire caste system?

Squid Game? Come fucking on.

You know what costumes I didn’t see? Ikarus or Athena or, wait, is that Hyperion in the ads? Is Marvel actually trying to sneak their Superman rip-off into a movie and think we won’t notice?

Okay, I just checked IMDB and no Hyperion character is listed. Perhaps that’s Ikarus shooting lasers out of his eyes. Does he have that power? As a lifelong Marvel reader, I couldn’t tell you. I figured he just flew on wax wings that melted on hot days.

Now that I think of it, maybe they should put Hyperion in a movie. Marvel has the Squadron Supreme, which is a knock-off of the Justice League. Not only does it contain Hyperion, but Nighthawk (a rich guy whose hawk looks suspiciously like a bat), Dr. Spectrum (who has a prism that shoots out multi-colored energy beams like the Green Lantern), Princess Power (from Utopia Isle), and the Whizzer (who either runs really fast or has the power of urination). How great would it be for the MCU to finally bury the DCEU by making a better Justice League movie using only the cheap knock-offs.

So long as they don’t make that movie like Eternals looks to be. 

Not that they need to stick with the obvious choices all the time. Shang-Chi was hardly on anybody’s list of Marvel properties, but the movie was solid. Of course, everybody was skeptical when they went from the Big Four (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk) straight to the obscure Guardians of the Galaxy. That skepticism lasted about as long as it took to watch the first trailer. That’s when we realized how much fun they can have with more obscure characters. We don’t need to show origins or stick close to a well-known character archetype. Nobody knew who the hell Star Lord was, so might as well make him obsessed with late-1970s pop music and a Walkman.

Guardians of the Galaxy, in fact, laid the groundwork for the rest of the MCU. Sure, there had been quips and comic scenes in the first few movies, but Thor: Dark World is true to the comics character and boring as hell. Thor: Ragnarok is not, and it is not. Marvel movies before Guardians were more fun than funny. Or maybe I have that reversed. Regardless, post-Guardians, they’ve mastered the sweet spot between the two.

My skepticism returned when Eternals was announced. They’re effectively gods, except not those fun Asgardian gods with their personal foibles and tendency to self-sabotage. More like those gods who have no weaknesses. Or interest.

One of the big draws of superheroes of old, particularly those of the Marvel variety, is their weaknesses and humanity. Human Torch is a hothead, Iron Man is an obsessive alcoholic, Spider-Man always gets in his own way. It got even better, even darker, with the X-Men. Storm can’t be in enclosed places and Rogue can’t touch anybody without potentially killing them. Yikes. 

The DC heroes have their drawbacks, too, but they aren’t as integral to their characters as most of them were added after the fact due to changing societal norms. And better Marvel writing. Flash is always late to everything. Superman, like Captain America, is unwavering and overly optimistic. And Batman, of course, is an asshole. So is Green Lantern. 

It’s no crippling claustrophobia, but it helps move the story along.

Newer heroes don’t tend to have the pronounced weaknesses anymore. And a lot of the old ones don’t crop up as often anymore. Thor never gets stuck in human form for being unworthy anymore. Iron Man kicked the booze close to fifty years ago. Storm never manages to find herself in closed areas and even Rogue has managed to get married and have sex. The only character who seems destined to never lose his weakness is Cyclops, because if he could control his eyeblasts, he wouldn’t need the visor anymore and would cease to be Cyclops.

Oh, and Batman’s still an asshole.

Origin stories seem to be lacking these days, too. No more gamma explosions or radioactive spiders, no more exploding alien planets or parents killed in crime alley. While the X-Men have been great for diversifying the Marvel Universe, but for a thirty year span, whenever they wanted to make a new character, there was just a general shrug about how. Make them a mutant. Mutant, mutant, mutant.

Then Marvel sold the movie rights to mutants and stopped making new mutants. Then came the Inhuman push, which was even worse. At least with mutants, the powers usually manifested during puberty. So you might not get an in-depth “how they got their powers” story, but you’d still get the occasional “how awkward the first manifestation was.” Remember when you popped that awkward boner in the middle of fifth grade and didn’t know how to hide it? Now imagine that boner was starbursts of light that knocked out half the class.

The Inhumans didn’t even get that origin story. Instead, a mist covered the entire Earth causing some people to go into a cocoon and come out with powers. No awkward classmates, no stand-in for systemic racism. Just wake up one day with powers and everybody’s cool with it. 

The new Ms. Marvel is one of the characters introduced during this glut. A lot has been made recently about a promotional photo for her upcoming Disney+ show implying she has a different power from the comics. I’m more curious as to the origin story. If she spends the entire first episode in a cocoon, not sure I’ll be coming back for episode two.

Come to think of it, Inhumans was the last major MCU flop. They might claim it’s not a flop because it was a tv show, not a movie, but make no mistake, the intent was for that to become the flagship property of the future. They released the first episode or two in IMAX theaters, but the plug was pulled before they made it to episode six. 

The basic problem with the Inhumans tv show was that it was based off the Inhumans characters, which are pretty friggin’ boring. Their “leader” can’t speak and the queen’s power is prehensile hair. The only interesting character is a dog. Plus they live on the moon, so they virtually never interact with supervillains, or Earth and humanity in general. These are the main reasons, when they realized Inhumans were the only way to introduce new characters that were eligible for the MCU instead of Sony, they knew they had to make a slew of new Inhumans.

In the end, Disney bought out Sony, which was much more feasible than making Crystal a worthwhile character. 

Unfortunately, Eternals seems to be doubling down on most of the mistakes of Inhumans. Uninteresting characters, far removed from the rest of the Marvel characters. Uninspired powers. If I wanted a bunch of Greek mythology, I’ll watch Wonder Woman.

Seriously, is their only flaw that they’re arrogant a-holes who don’t get involved with humanity? How is that fun to watch. It’s made even worse by the fact that, according to the trailer, they sat on the sidelines through the whole Thanos snap and Endgame. But they’ve decided that now is the time to make their presence known? It’s like watching a History channel documentary about aliens who showed up the day after the Egyptians finished the pyramids.

That trailer was the clincher. Unlike Guardians, the Eternals trailer didn’t make me any more inclined to watch it. If anything, it verified all my skepticism. Is there a single joke in any of the three trailers? Do we get any glimpse of characterization other than “attractive”? It feels bloated and confusing and, worst of all, boring.

You can tell by the casting that they knew it was a snoozer even before filming. Angelina Jolie AND Selma Hayek? Clearly they’re there for the mass audiences. But Kit Harrington proves they were worried about losing geekdom, too. Unfortunately, if the buzz I’m hearing is any indication, I don’t think it’s going to work. The only one of my geek friends who’s planning on seeing it has an annual movie pass that he’s desperately trying to get worth from before the end of the year. My non-geek friends aren’t even aware a Marvel movie is coming out.

I’m just glad that the first flop won’t be Shang-Chi. That was a worthwhile reach into an obscure character. Had it failed, we’d be in line for ten different Wolverine & Spider-Man buddy movies. If there’s going to be a flop, let it star big Hollywood names. Let there be no doubt that characters and story matter more than the name on the marquee.

Wait a second, isn’t the name of the movie on the marquee, not the actors? Meh. Story matters more than the name on the IMDB.

Don’t worry, though. I’m sure I’ll watch it once it’s out on Disney Plus. And the good news is Spider-Man is only a month away.

A Rose by Any Other (Same) Name

· November 10, 2020 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , , · One Comment

From what I hear, Chrissy Teigen has struggled with her pregnancy. In fact, I think she miscarried. A number of media types and people I know were super chagrined. 

Me, I kinda shrugged my shoulders.

I mean, any time a pregnant woman loses her baby is a tragedy. But on the flip side, what are we to expect when a woman her age tries to have a child? I think she’s in her fifties, at least. The very fact they could conceive, I assume through some in vitro test tube, is a miracle of science. Am I supposed to be shocked that it didn’t take?

Her husband, John Legend, we are told, sat by her hospital bed as complications took hold. A harrowing experience, to be sure.

Wait, John Legend? The guy that butchered a John Lennon Christmas song? He’s married Chrissy Teigen? Cougar much, Chrissy? 

But then I saw a picture of John Legend standing next to some young African American woman in a hospital bed. Is this a stock pohoto? Because that woman looks nothing likethe actress/model I remember from my youth. 

Wait a second… 

After weeks of hearing the story, I finally realized that Chrissy Teigen is NOT Cheryl Tiegs. Two ENTIRELY different people. 

Chrissy Teigen is only 34 years old, which makes a lost pregnancy all the more ghastly.

Cheryl Tiegs, it turns out, is actually 73 years old. So yeah, medical science or no, she ain’t getting knocked up by a wanna-Beatle any time soon.

I’m really bad at the whole “spot the celebrity” game. It bothers Wife incessantly. I can identify a Phil Collins drumfill in a random one-hit wonder from 1987, but ask me to find the similarities in pictures of Jane Foster and Queen Amidala and I’m at a loss. There’s no way it’s the same actress in each role. I mean, the one next to Hayden Christensen is the second coming of Katherine Hepburn, while the one in the MCU is being out-acted by Kat Dennings.

At least Natalie Portman kept the same hair style in those two movies. Nobody will ever convince me that the Laura Prepon who starred in “That 70’s Show” is the same Laura Prepon who has starred in… well, pretty much everything since “That 70’s Show.” After all, the former was a redhead, while the latter has been, predominantly, a blonde. East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet. It’s not like L’Oreal makes a compass.

But obviously visuals weren’t my main issue with Chrissy Teigen and Cheryl Tiegs. Their names are way too close together. If this was a book, it would be the mark of a bad author. For instance, I made it 80,000 words into a WIP before realizing that two of the main characters are named Richard and Robbie. It wasn’t until they were in the same scene together that I realized how annoying it will be to read sentences in which they both appear. But unlike Chrissy and Cheryl, I’ll fix that in the second draft, where I’m pretty sure Robbie will become a Willie or a Billy. What are Chrissy Teigen and Cheryl Tiegs’ excuse for not fixing that shit in post-write?

I had a similar problem the first thousand or so times Daughter watched various installments of the “Hotel Transylvania” franchise. Selena Gomez voices the daughter, Mavis, which initially made no sense to me. She seems too professional an actress to be doing cartoon voiceovers, to say nothing of slumming around with Adam Sandler and his ilk. Aside from the fact that Mavis sounds like a legitimate twenty-something. And cartoons have done a good job of making the characters have similar visual characteristics as the actors that play them. Drac’s facial expressions totally match Adam Sandler, and Johnny has Andy Samberg’s weird sideways mouth.

Speaking of which, Andy Samberg and Adam Sandler in the same movie? Was Adam Goldberg unavailable? Fortunately, I’ve watched enough “Brooklyn 99” (and “The Goldbergs”) to know the difference between them, but only because Adam Sandler is about as distinctive as it gets for a guy who went to college in the early 1990s. Bob Barker once called when I was working in the state Capitol to ask my boss to vote for a spay/neuter bill and my first response was that I loved him in “Happy Gilmore.” He said he expected “Price is Right,” because, I guess, he he figured grandmas were the primary demographic for legislative aides. Who did he think I was, Chrissy Teigen?

I’m sure it shouldn’t shock you to know that, whoever I was thinking played the voice of Mavis, it sure as hell wasn’t Selena Gomez. I finally saw a behind-the-scenes video showing the actors do the voicework and Selena Gomez, would you believe it, is actually a twenty-something who looks a bit like Mavis, her character.

The problem is that I have no idea who I thought “Selena Gomez” was referring to. I’m pretty sure this was the first time I realized Selena Gomez existed as a human being. I never explicitly thought of anyone in particular, but had the general sense of a middle-aged Latina. Perhaps Salma Hayek, because their first names have a lot of the same letters, but I kinda got a Jennifer Lopez visual in my head, which of course looks nothing like Mavis. Or Selena Gomez.

Obviously I know who J-Lo is, and her name is nowhere close to Selena Gomez. But hear me out. She played the original Selena in her biopic. 

Okay, maybe you didn’t need to hear me out, cause that’s all I’ve got.

Obviously Selena Gomez isn’t that Selena, because she died long before “Hotel Transylvania.” But that at least gets me over the “Jennifer Lopez is Selena” hurdle. Add in the fact that Selena Gomez dated Justin Bieber, while J-Lo dated Alex Rodriguez, and I hate both of them. Incidentally, I thought it was Tom Brady that J-Lo dated, but a Google search told me it was the other overrated sports figure in the northeast that I stopped watching ESPN because of. And no, Salma Hayek never dated Tom Brady, either.

To be fair, unlike C. Teigen and C. Tiegs, I never explicitly thought Selena Gomez was Jennifer Lopez. I just had a general idea in my head that Selena Gomez was a fifty-something singer/actress who had been around since the mid-1990s. So maybe I really did just think she was the dead Selena.

Finally, let me head off the potential woke response of me being a typical white male who can’t distinguish between individual members of other ethnicities. Because I can’t tell white dudes apart, either.

Harry Styles is, allegedly, yet another singer and actor. Does anybody do one or the other anymore? I guess most actors stay in their lane, at least since the glory that was Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time,” but singers, it appears, must now become actors. I blame it on Justin Timberlake. Or Frank Sinatra. They might as well be the same person. 

Not that I get them confused.

For some reason, Harry Styles pops up in my news feed from time to time. Maybe he’s dating someone? Or has some political view that he needs to inform everybody about? I’m not sure and I don’t want to google it lest I get MORE headlines about Harry Styles – I’m already suffering from a slew of Selena Gomez info since I wrote the first part of this blog post yesterday.

If I had to guess, though, I think Harry Styles is some sort of fashionista. I don’t know if that’s a gendered word. A fashionister? Or maybe fashionisto? fashionistx? As an aside, I heard someone refer to a number of major league baseball players as Latinx, which confused me because I thought we were only supposed to use Latinx to refer to a group with both Latinos and Latinas. Is Latino offensive even if it’s a group of males of Latin American origin? Of course, I’m only asking the white people this, because no person of Latin American origin uses the phrase Latinx because it makes absolutely no fucking sense in Spanish.

Sorry, where was I? Right. Harry Styles. I couldn’t figure out why Harry Styles was making headlines for things like who he was dating or his new hairstyle. I mean, even when the dude was relevant, what, twenty years ago, I would never have called him hip. Hilarious, sure, but he’s tall and lanky, a goofy body frame perfect for physical comedy and not much else.

Have you spotted my train track yet? I was thinking of Ryan Stiles, the improv actor most notable for being on every single episode of “Whose Line is it, Anyway?”, both the English (good) and Drew Carey (bad) iterations. From this mid-40s perspective, he’s the far more important and influential of the Stileses, but I’m slowly coming to realize that he isn’t the ONLY of the Stileses.

It’s tough being me sometimes. Probably even tougher being my wife.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to research the subtle distinction between Jimmy Dean and James Dean.

Taking Stock of the Bonds

· November 13, 2015 · Blog Entries · , , , , , , , , · No Comments

Time to weigh in on a controversy I wasn’t aware even existed.

I always thought there were certain universal constants. Some facts or central truths that everyone could more or less agree on. That the Earth rotates around the sun, for instance, or that we should all use the Base-10 numbering system.

Or that Sean Connery is the best James Bond.

But it turns out that that last little tidbit isn’t quite as commonly accepted as counting to ten. I recently observed a conversation between my wife, someone tangentially required to be a Bond fan, and a friend of mine who proudly professes herself as a fan of the franchise. I say I observed this conversation, and did not partake in it, because it would have been hard to enunciate with my jaw upon the floor.

“Who’s your favorite James Bond actor?” the agent of Blofeld friend asked.

“Well, my husband says there’s only one answer to that question,” my wide responded. “I know I’m supposed to say Sean Connery, but I’ve always really liked…”

At this point, I think I blacked out. I tried to focus through the haze in my vision, the buzzards flying through my ears. My wife couldn’t have just listed the worst Bond of all time, the one who had made a mockery of the character and the franchise, as her favorite.

“And for looks alone, you’ve gotta love…”

Did she just do it again? Reference my second-least favorite actor? Has she seen the same movies as me? Is it too late to reference George Lazenby in the Pre-Nup?

So I guess it’s now on me to write the definitive list of the six James Bond actors from best to worst. I won’t countdown from last to first, because there shouldn’t be any suspense at the top of the list. I won’t rank (or even reference) every movie, because if I wanted to write 50,000 words and waste fifty hours of my life, I would’ve just done NoNoWriMo . And even if you put a Golden Gun to my head, I wouldn’t be able to recount what happened in The Man with the Golden Gun.

  1. Sean Connery.

Let me put it simply for anyone that is confused: Sean Connery is James Bond and James Bond is Sean Connery.

Go find a James Bond book. Any book. It doesn’t have to be an Ian Fleming one. Now read a passage and try to envision anyone other than Sean Connery as the person performing those actions. It can’t be done. He is the definitive version.

                Does it help that he went first? Sure. Does it help that he never shot laser beams in space? Absolutely. Does it help that he was named the Sexiest Man Alive twenty years after leaving the role behind, at the age of sixty? That certainly doesn’t hurt.

When you ask a random person to describe James Bond’s traits, the most common answer is suave. That’s all Connery. Despite our little imagination check two paragraphs ago, it’s not how the character was written. Ian Fleming put a certain vulnerability to the character. He was a flawed man in a flawed world.

But the James Bond that we have come to know is a non-powered superhero. The only time he is vulnerable is when a Russian lady is kicking at him with a poisoned knife or if Goldfinger has a laser pointed at his crotch.

And how does Bond react in that laser scene? Roger Moore would have hammed it up with a few puns. Daniel Craig would have stared down Goldfinger until the opponent withered. Pierce Brosnan would’ve just chilled out and waited for a machine gun or explosion to save him because he’s too attractive and cool to die.

But Connery shows his mind racing while his forehead is sweating.

“You expect me to talk?”

“No, Mr. Bond,” Goldfinger responds in one of the greatest lines in cinematic history, “I expect you to die.”

But Connery talks anyway. He uses his wit before resorting to weapons or gadgets or… whatever the hell Roger Moore uses.  What people who grew up with the later Bond actors don’t realize is how understated the character should be.

Some people have said Connery was the least believable Bond in the fight scenes. They’re probably right, but the character isn’t supposed to be a hulking stuntman.

The one major drawback to Connery was that he clearly stopped enjoying it after Thunderball. He kind of mailed in You Only Live Twice, before leaving for one movie and coming back for Diamonds are Forever. And really, we can’t blame him for that last one.

  1. Daniel Craig. I haven’t seen SPECTRE yet, and if it’s as good as Skyfall, I might be willing to put Daniel Craig as 1a.

Remember what I said about Connery creating the movie version of Bond, but not following the book version? Well it took fifty years, but someone finally played the literary James Bond, and that’s Daniel Craig.

The character is supposed to be dark. He should be focused on the task at hand. He should always be wanting out of his lifestyle, but knowing there is no way out. If he’s ever reckless, it’s because he assumes his own mortality, not because he’s an invincible, cavalier playboy.

The definitive Daniel Craig exchange happens not long into his first movie.

“Do you want it shaken or stirred?”

“Do I look like I give a damn?”

Oh, snap! Did he just pull the rug out from every other actor? Because he’s right, James Bond should never have been focused on how his martini is watered down. He’s got way too fucking many things to keep track of and keep his eyes on.

I’ll be honest, when I first heard there was going to be a blond Bond, I thought it was a horrible idea. They should all look as close to the source as possible. But by the time his third movie rolled around, I couldn’t imagine anyone taking over for him.  I fear whoever’s next might get the Lazenby treatment.

In fact, I would have loved to see Sean Connery play the caretaker in Skyfall. Even though Albert Finney did a great job, It’s obvious the roll was written with Sir Sean in mind.  It would’ve been a cool bury the hatchet/pass the baton moment, but alas, it was not to be.

Allegedly, one of the myriad of reasons they didn’t pursue Connery for the roll was that they didn’t want the sideshow to distract from the main actor. And while that would have been an issue for any other Bond actor, I think Daniel Craig could have held his own starring against Sean Connery. Hell, he held his own against Judi Dench, the best M in history.

My only hope is that Craig is serious about not coming back for a fifth movie. If he wanted to come back, I’d welcome him back. But if he ends up coming back only for the money, he might be tempted to mail it in.

  1. Timothy Dalton. This will be the first surprise on the list for most people.

Timothy Dalton only had two movies, and one of them might be the worst Bond movie of all time. But he was a precursor to Daniel Craig, someone who gave Bond the seriousness and gravitas he deserves, but at a time when people had come to expect nothing but camp from the character.

I feel sorry for Timothy Dalton, as he came into the franchise at a horrible time. Not only was the Cold War wrapping up, but the rights to the character were going through legal issues. The six-year gap between License to Kill and GoldenEye almost killed the franchise.

But it wasn’t Dalton’s fault.

In fact, I’ll put The Living Daylights up as one of the top five or six Bond movies of all time. The Living Daylights had it all. Just enough gadgets and explosions without going overboard. A James Bond that is unflappable and smooth.

Then came License to Kill. Ugh. It was 1989, and although the Wall hadn’t come down when they filmed it, the whole glasnost and perestroika thing was going on. How could they make Gorby the bad guy?

So instead, they made it a personal vendetta story. Yes,  I like my Bond dark, just like my coffee. But a rogue agent stalking and killing someone without the backing of the British Secret Service? That’s not dark roast, that’s ground-infested sludge. Bond is a secret agent, not an assassin.

So there’s Dalton for you – one really good movie, one horrible movie, then a legal battle which ensured he couldn’t prove which one was really him. It’s worth noting that Quantum of Solace was Daniel Craig’s second, and worst, film. How much higher esteem would we have for Dalton’s run as James Bond if his third movie had been like Skyfall?

  1. George Lazenby. I might be the only one who feels sorry for Timothy Dalton’s luck and timing, but EVERYONE feels sorry for poor George Lazenby. He never stood a chance.

When Sean Connery announced he would not continue the James Bond role, one of two things was going to happen: either they’d stop making the movies or else he’d have to be replaced. Since they opted for the latter, somebody was going to be the guy that replaced Connery. It didn’t matter what George Lazenby did, or how well he did it, he wasn’t Connery. There’s a reason that almost every Vice President who took over for a dead (or resigned) President didn’t win the next election.

Except for Teddy Roosevelt. And poor George Lazenby is no Teddy Roosevelt.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was one of the last Bond movies I got around to seeing. I assumed it didn’t fit in the grander scheme of movies. It was an anomaly, the answer to a trivia question. George Lazenby was Pete Best. He was New Coke. Why should I bother?

But then I watched it, and guess what? It’s a damned good movie! And George Lazenby? He was solid. I wouldn’t say he knocked it out of the park, but he certainly doesn’t come across as a model who had never acted before, which is precisely what he was.

Then Connery came back for one more movie (not counting Never Say Never Again), and that movie was a sizeable step down.

And in the end, George Lazenby can say one thing that none of the other actors can say – he never made a bad James Bond movie.

  1. Pierce Brosnan. So disappointing to have this guy down this far.

After GoldenEye, I thought the franchise was back on solid footing. Bond was back kicking ass and pleasing every lady in sight. He had just the right amount of smugness. Sure, they had to make the plot based on the Cold War, but this was the first post-USSR movie, so cut them some slack.

I couldn’t wait for him to return.

Maybe he should’ve pulled a Lazenby.

What followed was three movies that were interchangeable. A mishmash of the same tropes and same mailed-in performance. I think it was a trilogy called The World Dies Again Tomorrow.

Am I being harsh? Quick, which one was the one with Denise Richards? And was the one where he got captured in North Korea the same one that had Michelle Yeo? Or was that Terri Hatcher?

That line of reasoning doesn’t hold true with the other actors. If I asked the average fan which Sean Connery movie had Oddjob and which one happened on the Orient Express, it wouldn’t take an imdb.com search.

My biggest problem with the Pierce Brosnan movies is that they turned the character into an action hero. Instead of Bond needing to investigate and unravel a conspiracy that slowly led back to the main villain, it was “Here’s the bad guy. This is where you’ll find him. Now go bang some chicks and blow some shit up for a couple of hours, then get a machine gun and shoot everything.”

I know the actor isn’t responsible for the plot and the script that’s put in front of him. This is an argument that people who like the Worst Bond Ever (see below) point out.  Certainly it’s not Pierce Brosnan’s fault that they made the character windsurf down a Melting-Ice-Hotel-Tidal-Wave.

But I have to think they cater some aspects of the script to how the actor wants to play the character. Maybe if Pierce Brosnan had said “Hey, guys, how about if I put the machine gun down and just kick somebody’s ass this once?”

So a brilliant start and then three duds. Even Roger Moore waited until his fourth or fifth movie before he started going through the motions.

Some people still swear by Pierce Brosnan. The next time someone says he was a great Bond, ask them what they liked about him. Then have fun seeing what percentage of their answer comes from his first movie.

  1. Roger Moore. Wow, what can one say about the actor who played the character in more movies than anyone else? Here’s what I say – let’s include Never Say Never Again, so at least “most movies as James Bond” becomes a tie.

Some people say Roger Moore was good at first, but just hung on too long. To them, I say that Man with the Golden Gun was only his second movie.

Others will point out, as I did with Pierce Brosnan, that he can only read the lines that are given to him.

It’s certainly not Roger Moore’s fault that they decided to go into space and make Jaws a recurring character. I doubt even an android love-child of Humphrey Bogart and Robert de Niro could make Octopussy watchable.

But seriously, Roger Moore, get that fucking smirk off your face. James Bond doesn’t smirk, he doesn’t pan to the camera, and he doesn’t speak exclusively in puns and double entendres.

The best example of Roger Moore at his worst was A View to a Kill, his final movie. It should be a damned good movie. Christopher Walken and Grace Jones as the bad guys, with the final fight scene on the Golden Gate Bridge. What’s not to like?

Other than Grandpa Roger Moore bumbling around, completely unbelievable with actresses one-third his age, desperately looking for a camera he can do a half-assed breaking of the fourth wall into.

What if the producers had decided to pull the plug on Roger Moore one movie earlier? Put Timothy Dalton or Pierce Brosnan in that movie and look how much more kick ass it would be. An actor that played a “Not Taking Any Shit” James Bond would’ve added much more gravitas to the batshit crazy that Christopher Walken can play so well.

Let’s take the definitive Roger Moore line from A View to a Kill:

After sleeping with Grace Jones the night before, Christopher Walken asks him if he slept well.

“A little restless, but I…,” eyebrows raised into the camera,  “got off… eventually.”

Wow. I made better ejaculation jokes in eighth grade.

Ian Fleming is rolling over in his grave.

Let’s see how later actors would’ve reacted to that script and that scene.

Timothy Dalton would’ve looked at that script, and said, “I’m not saying that. I’ll just say fine.”

Pierce Brosnan would’ve asked if he could just take out a gun and shoot Walken.

And Daniel Craig’s scene would’ve gone something like…

“How’d you sleep, Mr. Bond?”

“Do I look like I give a damn?”

Great Scott!

· November 4, 2015 · Musings · , , · No Comments

Lots of Back to the Future posts and references the last couple weeks. So why did I wait until this week? Had to make sure that Marty McFly was back to 1985. Now we can talk about him.

On October 21, a number of my friends were proudly posting pictures of themselves holding the Back to the Future DVD, saying they were just about to watch it.  Umm, good luck finding any 2015 there, guys. Cause it ain’t in the original movie. Even a number of the news reports I watched kept getting the release date of the movie wrong. Yes, the original movie was released in 1985, and that is the year from whence Monsieur McFly traveled.  But the movie in which he traveled to 2015 was Back to the Future Part II, released in 1989.

A sequel coming out FOUR YEARS after the original? How archaic!

In fact, when the original movie was produced, there were no plans for a sequel. The “To Be Continued” at the end of the movie did not appear in the theatrical release. In what kind of crazy alternate timeline is a movie released without the next five sequels already being planned and filmed?  And they didn’t even split the last movie in two? The horrors!

Of course, they DID film the second and third movie back-to-back, so that they could be released six months apart from each other. To my knowledge, they were the first to do this now-standard practice.

These are a few of the reasons the Back to the Future trilogy is still relevant, but there are others. And no, this is not just a reaction to Marty McFly’s “arrival date” just passing. Plenty of movies have predictions of future dates, but society doesn’t go apeshit when those dates arrive.  I don’t remember the news media running vignettes on the state of Artificial Intelligence on August 29, 1997, date Terminator predicted Skynet would become self-aware.

I know, I know. Self-lacing shoes are way more relevant to our future on this planet than self-aware technology. Who cares about the future of all human life if we can’t even get a goddamned hoverboard, right?

The Back to the Future trilogy is unique for a number of ways.  Going back to that whole 2 and 3 being shot back-to-back and released six months apart from each other. Six months! Even by today’s Fast and the Furious/Hunger Games standards, that’s fast. Twenty-five years ago, it was unheard of. The standard wait time between sequels back then was a good three years. I assume the conventional wisdom was that audiences would be disinterested in going back to see the “continuing adventures” so soon.

So at least in that one sense, Back to the Future Part II was as relevant as Godfather II.  Prior to Godfather II, movies were released like theater shows. First they would premiere in New York, and maybe Los Angeles, followed a few weeks later by the other major cities. They would then filter through the less-major cities, and if you lived in Omaha, you’re probably waiting a few months for the movie to hit the one screen in town.  The producers of Godfather II, released two years after the original, said “screw that.” They knew the public was clamoring to see the sequel, so they circumvented the powers that be and just released it everywhere simultaneously. It worked, and has been the standard ever since.

So you can thank Back to the Future for the fact that the Twilight craze wasn’t dragged out for another decade.

The trilogy itself was also unique, in that the three movies are so markedly different entities. The first movie was just your run-of-the-mill teen movie. Just take out Lea Thompson and add in Molly Ringwald, and you’d scarcely notice the difference between it and Sixteen Candles. The standard John Hughes tropes are all there. Geeky boy secretly pines away for beautiful girl, who is oblivious to his existence, because girl is enamored with foxy mysterious boy. Something about underwear, and then the geeky guy is encouraged by foxy mysterious guy to stand up to school bully and get the girl. And the space-time continuum is saved.

Wait, that last part wasn’t in Sixteen Candles? I must be thinking of Pretty in Pink.

The second movie is really the one that defines the trilogy.  I remember a lot of people complaining when it came out that it was too complicated. They had taken a cute little reverse-Oedipal story and added layers and complications. All these people wanted was another simple story about a boy trying to ensure his own birth, and those bastards went and added things like alternate timelines and divergence points. And sports gambling.

“Whatever,” I remember my pubescent voice admonishing people, “I’ve been reading comics for years. Alternate timelines? Big whoop.”

The second movie also did a good job of keeping some of the original themes going, but adding a little bit more gravitas to them. Now it’s not just Marty that will cease to be, but all of society. They also make squeaky-clean, save-the-world Marty the bad guy. Or maybe not the bad guy, but responsible for everything that went wrong. After all, he was the one who bought the sports almanac with the intent to make a quick buck in the past.

Then there’s the special effects. Having Michael J. Fox play multiple roles in the same room at the same time while not looking two-dimensional was new. And the last half-hour of the movie, where they actually are added into the original movie, was spectacular. If there’s a second Deadpool movie, maybe they can have him pull the “I was there during all of the earlier X-Men movies.” He does that in the comics a fair bit.

Oh, and they re-shot the final scene of the first movie with a different actress and barely anybody noticed.

I’m not sure which is more impressive: a scene in which one actor plays three roles or a scene in which two actresses play the same role.

Then came the third movie, a Western. That’s right, we went from teen movie to sci-fi head-scratcher to Clint Eastwood. Literally Clint Eastwood, since that’s the name Marty used in 1885, when the movie takes place. Imagine the balls on Bob Gale, the writer. He just decided he wanted to do a Western and, hey, the fans are clamoring for more Back to the Future, so here you go.

Imagine if the Return of the Jedi was suddenly about elves and dwarves. Or Return of the King showed Frodo and Sam spending a day in Saturday school. Or if the final Indiana Jones movie threw in aliens.

Wait, they did WHAT in Kingdom Skull? Okay, never mind.

The point is you can’t completely change the genre in the finale. But Back to the Future did. No more sports almanacs or alternate timelines or Michael J. Fox fading out of existence. But there was still enough of the standard tropes to connect the three – the Tanners are dimwits, benefiting from knowledge of the future, the time machine has lost power so a vehicle has to get up to 88 MPH. And trains. And horses.

And you know what? It worked!

So now that Back to the Future Day has passed, let’s stop with our obsession of how much it got right. No more hoverboards or shoes or Cubs. And let’s focus on the trilogy itself, and how groundbreaking it was. They influenced how trilogies could be filmed and marketed. They informed writers that, if you have an engaging premise and characters, you can do whatever you want with them and people will follow you.

Even if the hero abandons his girlfriend on the porch of a stranger’s house in a violent, dystopian present that he himself had created.

Sexism in Comics

· March 31, 2015 · Musings · , , , , , · 2 Comments

There’s been a lot of buzz recently about sexism in the comics industry. The comments tend to specifically attack two things: the lack of relatable female superheroes and the oversexualized manner in which the existing female superheroes are drawn.  As a lifelong comic geek, I can one hundred percent acknowledge and agree with both criticisms. That being said, it also feels like much of the criticism comes from people on the outside, and a number of their attacks and assumptions are more about making noise than change.

I’m not going to defend comic books. The overt sexualization of the female characters, which has always been around, has gotten worse. My friends and I used to joke that every female superhero had an additional power of gravity-defying bosoms. If a horny teenager that gets excited seeing a bra strap knows they are drawn over the top and unrealistic, there’s a problem.

Some of the defenders of the comic industry point to that socially-awkward, horny teenage boy as the poster child of the comic fan. They say that, since comic book companies need to make sales to those boys, they need to draw the women that way.  This is bullshit, because I was buying plenty of comics without any women in them. I never once remember buying a comic because of a nice rack on a superheroine. Nor did I ever put a comic back because the women were too plain.

This is borne out by comic sales. The most voluptuous women appear in Zenescope comics. These women aren’t just sexualized, they are straight-up fetish. Fairy tale characters wearing knee-high stockings and garters with panties visible under their Britney Spears-esque school-girl skirts. Little Red Riding Hood, Dorothy, and, hey look, Alice is giving you a glimpse of her very own Wonderland. Go ahead, look at their website.

So if sexy women drove comic sales, Zenescope should be a marketing force to deal with, right? Grimm’s Fairy Tales should regularly wresting the top spot from the various Animal-Related-Men. But nope. In January, their best-selling comic ranked #276, ranking right above Scooby Doo, Where Are You? And not far behind such modern-day powerhouses as Flash Gordon and Powerpuff Girls.

So if it’s not for the fans, why are the women drawn that way? I’m pointing the finger at the artists. Let’s be honest, many of them started as those very same awkward teenage boys. I was never able to draw worth a damn. Still can’t, which gives endless entertainment to my students when I try to draw a cow or a map of Europe on the white board. But most of the guys that I knew in high school who had the ability to draw tended to draw the same thing over and over: the hourglass shape from a woman’s armpit to her mid-thigh. Well, that and penises, but I’m guessing Marvel and DC frown upon overt phalluses in their comics. (I mean, come on, it’s not The Little Mermaid.) So when the guys that spent their teenage years drawing idealized female forms get hired to draw comics, we get controversies like the recent Spider-Woman cover.

So although the sexist drawings draw more ire from social activists, I don’t think they have much of an effect on comic’s fandom. Even if every woman (and man, I suppose)were drawn “normal,” I don’t see a lot of the people who are up in arms about this flocking to their local comic book store to drive up sales. The lack of bona fide female superheroes, though, might be more on topic.

Here again, the general argument is the overwhelming majority of male comic book readers. But we could be looking at a chicken-and-egg argument here. Do the lack of female readers equate to fewer female superheroes or do girls not flock to comics because they have no heroes to identify with?

Most of the female superheroes that exist today are derivative. Batgirl. Supergirl. Spider-woman. She-Hulk. Most of their stories are derivative, as well. And I can’t tell you how many times they need to team up with their male counterpart to truly accomplish anything.  She-Hulk might be the one that breaks the mold, seeing as she is a lawyer and she can keep her rage under control. Very rarely is there a Hulk/She-Hulk crossover.

Wonder Woman is one of the few well-known female superheroes that is not just a carbon copy of an already existing male superhero. And really, Wonder Woman only stands out as cool because she’s on the same team as Aquaman.

A lot of this, however, is endemic of another major problem in comics today – the lack of new creative characters.  Most of the characters I mentioned, both male and female, are over fifty years old now. There were a couple of golden ages of character creation – the DC characters in the late-1930s, the Marvel characters in the early-1960s. Most of the characters the average American has heard of (the possible exception being Wolverine, from 1974) came from one of those two eras.  And the comic book writers from that age were absolutely sexist. As was pretty much everyone in America. And the idea of gaining female readers would be laughable.

Since then, there have been concerted efforts to add more diversity in comics. Some have been successful, but most have not. Part of this is because they seemed to pander. But part of this is indicative of a larger lack of creativity, not just with female or minority heroes. None of the heroes created in the past forty years have gained much resonance with the public.  Exhibit A is Dazzler, a mutant created during the disco era who can turn sound into light. She wore roller skates and a silver disco-ball suit. Since then, she has lost the roller skates, but do we honestly wonder why no female readers today are identifying with her?

And lest you think Dazzler is weak because she’s female, bear in mind the male equivalent of Dazzler, the Hypno-Hustler, thankfully disappeared after disco died. The fact that Dazzler still around as a viable character speaks to both their attempt to diversify, as well as how sparse the landscape of “new” heroes is.

Comics have also gotten darker over the years, so sadly the one female character to stand out over at DC is Harley Quinn. But just because Kevin Smith named his daughter after her, one should not think she’s a hero. She’s borderline psychotic and is obsessed with the Joker. So instead of focusing on the halter tops she wears, we should maybe, I don’t know, be looking at her as the villain she is.

That being said, there are still a large number of very good female characters, especially in Marvel.  The problem is that they don’t have their own books. They are members of teams. I’ll put Kitty Pryde up as one of the most fully-realized characters out there. She has her strengths and weaknesses, she has grown from teenage rookie to effective leader. Storm was also the leader of the X-Men for quite a long time. Invisible Woman, despite being often portrayed as “mother first,” is clearly the glue and moral center of the Fantastic Four. Although the Phoenix force has been overdone and was ruined in X-Men: The Last Stand, in the original telling, Jean Grey proved to be one of the most grounded and tragic characters in the Marvel universe.

Recently, perhaps in response to a lot of that criticism, Marvel has been trying to put more female led comics out there. Carol Danvers is now Captain Marvel (she had been Ms. Marvel for years) and has her own comic and allegedly a movie coming, although the merging of Spider-Man into the Movie Universe has pushed back the release of this movie, as well as Black Panther, the first African-American superhero.  So once again, we see a desire to promote diversity, but only until we can jam another Spider-Man movie in.

The new Ms. Marvel, taking Carol Danvers’ place, is not only female but a teenage Muslim living in New Jersey. And as an added bonus, she’s drawn in an in-no-way-sexualized manner. Thor, as I’m sure you have heard, is now female. And this new female Thor ended up taking it from both sides: some complained that it was pandering and others complained that she was too hot.  Um, those people do know what the male Thor looks like, right? Most of the women I know thought Thor: The Dark World would have been much better if they had just extended the Chris Hemsworth shirtless scene for 120 minutes.

This is where it gets placed on the people purchasing the comics. The female-led comics don’t sell well. Thor has done okay, but I wonder if that will drop after they reveal who the new female Thor is. She-Hulk was canceled, Captain Marvel has trouble breaking the top 100. Storm currently stars in her own series, but in February it came in at #152, right behind Batman 66, a comic based on the old Adam West TV Show. Pow! Zap! Whomp!

There is an all-female X-Men title and it is usually the worst selling X-Men title. Fearless Defenders was another all-female group. One of the best issues of any comic book last year had all of the Fearless Defenders’ boyfriends whining and getting in fights at a bar, waiting for the ladies who were busy kicking asses, to show up for date night. This comic lasted a whopping 12 issues.

So at this point, you can’t overly blame Marvel or DC for looking at the sales and relative popularity of their comics. They might really want to give Kitty Pryde or Lana Lang (who is currently being written as an awesome non-powered character in Action Comics) their own series, but when they look at the numbers, they just decide to add another Batman title.

What the people that complain about sexism in comics ought to be doing is not maligning the entire industry. They ought to be finding the comics that do have strong, reasonably-drawn females, and encouraging people to buy them.  But what fun would that be if they can make more noise by NOT purchasing the comics, then complaining loudly to whatever media are near when they get canceled?

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