We have something very serious to discuss this week.
With the recasting for the 4th Diary of a Wimpy Kid Movie: The Long Haul, the comedic soul of the series (and emo dream boy), Roderick Heffley has been replaced by an actor who looks like Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka. And we know, like us, you won’t stand idle while this happens. Devon Bostick is Rodrick. He will always be Rodrick.
And if you have no idea what we’re talking about, you really need to get on your meme game — but we’ll explain the #NotMyRodrick movement to you anyway.
In peril, poor Polly Pearlwhite plunges from the pinnacle… And I, a superhero, really should fly up and save her and so I shall as soon as I change into my hero garb and… But what is this? I don’t seem to have worn the cape and tights under my Brooks Brothers suit and how could I forget such a thing? Well, come to think of it, I didn’t have my morning coffee and I’ve been Mr. Cottonbrain all day and… Never mind. Sorry, Polly.
So there I was – this is me taking now and not the fictitious person in the previous paragraph – and I’m about to reveal that early this morning, at about one, I finished watching the Iron Fist television serial and can report general satisfaction with it. But during the final minutes of superhero action I wondered if the film makers were going to give Mr. Fist a costume. He had one in the comic books where he first came to life and back when I was editing his monthly biography I regarded him as another one of Marvel Comics’s costumed dogooders, in the same area code as Moon Knight, Spider-Man, Daredevil, The Hulk, et cetera: not as popular as some of Marvel’s output, but clearly of the same ilk.
The show I was watching earlier today ended – mild spoiler-alert, one you needn’t pay much attention to – with Mr. Fist and a companion climbing to the top of a mountain and finding… not what they expected but rather things that must certainly have ruined their day and, not incidentally, provided a hook into another story. That, we will probably be seeing soon. Mr. Fist was wearing clothing appropriate to climbing snow-covered peaks, but it was just clothing, not a costume.
Marvel’s last adaptation of one of the company’s characters to television went costumeless too. This was Luke Cage, a.k.a. Power Man, who, in the comics I worked on, was Iron Fist’s partner. Coincidence? Probably. But might it not also be the harbinger of a trend?
The costume trope has been a part of the superhero narratives ever since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster introduced it with Superman in 1938. But they didn’t give us the first costumed hero. That honor goes to Lee Falk who began syndicating a newspaper strip titled The Phantom a couple of years before Superman appeared on the cover of Action Comics #1. The Phantom wore a skin-tight costume and a pair of holstered automatics. He lived and operated in the deep jungle, which makes the costume a bit puzzling: it doesn’t seem appropriate. But we won’t be foolish enough to quarrel with success.
Back to Mr. Fist. There’s no reason why action folk have to wear odd suits and a reason or two for them not to. The reasons usually provided are, well… as much excuses as reasons and I don’t completely buy them. It might be that they’ve outlived their time.
Certainly, Iron Fist did just fine in something he could have gotten at a mall.
Life is a fine movie. It’s reasonably well-acted, the creature effects are stunning, and the script has enough twists and turns to keep the audience on its toes. Unfortunately, Life is a monster movie set in a confined area in outer space— and while that’s a remarkably specific genre, it contains some titanic movies. Life is a good movie; Alien is a timeless classic. It’s not entirely fair to make Life stand against a movie like that but it was all I could think of while I was watching it. Life begs to be compared to movies it withers against, and while I struggle to say an entire genre/setting is out of bounds, you should probably come with something that makes your movie undeniably special and not just an attempt to be incrementally better than the last horror movie they saw.
There’s a bit of a pacing problem in Life— although one that is kind of unavoidable in a movie like this. Once the monster is on the loose it moves along nicely but it feels like forever until we get to that point. Most of the first hour is gone before anything happens, and if we were building a deep understanding of the characters and their relationships it would feel just fine, but instead it just seems like the movie wants to go over the exposition two or three times. I promise you: I understand that this alien is very strong and very adaptable. That’s literally every science fiction alien that isn’t going for the War of the Worlds twist.
They have made a very scary alien though. They stress (over and over) that the creature is infinitely adaptable, that every cell is a muscle, a brain, and an eye, and it gives them an impressive latitude to make the creature more terrifying every time we see it. It starts as an amorphous blob and gets more and more defined as it gets bigger until it looks an awful lot like the horrifying cross between a dragon and a Rorschach blot. I will say that for a creature that allegedly has vision capacity in every cell it definitely developed a traditional earth-like face and head, but honestly what do I know about Martian zoology?
Considering how long we have to get to the action it’s borderline outrageous that the characters never feel like more than rough sketches. We have the brash American, the stalwart business-like Russian commander, the British scientist who can’t see past the academic worth of the discovery, the Japanese man torn between the responsibilities of his job and his newborn daughter, the medic who has set the record for longest time in space and sees his home as being in orbit and not on the planet, and the quarantine officer with questionable allegiances. That’s all the character anyone in this movie shows. It’s not like there aren’t good actors here, but there’s no depth to play. We’re at the climax of the film and none of the decisions seem based on information that wasn’t in the first 20 minutes. No one grows and no one changes except from living person to alien food.
If you just want to be scared in a movie theater for an hour and 45 minutes, then there’s honestly nothing wrong with Life, it’s got a great sense of tension and some original creature and effects work. In the last month or so we’ve seen Get Out and Kong: Skull Island release and both are in the same general zone, and both blow Life out of the water. Get Out is a smarter, more chilling intimate character piece and Kong is vastly superior at pumping out big spectacle. There’s no space for Life in this cinematic climate and honesty, with the exception of just being dumped in the doldrum months I can’t imagine a time when Life would stand out. It’s a fantastic movie to discover some random evening on HBO and a mediocre use of one’s time in a theater.
I must admit, I agree with Roy Thomas and Larry Hama.
Unfortunately, this puts me in opposition to atleast three of my ComicMix fellow travelers – Martha Thomases, Joe Corallo and Adriane Nash. And, probably, many others who occupy these premises. That should make our next staff meeting amusing.
Iron Fist – I’m talking about the Marvel/Netflix series – most certainly is not The Prisoner of 21st Century. It’s not even as good as Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. But from reading the reactions of the aforementioned critics and many others, I do not find it to be the You’re In The Picture of the 21st Century, a show so obscure and godawfullousy that only Bob Ingersoll remembers it.
To be fair, I’ve only seen the first four episodes. Then again, Martha’s only seen the first four as well. But those critics who have been vocal in their distaste for the show seem to take umbrage at a number of the show’s elements:
It moves too slowly.
Yeah, well, there’s some truth to that but, damn, BFD. Epileptics deserve the opportunity to watch heroic fantasy without going into a seizure.
The lead, Finn Jones, sucks.
Maybe, maybe not. Stephen Amell was pretty lame when Arrow got its start, and he got a lot better. While Jones hasn’t quite reached the level of, say, Peter Capaldi, I’m willing to give him some time. How old is he, anyway? About 11, I think.
The plot is a rip-off of Arrow, isn’t it?
This particularly bothered my pal Joe. I respond: “Nope, it’s the other way around. In Arrow, Oliver Queen got himself lost in a purportedly fatal accident and came back five years later as a world-travelling, murderous superpowered member of the Russian mob who was cut off from the family fortune. Danny Rand got himself lost in a purportedly fatal accident and he came back some 13 years later a fully-powered superhero who was cut off from the family fortune. The difference is, the storyline in Arrow was mostly original to the teevee show – yes, Oliver did disappear for a while only to come back as a costumed non-superpowered, non-murdering hero. But Danny Rand did it first: when Roy Thomas and Gil Kane created the character, at that time Oliver Queen was nothing more than an occasional back-up feature in Action Comics. So there.
Shouldn’t Iron Fist be Asian-American? After all, it’s 2017, damnit.
Yeah, well, here I agree with Roy. You want an Asian-American character, go create an Asian-American character. In fact, you should. Somebody should. And, get this, Joe – ComicMix’s diversity columnist – made this same point a year ago. Iron Fist was created in (arguably) less-enlightened times. You can’t change the past but – and here’s where I differ greatly from some of my revisionist brethren – you can learn from it. They call this a teaching opportunity.
There are many positive elements in the Iron Fist teevee series. First and foremost: there’s the character of Colleen Wing, as performed by Jessica Henwick. She is not a side-kick. She is her own person, a fully capable young woman struggling to make it in the Big City. Yes, I’d love to see her spin-off into her own series, but let’s face it: a Daughters of the Dragon series with Colleen Wing and Misty Knight (Simone Missick) would kick-ass. Quite literally. Besides, Tony Isabella could use the check.
The bad-guy, Harold Meachum, is wonderful. Sure, we figured out he’s a finger in The Hand roughly well before the first commercial, but his motivations and his truly bizarre technique in handling Rand are fascinating. Better still, actor David Wenham is wonderful in the part.
The Netflix crew, under the direction of Marvel’s own Jeff Loeb, understands the need for and the approach to Mighty Marvel Continuity. We’ve got Madame Gao as the big baddie. We last saw her in Daredevil. Jeri Hogarth appears in three episodes; she was the lawyer who didn’t get along with Jessica Jones in the series of the same name.
Rosario Dawson is in this show. Of course, Rosario has been in just about every superhero show or movie since Kirk Alyn hit puberty, and the world is a much better place for that. Her Claire Temple is the glue of Marvel’s Netflix miniverse and I enjoy seeing her move about the continuity.
I appreciate that Rotten Tomatoes has an 81% audience score but only an 18% critics score. This has nothing to do with your opinion. I mention this only to point out that the critics are sick and tired of being forced to watch all these superhero programs and movies, but they do not pay for the privilege. The audience does. It is their money that shows up on the balance sheets, and thus far, the audience seems to enjoy the genre greatly.
I have done little but give Iron Fist faint praise – Larry Hama, who knows something about martial arts heroes, liked it more than I did. Maybe my opinion will change when I finish watching the first series. Yes, there will be a second – it’s already been picked up.
But, as Dennis Miller used to say (and might still, but hardly anybody cares), “your mileage may vary,” and that’s totally cool.
This past week I finished watching Iron Fist. I also went to a discussion at Manhattan’s Strand bookstore on queer representation in comics, with speakers including Jennifer Camper and Phil Jimenez, but I really want to focus on Iron Fist. Well, I checked out some of the old MST3K episodes they just added to Netflix too. That last part actually ties into my Iron Fist discussion. Yes, really.
The Internet has been flooded with reactions to Iron Fist that have been all over the place. Praise to malaise. I had already seen all the other Marvel Netflix series so I was diving in regardless of what the critics had to say. I got through it all in about days of watching.
It was a rough three days.
I’m not going to get too deep into spoilers, but if you want a 100% spoiler free viewing experience of Iron Fist and haven’t watched it yet, you may want to check it out first before reading ahead.
Welcome back! Okay, so is it just me or was there way too much of a similarity between this and the first season of Arrow? This all happens in the first episode, but Danny Rand coming back from being assumed dead after traveling far with his family and there being an accident and coming back to reclaim his dad’s company, his best friend’s dad being the bad guy, the Triad and the Hand both being Asian led criminal organizations, and that’s just off the top of my head. I might like the show more if I hadn’t seen it done a few years ago now.
Arrow was able to avoid the implications of cultural appropriation. As ComicMix’s own Martha Thomases pointed out in her last column, there is nothing inherently white about the character, so why did he have to be white? I totally understand the argument that casting an actor of Asian descent just because the character knows martial arts wouldn’t be ideal either. That’s what I talked about last year when I wrote about Iron Fist as a lose/lose. I’m not convinced that I was wrong yet.
The show also feels like it thinks it’s more clever than it actually is. I, like I imagine many others, figured out a major plot point a good ten episodes before Danny figured it out. I also liked the “thrown in an asylum when you’re actually magic and they just don’t know it” trope better when I saw it in Return to Oz and Buffy the Vampire Slayer many, many years before that.
Later in the week I ended up watching the MST3K classic, The Pumaman. This clumsy 1980 superhero outing is about a white guy who has the powers of an ancient God/alien worshipped by Aztecs and has a man of Aztec descent as his sidekick despite the fact that guy was definitely more knowledgeable of what was happening. The part of person of appropriate background to serve as sidekick this time was played by Jessica Henwick, whose opinions on this can be read here. Her character, Colleen Wing, is hardly the first character to play this role, nor is the sidekick in The Pumaman. The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, and more franchises have this premise. It’s dated and at this point it’s just boring. Give us something more creative.
Between all that and the character of Danny Rand quite possibly being the most annoying, unlikeable, mansplaining protagonist in a Marvel property makes this a bit hard to watch. If you enjoy it, great. There are people that do and they’re not wrong. I just found this to be a clumsy, ham-fisted attempt at the genre.
For the sake of fairness I will also say what I enjoyed about Iron Fist. It had a great score.
Another martial arts based franchise got a reboot recently. I saw Power Rangers with some friends over the weekend. It’s definitely a movie for a younger audience. I was impressed by how the character of Billy is a black autistic teenager, has a lot of screen time, was easily the second most consequential Power Ranger. The heroes in this were more diverse than in the original, but Rita was whitewashed with seemingly little backlash to that, which seems strange to me. Why care so much about diversity in one element of your film and not the other.
That said, I’d still recommend Power Rangers over Iron Fist. It has a little more heart, is about 11 hours shorter, and cares a lot more about Krispy Kreme.
I grew up on Broadway musicals. Once upon a time when going to see a show on Broadway didn’t cost you your mortgage plus the life of your first-born, my mom and dad were avid theatergoers. They saw the original production of South Pacific with Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, the original production of Camelot with Richard Burton and Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet, and the original production of The King and I with Gertrude Lawrence and a then little-known Yul Brynner.
When they were still dating they went into town to see Oklahoma! Over the years they saw Carousel, and Brigadoon, and Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady, and Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof, and Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!, and the original West Side Story with Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert. My father fell asleep at Cats and my mother said she had a hard time staying awake herself.
Our stereo console was filled with “original Broadway cast” albums from all those shows and more – well, not Cats. When I was kid I would put on an album of, say, South Pacific and pretend I was Mary Martin washing that man out of my hair – oh, and I still do that in the shower some times:
“When a man don’t understand you, When you fly on separate beams,
“Waste no time, Make a change,
“Ride that man right off your range. Rub him out of your roll call,
“And drum him out of your dreams.”
Yes, I am singing as I type.
My brother and I would put on West Side Story and dance around the living room, jumping on and off the chairs and the tables and sofas and getting into a lot of trouble. Later on, my mom often took Glenn and I into town to see revivals of these shows and others. In 1966 my father was laid up with a really bad ankle sprain, so I was privileged to go with my mom to see the one and only Ethel Merman in the revival of Annie Get Your Gun at Lincoln Center.
So it’s safe to say that I grew up on Broadway musicals. And love them. I have more Broadway soundtracks on my iTunes playlist than anything else – perhaps not cool, but fuck you and your Beyonce and Adele. One of my proudest and happiest moments and one that I will remember on my deathbed is when I played Peter Pan in Peter Pan at Camp Monroe. I have also played Ado Annie in Oklahoma and every single female role in Fiddler on the Roof except for Golde (Tevye’s wife, for those not in the know). I was Miss Mazeppa, bumping with my trumpet and in full Roman centurion regalia, in Gypsy.
So it’s safe to say that I grew up on Broadway musicals. And that it has continued into adulthood and to the present day. I became mesmerized by Hugh Jackman long before he was Wolverine when John and I went to see him as Curly in a revival of Oklahoma. And I became familiar with Melissa Benoist and Grant Gustin and Darren Criss long before any of them put on a superhero costume through my allegiance to Glee. And I knew Jesse L. Martin as Tom Collins from Rent, not to mention Victor Garber from Godspell, Sweeney Todd, and the 1990 revival of Damn Yankees.
And of course I knew John Barrowman from his days as Captain Jack on Doctor Who. But I never watched Smash, so I never caught on that Jeremy Jordan could sing and dance until last week…
…which was, of course, the crossover musical episode of The Flash called “Duet.”
It was wonderful.
It started in the epilogue of Supergirl on Monday night, in which Darren Criss pops up as the Music Meister, who does “something” to Kara which places her in a seemingly coma and then pops off to find the “fastest man alive.” Meanwhile, Kara wakes to find herself in a nightclub in what looks like the 1940s, dressed in a gorgeous gold beaded gown with a man telling her that she is the last-minute opening act. She steps through the curtains, and finds herself standing in front of a microphone and an audience. She opens her mouth and…to be continued.
And on The Flash the next night…
A young Barry Allen is watching Singin’ in the Rain with his mother, who is, uh, singing the praises of the musical. Then, in present time, Barry is watching Singin’ in the Rain and other classic musicals to soothe his tormented soul over his breakup with Iris. “Everything is better in song,” he says to Cisco, with whom he has moved in as a temporary(?) roommate.
Called to S.T.A.R. Labs because of a breach in the multiverse, they find Mon-El carrying a still-comatose Kara and J’onn Jonzz, who have come to Barry’s Earth because of the Music Meister’s claim to be looking for the Flash. The villain shows up, puts Barry into the same coma-like state as Kara, and suddenly Barry finds himself in the same nightclub as his Kryptonian friend… and she is up on stage, singing “Moon River.” (One of my favorites – from the not-musical Breakfast at Tiffany’s, in which Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly sings the lovely ballad, composed by Henry Mancini with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, while sitting on her fire escape and accompanying herself with a guitar.)
After Kara finishes her performance, the Music Meister pops in and tells them what’s going on – they are actually living this scenario psychically, or “in their own minds,” while their bodies lay undisturbed and inanimate in S.T.A.R. labs. Why the musical setting? Because both are deeply connected to the genre – Barry through his mom, and Kara through her love of The Wizard of Oz. They both must follow the plot of this mind-blowing musical to its end to recover and get back to the real world. Except: “If you die in here, you die out there.”
The episode is full of remarkable performances. Perhaps, at least for me, the best was the beautiful rendition of “More I Cannot Wish You” from Guys and Dolls sung by Jesse, Victor, and John. Grant’s interpretation of “Running Home to You” is heartbreaking and glorious. “Super Friend” is a treat to watch, with Grant and Melissa singing and hoofing and having a joyous time. Jeremy, Darren, John, and Carlos (Valdes) swing to “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.” And Melissa’s “Moon River” is, just, well, I just have to sing along…
“You dream maker, you heartbreaker,
“Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way.”
“Two drifters, off to see the world.
“There’s such a lot of world to see. We’re after the same rainbow’s end,”
They say what happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas, but in this week’s column I’m going to let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
As you may recall from last week, I was recently in Las Vegas at the GAMA trade show convention. This annual gathering is designed to help game store owners (and comic shop retailers) learn about upcoming products, learn best business practices and network.
In my role as a marketing consultant, I was helping a company called TCGplayer.com launch a new platform for retailers. It was hard work to get everything ready in time for the show, but it all paid off with fantastic results. And for a guy like me, it was especially fun to be onstage in a room of 300 retailers and introduce the company’s CEO during the keynote speech. By the end of the show, I helped deliver results that far surpassed their expectations.
Now I’m not sure if I’m a glutton for punishment or if I just really like hanging out at comic shops. But when the trade show ended on Friday, I embarked on a “Vegas walkabout” to visit the local Las Vegas retail shops.
First off was Ralph Mathieu of Alternate Reality Comics. Ralph’s a focused, upbeat retailer who is also a passionate fan. In fact, his amazing wall of original artwork at the back of the store is a bold testament to his passions.
I had met Ralph many years at a ComicsPRO event. Like GAMA, that’s also a trade organization for retailers, but ComicsPRO focuses more on comic shops than card stores – although there is a lot of overlap in both organizations. Back then, I think I met Ralph in the BOOM! Studios Mobile Party Bus… but that’s another story for another day.
Anyways, it was invigorating to see Ralph, and his co-worker Hannah, at his wonderful store. Just as I was wrapping up my shopping, a boisterous quartet burst through the doors!
These bad hombres were comic shop retailers from the GAMA trade show who, like me, were on the local comic shop trail. And there were faces I recognized:
Chris Brady is the owner of 4Color Fantasies in California’s Rancho Cucamonga and one of the leaders of ComicsPRO. He’s a wise retailer with a sharp eye and a catalog of great stories. He also brought two other folks from his retail team.
Brave New World’s new owner Mike is a big retailer with a big laugh. After a successful marketing career, Mike recently took over this legendary California comic shop. He’s cut from the same cloth as Mongo’s Vultan, Prince of the Hawkmen – he’s full of confidence and drinks deeply from the cup of life!
Once we realized we engaging in similar local retailer visits, these guys kidnapped me (i.e., invited me to tag along) and off we went!
We stopped at two more retailers:
Cosmic Comics is a fun store with gorgeous back issue file cabinets. Co-owner Brian Fudge came out from the backroom to chat us all up a bit.
MaximuM Comics has several locations and we dropped in at the one in Henderson, NV. That’s a nice suburb of Vegas. We were there on St. Patrick’s Day, and I was especially impressed with their sale on comics-with-green-characters: Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Hulk etc.
It was fascinating to spend the week with 400 retailers at the GAMA show, but even more interesting to visit actual retail locations with a few of them. These retailers studied each store we visited with inquisitive and evaluative eyes. They were looking for new retailing ideas. They wanted to know the problems solved with every retail choice. They were instantly able to evaluate everything they saw.
On the way back, we happened across a broken down Mercedes Sprinter van. It was filled with long-legged Las Vegas Dancers and they pleaded with us stay with them and drink martinis while they waited for their tow truck to come.
Well, that part is a total lie. The reality was much more mundane. We wrapped it all up in the early afternoon and went back to our hotel rooms for a nap, and presumably to read our new comics. And, you know what? That was a pretty awesome way to spend an afternoon in Vegas.
Tomorrow I’m supposed to have what is called a nuclear stress test – checking on the old ticker – during which they introduce a nuclear particle into my blood stream and then will track it. According to comic book physics, this should result in my gaining a super-power or two. So I’ve been considering what power(s) I might get or want.
There’s a spectrum of possibilities. Spider-Man got his powers through radioactivity, as did the Hulk. The Fantastic Four got their powers through a form of radiation. In the back of my mind, I wonder if the radioactive particle might activate some recessive mutant gene or possibly Terrigen mists like the Inhumans to which I may have been unwittingly exposed.
Daredevil got hit by a truck and some radioactive isotope/bar clonked him on the head which obviously gave him his radar sense. The Atom got his powers from White Dwarf Star radiation. Superman’s powers come from the rays (radiation) of a yellow sun, but he loses them under a red sun.
So – what powers would I want? Flight is always a great one but there are problems. For example, why doesn’t Superman have bugs in his teeth? You drive a car down a highway and you’re going to wind up with bugs in the grill and bugs on the windshield. And big airplanes are often having collisions with birds; does Supes do that or does he dodge them? So flying is not as simple or cool as one might imagine.
Enhanced strength? I’d be the perennial bull in the china shop. How much would I destroy by accident? I’d have to get used to it and learn how to modulate it; shaking someone’s hand could cause them major bodily harm.
I’ve always had the theory that super-powers in some way should have a psychological component; the power somebody manifests should be tied in to who they are. So what powers would work for me?
I tend to be more cerebral than physical, so I think I would tilt more to the Professor X end of the scale. Mind powers. Or like Deadman, I’d have the ability to inhabit other people and take over their bodies and live their lives for a while. It’s sort of what I do as a writer; I go into other lives.
Eh, then you also have Dr. Sam Beckett on Quantum Leap. I thought he was kind of creepy. He’d “jump” into other people’s lives and be them for a while and then, when he leapt out, the real person would come back, aware that they had been possessed and dispossessed at the same time and they’d be stuck living with the changes Sam Beckett had made in their lives.
Green Lantern would be up my alley; manifesting whatever I can imagine through sheer force of will. That, too, is what I do as a writer. But that falls outside the parameters of the concept – it’s not radioactivity that gives GL his powers but the ring. Same thing with Batman; no radioactivity involved in his creation. Unless we want to suggest Bruce was bitten by a radioactive bat when he first fell into the bat cave as a boy. Hmmmmm.
Of course, I could also wind up with less useful powers such as being able to sniff out chocolate within a mile. Or with a gesture make meatballs and sauce fly out of my fingers. With my luck, that would be more likely.
Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. If I get something, I’ll let you know next week. Unless, of course, I need to preserve my secret identity. If you hear nothing further from me on the subject, you’ll know why.
As the creator of so many great super-heroes would say – Excelsior!
Having finally caught and absorbed James Mangold’s Logan, the finale to the OG X-films, I find myself hoping that the execs behind the soon-to-be-released Wonder Woman and Justice League movies were taking notes. A caveat: I’m going to attempt to keep my lens wide this week. While I don’t believe I’ll be spoiling anything more than people on your Facebook feed have blathered about, be nonetheless forewarned.
Before I get into my listicle (they’re what make articles click-baity, don’t-cha-know), let me quickly pontificate. Logan was one of the most powerful superhero films I’ve ever seen. Perhaps second only to The Dark Knight. It was a straight-forward small-scale road picture that kept a handle on a single-thread story, presented as an homage to the westerns it evoked throughout the picture. In spite of a heavy-handed two-hour run-time, the film itself moves at a steady pace. The performances are top-notch, with Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman taking astounding leaps above their initial performances of Charles Xavier and Wolverine circa 2000. Sweet Rao I feel old just typing that. But I digress. On with the listercizing!
Things get dark, but never for the sake of needless angst.
The first thing DC should take note on… and perhaps highlight, circle, underline and install neon lights around… is that it’s perfectly acceptable to be maudlin if it’searned. X-Men, X2, and to a much-much-much-much lesser extent any of the other X-films did much to pile on the action and gravitas towards the mutant life en masse. But Logan abstains from needless retreading. Instead, it delivers us heroes who are hurt inside and out. It gives them needs, wants, and desires that don’t coincide with some greater plot or McGuffin. And when a McGuffin lands in their lap, they pleasantly drape it in subtext (Charles Xavier, through his delusional state, would seek to mentally communicate with any over living mutants, wouldn’t he?) that earns the gravitas the film requires. And when a character screams to the heavens in a shrill cry of anger and sadness, it comes by way of two-hours of earned malaise and not because it looks cool.
Show. Don’t tell.
During a lull between brutal set pieces, Professor X waxes poetic about the final days of his former academy. He doesn’t speak in pure exposition. He drifts in and out, dancing around nuanced and painful memories, and ultimately evokes the feeling of tragedy and regret deeply rooted in his psyche. We never hear the full details of what occurs. We never see some spiffy CG recreation. And we never need to.
In addition to Charles’ admission of guilt and shame and the slow reveal of X-23’s backstory, Logan elicits the show-don’t-tell ethos that DC needs to heed. While yes, we get the obligatory backstory tacked to her early on, it’s delivered without hanging a lampshade on it time-and-again. Laura is feral and untrusting. She’s lethal and raw. While we see her drop her guard eventually, it comes over the course of many scenes and instances where Dafne Keen shows us how powerful a performer she is. Logan never once feels the need to montage our way toward understanding a new norm.
Keep the violence real, believable, and still other-worldly.
The biggest issues I’ve had with Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad came solely in their fetish for destruction. Logan certainly was built for violence. But when it occurs, it’s not only earned by the stakes in the story, it comes layered with emotional and physical fallout. As Logan and others are forced to fight a youthful Wolverine clone (my one spoilery thing, I apologize…), suddenly fighting a savage killer with a healing factor feels like a true threat. It also stands to note that even in the climax of the film — with multiple combatants, gunfire, and viscera — there’s no death for the sake of spectacle. War is waged for hope, humanity, and vengeance. All that, and there’s nary a single beam-being-blasted-towards-the-sky. Natch.
The story is fearless in the face of predictability
If nothing else could be counted on by DC after seeing Logan, it should be the safe admission that sometimes it’s OK to tee-up a predictable story. There’s nary a single twist to the picture if you pay clear attention. But, due to the patience of director Mangold, we get a film that never needed to rely on ham-fisted trickery to earn the 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The potency lies in the characterizations and believable escalation of antagonism. Villainy in Logan is no less super-villainous that Lex Luthor creating Doomsday, or Darkseid declaring war on Earth. But it’s the reactions of our heroes that carry us through to the end credits. Jokes occur naturally and not at the behest of breaking a tense and necessary silent moment for the sake of relieving the stress on the audience. Mangold lets the story unfold through deliberate character-driven motivations. We never see the puppet-strings of action-figure-merchandisers creating moments for future marketing. Honesty and artistry over bottom-dollar-profits. And because of it, the fans have carried a hard R-rated film to over 500 million dollars in ticket sales.
I know Justice League and Wonder Woman are being built to pitch out to a larger PG-13 audience. But the sincere hope remains that DC paid attention. Logan was amazing not because it used the word fuck a few hundred times, but because the story delivered earned every last fuck delivered.
I feel like staying far away from Civil War II this week. How far away? I’m not even writing about comic books. That far.
Doubt was another attempt to do a Shonda Rhimes style show without Shonda Rhimes. CBS tried to hedge its bets by having former Grey’s AnatomyKatherine Heigl headline Doubt. Did that help? Even less than her presence helped in her last show, State of Affairs. State of Affairs lasted 13 episodes. CBS pulled Doubt after only two episodes. Which is one more episode than I was able to last. Doubt was such a huge turkey it could have fed the Eight is Enough brood and still have had enough to give the Brady Bunch leftovers. But I digest.
Doubt told the story of Sadie Ellis, a high-priced New York City defense attorney who was defending Dr. William Brennan on a first-degree murder charge. The show was, as TV flack hacks like to put it, “ripped from the headlines.”
See, Dr. Brennan was a doctor, a pilot, and a the son of a US senator, who was accused of murdering his 16-year-old girlfriend back in 1993. So, this story is a mash-up of John F. Kennedy, Jr. (son of a senator and a pilot) and Michael Skakel (nephew of a different Kennedy senator who was accused of the 1975 murder of his 15-year-old girlfriend and convicted in 2002). The writers had to go to the library achieves to find whatever newspapers they ripped this15-year-old headline from. I understand that if Doubt had made it to a second season, instead of just a second episode, it was going to do a “ripped from the headlines” story based on Sacco and Vanzetti.
Dr. Brennan’s girlfriend was murdered back in 1993. We learned in a pretrial hearing that Dr. Brennan confessed to the murder to another student while they were in boarding school. And that the murder weapon disappeared in 2006 and hasn’t been found.
Ms. Ellis and her team thought their best chance to win the case was to suppress the statement. If that was their best shot, Dr. Brennan better start getting measured for his fashionable “The New Black” jumpsuit. Because the odds of them winning the suppression motion were even worse than the odds of my winning the Mega Millionsand the Powerball. Three times.
The Fifth Amendment says that no one can be compelled to incriminate him or herself. Confessions are suppressed when they are obtained in violation this amendment because they are in some way coerced. All courts hold that if the government or one of its agents coerce the confession in some way it must be suppressed. That doesn’t apply here. Brennan gave his confession to another student, not the police.
Courts are split on whether a confession that was coerced by a private citizen should be suppressed. Some say any coerced confession should be suppressed. Others say only a confession that was coerced by the government should be suppressed. But, again, that doesn’t apply here.
Dr. Brennan’s statement was one that he gave voluntarily to another student while they were attending boarding school. There was no hint of coercion. And there is no split among the courts that a confession what was not coerced should not be suppressed.
Ms. Ellis could also have tried to suppress the evidence because it was a statement made by someone who was not in court and which is being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, i.e., that Dr. Brennan killed his girlfriend. You know, hearsay. Sadie didn’t even try that one.
When most states defined hearsay, the definition specifically excluded the statement of a party in the case that is contrary to the party’s position at trial — such as a confession by a defendant who pled not guilty would be. New York didn’t go that route. In New York, the statement of a party opponent is still hearsay. However, it is one of the exceptions to New York’s hearsay rule. So not hearsay or an exception to the hearsay rule, either way the confession would be admissible.
The judge quite correctly ruled that Dr. Brennan’s statement should not be suppressed. So the defense team’s best shot fired blanks. Then, just when things looked darkest for Dr. Brennan, they got worse. The police found the murder weapon.
Seems back in 2006 there was a fire in the 93rd Precinct and the evidence there was moved to the Staten Island police warehouse. Let me get this straight; the evidence was lost because the police forgot where they put it? That’s dubious at best and this show was never at its best.
Police have to keep track of what’s called the chain of custody on all evidence. They have to know where evidence is at all times so that when it’s offered in a trial, the police can establish that the evidence is actually what it purports to be and hasn’t been tampered with. Toward this end, evidence is kept in secure lockers and has to be signed out when someone wants to examine it. That way there’s a paper trial detailing where the evidence was at all times and who had it.
So when the police moved the evidence from the 93rd Precinct to the Staten Island warehouse, they would have made records of the move so that the evidence’s chain of custody could be maintained. The police would have known at all times where the murder weapon was and would have been able to put their hands on it anytime they wanted it.
Sadie tried to exclude the murder weapon. She argued to the judge that its chain of custody had been broken when it was lost in the warehouse. The prosecutor argued that a chain of custody breach goes to weight not admissibility. Wrong!
If the defense can establish that there was a break in the evidentiary chain of custody so that the evidence might not be what it purports to be or might have been tampered with, that means that the evidence is not admissible. Chain of custody arguments go to admissibility, not weight. Any prosecutor would know that; except, perhaps, the one who didn’t think to look in the police warehouse that all the other stuff from the 93rd Precinct was moved to after the fire.
And that’s what happened in the first episode of Doubt. I can’t tell you what happened in the second because I, like most of America, didn’t watch it. One episode was bad enough. I can only suffer so much for my art.
