10 Years of Bitter Posts - All of my posts for Film School Rejects

When I started writing my blog, I never even considered the possibility that it might lead to writing for other outlets. I certainly hoped it would boost the profile of my writing, but I had no ambitions of making a career out of it.

It was Scott Beggs who invited me to write something for Film School Rejects, and if I'm being honest, my first inclination was to politely decline. Then, what usually happens happened - I started getting ideas. To my delight, Scott liked my idea - a weird take exploring how one might apply the nitpicking of the modern STAR TREK films to WRATH OF KHAN, which is generally acknowledged as one of the stronger TREK movies. It was fun to kind of poke the bear of fandom.

So every now and then when I had a more pop-culture-y idea that seemed like it would stir up a reaction with FSR's reader base, I'd pitch it. At the time, my blog audience was pretty decent, but FSR seemed to have a wider reach and it was fun having my stuff read by people less familiar to me.

I've gone back and linked to ALL of my Film School Rejects posts, along with some reflections on each one. The posts in bold are some of my favorite ones, and also some of the more unique ones.


If The Internet Had Existed When ‘Wrath of Khan’ Hit Theaters - My first FSR piece remains my favorite, particularly for the reaction it stirred up. Alas, the original comments section was the casualty of at least two server moves for the site, but it was GLORIOUS to see half the comments on this piece come from anti-JJ TREK fans who used this to attack the new films while the other half of the commenters kept trying to explain, "You don't get it! YOU are what this article is mocking and you're doing it right now!"

Why The World Needs ‘Superman Returns’ - I am the internet's official defender of SUPERMAN RETURNS. I loved it when it came out, I felt it deserved a sequel then and will still argue that the only post-Nolan DC film that can hold a candle to it is WONDER WOMAN. I love this movie, and this piece explains why. I also tell you why most arguments against it aren't intellectually honest.

The Biggest Challenges Facing a ‘Wonder Woman’ Movie - This is a fun one to look back on now that we actually have a WW film. I think that Patty Jenkins deftly navigated every minefield I foresaw here, which is quite the feat because I KNOW other filmmakers would have faltered.

Must There Be a Wonder Woman Movie? - Do we "need" a WONDER WOMAN movie, I asked? Is it about a love for the character or is all this chatter coming from the perspective that she's just so big as a licensing icon that it's her time. After having seen and heard of some takes that were all wrong, I started to wonder if no WW movie was better than a bad WW movie.

The Long, Troubled Future History of ‘Back to the Future Part IV’ - Another early favorite, where I imagined the future production path of BACK TO THE FUTURE PART IV.

Why Isn’t There a Solo Black Widow Movie? I make the case that CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER created the moment where it was inexplicable that we hadn't seen evidence of a Black Widow solo film, while defending that her supporting role in THE WINTER SOLDIER shouldn't be treated like a demotion.

Badly Written Spin-offs (Not Gender) Killed Female Superhero Movies - The lie has persisted for decades that no one wants to see female superhero movies. I reexamined SUPERGIRL, CATWOMAN and ELEKTRA to see if that reputation is warrented and if those films should be our baseline.

Bombs Away: Enjoying ‘Batman & Robin’ on Its Own Campy Terms - What if, hear me out, what if BATMAN & ROBIN wasn't as bad as we've all claimed for 20 years?

5 Modern Gems Released During the Dumping Ground That is the Last Half of August

When The Smartest Version of Freddy Krueger Invaded Our World - I stan for the under-rated WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE.

Spare Us Your 90-Minute Video Takedown of The Force Awakens - I hate Red Letter Media's overblown takedowns of the Star Wars films almost as much as the critical culture it spawned. This was my appeal for sanity ahead of THE FORCE AWAKENS.

Why I Wrote a Book About The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay’s Films - The origins of my Michael Bay book, revealed!

Mark Hamill’s Comic Book: The Movie Shows That Luke Skywalker is One of Us - I reviewed Mark Hamill's directorial debut.

A Look Ahead to What The Next 15 Years Holds for the Lights Out Franchise - using prior horror franchises as a guide, I prognosticate what's in store for LIGHTS OUT.

6 Films That Are Waiting for Their Legacy Sequels - What other franchises are ready for THE FORCE AWAKENS treatment?

An Appreciation of That Thing You Do on its 20th Anniversary  - I celebrate one of my favorite films by looking at the Extended Cut as a teaching tool for how strategic editing can shift the entire feeling of a film.

Reclaiming The Fun Side of Batman - Adam West and Burt Ward return to the roles that made them iconic and I celebrate the need for Batman to get a little silly now and then.

Gilmore Girls “Final Four Words” Leave the Most Important Conversation Unsaid - I give high marks to the GILMORE GIRLS revival on Netflix.

How The Flash and Supergirl became my wife’s gateway drug to superhero fandom - Learn how the biggest fight my wife and I ever had was about if the time-travel in season one of THE FLASH made sense.

The Known Unknowns of Star Wars - The Star Wars franchise has an entire galaxy to play with and the first announced spinoffs were all built around familiar characters. I talk a little bit about why that is disappointing

7 Films That Could Be Headlined by Creepy Dead CGI Actors - ROGUE ONE's Peter Cushing resurrection inspired this piece.

The Passengers Dilemma - if you've seen PASSENGERS, you know the end of the film has the two main characters stranded on a spaceship that will take 89 years to reach their destination, but only one working hibernation pod. They decide that each can't condemn the other to lonliness so they live together. Here, I work out the math that has them splitting time in the pod and time awake so that they could both live to reach the destination, albeit at an advanced age.

A Brutally Honest Razzie Ballot - One of my all-time favorite posts, inspired by THR's "Brutally Honest Oscar Ballots," I imagine a Razzie voter doing the same for their ballot.

The Films of Frank Capra III, Ranked - A slightly tongue-in-cheek piece ranking the films of First Assistant Director Frank Capra III.

Why Are We Compelled to Rank Movies in a Series with Each New Release? - Film culture sites love to rank every new Marvel movie, Tarantino movie, or anything else in a series when the latest one comes out. But does it really mean anything?

An Aggregated Oral History of 2009 Films Ruined By the Last WGA Strike - Compiling quotes from the makers of TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, QUANTUM OF SOLICE, G.I. JOE, STAR TREK, and WOLVERINE, I give a sense of how the 2007-08 WGA strike really screwed up the films of 2009.

Ten Years Later, THE HOAX is Even More Timely In The Trump Era - a salute to one of my favorite underrated films, THE HOAX. Richard Gere plays Clifford Irving, a failing writer who fakes a biography of Howard Hughes after claiming to have been personally selected by the recluse. As one lie piles upon another, Clifford keeps building the con into an unstable house of cards. If you liked CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME, this 2007 film will probably scratch a similar itch for you.

Consider With Reservations: The Stars of Quantity Over Quality Cinema - I look at the direct-to-video output of such reliable talents in that area like John Cusack, Bruce Willis, Pierce Brosnan and Nicolas Cage.

How Movies Like 'King Ralph' Condition Audiences to Give Ill-Prepared Leaders a Chance - I blame Trump on one of his closest filmic counterparts - King Ralph

'Justice League' and the Fetishizing of Longer Cuts - Is longer actually better when it comes to films? This is a contemplation of how rarer, less-polished cuts can take on a myth of their own.

News from Earth-2: The Never-Seen Zack Snyder Cut of 'Batman v Superman' - one of the trippier posts I've written, wherein I posit that Joss Whedon had been brought in to save BvS instead of JUSTICE LEAGUE and that only now are we seeing "The Snyder Cut" of BvS. This article catalogues the differences between the Whedon Cut and the Snyder Cut.

The Morality of Erasing Content Made By Sexual Predators - As MeToo continues, what do we do when men we're now supposed to hate were responsible for art that was incredibly popular?

In Defense of Luke Skywalker - I make it clear where I stand on THE LAST JEDI as I debate the claims that it presents an implausible version of Luke Skywalker

An Ode to the Past and Future Films of Dawson Leery - on the 20th anniversary of Dawson's Creek - I went through Dawson Leery's filmography and tried to figure out if his movies would have been any good.

In the Aftermath of Tragedy, Generation Rey is Showing Why It's Their Time to Lead - As the Parkland survivors became gun advocates, I drew a parallel between them fixing what the Columbine generation couldn't and Rey fixing the sins of Luke Skywalker.

If You Want To Make a Superman Show, Make a Superman Show! - I took a look at how KRYPTON appeared to bend over backwards to introduce Superman elements in a show that takes place pre-Superman and decried prequels that want to have it both ways. I might have been a little hasty in this because KRYPTON was generally pretty deft in how it mined the mythos.

I ponder different cuts of JUSTICE LEAGUE

JUSTICE LEAGUE is out on DVD and bluray today, and it seems like a good time to mark the occasion by linking to two pieces I wrote for Film School Rejects, but never bothered to link to here.

First up is Justice League and the Fetishization of Longer Cuts. If you followed the production of this film at all, you know that original director Zack Snyder left the project early last year, following principal photography in order to deal with a family tragedy. Joss Whedon stepped in to oversee post-production and the reshoots of the film, which by all accounts were extensive. This all-but-ensured there'd be curiousity about an alternate version of whatever made it into theaters.

It's not that I don't get the interest, but in this case, it seems like fans are clamoring for something that can never exist. I don't think a pure "Zack Snyder Cut" was ever fully committed to film. The movie started shooting less than a  month after BATMAN V. SUPERMAN was released to a lot of negative reactions. All indications are that from that point on, rewriting began to shift the tone away from BvS dour and serious dirge. It wouldn't be surprising to learn there are pieces missing from what Snyder intended when he made BvS, and I seriously doubt that VFX work on scenes discarded during Whedon's tenure were ever finished.

Then follow that article up with a look at what might have been with News from Earth-2: The Never-Seen Zack Snyder Cut of Batman v. Superman. It's a look at an alternate universe where Whedon took over the reshoot of the earlier film and after much fan-campaigning, the "original" cut of BvS is finally seeing release.

If you want to read my review of JUSTICE LEAGUE, go here.

Film School Rejects: If you want to make a Superman show, make a Superman show!

In a recent post for Film School Rejects, I took aim at the latest examples of a trend: TV shows based on comic book properties that don't include the main character of those properties. Until now, GOTHAM was the most visible example, being set in Batman's hometown years before the Caped Crusader makes his debut. As I note, that hasn't stopped producers from mining the source material for other characters, even if it seems they're all debuting too early.

Two upcoming shows spun out of the Superman mythos - Krypton and Metropolis - both sidestep using Superman himself. Krypton takes place two generations in the past on Superman's homeworld, with a time-travel hook that has Superman foes traveling back in time to change history. (This conveniently lets the creators use plenty of characters who don't belong in that part of the timeline.) Meanwhile, Metropolis is focusing on the exploits of Lois Lane and Lex Luthor before Superman arrives.

Based on what we know so far, I'm finding it hard to muster enthusiasm for two properties that take place well before the single most important element of the story, and who will probably take some liberties to introduce a lot of characters early in this prequel setting. There's one thing that would pique my interest, and it's basically the same idea I had to improve GOTHAM  a few years ago:

How crazy would it have been if #Gotham started up with Bruce being killed in the mugging? All bets would be off.

— Bitter Script Reader (@BittrScrptReadr) September 23, 2014

In other words, establish that the villains in Krypton succeed in erasing Superman and Metropolis can be set in the same timeline, where there's no Superman coming to save everyone. The ripple effect of that change can be explored, forcing Lois to step up as a hero and maybe even sending Lex down a different, more noble destiny.

Check out the rest of my thoughts here.

The time has come for the next generation to save us from guns and the GOP

At this point, I do not understand how anyone can say with a straight face that they believe in the Republican Party. A fiction writer could not craft such a comically evil and corrupt organization without being smacked for a depiction of pure scum that was dead on the nose.

On every subject - workers rights, healthcare, race issues, LGBT issues, law enforcement, education, environment, conservation, taxes, the economy, national defense - they are on the wrong side. Every single policy seems designed to benefit only the richest of the rich, at the expense of hurting the poor and the middle class for not being rich.

In short, I've spent the last year saying "Fuck off and die" to the Republican Party so much that I felt like it was beginning to lose all meaning.

And then last week brought another mass shooting at a school that claimed the lives of 17 people. The blood had barely dried before the usual talking points were trotted out: "We should arm teachers!" "Guns don't kill people! People kill people!" "Now is not the time to talk about gun control!" "Don't politicize this!"

And my absolute favorite: "Laws won't stop criminals from getting guns because criminals don't obey the law." If you parse that out, it's really an excellent argument against laws of any kind.

Even for a party that has cornered the market on intellectual dishonestly, this is lunacy. We've spent 20 years trying to have a conversation with people who aren't willing to discuss the issue in good faith. Nothing ever changes and we keep trying to engage these right wing zealots as if they can be reached. 90% of the country - that's Republican and Democrat voters - want sensible gun care and it's blocked by the 10% of Republican politicians who are bought and paid for, and the sociopathic voters so desperate not to see the truth that they would rather believe all the shootings are staged false flags with crisis actors.

Fuck Alex Jones. If you have someone in your life who listens to the shit he peddles, cut them out completely. There's no saving them.

I've spent 20 years feeling like the only thing we can do is wait for these aging white bigots to die off and become demographically insignificant. Then, miraculously, in the shadow of tragedy... I got a glimmer of hope.

The teen survivors of Stoneman Douglas High School have done what no other school shooting survivors have done - become aggressive advocates for new laws and gun control. These kids aren't asking for change. They're demanding it. They're throwing down the gauntlet and telling lawmakers that one way or another, change is coming whether they like it or not.

Showing them rev up for "Here are our terms of surrender, you NRA prostitutes" has brought into sharp relief that this has been long overdue. It's time to treat this debate for what it really is - not a Socratic debate between equally good-intentioned sides, but a hostage negotiation. We've wasted our time trying to reason with the Party of Reagan, when it's been clear to all that to swallow the pro-gun shit they shovel, one's mind has to be as dementia-ridden as... well... you know.

(Okay, if I get off on the "Fuck Ronald Reagan" tangent, we'll be here all day. After the kids burn the NRA to the ground, maybe we can get started on Reagan's legacy. Even if you ignore that Iran-Contra was way worse than Watergate, the guy fucked the economy over for generations and let the AIDS crisis explode due to his homophobia.)

The generation that grew up about teen heroes fighting tyranny in YA dystopian novels is now faced with their own Voldemort and President Snow. Watching every right wing gas bag throw impotent punches at them has been a true delight and whine about how unfair the fight is has been a true delight.

So I wrote a piece for Film School Rejects about what I've dubbed "Generation Rey." Like the female star of The Last Jedi, it's fallen to them to solve the crisis that was created by and ignored by the heroes of the previous generation. Check it out here.

Consider With Reservations: The Stars of Quantity Over Quality Cinema

A recent viewing of a few direct-to-DVD type films gave me flashbacks to my reader days. I explore that in this post for Film School Rejects:

In my prior life as a script reader, I certainly read a lot of bad scripts, but at times, an even more common occurrence was a script that seemed to do a great many things right, but somehow fell just short of being something you wanted to champion as a movie. As draining as the terrible scripts were, there’s something pure about clear-cut bad. It takes little effort to explain why they’re unfit.

The real challenges were the scripts that had kind of a decent premise, kind of an okay twist or two, and a lead character who wasn’t bad so much as he or she was just… there. The raw materials are there for what COULD be a script. They just happen to be assembled in the least compelling way possible. It’s competent enough that it feels close to being a movie, but it’s raw enough that you won’t want to put your job on the line to tell someone else to read it. Scripts like this often got the “Consider with Reservations” ranking. If you’ve worked in Hollywood, you’ve probably read a number of scripts like this. If you’re not in the biz, it’s hard to find a good analogy to explain these scripts that need more time to bake.

Then, after a trip to Netflix one recent afternoon, I realized there’s an easy series of examples I can point to. In their library at any given time, you’ll stumble across a ton of recent films you’ve never heard of that star former mega-stars like Nicolas Cage, Bruce Willis, John Cusack, and Pierce Brosnan.

The men who headlined some of the biggest films of the eighties and nineties now film entire movies that no one knows exists until they show up under the heading “Because you liked Con Air.” Just going back five years, here are the films of just ONE of those aforementioned actors: Stolen, The Croods, The Frozen Ground, Joe, Rage, Outcast, Left Behind, Dying of the Light, The Runner, Pay the Ghost, The Trust, Snowden, The USS Indianapolis, Dog Eat Dog, Army of One, Arsenal, and Vengeance: A Love Story. That’s SEVENTEEN films! How far into that list were you before you were sure I was talking about Nicolas Cage?

Read the rest of Consider With Reservations: The Stars of Quantity Over Quality Cinema over at Film School Rejects

Ten Years Later, ‘The Hoax’ is Even More Timely in the Trump Era.

Ten years after it's release, the little-seen Richard Gere film THE HOAX remains a fascinating film about truth, outrageous lies and why the bigger the lie, the more people believe it. Based on the real story of a man who convinced his publishers he was working with recluse Howard Hughes on the latter's biography, eventually becomes a great study in tension and paranoia too.

And, in showing how people rationalize even the most unbelievable lies, it seems more relevant today than ever, in the Trump era.

This is the topic of my latest piece for Film School Rejects:

But to return to The Hoax, there’s something appropriate about the uncertainty of historical fidelity in a film about a writer pulling off the mother of all lies. It’s 1971 and Clifford Irving (played with wonderful desperation and cunning by Richard Gere) has just had his latest book rejected by a publisher. Unfortunately, the commercial failure of his last book — about an art forger — has killed his hopes for another project. Like many writers when faced with a “Pass,” he doesn’t take it well and barges into a company meeting to say he’s got the book of the century, something they’d regret passing on — an autobiography of the reclusive Howard Hughes.

It’s an utterly implausible and grandiose lie and — in a manner less surprising in the Trump presidency of 2017 than it was in 2007 — the brazenness of the lie gives it credibility. Who in their right mind would lie about something so easily impeached? Putting the experience of his last book to use, Irving expertly forges notes from Hughes (and it is true that in real-life, handwriting experts said that the odds of being fake were “less than one in a million.”) Hughes’s reclusiveness and erratic behavior also ends up selling the lie. The man was known to be unstable, so bizarrely, and attempt he’d make to disown involvement with Clifford would lack enough credibility to expose Irving.

The real Clifford Irving complained bitterly about the liberties the movie took with his life. Screenwriter William Wheeler agrees with my notion of truth in film, telling The New York Times, “I almost feel like I would not be servicing the material correctly if I didn’t have some mischief in my attitude. I wanted to stay true to the spirit of the things that happened, and the motives of those doing it, and within that, construct my own tall tale, based on Clifford’s tall tale, which is based on Howard’s tall tale. And [director] Lasse [Hallström] did his own spinning on top of mine. And then, Richard.”

Read the rest at FSR: Ten Years Later, ‘The Hoax’ is Even More Timely in the Trump Era.

Reactions to my FSR post "An Aggregated Oral History of 2009 Films Ruined By the Last WGA Strike"

With two weeks to go on the WGA's contract with the AMPTP, I've got an already hot new post on Film School Rejects taking a look back at the consequences of the last Writers Guild strike:

Hollywood is facing the threat of another Writers’ Guild Strike, one which would immediately stop all writing and rewriting on guild signatory productions — essentially everything from the major studios. So far, negotiations have been contentious, with the WGA arguing that though the business has seen record profits, the average writer’s income has declined in this boom period. And yet, at the bargaining table, the AMPTP — who represent the producers — came offering not gains, but rollbacks. They basically asked the writers to accept less than their current contracts.

The total cost of what the writers are asking for is not particularly excessive. For instance, the cost to Disney would be $21.2 million a year — barely more than half of Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger’s $43.9 million salary last year. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds on this, but if you’re interested in the particulars, this post from TV writer Ken Levine lays it all out pretty well.

So if the writers demands aren’t that excessive, is it wise for the AMPTP to force a strike by playing hardball? A long strike would have the result of impairing production in television and film. In TV, the fall season would be delayed and on the feature side, the major tentpoles set for 2019 might have to begin production without complete scripts. And under Guild rules, no writing or rewriting can be done on those scripts for the duration of a strike. This would include Marvel’s Captain Marvel and the sequel to Avengers: Infinity War, the ninth Fast and the Furious film, the next Spider-Man film, Transformers 6, and at least one or two yet-to-be announced Warner/DC films.

In looking back at the old strike, I aggregated an "oral history" of sorts, compiling the quotes of what writers, actors and directors had to say about how the strike affected the production of several 2009 releases: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Star Trek, and Quantum of Solace. Just about all of those were critically panned (save for Star Trek, which I actually think is a fantastic film) and the strike was frequently cited as a factor in their quality.

There was a little blowback on Twitter about the title of the article, "An Aggregated Oral History of 2009 Films Ruined By the Last WGA Strike." It was accused of being anti-writer propaganda, which I strongly dispute. The writers don't WANT to have to strike, but they are left with no choice if the AMPTP won't make a fair offer rather than instead coming to the table with rollbacks. So if you as viewers don't want your anticipated tentpoles of the next two years to be terrible, support the writers so that they can get a fair deal from the AMPTP.

I also faced some snark on Twitter from people saying "these movies were going to suck anyway." Frankly, I think that sentiment is far more anti-writer than what my headline was accused of being. As noted, Star Trek actually turned out pretty good, Wolverine had two sequels that were very good, The Bond films immediately before and after Quantum were also great, and even Transformers was considered pretty decent until the sequel. It's not impossible that more of these films could have been good.

Let's not forget how much we scoffed at sure-fired duds like 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie before we saw them. Ergo, saying these films were going to "suck anyway" is assuming facts not in evidence.

Anyway, take a look at how things went down on those films in the post here.

Why Are We Compelled to Rank Movies in a Series with Each New Release?

Got another post for Film School Rejects that sort of branches off of my earlier The Films of Frank Capra III, Ranked post. This one examines the pathology behind the relentless ranking lists we get each time a franchise releases a new chapter.

The ubiquity of practice certainly suggests the writer and the readers must be getting SOMETHING out of it. Is it that in our society, we find it less satisfying to praise a winner if we’re not simultaneously mocking and debasing the losers? I’ll plead guilty to relishing the act of putting HOOK at the bottom of every “Spielberg Movies, Ranked” list I’ve ever been a part of. Would others argue that the list serves the purpose highlighting the cream of the crop? If that was so, why not just write a post called “The Five Best Marvel Movies?” 

Read the rest of "Why Are We Compelled to Rank Movies in a Series with Each New Release?" over at Film School Rejects

Fate of the Furious: The Films of 1st AD Frank Capra III, Ranked!

I have another new piece at Film School Rejects. This week, the lastest film in the Fast & Furious series has been released: The Fate of the Furious. As is required by law, when a franchise unleashes a new chapter, there must be some measure of ranking the previous entries, or the previous works of a collaborator.


Friday brings us the release of The Fate of the Furious, the eighth film in The Fast & The Furious series. Thus, there could be no better time to look back and rank the previous works of one of the films most notable craftsmen, a man whose name is legendary. I speak of course of First Assistant Director Frank Capra III.

Capra III is the grandson of director Frank Capra, a Hollywood legend whose work includes It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It’s a Wonderful Life. How did that pedigree fare two generations removed? This exhaustive look at Mr. Capra III’s 1st AD career will tell the tale.

While the film’s director often gets the lion’s share of the credit, the First AD is one of the most critical positions on set. In fact, it’s the most important person “below the line.” (In other words, the most important of the people who aren’t “important.”) He or she is the one who keeps the trains running on time, the taskmaster who sets the schedule and then keeps everyone on it. They oversee the entire crew and essentially do all the hard work so the director can focus on the minutiae of their job. A true student of film can probably stop the distinctive work of an AD everywhere without even checking the credits.

21. Oscar (1991) — Mr. Capra the Third’s maiden voyage as 1st AD was the rather unremarkable mob comedy from Stallone’s brief foray into lighter fare such as this and Stop or My Mom Will Shoot! Capra’s background directing seems stranded in the stagy production design.

See if you agree with the rest of my rankings and check out the entire list at Film School Rejects.

In defense of PASSENGERS

Every now and then I see a film get a reaction that makes me wonder if I saw the same movie as the rest of the audience. When OBLIVION came out, it was so aggressively panned that I waited until DVD to view it, upon which I discovered a very entertaining, well-made sci-fi film. Slightly more recently, I felt that the aggressive hate for TOMORROWLAND felt quite out of proportion to the mildly disappointing but still interesting film.

And then there's PASSENGERS. Last weekend, it felt like you couldn't swing a dead cat on the internet without hitting someone ready to tell you that the premise was creepy, or that the film was sexist, or that the ethics of the film were appalling.

In a nutshell, here's the premise of the script by Jon Spaihts: Jim is one of 5000 passengers in cryo-sleep for a 120-year voyage to a new colony planet. Due to a completely unprecedented malfunction, his chamber wakes him after 30 years, making him the only person set to be awake for 90 years. He can't go back to sleep and though the ship is programmed to tend to his needs, his only companion is a robot bartender. In other words, he's facing the prospect of never having human contact for the rest of his life.

This is tantamount to solitary confinement, a practice that many psychologists consider inhumane. This article from Gizmodo calls it "the worst kind of psychological torture" and in fact, "solitary confinement beyond 15 days leads directly to severe and irreversible psychological harm. But for some, it can manifest in even less time." We need to take this into consideration and then note that Jim spends an entire YEAR alone on the ship before he comes very close to attempting suicide.

Human beings are social creatures and without that interaction, Jim is trapped in hell. However, he's tech-savvy enough that he knows how to wake up someone else. Company would go a long way to relieving his pain, but there are other ethical concerns. Jim discusses this with his bartender, likening it to being trapped forever on an island, but having the power to transport one person there, knowing that you were ruining their life.

This one interaction alone shows that the film is aware of the ethics behind Jim's predicament. By questioning it in such a way, I don't understand how anyone could come away from the film thinking the movie sees what Jim does as pure. It's largely about the question of if you could make your personal Hell more bearable by condemning someone else to join you. He ultimately awakens the beautiful Aurora, leading her to believe another malfunction is to blame for her state.

Where many of the critics seem to miss the mark is where they equate Jim's actions with a violation of sexual consent. I think it's offensive to actual rape victims to equate anything in this film with sexual assault. To me, what Jim does is not about sex so much as it's about human contact. He needs a companion ship that isn't necessarily sexual. Sure, the water is muddied because the two DO fall for each other and there's no lack of sex appeal on the part of Aurora's portrayer, Jennifer Lawrence.

If Jim had woken up a man, someone who he felt would be his Number One Bro, would we still be having this debate? PASSENGERS seems most interested in the morality behind alleviating your pain by sharing it with someone else. I don't even know if I'd necessarily argue that the film comes down on the side of it being right, but it DOES depict how a desperate person might come to believe this is the only course of action available to them.

Seriously, could YOU face the prospect of 90 years alone on a ship? How far would you have to be pushed before you convinced yourself you HAD to have human contact? And once you arranged that, would you really be forthright with the fact that you caused the malfunction? Jim certainly makes selfish choices, but they're selfish choices in the midst of an incredibly painful experience. I also don't believe you have to choose between being sympathetic to Jim and sympathetic to Aurora.

Aurora rightly is furious when she learns Jim engineered her awakening. "You MURDERED me!" she screams, more than once. The blossoming romance is immediately dead, and she begins a period of shutting him out. At this point, I thought the film might explore her isolation as a way of depicting what her loneliness might drive her to. This path could lead her to understanding Jim's horrible decision, even as it isn't necessary for her to condone it.

Instead, the third act brings Jim and Aurora together to resolve the increasing malfunctions of ship's systems. It turns out that an asteroid impact is to blame for the damage that shut down Jim's pod and that the other damage it caused has built up into a reactor malfunction that will destroy the ship. To save everyone, Jim has to go outside the ship and open a door manually so Aurora can vent the reactor while he's stuck in the path of the radiation. It means certain death, and indeed, he takes the direct blast with only a small shield to deflect it. Though Jim told her not to come for him, Aurora dons a spacesuit of her own and risks her life to bring him back, where he is resuscitated.

There's some criticism that the third-act crisis is a convenient way to let Jim off the hook. If he hadn't woken her, then there would have been no one else to help him save the ship and the entire crew. Aurora is presented with a situation where she can say, "If he hadn't woken me, I'd be dead."

This would be a more fair criticism if the film embraced it. I believe it does not. A couple points to recall:

- As the crisis reaches its peak, Aurora suggests waking some of the crew. There's no hesitation on her part, even though this means they would share her fate on the 90-year voyage. In the context of this moment, doing so would directly save 5000 people as well as herself, so yes, there is a "needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few" scenario. But she's not without self-interest here either. Remember too, that Jim would have died had he not acted to preserve his own sanity.

- Aurora goes against Jim's wishes when she risks herself to save him. Jim is content to die saving everyone else. Is her motivation romantic? I don't think it necessarily has to be, and the film allows for the interpretation that it's not. Aurora surely knows all the details of Jim's horrible year alone and what being that alone did to him. If Jim dies, this is the fate she's facing - the total abyss of loneliness for the rest of her life. Is risking herself for him a purely selfless act? Or is it one she willingly takes because it would be better to die quickly than in the lingering slow torture Jim endured?

Taking those together, I don't think we can discount that Aurora comes to understand what pushed Jim to awaken her. She's stared that same fate in the eye and it gives her what she needs to accept his choice. The ending is not about letting Jim off the hook so much as it's about pushing Aurora to her limits. In the end, she needs companionship just as much as Jim did. This is why I feel that even if there had not been an immediate crisis, Aurora would have eventually thawed things with Jim. Whether that came as a result of madness, Stockholm Syndrome or genuine empathy is a matter of debate.

Moreover, this is easier to see if you're not determined to equate Jim with being a "stalker." He's not a calculating and manipulative predator. The film more accurately diagnoses him as a drowning man grabbing for any life preserver. You can decry his actions, but the point of the film is to make you ask, "What if you were the one who was drowning?"

It disturbs me that we see art being attacked for merely exploring complex scenarios like this. Back when Indecent Proposal was made, did people think that just by making the film, the creators were advocating that a married woman sleep with a billionaire for one million dollars? If we discourage art that asks uncomfortable questions or explores moral grey areas, what will be left with? You can be uncomfortable with Jim does and still acknowledge that the film doesn't endorse it by building drama around it.

Passengers is the story of a man pushed to his moral limits. The more I examine it, the more I suspect the film is rejected out of hand by viewers uncomfortable contemplating what they would truly do in Jim's shoes.

Bonus: I wrote an article for Film School Rejects in which I worked out how Jim and Aurora could have used the functioning medical pod at the end of the film to take turns sleeping long enough for both of them to make it to the colony within their lifespans. You can find it here.

My ROGUE ONE reflections over at Film School Rejects

I haven't written a full review of ROGUE ONE, and at this point I'm not likely to. For the most part, I enjoyed it, but my immediate reaction was that it didn't work for me the way THE FORCE AWAKENS did. Since last year, I've watched THE FORCE AWAKENS at least seven times and the film still works just as well for me as it did after my first viewing. In some ways I might find it more re-watchable than parts of the original trilogy, but beyond that, I can't think of too many films in the recent past that have made me WANT to rewatch it that many times without getting weary of it.

(And I can only blame one of those rewatches on the writing process of THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII. By the way, if you still haven't checked out that script that I wrote with Brian Michael Scully, you can find it here.)

I bring that up by way of mentioning that "not as good as THE FORCE AWAKENS" is far from a condemnation from me. I thought ROGUE ONE was solid entertainment, particularly once it got going. The early segments of the film drag as all the pieces come into place. What matters is that it finishes strong. From the point where the team assembles against orders to get the Death Star plans, everything seems to click into place, and we get another JEDI-esque finale with several battles advancing on different fronts.

Outside of Jyn, I felt disconnected from most of the characters, and that's where THE FORCE AWAKENS gains a lot of its edge over this film. Donnie Yen's Chirrut has some clever moments, and the novelty of a blind devotee of the Force taking down superior forces never gets old. Okay, and K-2SO was pretty awesome. The movie managed enough base hits and triples that I came away satisfied.

Of course, the Darth Vader scenes were the sort of moments fans have been hungering for for 30 years, particularly the hallway scene. But that also speaks to one of my bigger issues with the film in general. This is the first Star Wars feature film to venture outside the Saga Episodes, and the first place we go ends up being a very direct prequel to the original film. I have some concerns about these "Star Wars Stories" only going to the most obvious places in Star Wars history, and for further discussion of that, check out my piece "The Known Unknowns of Star Wars" at Film School Rejects.

While you're over there, click on over to my second ROGUE ONE story, "7 Films That Could Be Headlined by Creepy Dead CGI Actors." As you might infer, I felt that the use of VFX to resurrect Peter Cushing as Tarkin yielded somewhat mixed results. But if we get past the ethical issues, think of all the new performances we could enjoy!

Have a good holiday everyone, and if you get a chance, please buy my book, "MICHAEL F-ING BAY: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films." It's a great last-minute stocking stuffer for the film geek in your life!

Film School Rejects: The Flash and Supergirl as my wife's gateway drug to geekdom. Plus MORE articles!

I know my posting has been sporadic the last few months. There are reasons for that and I'm hoping to redress that as we head into 2017. If time permits I'll do a couple belated reviews for some recent films, and with luck, I'll have seen enough of the major 2016 releases to do a Top 10 or Top 20 post. One factor in my absence here is that I've been writing a bit more for Film School Rejects. This has been going on for a few months, and I've neglected to cross-post those over here.

Yesterday, FSR published my most recent essay: How The Flash and Supergirl became my wife's gateway drug to superhero fandom. It's a reflection on how the Greg Berlanti shows are making an incredibly complex mythology accessible to people who never would have considered reading a comic book. You can also learn how the most intense fight of my marriage was over the time travel logic of The Flash.

My other recent articles are:

Gilmore Girls "Final Four Words" Leave the Most Important Conversation Unsaid - An exploration of the abrupt conclusion of the recent series revival by contrasting it with one of the best-received series finales: Angel.

Reclaiming the Fun Side of Batman - I take a look at the recent animated film Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, starring Adam West and Burt Ward, to push back against the idea that Batman always has to be serious and gritty.

An Appreciation of That Thing You Do on its 20th Anniversary - A loving tribute to one of my favorite films, and a deep-dive into how the Extended Cut of the movie can show how critical the right edits can be in taking an okay film to the next level. The longer cut of the film has so many unnecessary moments that were (rightly) removed for pace and repetition. It's a wonderful opportunity to extrapolate how Tom Hanks learned from and corrected his mistakes.

6 Films That Are Still Waiting for Their Legacy Sequels - In a film culture that's brought us the re-quels like Creed and The Force Awakens, what other library titles might be ripe for a reboot with new protagonists treading familiar paths while being mentored by their predecessors?

A Look Ahead to What the Next 15 Years Holds for the Lights Out Franchise - Using other horror franchises as a template, how much the other slots in the inevitable Lights Out box set be filled?


As FSR publishes through Medium, you can follow me on Medium here.  I'm going to try to be better about flagging these over here, but that's a good way to see articles as soon as they post.

Also, with the holiday season approaching, I'd like to again remind everyone that my book Michael F-ing Bay: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films is a great stocking stuffer for the film geek in your life. It's only $5 on Kindle!

I always feel like a self-promoting whore when I do this, but any time I plug the book on Twitter, I get replies from people who say they had no idea it existed. The extra cash would definitely come in handy this holiday season, so if you've enjoyed my posts and would like to leave me a tip for the holidays, please consider buying the book.

You can find all my Michael F-ing Bay posts here. This one in particular is a good all-purpose primer on it.

SDCC wrap-up: A salute to Mark Hamill's COMIC BOOK: THE MOVIE and Superman: Rebirth

The older I get, the more my trips to Comic-Con take out of me. This is almost a week past due, but I wrote a piece for Film School Rejects about Mark Hamill's little-seen directorial debut COMIC BOOK: THE MOVIE. It went live while I was at SDCC and had no opportunity to write a post here. However, Mark Hamill himself RT'd the link to it and I'm told that at one point, the article was on the front page of Medium, so I hope you enjoy it.

When I was in college, some friends and I had a ritual we’d do on nights where several of us were bored. We’d grab my friend Joe’s high-8 camera and wander into the bowels of the library to shoot our own improvised movies. These were all done with editing-in-the-camera, meaning we shot in sequence, one shot at a time with no post-production work. We never started with a script, though by the end we were bringing along an array of costumes and props.

None of these were great films, but there was an infectious energy about them. The first film was just myself and Joe, and we took turns holding the camera depending on which of us was in the shot. We had fun but wouldn’t have repeated the experiment had the friends we showed it to not said, “When are you doing another one? Can I be in it?” This goofy time-waster looked like so much fun that its energy transcended its low production values and creative constraints.

Mark Hamill’s 2004 directorial debut, Comic Book: The Movie, is the closest I’ve ever seen a feature film duplicate that energy. It’s an improvised mockumentary in the tradition of the Christopher Guest films like This is Spinal Tap and Best in Show. This is a shaggier effort than those films. CB: TM was apparently shot on digital video, but I’d swear the visual quality isn’t much more impressive than High-8, particular when displayed on an HD screen.

[...]Hamill’s repertory company of players is largely made up of voice actors whose work you’ve heard in shows like Pinky & The Brain, Futurama, Animaniacs and many, many more. But that’s all part of the infectious joy of this film. It really feels like Hamill was hanging out with his buddies and said, “Why DON’T we make a movie about something we all love? And let’s do it in a place we love: San Diego Comic Con.”

You can find the rest on Film School Rejects at:  Mark Hamill’s Comic Book: The Movie Shows That Luke Skywalker is One of Us.

In additional Comic-Con news, two of my experiences work as follow-ups to earlier posts. Years ago, I wrote about how when I was in college, I wrote a letter to TV writer Ron Moore (TNG, DS9, Roswell, and Battlestar Galactica) and much to my shock, he tracked me down to call my home and thank me for the letter. It felt like one of the coolest things that had happened to me. Since then, I've always wanted to meet him, even if just to shake his hand and thank him for being so cool. Well, I briefly got to meet him following the Writing for Star Trek Panel and he could not have been a nicer guy. There have been some shifts in positive direction as far as my career lately, and I'm taking this encounter as a signpost of big things on the horizon.

I also attended the DC Rebirth: Superman panel, which focused on the newly relaunched Superman titles. About four years ago, I wrote two very long posts about my relationship with Superman comics and what eventually led me to break up with collecting comics after 23 years of consistent buying. This came a year after DC Comics began a massive relaunch known as The New 52. You can find those old posts here and here.

Well, this May, DC relaunched yet again via DC Universe Rebirth and they knew the exact way to lure me back - Superman writer extraordinaire Dan Jurgens is penning ACTION COMICS, and the Superman of the New 52 is dead. In his place, the pre-New 52 Superman has taken over in this universe and he's not alone. He and his wife Lois have crossed into this new continuity and they've brought with them their 10 year-old son Jon. (This whole story was told in the CONVERGENCE tie-ins and SUPERMAN: LOIS & CLARK, also written by Jurgens.)

I can't tell you how much of a difference this has made. Superman has felt heroic and confidant again, a hero worthy of being looked up to. Better still, his relationship with Lois helps humanize him. The big element the New 52 got rid of was Lois and Clark's marriage, but it also severed ANY real relationship between the two. Superman's romantic interest was Wonder Woman, and it felt wrong to pair him up with another super, as it's always been more interesting to show that Lois Lane is more than up to the task of being Clark's equal.

As much as losing Lois hurt Superman, losing Clark REALLY hurt Lois's character. They're really yin and yang, particularly since the previous two decades-plus where she's in on the secret. No one really seemed to know how to develop Lois on her own and she never had the same chemistry with other characters that she did with Clark when there was romance on the table.

At the Superman panel, Dan Jurgens said that he considers ACTION COMICS #1 to be a significant book not just because it introduced Superman, but because it's also the first appearance of Lois Lane. There are few writers who understand Lois Lane as well as Jurgens and I really believe that she is in good hands with him and Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason, who are writing the SUPERMAN title. Fans who are frustrated that Lois's role has only been that of Jon's mother since REBIRTH are advised to be patient, because it was hinted that a few developments are very close on the horizon to restore her to prominence.

Let's talk a little about Jon Kent, who might be my favorite addition to the Superman mythos in a long time. He's got Clark's powers and Lois's inquisitive attitude. It's only been recently that he found out his dad is Superman and both writing teams really have a strong handle on his voice. He's a good kid, but also isn't afraid to stand up to his parents when he wants to be heard. There's something very endearing about seeing Superman as a father, taking his son on a routine rescue and using the adventure as an opportunity to teach him about his powers.

The Superman books have not had this much heart in a long time. Some characters feel too "aged up" when given children, but Superman's always been such a paternal figure that it feels natural to give him a child. I'll admit, in Jurgens's first issue of ACTION, it brought a smile to my face to see Jon cheer "Go Dad, go!" as his father flew off to a confrontation. (Art by Patrick Zircher.)

I can't speak for the quality of most of the other Rebirth properties (other than urging you check out BATGIRL & THE BIRDS OF PREY, written by THE 100's Julie & Shawna Benson), but if you've been a lapsed Superman fan, the stories being crafted by Jurgens and Gleason & Tomasi; drawn by Gleason, Zircher and Tyler Kirkham, are some of the most original and heartfelt tales the character has had in a very long time. It's the perfect antidote to the missteps of the New 52 and the darker tones of BATMAN V. SUPERMAN.

For the first time in a long time, the greatest superhero in comics is in the hands of creators who understand what makes him great, and I for one am enjoying the ride.

Film School Rejects post: Why I Wrote a Book About The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay’s Films

Following my efforts to get more Amazon reviews for my book MICHAEL F-ING BAY: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films, (which you can read about here) I was invited to write a column for Film School rejects about why I wrote the book in the first place.

The real genesis of the book came Summer 2014, when I saw a lot of people on Twitter talking about going to see the latest Transformers film despite being certain it was terrible. (That’s somewhat amusing when contrasted with the latest Ghostbusters conversation, where you can get into a fight with a Ghost-Bro who hasn’t seen the film and STILL is certain it’s terrible.) Unsurprisingly, these people walked out of the film with their assumptions confirmed and somewhat disingenuously acted shocked at how much they disliked it.

I won’t say I felt bad for Bay, but I briefly considered that perhaps his audience was seeing in his films what they wanted to see. So as an experiment, I resolved to view Transformers: Age of Extinction with not only an open mind, but one that gave him the same benefit of the doubt that Hitchcock and Scorsese are afforded when their films are dissected in film school. 

You can find the rest of "Why I Wrote A Book About The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films" here on Film School Rejects.

And don't forget that through Friday, the Kindle Edition of the book is only $2.99! And please leave a review if you've read it!

Spare Us Your 90-Minute Video Takedown of THE FORCE AWAKENS

I couldn't let the occasion of a new STAR WARS film go by without at least one more thinkpiece, this time over at Film School Rejects:


As the release of a new Star Wars film drew near, I began mulling over how I could contribute to the conversation. With many choice topics already spoken for, I settled on the idea of revisiting a divisive chapter of Star Wars history. It had been long enough since its release and I conceded that a rewatch might bring out hidden virtues.

I wasn’t deep into my viewing before I deeply regretted this assignment. It was almost agonizing to subject myself to the witless dialogue on screen, the far-too-for-its-own-good editing, and a general sense of arrogance that permeated every frame. How anyone could watch this and defend it is beyond me.

In short, I hate Red Letter Media and its avatar “Harry S. Plinkett” with every bone in my body.

You can find the whole post here.

I talk MICHAEL F-ING BAY on the Broken Projector podcast

Continuing my press for MICHAEL F-ING BAY: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films, I appeared last week on the excellent podcast Broken Projector. Host Scott Beegs of Film School Rejects was kind enough to ask some good questions about my book and Michael Bay's oeuvre in general.

On any given week, Broken Projector is a must-listen, but I especially hope you'll check out this week's show.

You can find the episode embedded at Film School Rejects here.

Download the episode directly here.

Buy MICHAEL F-ING BAY: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films here.

Here's my post announcing MICHAEL F-ING BAY: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films.

My tribute to WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE on Film School Rejects

I know that the internet of late has devoted an excessive amount of time to '90s nostalgia. This year especially has been a deluge of 20-year retrospective pieces, as it turns out that 1994 was a pretty big year for pop culture. And yet, as tired as I am of such things, I joined the ranks of the guilty this week with a piece I wrote for Film School Rejects.

It has been twenty years since the release of my favorite sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street, the very meta Wes Craven's New Nightmare. It's always felt to me like a very clever movie that was under-appreciated in its time and any notoriety is has in retrospect seems to be as a footnote to Scream, which followed two years later. I gather that "real" horror fans hate how it takes place in the "real world" makes Freddy of the previous six films just a character in a movie. The movie's uniqueness repells some, but for me, that's why it's worthy of being celebrated.

I'm grateful that Film School Rejects gave me a forum in which to express that.

“Every kid knows who Freddy is. He’s like Santa Claus or King Kong.” – Heather Langenkamp in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. 

In a film full of truthful observations, that line always struck me as the truest, or at least the most relevant to my own relationship with Freddy Krueger and the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. I was four when the original came out in 1984, so I was too young to experience that film or most of the first few sequels on their first release. As I grew up, my awareness of Freddy came from what seeped into popular culture. As best as I can remember, my introduction was either a kid in my 4th grade class wearing a Freddy mask for Halloween, or possibly an ad for the costume in a comic book. 

So “my” Freddy was less the disturbing child murderer whom Wes Craven created for what probably felt like a standalone film, and more the watered-down pop icon. Less a psychological threat, and more of a catchphrase-spewing gimmick killer. It’s the difference between how the shark from Jaws plays on screen, and experiencing him on the Universal Studios tram tour. 

As a result, Freddy never scared me as a kid, nor did I have any desire to see the movies. I knew that they came out every year or two and I assumed all of the movies were stupid slasher films, in which, I saw no appeal. I remember seeing a trailer for Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare in 1991 and thinking it looked incredibly awful. Good riddance. 

Then came 1994 and the release of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. 

Read the rest over at Film School Rejects.

Film School Rejects article: 5 Modern Gems Released During the Dumping Ground That is the Last Half of August

It’s that time of year. School is mere weeks away from starting up again, the biggest blockbusters have had their bows, and the studio releases are transitioning to the distribution equivalent of tossing an old couch on the curb to make room for the new one. May, June and July (and let’s be honest, now April) bring the big crowd pleasers. The last two weeks of summer herald the arrival of the “Everything Must Go” Sales before fall sends us into Oscar bait prestige pictures.

 Don’t believe me? The slate for the next two weeks includes Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, a sequel that’s arriving at least five years too late; Are You Here, the directorial debut of Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner that garnered early reviews in the exact opposite tone of his acclaimed show; Jessabelle, a release from the Blumhouse factory that’s not getting a plum horror spot, so you know it’s good; and The November Man, an entry in the very neglected genre of CIA agents dragged back into the game because “this time it’s personal!”

It’s generally an accepted fact that if a movie is set for the dog days of August, the studio has less confidence in it than Taylor Swift’s latest beau does of being the one guy she dates who doesn’t end up inspiring a song.

 But every now and then, conventions are made to be broken.

Read the rest of my article over at Film School Rejects to find out which five films I consider to be the modern classics released during this dumping period.

Film School Rejects post: BATMAN & ROBIN isn't as bad as you remember it

It's become a rather common occurrence for film and pop culture sites to celebrate the anniversary of some film that carries a great deal of nostalgia for members of a particular generation.  Last month, Ain't It Cool News celebrated the 30th anniversary of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with a seemingly endless series of articles revisiting this "underrated" film.

Permit me a small digression. I think what turned me off from the Temple of Doom love-fest a bit was that every writer singing the praises of the film seemed to be coming from a place of defensiveness. It was as if they grew up in a world where Temple of Doom was as derided as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was upon release.  The result were a lot of testimonials that seemed determined to defend the film from an attack it never really faced, and then exaggerating the virtues of the film to prove the "haters" wrong.

Honestly, there was a whiff of the disingenuous to this celebration.  Temple of Doom is a perfectly adequate film.  It's got some great action set pieces and a number of moments that stand with the best of the series.  It also has some really awful ethnic stereotyping, some wretched moments that are comedically tone-deaf, and love interest that's the Jar Jar Binks of the first three films.  There's plenty of stuff to love, but it's got plenty of flaws too.  Maybe the ridiculous dinner scene doesn't bother you.  Perhaps you are inclined to argue that Willie Scott is exactly what Lucas and Spielberg were going for by evoking a specific sort of 1930s archtype.  I don't necessarily agree that authorial intent trumps the effectiveness of those intentions.  Just because Lucas and Spielberg got exactly what they wanted at the time doesn't mean it wasn't a bad idea on its face.

(Don't get me wrong. Temple of Doom gets more right than it gets wrong, but it's not without demerits.  When I throw the movie in for fun, I usually watch the amazing opening sequence up until the raft drifts into the village.  Then I skip to just before the mine car chase.)

It was interesting to contrast some reactions to the Temple of Doom nostalgia to some muted appreciation for Ghostbusters II that arose a few weeks later.  While most people sharing and commenting on the Indy articles were clearly in the pro-movie camp, the Ghostbusters II reactions were more mixed, with a lot of assertions that the people who loved that film did so only because they saw it as kids before they knew any better.

There's a grain of truth to that.  There's plenty in the Ghostbusters sequel that amused me, but I won't pretend for a minute that it's as accomplished as its predecessor. It DOES bemuse me that some people hate it so much though, so passionately that I think they would be the ones most in need of revisiting the film with objective eyes.

Which brings me to a piece I wrote for Film School Rejects.  Rather than revisit a film that was generally considered pretty good and try to upgrade it to "flawless timeless classic," I resolved to examine a truly derided film, one who's name is so synonymous with "worst movie" lists that you can count on it ending up somewhere on the general "Worst Movies Ever" lists and almost always at the top of "Worst Comic Book/Superhero Movies Ever Made" articles.

That's right. I attempted an objective re-examination of Batman & Robin.

I hadn't watched the film in about a decade or so.  Before I revisited it, I had a few theories.  It occurred to me that since this movie no longer carried the burden of being the torchbearer for an entire franchise (or for that matter, the entire genre of superhero films) a lot of baggage became irrelevant.  It was similar to how as a major Superman fan, I rejected Smallville for many years until I learned to just accept it as an alternate universe type version of the characters I loved.

So my mission statement for this viewing - to find out if it was possible to accept Batman & Robin on its own terms and evaluate how well it executes its own ambitions. It clearly wasn't trying to be Tim Burton's Batman, nor was it trying to be in the same vein as Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.  Beating it up just because it doesn't conform to a Bat-fan's particular preferred incarnation of the character is unfair.

So if one accepts that Batman & Robin is actively trying to be a big-budget version of the 1960's campy TV show, is it possible to appreciate it the same way that most fans have now accepted Adam West's incarnation as a valid interpretation?

Check out my Film School Rejects post for the answer in "Bombs Away: Enjoying BATMAN & ROBIN On Its Own Campy Terms."

Film School Rejects post - "Badly Written Spin-offs (Not Gender) Killed Female Superhero Movies"

I'm sure in the past on this blog we've addressed the dearth of female superhero movies.  For years, the excuse was that "Audiences don't go to Female Superhero movies," an excuse that seemed to fall in line with the "conventional wisdom" that female-driven action movies can't find an audience.  It's dubious logic at best, but it became common to see CATWOMAN paraded around as a contributing factor about why Warners was skittish about pulling the trigger on a WONDER WOMAN film.

This always felt like bullshit to me.  Even when a bad superhero movie salted the Earth on a particular property, usually a second chance was granted within a decade. (There was only about eight years between BATMAN & ROBIN and BATMAN BEGINS.)  Surely now that we're in a superhero renaissance, the old beliefs can be revisited?

More than that, if SUPERGIRL, CATWOMAN and ELEKTRA were being held up as the reasons no one was willing to take a chance on another female superhero movie, shouldn't a more thorough autopsy be performed on those movies?  Were those movies failures because they focused on women, or because they were simply objectively bad movies?  If a brilliant female superhero movie still failed to find audiences, maybe - MAYBE - the naysayers would have a point.  But if not...

To that end, I recently spent a week revisiting SUPERGIRL and ELEKTRA, and watched CATWOMAN for the first time.  The goal - find out what made these movies fail.

Head on over to Film School Rejects to see my post on why each of these movies fell short of expectations, in a post called "Badly Written Spin-offs (Not Gender) Killed Female Superhero Movies."