What Superman Unchained Can Learn From Django Unchained

Yesterday, DC Comics announced that Scott Snyder and Jim Lee’s much anticipated new Superman comic is set to debut this June and that it will be called Superman Unchained.  I guess because Superman’s always busting out of chains and stuff?  It seems like kind of a dumb name to me.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that DC also publishes a comic adaptation of Django Unchained.  With this new Superman book, they seem to be horning in on all of the Unchained buzz from this past award season as well as the general hip cache of Quentin Tarantino.  If they’d launched a new Superman book a few years ago, they probably would’ve called it Inglourious Superman.  I actually like that way better than Superman Unchained.

Anyway, I think Snyder and Lee can learn a very important lesson from Django Unchained.  While at first glance Superman and Django might not seem like they’ve got a lot in common, there are some similarities.  For example, both of them know what it’s like to deal with a mean, rich white dude who doesn’t care for people who are different than him.  Calvin Candie is totally an antebellum Lex Luthor.

What’s fascinating about Django Unchained is that it sets out to tackle racial issues in ways we’re not used to seeing.  A revenge flick where a black slave takes down a white plantation owner is not at all a common trope in American cinema.  Slavery is, obviously, a rather touchy subject, usually addressed with the utmost solemnity and seriousness.  Django Unchained does get into the brutality of the slave trade, and realistically so, but it’s not Roots.  It turns into an epic, almost fantastical shoot ‘em up of the sort that we’d expect from Tarantino.  Opinions on the film have ranged from decrying it as racist garbage to praising it to the high heavens (personally, I liked it and thought it worked), but regardless of where you land on the film’s effectiveness, it was certainly thought provoking and tackled a tricky subject matter in an innovative way.

However, there’s a significant problem with Django Unchained.  While it’s all about addressing stereotypes and issues surrounding race head on, it completely fails to do the same for gender.  It is a straight up, full on damsel in distress narrative.  The entire plot of the film revolves around rescuing Django’s wife, Broomhilda.  Kerry Washington has little to do but cry, look scared, scream sporadically, be told how pretty she is, and fearfully whisper her few lines.  She is in no way a party to her own rescuing.  Django and his associate Dr. King Schultz are behind it all.  The few other female characters in the movie amount to a group of house slaves and Candie’s sister, who has very little to do.  Django Unchained does a ton of interesting things with race, but gender falls by the wayside.

Now, I’m not saying that Tarantino is some sort of misogynist.  The dude made Kill Bill.  What I am saying is that there’s a valuable lesson for Superman Unchained in Django Unchained.  Scott Snyder is a great writer and Jim Lee is a great artist, and I’m sure they’re both going to do a lot of interesting and fun things with this book.  Snyder always approaches characters from a cool angle, and I’ve heard that Lee is really pushing himself and trying new things with his art.  All of this is awesome.

My only friendly suggestion is that while they do all of these fun things that they don’t fall into the same trap as Django Unchained.  Cool stories and great art are a good time, but no one wants a damsel in distress narrative, or a book where female characters are treated like they have been elsewhere in the New 52.  Like when we saw a page of Catwoman’s breasts before we saw her face in Catwoman #1.  Or when Voodoo was a stripper for most of Voodoo #1.  Or the epic fail that was Starfire in Red Hood and the Outlaws #1.  Keep gender in mind.  Know the tropes and stereotypes that are so easy to slip into and avoid them.  Think of female characters as characters and not plot devices.  Or pin-ups.  While you’re bringing a fresh, new take to Superman, don’t forget to invest some time in Lois Lane too.

I’m very optimistic that they will, and that Lois will be much more than a damsel in distress for Superman Unchained.  Everything I’ve heard about the book so far sounds great, and I’m excited to check it out this June.  It’s just that Django Unchained stumbled by focusing ALL of its attention on being new and progressive and interesting in just one area, and I wouldn’t want to see its Kryptonian namesake make the same mistake.  I have a lot of faith that it won’t.  I still don’t love the name, though.

Fantastic Live Action Wonder Woman Fan Trailer

Today on io9 there’s an awesome new movie trailer for a film that will probably never see the light of day.  Half because it’s a fan trailer for a trademarked and copyrighted character, and half because the protagonist has the worst luck making it to the big screen.  That’s right, it’s a Wonder Woman trailer!!

Or rather, a “Female Super Hero Fan Film” trailer, but it’s Wonder Woman.  Jesse V. Johnson directs and Nina Bergman stars in this super cool trailer that features Wonder Woman taking down a bunch of Nazis:

This is pretty impressive for a fan trailer.  Hell, this is more impressive than the entire David E. Kelley pilot!!  Setting it in World War Two like the original comics is classy, plus there seem to be some other fun Wonder Woman references.  For example, her shooting down the German plane is reminiscent of the cover to Wonder Woman #189 from the mod era.  The costuming is solid, and I like the tweaks they made to Wonder Woman’s outfit.  The whole thing is just very well done.

And also the closest we’re going to get to a live-action Wonder Woman for a while.  The Justice League movie is in a bad way right now, while the CW’s Amazon pilot has been pushed back a year.  It was fun to see a live-action Wonder Woman taking down some Nazis, however briefly.  Everyone involved in this trailer did a fantastic job, and I hope a lot of people check it out.

“Wonder Women!” Documentary Airs On PBS On April 15

The documentary Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines has been getting a ton of buzz over the past year.  Directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, the film tells the story of Wonder Woman and other female heroes in popular culture.  Here’s the official synopsis:

WONDER WOMEN! THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICAN SUPERHEROINES traces the fascinating evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to the blockbusters of today, WONDER WOMEN! looks at how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation.

WONDER WOMEN! goes behind the scenes with Lynda Carter, Lindsay Wagner, comic writers and artists, and real-life superheroines such as Gloria Steinem, Kathleen Hanna and others, who offer an enlightening and entertaining counterpoint to the male-dominated superhero genre.

And here’s a trailer:

It premiered at SXSW in 2012, and has played severals festivals and conventions since, and finally it’s reaching a wider audience when it airs on PBS on April 15 as part of their Independent Lens documentary series.  I’ve been wanting to see this for some time, and I’m very excited that it’s going to air soon!  It looks really interesting, and it’s got a stellar lineup of interviewees.  I’m particularly curious to see their take on the original Wonder Woman, because over the years Marston’s approach to the character has been recast and modernized to fit a more current view of feminism.

Look for Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines on April 15!!  I’ll likely post a reminder as the day nears.

CW’s Amazon Not Picked Up, WB’s Justice League Movie On Hold OR This Is Why We Don’t Get Our Hopes Up

If you were looking forward to seeing a live action Wonder Woman any time soon, either on the small screen in the CW’s Amazon TV show or on the big screen in a Justice League movie, this just isn’t your day.  We’ve got some bad news on both fronts.

First, the CW has announced its list of new pilots for Fall 2013, and Amazon isn’t one of them.  Written by Allan Heinberg and focusing on the early days of Wonder Woman, the project had gotten a lot of press but didn’t make the pilot list.  This isn’t even the list of shows that are going to get picked up.  These are the shows that MIGHT get picked up if the pilots go over well with network brass.  It’s a preliminary step, and Amazon doesn’t even have that.

However, it looks like the plan is to roll the show over to next year, for Fall 2014 or maybe a bit earlier if they’re particularly excited about the project as it continues to develop.  Arrow is doing really well for the CW, and they seem committed to expanding that brand, so they’re going to give the show more time.  The project isn’t cancelled so much as postponed, though as always with live action Wonder Woman news I caution you not to get your hopes up too high.

If that wasn’t enough, Variety reports that the Justice League movie, co-starring Wonder Woman and written by the dude who wrote the widely panned Gangster Squad, is on hold until Warner Bros. gets a look at how well Man of Steel does at the box office.  So I suppose that means there’s a possibility that if the movie underperforms, there might not even be a Justice League movie.  At the very least, it will probably be delayed.  It’s slated for some time in 2015, but if they’re waiting another six months for Man of Steel to come out then the schedule might get pushed back.

So yeah, double bummer on the live action Wonder Woman front.  And, just to add insult to injury, Young Justice was cancelled yesterday so if you were digging the animated Wonder Girl you’re hosed there too.  They can’t not make some sort of live action Wonder Woman forever, right?  It’s been almost forty years since Lynda Carter.  It’s got to happen at some point!!  Though this is the sort of thinking that leads to disappointment.  Hopes, stay down!!

My 10 Favourite Non-Comic Book Things Of 2012

Much like with my best of comics list, “things” is vague, but it’s a good way to look at everything at once.  Plus this is a comics blog!!  You don’t need my Top 10 of everything in the universe.  So we’ll stick with the vague listing.

I liked a lot of things this year, but this list is the things I absolutely loved.  Let’s get to it!!

10. J.K. Rowling

I read ALL of Harry Potter for the first time ever this year, in about three weeks, and it was absolutely spectacular.  Reading Harry Potter for the first time was my favourite thing of 2012 that didn’t come out in 2012.  But then, J.K. Rowling had a new book, The Casual Vacancy, written for adults and without a single wizard.  It was really quite good, as well as impressively dark and depressing, and was the complete opposite of Harry Potter in almost every way.  It takes guts to do something so different from the bestselling book franchise in the world, and skill to make small town politics as engrossing as the Tri-Wizard Tournament.

9. Elf on an Elk

The best of The Hobbit happened about five minutes in after Smaug took over the Lonely Mountain and the dwarves looked to the elf king, Thranduil, for assistance.  Thranduil stared them down and then dismissively looked away, all while riding an elk with HUGE antlers.  It was amazing, and lasted all of six seconds.  It was so brief and majestic, I can’t even find a good picture of it online.  It was the best, most random thing I saw all year.

8. Nate Silver

Obama winning the presidential election was great and all, but the best part of election night was watching the results come in and seeing that Nate Silver had called EVERY single state.  Pundits on both sides had predicted 12 billion different outcomes, and the absolutely asinine media coverage of the campaign tried to make the race look like it was too close to call, but Nate Silver got it ALL right.  With math.  It was awesome.  I sincerely hope that in four years, when the media tries to create ratings-boosting narratives instead of reporting facts, everyone ignores them and listens to the guy who’s actually using his brain.

7. Louie

Louis CK’s been killing it for the past few years now, and Louie remains one of the most enjoyable and fascinating TV shows on the air.  It was weird to begin with, but each year he takes it further from traditional comedy and story structures and makes it more and more bizarre.  It’s hilarious and surprisingly touching, and just amazingly cast.  The young actresses that play his daughters are particularly excellent.  You never know what’s going to happen when you tune in to Louie, and that’s what makes it great.

6. Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

I’ve enjoyed G. Willow Wilson’s for years.  Cairo was fantastic, and her recent Mystic mini-series at Marvel was super enjoyable.  Her first novel, Alif the Unseen, combines Islamic mythology with modern technology, and the result is a fascinating and great read.  I don’t know a lot about Islamic mythology, like djinns and such, so it was really interesting to be immersed in this world.  And also useful to enter it through the modern computer hacking world, which I’ve got a better grasp on.  Alif the Unseen is a unique and exciting novel, and I highly recommend it.

5. Sherlock

It’s a testament to how great Sherlock is that the two leads are so busy with other projects that the next season keeps getting delayed.  Martin Freeman was busy with The Hobbit, while Benedict Cumberbatch is just in everything now.  Cumberbatch gets most of the Sherlock love, but it’s the duo that makes the show so enjoyable.  They just ARE Holmes and Watson, and their chemistry is perfect.  That their cases are exciting is a bonus; I’d watch just to see the two of them sit around and chat.

4. Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live

As always, Saturday Night Live was hit and miss this year.  There was also a lot of cast turnover, with some big names leaving the show.  By far, my favourite new cast member is Kate McKinnon, who does great impressions (her Ann Romney was spectacular) and who starred in my absolute favourite sketch of the year.  As the Spanish woman who infamously repainted Ecce Homo, McKinnon KILLED me with lines about Jesus’ “enormous round monkey face.”  I could watch that bit on a loop forever.

3. Marvel’s The Avengers

I can’t recall ever having a better time at the movies than when I saw The Avengers.  The action was crazy, the new cast members were great, and it perfectly brought together all of the existing Marvel movies while FINALLY making the Hulk work on the big screen.  I’ve never heard a theatre of people erupt in laughter like they did when the Hulk picked up Loki and swung him around like a ragdoll.  It was a fun, crazy movie that perfectly captured everything that’s great about superheroes.

2. HHhH by Laurent Binet

HHhH is a novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a top Nazi leader, during World War Two.  Sort of.  It’s half a novel, and half Laurent Binet’s ruminations on how you turn history into fiction and the various pitfalls that entails.  Binet critiques other books and movies that tell the same story while saving the harshest critiques for himself, and wonders about how much we can actually know about historical events and how much is just speculation.  It’s completely fascinating and engrossing, and serves as a brilliant lesson for how to approach history.

1. Happy Endings

There are a lot of great comedies on TV right now like Parks and Recreation, Archer, and Community, but I think the funniest show this year, and my favourite non-comic book thing of the year, is the criminally unwatched Happy Endings.  This show is just wall to wall jokes, and you’ve got to watch it a few times to catch everything.  It’s weirdly wonderful, and includes bits like Jane staging an elaborate Gallagher-esque watermelon smashing to amuse her dad, and Brad rediscovering his early 1990s love of ventriloquism with his stand-up comedian dummy, Sinbrad.  It’s all SO ridiculously funny, and I laugh like crazy through every episode.  It’s pure hilarity.

So there was some decent stuff in 2012, particularly of the funny and/or weird and/or fascinating variety.  Hopefully we’ll get even more in 2013!!

The Hobbit Review OR Good Not Great, But It Had An Elf On An Elk!!

First off, the Man of Steel trailer looked absolutely spectacular on the big screen!!  All the chills and excitement I felt watching it online were magnified tenfold seeing it in a theater.  I still have lots of reservations about Nolaning up Superman and having Zack Snyder direct it, but the trailer was amazing.

Second, I saw the 48 fps version so let’s talk about that now and deal with the movie on its own after.  Peter Jackson shot The Hobbit at 48 frames per second instead of the standard 24, which gives you way more detail and a realistic feel.  It was… odd.  I don’t think it worked.  Yeah, a lot of the scenes looked as real as I’ve ever seen a movie look, but that wasn’t exactly a good thing.  It sometimes just looked like a guy standing outside in a wizard costume, and lacked the ambience and depth and feel that I was used to from the original trilogy.  Plus, a lot of the movements felt jerky or sped up.  There were occasional scenes where the detail was amazing and cool, and it’s certainly technology with a ton of potential, but it just didn’t work for me here.  A lot of scenes just didn’t FEEL like being at the movies.

Now, the movie itself!!  I liked it, but I didn’t love it.  I’m a HUGE fan of the original trilogy, like ridiculously so.  I’ve got nearly all of the action figures, I’ve seen the movies probably 30 or 40 times each, and when Fellowship of the Ring came out I ate untold numbers of Burger King kid’s meals to get all the toys.  I love the books and I love the movies, and I was over the moon excited for The Hobbit.  I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t great.

I think the main problem was that it wasn’t sure what it wanted to be.  It was sort of like two movies jammed together.  At times, it was broad and funny, but it also got pretty dark and violent too, with no real happy medium.  For example, the dwarves were either being goofy and cartoonish or they were SUPER somber and decapitating goblins.  There was so middle ground.

It felt like a conflict between design and execution.  Some of the dwarves were clearly designed to look comical, and there were elaborate bits meant to be funny, like a weird dish stacking song number near the beginning.  But then maybe they thought they were being too broad with it, so the fight scenes became more violent and everyone turned very moody.  It’s like they set out to make something tonally different from Lord of the Rings but chickened out halfway through and decided to try to capture the original formula for success, and they over-corrected.

Lord of the Rings was very condensed while The Hobbit is stretched out, and the former worked much better than the latter.  In trying to turn The Hobbit into a trilogy and seemingly trying to capture the vibe of the first trilogy, they lost what’s unique about The Hobbit.  The stakes are so much lower and it’s mostly just a fun adventure, but the movie tries to make the dwarves quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain as epic as the quest to destroy the ring of power.  It’s just not.  They played up the Sauron/Necromancer thing with mixed results.  It could lead to something cool in later movies, but things felt a little muddled and inconsistent in this first one.

However, there was a lot that was great.  Martin Freeman is PERFECT as Bilbo, and really made the movie.  He saved some dodgy scenes, especially in the beginning, and I really missed him later on when he and the dwarves were separated.  His scene with Gollum, who looked fantastic, was one of the highlights of the film, and his general fish out of water bewilderment was enjoyable the whole way through.

It was great to have Ian McKellen back as Gandalf again, and to see Elrond and Galadriel too.  Elrond was more light-hearted this time, which was fun.  The dwarves were well cast as well, but it’s hard to keep them all straight.  Several of them got good character moments, though, and I think they were handled as well as 13 characters could be.

The style of the film picks up where the Lord of the Rings left off, and Jackson’s version of Middle Earth looks as amazing as ever.  The costumes, locations, and sets were all gorgeous.  And the score!!  One of my absolute favourite things about the original trilogy is how each region and/or race has their own musical theme, and The Hobbit’s new dwarf theme fits in seamlessly with the existing musical style.

There were also lots of little moments that I loved.  The absolute coolest moment in the movie was at the beginning when Smaug has taken over the Lonely Mountain and Thranduil stares down the dwarves, turns around, and leaves without helping WHILE RIDING AN ELK!!  Elf on an elk!!  It was so much fun.  I can’t wait for more Thranduil in the next movie.  Lee Pace was an inspired choice.  Other great bits included:

• Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords back as an elf, but with lines this time.
• Gandalf busting the dwarves out of the goblin town.  It’s always fun when Gandalf throws it down.
• It was a change from the book, but I liked Thorin doubting Bilbo and Bilbo proving himself.  It gave the movie an arc that it needed.
• The goblin king was weird and gross and fun.
• I think they upped the role of the mountain giants from the book, but it looked pretty awesome.  I enjoyed the massive rock giants’ battle immensely.
• That one dwarf who’s super into chamomile tea.  He was amusing.

All in all, I liked The Hobbit.  While it had its problems and it wasn’t the mind-blowing opening that Fellowship of the Ring was, that’s a high bar to match.  Sure, they could have cut a half hour and sorted out a more consistent tone and vision, but how can you not enjoy Martin Freeman tromping his way through Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth?  The world he’s created is astounding, and it’s so much fun to see Bilbo Baggins explore it.  Plus, elf on an elk!!  I really hope he rides it in the Battle of Five Armies.  So yeah, it was good but not great.  I enjoyed it, and I’m definitely going to see it again.

Man Of Steel Trailer Released OR It Looks Surprisingly Good

Along with most everyone else on the planet, I was a little concerned when Warner Bros. announced that Zack Snyder would be directing the new Superman movie.  Don’t get me wrong, 300 was crazy fun, and the man’s not entirely without skill, but he seemed like a generic, uninspired choice for Superman.  Plus his movies are kind of rapey, you know?

The teaser for Man of Steel was pretty vague, but now we’ve got the first full trailer and it’s actually quite good:

First off, Superman has a beard, which is classy.  People with beards are automatically ten times cooler than everyone else.  FULL DISCLOSURE: I also have a beard.

Second, it looks explodey and crazy and Michael Shannon looks completely bonkers as Zod, which is a very good thing.  Unhinged Michael Shannon is one of the most enjoyable things in the world.  I just finished the last season of Boardwalk Empire and in one scene he went from mildly irritated to burning a dude with an iron, trashing his office, and then calmly walking out like nothing had happened.  I think he’s going to be a fantastic Zod.

Third, it looks like it’s definitely going to be a darker movie.  Clark seems to be dealing with some heavy things, and I think that maybe his parents are going to die and that sends him on his fishing journey.  In the trailer, Martha is his island in the sea of voices and sounds he can hear, and without her he might have some troubles.

On top of that prediction, it’s abundantly clear that this isn’t an “Oh hooray, a superhero… welcome to the city!” kind of movie.  People don’t appear to be accepting Superman with open arms, if his arrest is any indication.  Lois is going to accept him, though, and have his back.  She always does.  Amy Adams was only in the trailer for like two seconds, so there’s not much to say about Lois, but it wasn’t a bad two seconds AND she didn’t burst into song.  I always expect Anne Hathaway and Amy Adams to spontaneously start singing when I see them in anything.  It made Dark Knight Rises kind of weird for me.

So yeah, it looks very good.  A little darker and more morose than I like my Superman, but Henry Cavill seems like a good fit for the part and they’ve finally closed the door on the Donner/Reeve era.  Superman needs a new direction.  I’m definitely intrigued.  Plus it had Superman flying and such, and that always gives me chills.

However, we’ve seen great trailers from Snyder before, and the movies don’t always follow through.  Remember how amazing the Watchmen trailer was?  That was one of the best trailers I’ve ever seen, and it had me over the moon excited for the movie.  And then Watchmen was really, really bad and I was all disappointed.  So my hopes aren’t all that high for Man of Steel, seeing as I’ve been burned before by Snyder AND by a new Superman movie (I’m looking at you, Superman Returns).  I’m going to keep my expectations low and hopefully I’ll be surprised at how good the movie turns out.  So far, the trailer has me cautiously optimistic.