Ben Affleck has been cast as Batman! This is it, the endtimes. In the smoldering ruins of our civilization, our children will look to us and say "You witnessed it? You saw them cast Ben Affleck as Batman, and you did nothing?" and it will be our shame to sullenly nod.
Allow a counterpoint.
Christian Bale wasn't the best Batman. He was an EXCELLENT Christopher Nolan's Batman Batman, but as far as Batmen go, the animated series Batman is the best, for a couple of reasons (which may get their own post eventually, but for the sake of comedy I'll just say "gargling gravel" and walk away). Michael Keaton was the best actor to play a Batman, even if his Batman wasn't a very good Batman. George Clooney was a goofy as hell Batman, but you can't blame him for that: you can only do so much with an awful script. Adam West was also goofy, but the old Batman show was more tongue-in-cheek than we would ever allow the serious subject matter of a man dressed as a bat to be, and it's part of what makes Batman a household name.
What I'm saying is that lots of actors have brought lots of things to the Batman role. Who's to say Ben Affleck won't do the same? Yes, he'll be different from the Nolan Batman. Just like Nolan was different from the Burton Batman. But more than that, it was already going to be different from the Nolan Batman because Nolan isn't going to be as involved. But different is not always bad!
Now some may hop in with "Well, Affleck just doesn't seem like he'd fit." To them I say: American Psycho and Newsies. You think the guy who played Patrick Bateman is a good idea? Sure, Bateman is only one letter off from Batman, but the similarities sort of end there. And he was in Newsies! I think the Joker will need more than a stirring rendition of Santa Fe to take him down!
You see? You can't judge a book by it's cover.
"Well, Ben Affleck is a terrible actor." Yeah, no, that's fair. He was in Gigli. Before he was in The Town and Argo and after he was in Good Will Hunting and Chasing Amy.
Look, I guess what I'm saying is that maybe we should give the guy a chance. If the movie sucks, we can always hate on him together, but why don't we make sure the movie actually does suck before we form a lynch mob? It's Batman AKA the cash cow. It's not like the series will die if they make a terrible move (see "George Clooney" above), they'll just reboot it in a couple of years.
PS, the best thing to come out of this is a tweet from Newark Mayor Cory Booker stating:
"LOL, I'd rather be true to myself & lose than pander 2 Ben-haters & win MT@Frances_Locke Put an end to #BenAffleckAsBatman I'll vote 4 you"
Friday, August 23, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Kick Ass 2: Tonally Confusing
Trigger warning, just FYI, it happens in the movie so I discuss it here.
So I saw Kick Ass 2 today (who'd a thunk?) and I was disappointed. I mean, if we were to use a meal analogy, I was looking for a cheap burger off the dollar menu: I know I'm not supposed to eat it, but it's a vice, and honestly I could eat them two or three at a time. What I got was a handful of popcorn and a cup of tap water (which made for a meal at the video store I worked at growing up more than once, unfortunately, when I forgot to pack a lunch and didn't want to wait to get home); the movie was certainly a movie, it did fill up two hours, me and me droogs got our fill of the old ultra-violence, but I'll probably never watch it again.
I think it's because the movie was all over the place tonally. There's a reason that Batman movies are never mob movies even though most of Batman's enemies are, in fact, the mob. It's because while the violence the Joker commits is heinous and dark, it's still not real violence. What I mean by that is that when the Joker shoves a pencil into a man's eye socket, we know that doesn't actually happen at mob meetings. We're seeing an embodiment of evil doing over-the-top evil things. This sets a background for a good vs. evil story. What you don't see is Nicky Santoro stabbing a guy in the neck with a pen, or Tommy DeVito and James Conway murdering Billy Bats in the trunk of a car. That's because that sort of violence is shown so we can realize the brutish reality of what being a criminal is actually about.
The point of Kick Ass, and what I think the first movie does a passable job at doing, is showing the real violence that would actually occur when a man in a mask tries to be a "real-life superhero." That's why my least favorite scene in the first movie is when Kick Ass shoots the guy at the end with a bazooka. And the second movie is full of that stuff: a great contrast is Kick Ass's first fight in the original and his first fight in the sequel: in the original, he gets beaten, stabbed, and hit by a car, and ends up in the emergency room. In the sequel, he gets beat while on the ground for a good while, then gets up. And just in time for "witty banter" with Hit Girl. Now if Kick Ass 2 had only been that kind of over-the-top the whole time I might have liked it more as a guilty pleasure, but it wasn't.
There's a scene that exemplifies what I mean: The Mofo' and one of his goons have captured a female hero and he outright says he's going to rape her. Then he . . . can't get it up? So he . . . tries? All the while his Russian comrade murders ten cops outside while the Tetris theme plays. Here we have a brutal scene of real violence that's then played for laughs as a ridiculous cartoon show occurs outside. Am I supposed to be horrified at the violence? Am I supposed to be enjoying the action? Am I supposed to be laughing at his impotence? Because I can't do all three at once. Also, the Mean Girls parody seemed like it belonged more in a Jason Friedberg movie (Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that a movie must always be somber to be good, but I am saying that an E.D. joke during a rape scene isn't funny or well done. You can put comedy and violence next to each other (for a good example, watch the far superior Cabin in the Woods), but you can't put wacky comedy and realistic (not in the visual effects sense, but in the tonal sense) violence together because only a sociopath thinks that realistic violence is wacky: look at the opening of The Departed. When Frank Costello laughs at the ways the bodies of his victims fell, Mr. French tells him there's something wrong with him. If Mr. French was in the theater of Kick Ass 2, he probably would have thought there was something wrong with anyone who completely, 100% enjoyed every minute of it.
And don't even get me started on the tacked on and confused moral messages. HEY MOVIE! If I wanted a movie to teach me a lesson about being all I can be, I wouldn't be going to Kick Ass.
So I saw Kick Ass 2 today (who'd a thunk?) and I was disappointed. I mean, if we were to use a meal analogy, I was looking for a cheap burger off the dollar menu: I know I'm not supposed to eat it, but it's a vice, and honestly I could eat them two or three at a time. What I got was a handful of popcorn and a cup of tap water (which made for a meal at the video store I worked at growing up more than once, unfortunately, when I forgot to pack a lunch and didn't want to wait to get home); the movie was certainly a movie, it did fill up two hours, me and me droogs got our fill of the old ultra-violence, but I'll probably never watch it again.
I think it's because the movie was all over the place tonally. There's a reason that Batman movies are never mob movies even though most of Batman's enemies are, in fact, the mob. It's because while the violence the Joker commits is heinous and dark, it's still not real violence. What I mean by that is that when the Joker shoves a pencil into a man's eye socket, we know that doesn't actually happen at mob meetings. We're seeing an embodiment of evil doing over-the-top evil things. This sets a background for a good vs. evil story. What you don't see is Nicky Santoro stabbing a guy in the neck with a pen, or Tommy DeVito and James Conway murdering Billy Bats in the trunk of a car. That's because that sort of violence is shown so we can realize the brutish reality of what being a criminal is actually about.
The point of Kick Ass, and what I think the first movie does a passable job at doing, is showing the real violence that would actually occur when a man in a mask tries to be a "real-life superhero." That's why my least favorite scene in the first movie is when Kick Ass shoots the guy at the end with a bazooka. And the second movie is full of that stuff: a great contrast is Kick Ass's first fight in the original and his first fight in the sequel: in the original, he gets beaten, stabbed, and hit by a car, and ends up in the emergency room. In the sequel, he gets beat while on the ground for a good while, then gets up. And just in time for "witty banter" with Hit Girl. Now if Kick Ass 2 had only been that kind of over-the-top the whole time I might have liked it more as a guilty pleasure, but it wasn't.
There's a scene that exemplifies what I mean: The Mofo' and one of his goons have captured a female hero and he outright says he's going to rape her. Then he . . . can't get it up? So he . . . tries? All the while his Russian comrade murders ten cops outside while the Tetris theme plays. Here we have a brutal scene of real violence that's then played for laughs as a ridiculous cartoon show occurs outside. Am I supposed to be horrified at the violence? Am I supposed to be enjoying the action? Am I supposed to be laughing at his impotence? Because I can't do all three at once. Also, the Mean Girls parody seemed like it belonged more in a Jason Friedberg movie (Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that a movie must always be somber to be good, but I am saying that an E.D. joke during a rape scene isn't funny or well done. You can put comedy and violence next to each other (for a good example, watch the far superior Cabin in the Woods), but you can't put wacky comedy and realistic (not in the visual effects sense, but in the tonal sense) violence together because only a sociopath thinks that realistic violence is wacky: look at the opening of The Departed. When Frank Costello laughs at the ways the bodies of his victims fell, Mr. French tells him there's something wrong with him. If Mr. French was in the theater of Kick Ass 2, he probably would have thought there was something wrong with anyone who completely, 100% enjoyed every minute of it.
And don't even get me started on the tacked on and confused moral messages. HEY MOVIE! If I wanted a movie to teach me a lesson about being all I can be, I wouldn't be going to Kick Ass.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Why Elysium Disappointed Me
Elysium is not bad, which in and of itself is not the most ringing endorsement. It's definitely heavy handed, and I sort of wonder why, when so much of the cast is part of an insular Latino community, Matt Damon is the main character, but whatever, if you want to see a dude go from living person to strawberry jam in 2 seconds this film is for you.
The bigger problem, to me anyway, is that Battle Angel (and not Burst Angel, as I mistakenly said to a friend earlier) covered a lot of the same ground 23 years ago and did a better job of it. Battle Angel (at least the OVAs, which are what I watched) followed the Steven Spielberg school of thought by never showing their floating city, instead focusing on the actual emotional impact of living in garbage but knowing that paradise was just a few short miles above you.
Another problem is that Elysium pulls its punches. While Battle Angel explicitly shows how little the people in Zalem care about the inhabitants of the city below (by buying the organs of people without questioning the source and straight up murdering those who try to ascend), Elysium is too tied to emulating the border situation between the U.S. and Mexico today: while you see two ships get shot out of the sky (two ships filled with no one we care about by the way), when the third ship makes it to Elysium the people inside are deported instead of being gunned down. You know that Earth is in bad shape in Elysium because everything is dirty and people are lighting fires at night, but you never actually see any wanton crime or violence. In Battle Angel, you see several murders in the streets: you get a sense that things really are bad there.
But okay, you've already shown the WASP paradise that is Elysium (the space station, not the movie), and you don't want to disturb audience members by showing a realistic run-down dystopian future. My next problem comes in how easy it is to A. Get to Elysium (which apparently is so devoid of weapons that it's only orbital defense is a dude with a missile launcher firing FROM EARTH) B. Have a shoot-out on Elysium without any intervention. If it's as easy to get to Elysium as the movie shows it is, why on Earth has it not already been overrun? How does a guy throw a grenade into the Elysium equivalent of a command and control center without a robot death squad murdering his face? Again, other movies have done it better: in The Curse of the Golden Flower we see Prince Jai's army apparently take the Forbidden City only to be brutally massacred in a massive ambush and have their corpses and all sign of carnage cleared away in a matter of minutes. This scene clearly shows the power and control of the emperor, and a similar scene (even if it allowed a small victory to the protagonist to keep it from being so bleak) might have done a better job of displaying the power of Elysium.
Instead we see a film whose legacy is to be heavy-handed and kind of fun at parts, but ultimately forgettable.
On another note, I went to Shake N' Burger after the movie and it was pretty good. I got their juicy burger, which lived up to the name. I topped it off with a good chocolate malt, and unlike some people I went with I didn't spill it all over the floor of Suburbatron.
The bigger problem, to me anyway, is that Battle Angel (and not Burst Angel, as I mistakenly said to a friend earlier) covered a lot of the same ground 23 years ago and did a better job of it. Battle Angel (at least the OVAs, which are what I watched) followed the Steven Spielberg school of thought by never showing their floating city, instead focusing on the actual emotional impact of living in garbage but knowing that paradise was just a few short miles above you.
Another problem is that Elysium pulls its punches. While Battle Angel explicitly shows how little the people in Zalem care about the inhabitants of the city below (by buying the organs of people without questioning the source and straight up murdering those who try to ascend), Elysium is too tied to emulating the border situation between the U.S. and Mexico today: while you see two ships get shot out of the sky (two ships filled with no one we care about by the way), when the third ship makes it to Elysium the people inside are deported instead of being gunned down. You know that Earth is in bad shape in Elysium because everything is dirty and people are lighting fires at night, but you never actually see any wanton crime or violence. In Battle Angel, you see several murders in the streets: you get a sense that things really are bad there.
But okay, you've already shown the WASP paradise that is Elysium (the space station, not the movie), and you don't want to disturb audience members by showing a realistic run-down dystopian future. My next problem comes in how easy it is to A. Get to Elysium (which apparently is so devoid of weapons that it's only orbital defense is a dude with a missile launcher firing FROM EARTH) B. Have a shoot-out on Elysium without any intervention. If it's as easy to get to Elysium as the movie shows it is, why on Earth has it not already been overrun? How does a guy throw a grenade into the Elysium equivalent of a command and control center without a robot death squad murdering his face? Again, other movies have done it better: in The Curse of the Golden Flower we see Prince Jai's army apparently take the Forbidden City only to be brutally massacred in a massive ambush and have their corpses and all sign of carnage cleared away in a matter of minutes. This scene clearly shows the power and control of the emperor, and a similar scene (even if it allowed a small victory to the protagonist to keep it from being so bleak) might have done a better job of displaying the power of Elysium.
Instead we see a film whose legacy is to be heavy-handed and kind of fun at parts, but ultimately forgettable.
On another note, I went to Shake N' Burger after the movie and it was pretty good. I got their juicy burger, which lived up to the name. I topped it off with a good chocolate malt, and unlike some people I went with I didn't spill it all over the floor of Suburbatron.
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