Man of Steel, Superhero Cinema, The Fun Police, and the War on Hope

"Your girl sent you to Glamour Shots too?"

I liked The Dark Knight, and I'm pretty sure that's only because I loved Heath Ledger's Joker.

The Joker was a livewire who brought more life  to The Dark Knight with his batshit rumblings than any other character or plot development. He was the clown prince made "real"in a way that never betrayed the characters roots as a four-color creation. He made The Dark Knight far more entertaining than any other entry in the trilogy.

In fact, The Dark Knight is the only entry in the Dark Knight trilogy that I own. Not that the other entries aren't thoughtful, exquisitely crafted films; it's just that they're a tad...boring. They're so adult, so cerebral, so overpopulated with pontification, so crippled by an attachment to "reality" that it makes the more fantastic elements seem silly and the narrative shortcuts glaringly obvious. Worst of all, they elevate plot so high over character that the driving force behind these narratives--the iconic characters and their specific characterizations--get lost in the shuffle.

Case in point: Man of Steel.

Man of Steel is, despite some crucial chaos in the climax, a perfect example of a similar type of 

experience because it spends about fifty percent of its runtime on long shots and speechifying from Supermans multiple fathers designed to convince the Superman and the audience that he is destined to be Space Jesus. the whole destiny angle robs Supes of a lot of agency and pushes the "Supes-as-an-outsider" angle to the forefront. While this would likely be a prominent conflict to young Kal-el, it is not the most uplifting or aspirational or entertaining conflict for Superman to deal with. It is so internal and hard to visualize that it makes Superman appear more mopey than he is.

Then, as if to reward viewers for sitting through a dour hour, director Zack Snyder and company send Supes out to play Dragonball Z with a bunch of bad guys on the streets of Smallville and Metropolis. Hundreds, thousands, probably millions of innocent lives are lost, and Superman only seems to care about six people: a random family of four, Ma Kent, and of course, Lois Lane. Poke around the net and you'll see that this is a major source of consternation to fans, critics and creators, especially the folks at Badass Digest and Superman Birthright writer and modern comic writing legend Mark Waid. 

"Yes, that's a building coming at you. No, this isn't Transformers."

I can't blame them for being concerned. I'm no purist, but I know that Superman always goes out of his way to save lives and -- SPOILER ALERT -- he does his best to avoid killing.

Most importantly, he smiles. He's not as funny and quick as Spidey or as snarky as Shellhead or as exasperated as the Thing--no, the Marvel heroes don't take themselves that seriously that's just the sourpusses at DC, Flash excluded.

"Dude, you can fly. Lighten up."

But, in Zack Snyder, David Goyer, and Christopher Nolan's Man of Steel, Supes comes off as glum, reckless, and slightly vengeful mostly for the sake of the narrative they want to tell. And that is their right, but I wonder if maybe movies like the Avengers, which isn't that much better in mitigating casualties, can't open film makers eyes to a different way to approach the comic book narrative. One in which character comes first and reality is left behind.

Superhero movies are based on source material that is so inherently fantastic that it requires a suspension of disbelief on par with the suspension of disbelief applied to pro wrestling. Short of abandoning all pretense of super heroics and daring-do, there's no way filmmakers can make superhero flicks that aren't fantastic to the point of silliness, so they may as well embrace the amazing, the spectacular, and the uncanny. 

There's little to no chance of grounding something like this in reality, so why try?

Seriously, despite Nolan's best interests with the Dark Knight series, the fact that Bruce Wayne dressed up like a bat rather than dressing like the Punisher shows that there was no way to avoid a very silly conceit and still have the series be considered a Batman adaptation. Ditto for the story of alien space Jesus who can hurl mountains or the man in roboarmor or the green super-Jekyll or the kid in the spider outfit.

I'll never forget how the first Arkham video game, despite its occasionally brutality and grotesque "grim and gritty"-ness, was such a welcome counterpoint to the Nolanverse. While Nolan's approach to the Batman legend is as welcome as any interpretation, Rocksteady's Arkham games did such an excellent job of melding the fantastic and the "real" that I couldn't help but prefer them over the Dark Knight films, mostly because the developers at Rocksteady were limited only by their imaginations, the limits of the technology, and the DC Comics vanguard. 

Rocksteady acknowledged the fantastical properties of Batman's world and embraced it. They recognized the importance of the characterization of the cast, granted Batman will always be a stick in the mud, but that's his way, and emphasized those outsized qualities when creating solidly entertaining  characters. Rocksteady's vision may not be perfect--a little less misogyny would be nice--but it is a great example to creators of all stripes, particularly filmmakers on the next swath of superhero flicks.

Grounding this in reality is only slightly easier, but not by much.

To the filmmakers who are working on or will work on superhero flicks, I encourage them to embrace the silliness. Embrace the fun. And let the heroes have some fun to. Let them smile, like Christopher Reeve did. Let them snark like Tony or sling jokes as fast as webs like Spidey. Let them banter like the Avengers. Let them be more than soapboxes with dish towels around their necks.  Let their words flow forth like humans not philosophy treatises. Let their burdens be based on the struggle to do the right thing when it seems like their bodies or minds or spirits wont let them. Let them be human, like us, so their moments of sacrifice mean so much more to us.

Superheroes are great as aspirational figures, but if they lose the fun and the humanity then they will lose the audience. These are fantastic myths, plain and simple. They are metaphors for reality. They are not reality. They are stories that allow the storytellers to show humanity how great it can be, even if it uses crazy tropes like mad scientists, giant robots, aliens, and super soldiers to do it.

On that note, there's something else that gets lost in the translation from the four color realm to the silver screen: these are tales of heroism. They should be treated as such. 

I realize spectacle and bombast are par for the course in event movies these days, but at some point all parties involved, from the studios to the filmmakers to the audience have to really take a look at what these flicks are saying. We have to examine how close they hew to the aspirational and, yes, instructive nature of superhero fiction. These stories will last, and hopefully not always as corporate properties ( one can dream), and will exist as narratives that will show future generations how to rise above their limits and be better people. 

That said, can we cool it on the massive loss of life in these movies, or at least deal with it thoughtfully and responsibly. Yes, it may drag the fun down and shift the tone dramatically for more than a few moments, but having heroes stop punching and start protecting, or having them mourn the loss of people they will never know, will show that these heroes are compassionate, a key quality of a hero, and better than their enemies.

Now, this may be a hard road to travel for filmmakers as the very nature of filmmaking requires spectacle, bombast, and resolution, especially the modern blockbuster. But, the destruction in these flicks has to be tempered with the idea that superheroes are metaphors for virtues like selflessness and sacrifice. Those virtues are hard to see when superheroes are causing so much collateral damage that the body counts are as high as lottery pots.

"See, nothing wrong with a smile, as long as you're cool about it"

These heroes and their stories, however they are told, are some of the few weapons we have against cynicism and selfishness. They are some of our last weapons in the war against hope that the world keeps losing day by day. Don't let them fade away.

Movie Review - Watchmen

Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel Watchmen is a peculiar piece of art. It is visually stunning, filled with iconic images of the unbelievable framed as perfectly as any comic splash page, but as a narrative it is discordant, sluggish, and pretentious. Of course, those very qualities could describe the novel itself. I read Watchmen for the first time about three years ago after twenty-two years of wondering what was behind that blood splattered smiley face. I was nowhere near as impressed as the most ardent comic fans. I understood its brilliance, (it was one of a handful of titles in the ‘80s that brought the tried and true conventions of the superhero genre crashing down.) but that didn’t make me enjoy it any more. I never liked or even remotely cared for the characters. And, while I understood the insane genius of the antagonist’s plot, I always thought there had to be a simpler plan. With that in mind, I did not buy into the hype for Watchmen. I knew exactly what this movie would be: a love letter to the fans and a confusing mess to anybody who wasn’t invested in the original property. After sitting through this nearly three hour behemoth, I found out just how right I was.

Set in an alternate 1985 where Nixon is campaigning for his fifth term and the Cold War is about to go nuclear, Watchmen tells the story of the end of “superheroics.” It follows a group of a “superheroes”–debatable considering only one actually has powers–as they unravel the mystery of a hero killer and discover a devilish plot that threatens the world with total annihilation. Our “heroes” in this piece include the increasingly apathetic and god-like Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), aging, impotent Dan Dreiberg, known ominously as Batman analogue Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), frustrated yet sultry scuba-suit-wearing superheroine Sally Jupiter, The Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), vicious absolutist vigilante Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), psychopathic superspy The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and, the comic book version of Alexander the Great, Adrian Veidt, or Ozymandias to his legions (Matthew Goode). Through a jarring narrative structure, we learn about the disturbing faults behind these “heroes,” ranging from fetishism to sadomasochism to nihilism to total apathy for humanity, Snyder mimics the novel’s structure by interweaving flashbacks that traces the history of the group from their predecessors to the outlawing of masked heroes to the present (1985) where nuclear war between the US and USSR is imminent.

With Watchmen, Snyder uses a deft combination of CGI and staging to faithfully recreate the visual aesthetic of Watchmen illustrator Dave Gibbons original artwork. He also meticulously mimics and compresses Moore’s complex narrative structure. What Snyder failed to do was use these elements to craft a story or characters that movie audiences would actually cared about. Yes, technical proficiency and adaptation faithfulness count for something, but if a director fails to engage their audience then for all intents and purposes they have failed. In all fairness, the blame is not solely Snyder’s to bear. The obtuse source material, a collection of shoddy performances, the limits of the film runtime, and the modern audience’s understanding of superhero films all had a hand in crippling the Watchmen.

The difficulty in adapting Watchmen lies in the relative investment of its audience. Moore’s graphic novel is revered because it was targeted at readers who were invested in the concepts and philosophies of superhero comics. Snyder’s Watchmen struggles to connect with audiences that enjoy superhero movies, but, once they leave the theater, still believe that comics are kids stuff. Furthermore, Watchmen pushes superhero conventions so far into adult thematic territory that it becomes uncomfortable and laughable to modern audiences. Take for instance, the scene where Nite Owl and Silk Spectre make love in a flying Owl-mobile after they’ve saved citizens from a burning building, with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as the score. Looking over the audience, I noticed some patrons were squirming while others were ready to explode in laughter. It was just as ridiculous as it sounds. And that’s the problem. The concepts that were so powerful in Moore’s novel appear simply insane on film. With superheroes barely taken seriously by mainstream audiences, this film does not help the case by putting people in silly costumes in preposterous situations.

Adding to the ridiculousness of the story were wooden performances,–the most notable being Akerman’s stiff, ineffectual Sally Jupiter–bad makeup,–see Carla Gugino as the aging elder Jupiter and senior citizen Nixon–and unsympathetic characters–fetishist Nite Owl who gets off from doing deeds of daring-do. If not for the electric performances of Jackie Earle Haley and Jeffrey Dean Morgan this film would sink leagues beyond its weight. Haley’s Rorschach is amazing. This tiny firecracker is a moral absolutist who brutally punishes his foes with homemade weaponry and Dirty Harry style quips. Anytime Rorschach is on screen the film comes alive, thanks to his uncompromising nature and penchant for kick-ass brutality. To a lesser degree, Morgan’s Comedian also shoots life into the film with his brash, despicable superhero turned government spook. The Comedian’s disturbing actions cover up a broken man who lives with the weight of terrible truths and sins. In a few scenes, Morgan displays this disturbing duality through masterful control of emotion and delivery.

Haley and Morgan’s performances alone could not save Watchmen from its debilitating disconnect and distance from audiences who barely read comics. Today’s movie-goers absorb superhero films mostly as popcorn entertainment. With the exception of a few masterfully done pieces, (Dark Knight, X-Men 2, American Splendor, Ghost World, etc.,), most movies in the superhero genre are light fare with simple plots for easy consumption by masses that respond more to stunning visuals than complex storytelling. Therein lays the problem with Watchmen. It is an inherently dense and complex story. There is no way even a modicum of the depth and complexity of that 400-page tome could be completely and accurately translated into the brevity of film without alienating mainstream audiences or disappointing core fans. Terry Gilliam, an early contender for the director’s chair when Watchmen was first optioned, was on target when he said Watchmen would be best served as a five-hour miniseries. If Watchmen was filmed as a mini-series it would give viewers time to digest and reflect on the material over time rather than engaging in the futility of parsing the dense narrative in a three hour span. Furthermore, the extended runtime would allow for significant establishment of the Watchmen’s universe with more scenes to better develop the characters and a world that is in dire peril. An extended runtime would also improve viewer investment in characters that are difficult to sympathize with and world that may be too implausible even for the most jaded viewers. In this case, Watchmen was undeserved by a conglomeration of external and internal forces. A work this significant did not need to be adapted into a potential blockbuster. It made the most appropriate impact in the late 80s when it effectively reshapes the superhero genre by attacking its conventions. In the case of the film, its impact is less significant but the result may be the same. Just as Moore’s Watchmen effectively killed the popularity of traditional superhero storytelling, Snyder’s Watchmen may have fired the kill shot on the popularity of the superhero genre. Based on recent statements from Snyder, maybe that’s exactly what he wanted Watchmen to do.