The Culture Beat

This winter both Marvel and DC are taking their superheroic characters through dark times. As I discussed months ago, the two premier comics companies have been stuck in ever darker big crossover stories that have shaken up their respective universes. Marvel has just finished up its "Dark Reign" saga wherein the evil Norman Osborn (aka the Green Goblin) has used his high security chief position to persecute the true heroes, particularly fugitive Tony Stark, creator of Iron Man, whom he beat into an inch of his life to obtain important information contained in Stark's brain. Stark currently lies in a mentally "disassembled" state, having deleted his intelligence and memory to keep Osborn from obtaining the info. And Osborn's forces have attacked Thor's mythical home, Asgard, in the current "Siege" crossover that is supposed to wrap up years of previous ongoing crossovers. During this period Steve Rogers, Captain America, was arrested, assassinated, and recently resurrected only to step aside and let his erstwhile sidekick, Bucky, continue on as the Star Spangled Avenger, deflating his much anticipated triumphant return. Never one to resolve a crisis, Marvel fans could be understood for wanting a little more fun and escape from these exhausting megastories.

Things are hardly better at DC which is in the second half of, depending on when you started counting, eight to twelve month cosmic catastrophe, "Darkest Night." After the previous crossover, "Final Crisis," saw the murder of Bruce Wayne's Batman, or maybe his banishment to some other time and place where he was last seen painting a bat shape on a cave wall. Since then, the long-anticipated "Darkest Night" centered in the Green Lantern titles but encompassing the DC universe has seen the rise of "Black Lantern" rings that seem to resurrect fallen heroes and villains as murderous cadavers in an overpowering assault against the living, a sort of DC zombies epic. All of this is quite, er, dark, in fact it is the blackest night yet seen, as even some living heroes have had their hearts ripped out before rising again as Black Lanterns. Bleak enough for you?

All of this devastation going on in the superhero world raises the question of why so much horror and doom? Most comics fans were drawn to the genre as kids enthralled by the fantastic tales of adventure and heroism by spandex-clad characters whose valiant efforts against evil helped form their earliest sense of morality. The short answer to why today's comics are so dark is that many of these same readers grew up still reading these books and required that their heroes "grow up" as well by becoming more brutal in their wars against evil and seeing darkness in their own hearts birthing. In fact, the "grim and gritty" mode of superheroism has been with us since the mid-1980s when it was launched by the success of mostly two graphic novels, Alan Moore's Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. The more the "realism" increased, the less fun comics were, an exchange that seems to have held ever since.

While many would argue that it was necessary for comic book superheroes to face the complexities of life, a notion that made Marvel Comics the powerhouse that it became, continually darkening superheroes has had the effect of discouraging entry by the kids who were once the main readership. Thus we have swapped the caricature of the square-jawed and somewhat simplistic caped hero for the now equally cliched tormented and flawed grim avenger.

But maybe things are about to change. Both companies have announced that after their current Gotterdamerungs run their courses, late spring will bring a rebirth of heroic adventure and fun. DC has previewed the dawn of "Brightest Day," the sequel of sorts to "Darkest Night" adding symmetry to the play on the stirring Green Lantern oath:

In brightest day, in blackest night
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil's might
Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!

Some comics observers are skeptical that DC's oft-promised lightening up will really stick this time but if for no other reason, it's a smart marketing move to contrast with the death and misery of the last six years. And the new era is supposed to include the return of Bruce Wayne, with or without his bat cowl.

Similarly, Marvel's coming "Heroic Age" will focus on their biggest heroes, which I'm hoping includes "reborn" Steve Roger's Captain America, now currently sidelined after his anti-climactic return from the dead. It's one thing to decide to tell brighter, more adventuresome stories-there's a skill to this kind of storytelling that may have been forgotten after so many years of angst. Writers for the upcoming new stories would do well to look at a recent example of classic superhero storytelling by a master. Veteran Mark Waid's run on The Brave and the Bold , featuring Batman and Green Lantern among many others, is now collected in two volumes, was thrilling, funny and respectful of the genre without embalming it. This is the kind of return of brave and bold storytelling that I'm looking for.

Fans of the groundbreaking ABC series have, depending on the depth of their devotion and available leisure time, numerous ways to indulge in their favorite series as they await the Feb. 2nd season première of Lost's last season, the one in which their patient waiting for answers will be rewarded with some sort of grand explanation of the island's many mysteries. I absolutely love the series but, perhaps by temperament, have never immersed myself into the vast ocean of website, plot minutiae or peripheral activities spun off by ABC. But I hope to pursue my own line of research of the series as an exemplar of what I call the television Maxi-Series, a dramatic program with an intended ending and thus a limited numbers of episodes, rather than the typical rolling episodes until the series expires creatively and ratings-wise. So here are some ways to prepare for the last chapter, volume or whatever you want to call the last season of one of television's most magnum opi.

Readers of this blog will recall my love and appreciation for Entertainment Weekly's Jeff "Doc" Jensen's brilliant "Totally Lost" blogs that at least double the pleasure of the show. Jensen, one of the magazine's most energetic followers of pop culture, is also highly intelligent and continuously delves into the more esoteric theories, mythologies, philosophies and scientific ruminations to offer highly entertaining interpretations of the show's meaning. During last season's his EW colleague Dan Snierson joined Jensen in an online video series that riffed on the current plotlines and was screamingly funny. I look forward to the guys' return to the small computer screen.

But meanwhile, Jeff's latest theory, on the island as a place where addictive behavior of various characters may perhaps find healing, currently the lead piece at Totally Lost, ponders the series' redemptive theme, and Jensen's Christian faith again serves him in understanding the need for healers, like castaway Dr. Jack Shepherd, to look at the mote in his own eye before he can truly help others.

Speaking of redemption, I teach a class at Palm Beach Atlantic University called "Redemptive Storytelling in Television and Film and I used this video last year since it encapsulates the various situations from which so many of the characters need redemption.

Another place to look for those wanting very in-depth discussion of whole episodes, there's "Lost in Translation," a blog by Shawn McEvoy, Senior Editor of Crosswalk.com. His blog appears at the same place mine is carried, theFish.com. He's currently going through every episode "looking specifically at Christian/religious themes, other important or interesting concepts, literary references, and the theory that it's largely been about a game in which someone has won, and someone has… LOST."

Finally, there's the ABC Lost site full of clips, interviews and entire episodes to help you get up to speed for season six. Soon we will begin to see just what will become of these complex and compelling characters as they deal with the new chessboard they will find themselves on after Juliet hit the "reset" button on the nuclear device.

Posted by: Alex Wainer

The long-running effort to return Spider-Man to the big screen just took a big left turn with this news release that Sony has decided to scrap the current franchise with director Sam Raimi and star Toby McGuire and reboot the character as a contemporary teenager. Seems that the team that brought billions into the studio's coffers with the first three films just couldn't agree what to do next. There was discussion of what villain the hero should face, the most recent being the geriatric Vulture. But all this isn't really that surprising given that the franchise had succeeded in adapting the comic book hero to film far too successfully to continue.

The first Spider-Man film profitably launched the character with an origin story that stayed true to the classic comics story where Peter's irresponsibility with his new powers leads to the death of his beloved Uncle Ben and his commitment to dedicate himself to fighting crime. Spider-Man 2 fulfilled the theme of self-denial as Peter's mission was pursued at the painful loss of a normal life with his beloved Mary Jane Watson. Everything fans loved about the character was beautifully played out in the ultimate Spider-Man story. At the time I wondered where the next film could possibly go thematically that could improve or even equal it. And they couldn't. The infamous sequel was a confused and constipated mash-up of too many villains, poorly structured plot and badly motivated lead characters. Yet Spider-Man 3 made almost $900,000,000 worldwide so of course Sony would plan on sequels. But Raimi must have sensed that he had succeeded too well and that there was no where else he could satisfactorily take the character.

Thus the tactic too often used by the comics industry-when a character gets tired, reboot it. Since the 1980s, there have been three or four different re-tellings of Superman's origin. Now, the studio has decided that the only way to sustain the movie version of the character is to re-invent him. IOW, it's Spider-Man Begins all over again, within memory of young people who can remember Raimi's first origin story in 2002. By making Peter a teenager again, you return the character to his most appealing period as a new hero trying to get a handle on both his new powers and high school relationships complicated by his double life. But, as Toby McGuire who was 27 when he first played the teen hero and now at 35 is looking a little old for the eternally youthful Peter Parker, the problems of sustaining a comic book character's unchanging age demonstrates why even a teen Spidey will need to be in a series of films paced every 18 to 24 months, like the brilliantly produced Harry Potter films, to sustain the teen concept.

And this also points to a looming issue for another comic book franchise, Warner Brothers fabulously successful Batman films: The Dark Knight's billion dollar success left the studio eager to follow up on Christopher Nolan's artistic and financial success, but The Dark Knight, like Spider-Man 2, are both probably impossible to top and anything else would be a lesser effort-which of Batman's supervillains could possibly offer a challenge to match the Joker's? Will Warner's be able to see this instead of dollar signs or will they follow Sony's lead and re-conceptualize the franchise yet again with yet another director so that Batman begins yet again?

Posted by Alex Wainer.

Writer-Director Judd Apatow's third film fared poorly at the box office and with many critics but I hope he won't be discouraged for this anomaly; the film is a risky effort at engaging the psyche of entertainers, specifically comedians who have a love-hate relationship with their audience and the people around them.

I am especially interested in Apatow whose first two films, The 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up were unique mixtures of foul-mouthed comedy and moral parables. Both concern men who are challenged to grow up and take on the responsibility of adults when they'd rather stay adolescents either out of fear or convenience. Though the films feature dope smoking, fornication and amazingly colorful profanity, Apatow's vision is deeply conservative in his insistence on the superiority of sex within marriage and taking responsibility for seeing an out-of-wedlock pregnancy through to term. I feel a small debt of gratitude for Apatow's unique sensibility; I wrote about the first two films for Breakpoint a few years ago and the article was later reprinted in a textbook collection of article on writing about popular culture. Thus I was interested in Apatow's most recent film.

Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, an Adam-Sandler type comedian who learns he has a form of lymphoma that will probably kill him soon. The millionaire entertainer grow despondent at his fate but has no one to confide in. One night at a comedy club, he sees a young new comedian, Ira Wright, played by Seth Rogan, trying out his stand-up act and hires him to write some jokes for him. Soon, Simmons makes Wright his all-purpose assistant, but it quickly becomes apparent, that George has actually hired Ira to be his friend. He asks Ira to sit by his bed while George talks until he is able to sleep. At the same time Ira can see that George uses his talent to express a thinly concealed hostility, his insult jokes have the bite of passive aggression. Apatow and Sandler have been friends for many years and are drawing from their experience in the comedy business where one may have many colleagues but few close friends. Apatow says in the special features production diary that he made the film to express the importance of not letting one's work overwhelm one's relationships with family and friends, a problem he acknowledges that he wrestles with.

Because of the nature of George's plight, the plot isn't as rollicking in its humor-in fact it's as much drama as comedy and this may explain the film's lack of success-audiences primed for more of the same got a reality check when they encountered Apatow's hero coming to terms with the prospect of his death and the limitations life imposes on us. The ending is not hopeless but wise and sober. Like his earlier films, Funny People is peppered with profanity and two brief sex scenes that are deliberately non-sensual. If you can handle that kind of content, you might check it out.

Posted by Alex Wainer.

I had heard good things about one of the year's biggest sci-fi movies of 2009 and finally saw it this week. A bunch of aliens is oppressed by human corporate military forces who seek to move the weird-looking aliens from their home to another location. The special effects were amazing, like nothing I'd ever seen and the inventiveness of the filmmakers was endless. And after watching it, I was reminded of another film with a very similar plot that I'd seen last week, Avatar, which wasn't nearly as good. You see, I finally watched District 9 on Blu-Ray DVD.

I'd avoided District 9 because I'd heard it was awfully violent and figured I'd prefer to see it on home video. Yes, it was extremely bloody in ways I'd never seen in a movie but man, did it out-create Avatar. As my review here discussed, James Cameron's film portrays the security forces of a big mean corporation using advanced military technology to violently drive out the blue-skinned natives of a forested planet (sort of like the Imperial forces tried to do to the little Ewoks in Return of the Jedi with the same disastrous results.) But watching District 9 was the far richer cinematic experience.

In both films we have a private corporation seeking to oppress aliens. In District 9, the bug-like "prawns" are apparently refugees from some giant otherworldly transport ship that floats stalled over Johannesburg, South Africa. The thousands of aliens within were relocated to a slum outside the city and now, MNU (Multi-National United) the mega-corporation charged with removing the prawns are led by Wikus Van De Merwe, a nerdy bureaucrat who knows just how to smile patronizingly as he tells the shanty town occupants they must sign a form acknowledging they must move. When he's accidentally exposed to an alien fluid, he begins to slowly transform into a prawn and becomes wanted my MNU to be dissected for alien tissue that can be used to exploit the prawn's advanced technology. Wikus undergoes more than one kind of transformation as he is forced to see the huge injustice he's been a big part of.

The first part of the movie is shot partly in documentary style so that we follow the story as outsiders being introduced to the tender mercies of humans quite prepared to violently punish these repellent outsiders and many have recognized director Neill Blomkamp's referencing of South Africa's apartheid history in the plot. But every character in the film, so unlike Cameron's, seems fully fleshed out as characters rather than stereotypes. Avatar's Na Vi are standard issue noble savages. The prawn apparently have a class system and most of the ones in the ghetto are not only not noble, they are repulsive in their behavior. Nevertheless, we feel both the revulsion of the humans and the cruel victimization of the prawn.

Whereas Cameron has long been heralded as king of the world of special effects and action scenes, other than the beauty of the moon Pandora, almost everything in Avatar felt entirely conventional in staging and presentation as if the director hadn't had a new idea in 10 years. Blomcamp's vision is startlingly fresh and all the more intense and scary for it as the 30-year old former digital effects director uses his background to create some of the best interaction between human and "painted-in" digital aliens in film history. After an hour of Avatar, one pretty much gets used to the alien world and the effects don't feel as special. I never got used to the surprise and innovation flowing from District 9 and the drama of poor Wikus as he fights his transformation holds you till the end. Empty spectacle versus brilliant use of effects to undergird a gripping parable of new found empathy-there's no contest.

Posted by Alex Wainer.