The Scariest Thing You'll Ever Read

The other day, my wife and I were discussing the news that against all common sense and basic human decency, the Transformers franchise has not yet breathed its last. "Transformers 4," I mused. "Just think of the waste. All that money going to such an utter void of talent."

"Yeah," my wife said. "They could have used that money to finally make the 'Elfquest' movie, for a start."

I chuckled, knowing that my wife is an ardent Elfquest fan who awaits the Elfquest movie in much the same way that a Cubs fan awaits that World Series ring. But then I thought to myself, "But what if they got Michael Bay to do the Elfquest movie?"

The image came to me in a vivid flash. All of the strong, beautiful female characters replaced with simpering eye-candy. The open acceptance of alternative lifestyles done over as macho gay panic "male bonding". Shaky-cam upon shaky-cam, explosions in a fantasy world that doesn't even have gunpowder yet, either Cutter or Skywise played by Shia LaBeouf...

My wife noticed my shudder and faint, inarticulate cry of revulsion. "Whatever it is," she said, "I don't want to know." I knew she was having a rough day, so I decided not to tell her. But I had to share it with someone eventually. (When you read this, um...sorry, honey. But at least I waited until you had a little chance to brace yourself for it!)

My Crazy 'Shining' Theory

Last week, on my guest post at Mightygodking.com, I wrote about why people might see the classic Kubrick film 'The Shining' and see all sorts of crazy things. It's been viewed through a lot of different lenses and has been seen as a Holocaust analogy, a polemic on the gold standard, and a symbolic allegory for the genocide of native Americans. But in the end, I rejected the notions that tiny clues in the film could point the direction to Kubrick's "true" intent.

Then I went and rewatched the movie. And true to form, I noticed a tiny clue that I think points to what Kubrick was intending. And like everyone else over the years, I think I'm right here, based on what I know about Kubrick and his film-making style and his personality.

I think the key is in the TV show Danny is watching, just before Jack completely loses it and threatens to kill Wendy for the first time. (The classic "give me the bat" scene.) Danny and Wendy are sitting together, eating lunch and watching cartoons...and the theme song is the old "Road Runner" theme. ("Road Runner! The coyote's after you! Road Runner! If he catches you, you're through!") Now, this was something Kubrick would have had to obtain permission to use. He could have used any cartoon, any kid's show, really anything at all. But he wanted people to be subconsciously thinking about the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, and he wanted them to be thinking about it right as the action ramped up and Jack's dementia turned lethal. Why?

Because that's what he wanted people to be viewing the last act of 'The Shining' as--as a gigantic, dark, twisted version of the Coyote/Road Runner cartoon, with Jack as Wile E. Coyote and Danny as the Road Runner. Jack is relentless, pursuing Danny with a single-minded obsession (but simultaneously narrating events with an otherwise inexplicable good cheer), while Danny is fleeing with no particular goal or aim. And just like in the classic cartoons, Jack receives injury after injury, getting whacked on the head and falling down a flight of stairs and getting locked in the pantry and finally getting lost in the hedge maze. While Danny runs out and away with a "meep meep!"

It makes sense. Kubrick was known to have a mischievous sense of humor. He was known to make movies that started serious and turned into black comedies as it slowly became clear to him that he couldn't keep a straight face behind the camera. It explains why Jack's madness slowly ramps up to "cartoonish" levels as the film goes on. Kubrick meant for you to laugh at Jack even as the situation creeped you out--the whole thing is one big live-action cartoon.

A cartoon about the Kennedy assassination being a CIA operation, of course. See, the references to July 4th in the final scene...

Life Lessons From 'The Lion King'

1) When there isn't enough for everyone, it's just better to have a class of privileged few who get the majority of the resources and an underclass who are forced to live in a ghetto and eat scraps. It's the natural way of things, and trying to change that by giving more to the lower classes will just result in disaster.

2) The rest of us should be happy to be ruled over by a group of predatory overlords who will devour us whole should we become sick or weak. Someday, eventually, in a vague and symbolic manner, karma will even things up.

3) Physical strength and charm are the defining characteristics for a leader; someone smart is probably just evil anyway. Don't listen to them.

4) Likewise, leadership should be hereditary. Good genes define intangible traits like sound judgment and political skill. Even if there's no evidence of leadership exhibited by the son of a leader, simply putting him in charge will instantly bring those traits to the forefront and make him the superior choice.

5) In any family, accents will be entirely variable in terms of ethnic and socio-economic background; coincidentally, the voice that sounds whitest will always be the person the story revolves around, while British-sounding people are invariably evil. African-American voices usually mean that you will be wise and dignified...but also that you're probably going to die in the first act.

There Is No Hyperbole Great Enough

DC Comics made an announcement today that should absolutely, positively, unequivocally stun everyone in the entire comics-reading world today. Seriously. There has never been news this big in my entire lifetime in the industry, not ever.

No, not the "We're relaunching everything at #1!" crap. That'll be retconned away within five years, max. (Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison have a collective Silver Age crush that makes Mark Waid look like Alan Moore. Their "reboots" are never going to last, because they're coming from the guys who undid 'Crisis' and invented a whole cosmology-shattering mini-series so that they could bring back the 70s Legion. Geoff Johns is psychologically incapable of true innovation.) No, I'm talking about the news of same-day digital distribution.

Or, as I call it, "Hey, comic book stores! F*** you sideways!"

Sure, DC is trying to downplay this. They're trying to say that they will have special incentives designed to get people into stores. (This is roughly akin to stabbing someone with a broadsword, hooking the open wound up to a turbine-powered exsanguinating vacuum pump, and then announcing that you plan to put some band-aids on the counter.) They're no doubt going to say that collectors will always want the print edition. (But in the kinds of numbers that can support an independent retailer?) They will no doubt point to their back-catalog of trade paperbacks. But honestly, that's all like spritzing the Hindenburg with one of those little plant misters.

Because this...this is in all likelihood the beginning of the end for print comics. Same-day digital means that anyone who wants to can go download their comics directly. No trips to the comics store, no waiting, your very own copy of a comic right there on the hard drive. And let's face it, the iPad has been regarded from the beginning as a perfect platform for digital comics. This is going to drain away a big chunk of the market from print.

And the profit margins for comics stores aren't great. Losing a big chunk of your DC sales is probably going to result in some retailers going out of business, especially for those stores that are going to have to try to guess how much their demand is going to drop and will be stuck with unsold copies if they over-order. (Personally, if I was a comic book store owner? Tomorrow, I'd have a sign outside saying, "DC Comics will only be available at this retail outlet if you pre-order them.")

And if stores start going out of business, Marvel is going to have to either jump on the digital bandwagon or lose money as they lose outlets for their product. And if Marvel goes digital, the death spiral continues...there's not a retailer running that can survive on solely its indie books. They need Marvel and DC to pay the bills, and they might not be there much longer.

Some might suggest that this is hyperbole. They might say that comics is such a tradition-oriented industry that this initiative will fail and leave comics back where it started, a niche market catering to nostalgia. (It's certainly the argument that I'm using regarding the "Every issue is a new #1!" BS.) Time will tell if I'm right or wrong.

But on the other hand...if MGM announced that it was making a new James Bond movie, and also announced that all their movies would be available on Netflix the same day as they came out in theaters...wouldn't you be talking less about who Bond is going to be and more about how hard this is going to make life for movie theater owners?

Exciting Pixar News!

Of course, we've all heard the announcement of Monsters University, the next movie after Cars 2 and Brave and the first Pixar prequel. But what you may not have heard is that this is just the first of an entire new slate of films exploring the beginnings of Pixar's beloved characters! Brad Bird and John Lasseter are already thrilled about the idea of getting at the roots of what made Pixar's protagonists tick. Some of the slated films include:

Losing Coral: A shocking and gruesome tale of terror and revenge, Losing Coral focuses on the night when clownfish Coral runs afoul of a brutal, sadistic barracuda named "Heartless" (voiced by Christopher Walken.) The taut, suspenseful thriller follows the deadly game of cat-and-mouse Heartless plays with Coral, a game that ends in tragedy when Heartless murders her and devours her eggs. The film then follows Marlin as, pushed over the edge by the death of his mate, he hunts down and kills Heartless by luring him into a nematocyst. About to commit suicide, Marlin discovers that one egg has survived...an egg he decides to call Nemo.

Cars 0: Carmageddon: When the first machines develop sentience, humanity is initially thrilled by the development of a machine culture. After all, we built them--surely they'll be grateful to their creators? But instead, the human race finds itself locked in a deadly battle with the vehicles they designed, and only one race can survive. In the end, the machines exterminate the people, leaving nothing but the trace remnants of our culture to survive in the entertainments the new mechanical race devises for itself.

The All-Too Credibles: Thrill as Bob puts on a few extra pounds and loses job after job! Gasp as Helen slowly gives up on her own ambitions to become a stay-at-home mom! And be astounded by Violet's unhappy school years as she slowly learns to keep her head down and not make waves because girls don't get called on anyway! It's an exciting descent into vague dissatisfaction for the whole family!

WALL-Lander: As it becomes apparent that humanity will not return, and the trash removal robots slowly begin to break down, each one realizes that the only path to survival is to cannibalize its brethren for parts. A vicious war begins, as each robot seeks to disable its fellows so that it can keep itself alive that much longer. In the end, there can be only one...

...this isn't doing anything to disprove my belief that I'm never going to be working for Pixar, is it?

Bleak, Pessimistic, and Hopefully Wrong

I'm a bit worried about the future of Marvel's movie division. I don't think it even needs saying, at this point, that Marvel's track record at making movies of their characters is much better than DC's; even counting high-profile misfires like Elektra and Daredevil, they've had more and better films than DC--the latter has really only had two major franchises that they've managed to translate into movies, and those have both had long fallow periods (between Batman and Robin and Batman Begins, and between Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Superman Returns.)

Why? If you study the disastrous history of DC's film franchises, the answer becomes pretty obvious; as a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Entertainment, DC has not been in a position to exercise control over their intellectual properties. Despite a long and relatively successful track record of managing their characters well ("Identity Crisis" notwithstanding) they're forced to bow to the whims of studio executives who don't necessarily understand the appeal of the characters. Everyone has their own set of demands to impose on the next Superman movie, and there's nobody with a strong, singular vision behind the wheel to keep those demands from tearing the film apart in a mess of confusion and conflicts between fanboyish enthusiasm ("Dude, we've got to put in the Eradicator! It'll be an easter egg for the fans!") and outsider indifference ("Why do we really need to have Superman in costume, or flying? Seems kinda corny to me.")

But Marvel...they're the client, not the employee. They're the customer, and the customer is always right. By demanding script approval when they sell the property, they can ensure that the brand isn't diluted by incompetent or indifferent adaptations. They can make the movies a strong translation of their original stories, instead of a vague, generic, corporatized blockbuster (like, say, the GI Joe or Transformers movies.) That power is something that they should not surrender lightly, because it's a big part of what makes the movies work.

But, um...they did, didn't they? They're now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney. Marvel Studios is possibly redundant, and even if it survives, it'll be as part of a larger company. Admittedly, a company that's downright famous for being ferociously protective of its intellectual properties, but nonetheless a company that views Marvel as just one of its many projects. Marvel will no longer have the same leverage it once had when dealing with directors, producers and screenwriters, and I'm worried that this might translate into weaker films. I hope I'm wrong, of course. As I say, Disney is quite protective of its characters, and might at least be willing to listen to people who think like they do. But if Thor has a wacky, jive-talking robot as his sidekick, you know who's to blame.

Disquieting Geek Thought of the Day

A while back (perhaps a year or so ago) I read a book called "The Card", about the history of the world's most expensive baseball card (a T206 Honus Wagner card, made between 1909 and 1911 and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.) The book discussed in detail questions about the card's authenticity (some suspect the card might have been doctored to make it look more pristine) and about the authenticity of baseball cards in general (there's no way to prove provenance in the hobby, and historically, the cards have been low-quality and easy to manufacture...and hence, easy to fake.)

This led me to the book "Card Sharks", which discusses how that exact problem (forgery and fraud of a product with no trail of provenance) led to the creation of the Upper Deck company, which makes cards that are higher-quality and harder to forge...and how some people suspect that Upper Deck themselves has been "forging" their own cards by creating a larger number of cards than advertised, and quietly disposing of the extras on the secondary market. (In other words, you tell people that "only 1,000 of these cards will ever be made!" Then you print 2,000 and sell the extra thousand to collectors on eBay for ten grand each, knowing that the odds of anyone actually being able to piece together a definitive picture of who's got which cards are so low as to be non-existent.)

And then recently, I read "The Billionaire's Vinegar", which is all about the world of wine collecting, and how (again) there's no such thing as a trail of definitive provenance and no ability to definitively prove the age of a bottle of wine (the best they can do is prove it came from before World War II, because nuclear testing has deposited microscopic amounts of radioactive material all over the planet since then. Cheery thought, hmm?) So again, forgery and fraud are rampant, because there is no way to prove what the definite article is.

And this combined with some thoughts of mine about sports memorabilia (where it's well-known that fake signatures circulate on baseballs, bats, jerseys, et cetera, because there is...all together now...no trail of provenance for most of those items. Yes, a lot of modern signed products come with a "Certificate of Authenticity". But, well, Upper Deck proves that those are only as helpful as the people they come from...always assuming they're not forged, too.) And I've come to a conclusion.

There have to be fake comic books out there. It's just a given. You've got a hobby with no means of establishing a definitive trail of provenance (comics are passed from collector to collector, and collectors routinely buy from other collectors with no way of guaranteeing that the comic originally came from the company.) You've got a product that is easily forged (the printing process on older comics was cheap and easy, by design.) And you've got an economic incentive to forge. (Amazing Spider-Man #1 sells for upwards of $40,000...that's a pretty big reward for forgery.) Sure, there are "authentication services"...but go read those three books, and you'll get a pretty good idea of just how asymetrical the war is between forgers and authenticators, and just how likely it is that the forgers are winning at any given time. (For those of you who don't have the time or money to read them, I'll just say that the answer to both questions is "very".)

So in other words, if you're a comic collector, particularly a big-time comic collector...odds are, at least one of your showpiece comics is a fake. And you'll never know which. Fun thought, huh?

Who Doesn't Want To Be A Superhero?

Not that I've ever seen the show, but I do know about Stan Lee's surreal reality series wherein people try their best to act like real-life superheroes and convince Stan that they've got the chops to save the world (or, at least, get their own comic book where they pretend to save the world.) But really, on thinking about it, is there a single superhero out there you'd actually want to be?

Sure, having the powers would be neat. I'd love to have Batman's martial arts skills, his deductive genius, his neat gadgets. But you know what I wouldn't love? Getting shot at every night, and never being able to get past the tragic deaths of my parents at an early age. Sure, it sounds awesome to be Superman, until you remember that his whole species was wiped out the day he was born (wow, that's got to be one downer of a birthday celebration. "Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to the lone survivor of a cosmic genocide, happy birthday to me!") And let's not even start to get into what it might be like to be Spider-Man. Even Aquaman has a sucky life, and he doesn't even have the awesome powers to make up for it! (Although, to be brutally honest, it would be kind of sweet to be able to swim without needing to hold your breath, and talk to the dolphins and hang out with giant squids and stuff.)

On thinking about it, I'm actually hard-pressed to name a single superhero I'd actually want to be, and you'd think that'd be a no-brainer fanboy question. Being a superhero seems to come with a free, non-returnable gift of death, misery, pain, and suffering for you and your loved ones, with the added bonus of no actual financial gain out of the deal (pretty much all of the billionaire playboys started out as billionaires before becoming superheroes.) Even the guys who are living the good life are just one new creative team away from becoming the next Penance (so-named because...well, because just appending "Dark" to the front of a character's name to indicate how mature and bad-ass they are wouldn't come back into vogue for another couple of years.)

So remember, denizens of the Marvel and DC Universes. When you look up and see superheroes flying overhead, and dream of sharing that grand and glorious life...thank your lucky stars you're not actually doing it. Because the best-case scenario is that you only die once.

Torso Cut In Half (7)

As you may or may not have noticed, I recently went through the archives of this blog and labeled everything. I've got "crazy ideas", "depressing geek thoughts", "muppets", "zombies", et cetera et cetera et cetera. This is a relatively new technology, but it's proliferating at an alarming rate.

How alarming? When I went to do this entry (it was originally going to be a "bad movie lines" entry, but I couldn't find the quote), I looked on imdb.com for the relevant bad movie line. I didn't find it, but I did find that the movie in question had the plot keywords, among others, "shot in the stomach", "bitten in the throat", "exploding building", and bizarrely enough, "unisex bathroom". Clicking on "bitten in the throat", I find that there are dozens of related keywords, including "brain eating", "kicked in the face", "sister sister relationship", and, of course, "torso cut in half".

And I thought it was hard work coming up with labels for my posts. Who has the job of deciding whether a movie features "throat slitting" or "stabbed in the throat", and how many anti-depressants do they take each day?

Depressing Geek Thought #3

(For some reason, a lot of these seem to come out of 'Star Wars'...)

So let's get this straight. Jango Fett is the template for the Clone Troopers, later Stormtroopers (which means Boba Fett is just a glorified stormtrooper. Sheesh. No wonder he gets dropped by a blind guy with a stick.) They ask him what he wants for his payment--payment for using his genetic material as the template for the new Imperial Army, and for essentially giving the Sith the means to conquer the galaxy. You have to figure the sky's the limit here. And what does he ask for?

"I want a little boy. And I want him to look just like me."

Ynnnngahh. I do not think there is even a term in the DSM IV for the mental disorder that makes you want to clone and molest a younger version of yourself. No wonder Jango ran so fast when Obi-Wan showed up. He thought he was from Child Protective Services.

Depressing Geek Thought #2

As we all know, there's a whole huge vast pile of books detailing exactly what happened after the end of 'Return of the Jedi' in the Star Wars universe. But let's face it--they were all written before Lucas redefined the terms of the game with the prequels, and a lot of the assumptions they made about the series have turned out to be wrong. (Just try reading Timothy Zahn's "Thrawn Trilogy" now, in light of what we've learned about the Clone Wars. Attempting to reconcile the two will destroy your brain.)

So let's think for a moment about what we might see in a post-'Jedi' universe now that we know everything. It all revolves around Luke...and I don't think he's destined for a happy life.

Think about it. In addition to seeing the ghost of his dead mentor, a ghost only he can see, he's now apparently being followed around by the ghost of Yoda and the departed spirit of his father. And Yoda, well, he's gotta be bitter. Luke basically took his whole philosophy of the Light Side/Dark Side dichotomy and jammed it into a toilet and gave it a swirlie; he's going to have to reprioritize his entire philosophy, and that's something that's very hard to do when you're a) 800-plus, and b) dead. Yoda's probably just going to sit there bitching at Anakin all the livelong day, stopping only to scream at Luke for training Jedi wrong.

Meanwhile, Anakin and Obi-Wan will be having their own problems. Anakin was never very likeable--smug, whiny bastard, really, and being the only one of the three who's mastered the "blue ghost" technique well enough to get a young, handsome ghost body won't help--and there's bound to be a lot of bickering there. And from Anakin's point of view, the same two schmucks who trained him so well that he wound up falling under the sway of the Dark Lord of the Sith for decades are now giving great advice to his son, too. That's going to go over real well.

Then there are the other ghosts. Oh, sure, we didn't see them--but we've learned that this is a new technique that Qui-Gon learned. At the very least, Qui-Gon should be wandering along soon, and we know he never got along with anyone on the Jedi Council. At worst...well, imagine Luke screaming "Shut up! SHUT UP!" at thin air while to his eyes, hundreds of Jedi push at each other to tell him best how to re-establish the Jedi Order. Sure, he's a respected military hero (despite spending several months effectively AWOL over the course of 'Empire'), but how long before he's committed to a sanitarium "for his own good"?

That's the ultimate death of the Jedi order. Not extermination at the hands of the Sith, but Luke, straitjacketed in a forgotten institution somewhere in the Outer Rim, begging Mace Windu to stop yelling at his dad for the whole hand thing.

Then they start in on Leia...

Depressing Geek Thought of the Day

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