Ben Affleck as Batman, or Can't We All Just Get Along?

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"

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.

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 Man With the Iron Fists Was Terrible

Yeah, just so you know, not only did it put the "F U in Kung Fu," it put the "RZA" in "RZA probably shouldn't have creative control over a movie."

But more importantly, watching this movie got me thinking about something. Note that everything I'm about to talk about is based on anecdotal evidence and shouldn't be regarded as the sole truth, it's just based on something I've seen that I find interesting.

Fantasy appears to be a fairly white genre. White people watch it, white people act in it, and white people write it. Kung fu movies, on the other hand, tend to be bigger with the black demographic. I mean, even in blaxploitation films, the main characters tend to know some sort of martial art (see Dolemite or Black Dynamite). I started looking at it, and I think I see why.

Fantasy movies/TV shows tend to be about 2 things: 1) an evil king has taken over a good kingdom and the good people rise up and fight them or 2) an evil king rules over an evil nation that is at war with a good kingdom. These sorts of stories have themes of xenophobia, the good nature of people, the evils of totalitarian governments, and the power of the individual to change the whole world.

Kung fu movies, on the other hand, are more consistent in their setting than their stories. They tend to take place in small communities that are ruled by corrupt government officials or crime families. Even stories without the emphasis on community tend to focus on themes of crime, the apathy from national organizations towards corrupt local officials, the abuse of power by those in authority, and the importance of friends and mentors over everyone else.

I think you can see where this is going: white people lead a pretty advantaged life, and because of that they have the luxury to spend more time worrying about big ticket issues that don't directly affect them personally. Black people, however, are hated in their own home, and so are focused on day to day survival in one of the most affluent countries on Earth. I think that it is this difference in life experiences that can account for the two groups's preferences in entertainment.

Just a thought.

Seriously, though, don't see The Man With the Iron Fists when Enter the Dragon is available on Netflix.

Why the "It's Morally Right" Argument Doesn't Work, Particularly for Mormons

So, whenever I discuss politics, there is inevitably one person in the group who takes a moral stance, e.g. "I think X is wrong, therefore X should be illegal." It's annoying, and stupid, and also annoying. It's a bad argument in general. While it may have a deep seated place in your heart, just know that whenever you use this point in a debate, it holds the same water as "I like X, therefore X should be the norm," or "Steak tastes good, vegetarianism should be illegal." If you really think something is true morally, and your conviction is that strong, take your time to do your research and be able to explain why it's true or, more importantly, why everyone else should think the same way you do.

I, being Mormon, spend a lot of time with Mormons, and so this is who I tend to see making this mistake the most. For example, I get that as a Mormon you are against drugs and see smoking Maui Wowie as almost murder. I, as a Mormon, am against using drugs. But you can't say "drugs are bad" when a person discusses the positives of legalizing marijuana in the United States and act like that's a rebuttal to points about tax benefits, safety through regulation, and the collapse of drug cartels (if you want we can talk about this later, for now ignore the message and focus on the idea). And now I have the ultimate proof that Mormons can't use the "X is bad" argument in an un-ironic fashion.

"We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

The eleventh Article of Faith discusses that we worship according to our own conscience (according to what we believe) and that we allow all men the same privilege (to worship or believe according to their conscience). Therefore, if we say "X is morally wrong," we must admit that our opponent's argument, "X is morally right/X has no intrinsic moral value,"  is to be treated as as valid as our own.

This is not to support the idea of moral relativism, something I myself don't believe in. I believe that for every situation there is a category of "right" responses and a category of "wrong" responses (I say categories because I am in love with the "good, better, best" approach to morality-not all wrong things are equally wrong, and not all right things are equally right). But I am saying that in a situation where you are attempting to expand the influence of your beliefs beyond yourself (politics) you need to justify your opinion.

I am also not against people trying to influence others based on their beliefs. That's what politics is. We get this great uproar of "Don't shove your beliefs down my throat!" when we discuss issues such as sexuality and drug use, but no one seems to think the state is doing a bad job of shoving our beliefs about violence down the throats of murderers or our (markedly arbitrary) beliefs about the age that it's okay to start having sex down the throats of pedophiles. Society is a group of people coming together to create a compromise of  beliefs among a group of people and then applying that compromise to everyone: it infringes upon the individual to create a better situation for the whole. But that's the kicker: compromise.

Don't come to me and expect me to compromise my beliefs unless you can prove why it's better for me or society as a whole. Let's see some evidence. Stop talking about the morality of policy decisions and let's start talking about the effects of policy decisions. Morally I've already decided what I'm doing ("As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord"), so if you want me to change you've got to approach from a new angle. Otherwise, you're casting your pearls before swine.

In-N-Out

Alright, so I went and saw Cloud Atlas yesterday (and it was gooooood). As my roommate and I were driving home, the traffic was pretty bad, so I missed my turn. Because we were driving past, I had an inspiration.

"Let's stop at In-N-Out." So we did. And . . . I was underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, it tasted good. But to explain why I wasn't impressed, let me explain my three-burger theory.

There are three ideal types of burger. There's the cheap burger. This burger has a thin patty that is usually a perfect geometric shape like a circle or a square. It comes with fries that are quarter inch on a side or less and are sometimes made of ground up and re-combined potatoes, not cut potatoes. The toppings are pretty standard: cheese, pickles, onions, lettuce. Nothing crazy. The second is the gourmet burger. This burger typically has a irregular and usually thicker burger, also can be pretty big circumference-wise. The fries are fresh cut and usually about a half-inch on the side. The burger has a host of possible toppings outside the "standard." The third is the homemade burger: there's no real consistency beyond made at home. The fries are either store-bought, really thick, or gross. Toppings tend to be standard, but people put some whack shiz on there, for real-real.

Alright, I told you that story so I could tell you this one: In-N-Out is probably the best cheap burger I've ever had. But my favorite kind of burger is not of the cheap type. After I was finished at In-N-Out, I was like: that was good. Now let's go get some real food. The fries: lackluster, at best. When your fries make me crave Mickey D, you've got problems. The shake? Standard. Not great, not terrible, just standard chocolate shake. And I mean, if you love cheap burgers, if Mickey D's is your bag, then you will love you some In-N-Out. I really don't.

You see, I prefer 5 Guys. I go there, I get a stacked burger, thick and tasty fries (and lots of them), and I leave full to bursting. Cheap burgers are all about the same. I know there's some quality difference between Burger King and In-N-Out, but I see the difference between Burger King and In-N-Out is smaller than the quality difference between 5 Guys and In-N-Out.

Sorry Californians. Happy reviews come from happy obese people, and happy obese people come out of 5 Guys.

So, I ate at 5 Guys today.

Can I just say that this video should be canonized by every major religion due to its statement of eternal, divine truth?

Also, apparently some people (my roommate Dre) don't think it's okay to draw dirty pictures on those slips of paper they leave by the corkboard and then put them back for other people to find later.