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Henry & Ben, or Superman & Batman

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I never did get to post my thoughts on the Superman/Batman movie that was announced at the San Diego Comic Con. I wanted to but it just sort of slipped away.

I’m excited about the Superman/Batman movie, though not as excited as I was 10 years ago. I liked Man of Steel well enough and am interested in what they could do in the future. There seems to be a sort of apathy about the movie in some circles, while other non-comic book readers can’t figure out how the two heroes could possibly be put together. It’s not like the comic books have been doing it for nearly 75 years or anything. I guess the biggest thing is to remain faithful to the concept of the heroes, which in itself is controversial.

Many have been very much against the way Superman was portrayed in Man of Steel, and the idea that it was his first outing and he was new to the superhero game doesn’t seem to be answer enough to those concerns. When all is said and done, I had mixed feelings about the details of Man of Steel but liked the feel of the character well enough to want to see him again. It will be interesting to see how this works with a new Batman.

Which leads me to the news that may break Twitter and Facebook and the interwebz: Ben Affleck has been cast as Batman/Bruce Wayne for the movie.

I like this casting. I’ve always liked Ben Affleck. Yes, he’d made some bad movies, but every actor has. He got a bad rap for awhile that I feel has been undeserved. I always thought he could be his generation’s Harrison Ford, given the right opportunities. I suspect that he will bring pathos and ethos to the role.

As far as speculation on story, who knows? I’d love it if Lex Luthor employed the help of billionaire philanthropist (and rival) Bruce Wayne to help rebuild Metropolis after the events of Man of Steel, and perhaps even try to coerce Wayne to help build an army to keep Superman in line. As the Dark Knight gets to know the Man of Steel, and as Wayne gets to know Luthor, he realizes it’s not the Kryptonian who’s a danger, but the Human.

That’s my pitch. I’ve been wrong in every way whenever I’ve speculated about these movies. We’ll go in 2015 and find something better, I’m sure.

But those are my thoughts. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be a fun ride.

Dear Mr./Ms. I’m-Too-Cool-For-School: Fuck You

So today the social mediaverse was alive with the news of BBC’s announcement of the 12th Doctor of its long-running show Doctor Who. I am a new Whovian, having only begun watching the show via Netflix late last year (I’m still waiting for Amazon Prime to get the second half of series 7, or Netflix the entirety of series 7). I intend to go back and watch what I can of what’s being called Classic Doctor Who on these streaming services. Because Doctor Who has exploded since its 2005 revival, today was a big day for nerds, geeks, purveyors of fine entertainment, science fiction aficionados, and the British public. My Twitter stream, my Facebook stream, everything has been posting and talking about The New Doctor Peter Capaldi.

With this excitement (fear? horror? disappointment?) has been the usual people who are Too Cool For School. The ones who go out of their way to let their Facebook friends and Twitter followers know they have no interest, not a scintilla, a microbe, a minute inkling of a teeny-tiny possibility of interest in who the new Doctor is. They have never seen, will never see, have no interest in ever seeing Doctor Who, Doctor What, Doctor Where, or Doctor How (though they’re probably lying on that one: Everybody wants to know How).

Look, I think we’ve all done this at some point. And if I cared to go through my Facebook musings since I signed on in 2008, I’m sure I could come up with a dozen examples. Sometimes I’ve done so as a joke (at some point in the last year about the TV show Once Upon a Time). But I had an epiphany at some point during some football game or hockey game or somedamnthing, in which I didn’t give one iota of a fuck about: Why piss on their parade? Some of these people on my feed care about whether Tom Brady or Lebron James or some other athlete or team wins, they’re really into it, so who am I to be Too Cool For School?

I see this as a moment of mature clarity for me. It’s so easy to dismiss out of hand something one does not like that everyone is talking about. All it is is the 12-year-old who decides to wear black clothing on Colorful Clothes Day. It’s the little kid who is going to say “No” even when they’re dying to say “Yes.” It’s the Republican who has scientific evidence in front of them but decides Climate Change doesn’t exist and stricter gun laws won’t save lives.

It’s silly.

So, for those of you who are too cool to care about Doctor Who, or the Superman/Batman movie, or Star Wars, or Stephen King, or Harry Potter…or even shit I don’t care for like Transformers, Twilight, or whatever else: Fuck you.

I’m not talking about opinion here. If you’ve seen it and want to say you didn’t like it, go for it, man. By all means, add your thoughts to the mix. But if you’re just too hip, too cool, too happening, too intellectual, too snobby to care about what, it seems, a lot of other people care about, keep it to yourself. Otherwise, go fuck yourself.

Now I’m going to write. Play nice.

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