Iron Fisting

I didn’t catch the new Netflix/Marvel series IRON FIST, so I can’t comment on its quality or lack thereof. Apparently it didn’t go over so well. I don’t honestly care; comics-related television and movie projects are a dime a dozen. We have reached and surpassed oversaturation. The TV shows and movies can’t ALL be good, not when there are a gazillion of them. It’s the sheer rule of probability.

I CAN comment on the idiotic compliant about Iron Fist being a white guy, though. I’m sick to death of this PC (talk about oversaturation!) faddish gotta-save-the-world-by- means-of-revisionism-and-censorship-of-pop-culture movement. I’ll see your “white savior” malarkey and raise you a fish-out-of-water scenario! What’s the difference between the two? Nothing at all except skin pigmentation. Making it all about skin color? You tell me who’s being racist, then. Oh, and Danny Rand’s mother was from K’un Lun, which though it is a mythical realm is generally interpreted as being populated by ASIANS. Which means Iron Fist is half Asian. That should suffice to shut up those bitching about the CHARACTER’s whiteness. (It won’t, but it should.) As for the ACTOR portraying the character, Finn Jones, he’s English. Is there any Asian-ness in his genetic pedigree? I don’t know. I doubt anybody asked him when he auditioned for the part. Should they have? Should they have made an issue out of his race? Wouldn’t that, by definition, constitute racism? If they’d wanted to be truly accurate to the character as he is presented in the comics, they should have cast an actor who is half Asian. But would even THAT have satisfied the PC wankers?

How LOGAN deviated from the comics

If you’re looking for a more mainstream review of the hit film LOGAN, head on over to our sister site, werewolves.com. As THIS site is dedicated to comics and comics-related subjects exclusively, Ima focus a bit more on the geekier side of things, on some of the ways in which the film lined up with the established comics canon and some ways in which it diverged. Before I really begin, though, I should announce a SPOILER WARNING. Just in case you’re one of the few who hasn’t already seen it and has managed to avoid anybody telling you what happens. (If you have managed to dodge all the spoiler talk, you deserve props either for concentrated effort or exaggerated luck, or else pity because you have no social life or social interaction.)

As beautiful as the father/daughter dynamic in the film is, I had to inform my lovely movie-attending companion that in actuality Laura, aka X-23, is NOT Logan’s daughter. She is his CLONE. They only had access to half of Logan’s DNA, the X instead of the Y chromosome, so they just duplicated it and then created a clone from that genetic material. That’s why she’s a girl. It’s a fine point, perhaps, but it is a fact. (Apparently they found the other chromosome at some point, though, because X-24 is a perfect MALE copy of the ol’ Canuklehead.)

As for why, as my lovely companion asked me, I didn’t tear up at the end, when Logan died, I had to explain that he has been killed off numerous times before and always comes back. Never doubt the powers of popularity! (The same is true of Professor X.) He even got trapped in Hell once and came back from it, after laying the smackdown on the devil! Death from a slowed-down healing factor, massive injuries, and adamantium poisoning ain’t nothin’ for him. In point of fact I believe he’s ALREADY come back from that scenario in he comics.

The question is whether or not we will see Hugh Jackman back in the role. Don’t bet against it. LOGAN has been a whopping monster hit—and Jackman has already said he’d play Wolverine again if he got to appear in an AVENGERS movie. Considering that the yokels at 20^th Century Fox have now painted themselves into a corner—they’re going to want to continue making money off the character, but where do they go from here?—it would make perfect sense for them to take the step of reuniting with Marvel Studios, especially if the new Spider-Man flick makes a shit-ton of money, which I’m betting it will.

No worries, peeps. Wolverine will be back. You can’t keep a good (X) man down.

The Razzies deserve a Razzie

The Oscars lost credibility forever on the night a Woody Allen flick beat out STAR WARS for Best Picture of the Year. A film that completely reinvented popular culture and changed moviemaking for all time. And a Woody Allen comedy. Yeah, which one is REALLY the most deserving of recognition? And then there’s Oscar’s refusal to recognize genre work, the innate snobbishness that also severely hinders its legitimacy. As little as the Oscars mean, though, their dark companion, the Razzies, mean absolutely NOTHING. They never had credibility to lose. They are an embarrassment to themselves.

I don’t know what movie “won” the Razzie for worst picture this year, and I don’t care. I’ve never followed the Razzies and I never will, again because they are meaningless drivel. I did hear that BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN got nominated. Seriously? Even by Razzie standards, this is embarrassing. I could, with little effort, name dozens of movies deserving of that “honor.” BVS doesn’t even belong on the list. If it WERE a bad movie—which it ISN’T—I doubt it would be even in the top (or bottom?) one hundred.

Try to wrap your mind around this concept, BVS haters. A movie can be well made, well executed, and still not be well LIKED. A lot of folks didn’t like BVS, but a lot of people DID, and there were far more of the latter than the former, as statistics bear out. Numbers don’t lie. But you wouldn’t know it, listening to all the self-important wannabe Hipsters who lazily throw around the word “suck” as if it means something. They may not have LIKED the movie, but the amount of viewers who did not care for it is NOT equivocal to the quality of said movie. It is simply that the final product was not to their tastes. That doesn’t mean it was a failed execution. With BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN, the creators set out to make a certain kind of movie and they made it. Technically, it is sound. It’s like a chef preparing a special dish for a dinner party. Not everyone at the party cares for the taste. That doesn’t mean the chef is a lousy cook or that he fouled up the recipe. Only that not everyone has a common palate.

I figure all this is over the heads of the tryin’-ta’be’trendy pilers-on who make up the Razzie fan base and I’m probably just preaching to the choir, here, but it needed to be said, anyway. People who use their brains, well, they do just that. People who don’t? They wait for the Oscars and the Razzies to tell them which movies are any good and which ones “suck.” Know what REALLY sucks? Not thinking for yourself and following a vocal (but not too numerous) crowd in a pitiful effort to be a part of said crowd. Oh, and the ones who pander to those lemmings as they march along blindly. The rest of us sit back and chuckle as we watch them all play follow the leader right off the nearest convenient cliff.

Who’d want to have a COMMON palate, anyway?

HELLBOY 3 is NOT happening

A couple’a three weeks back, I reported that the long-awaited second HELLBOY sequel was likely in preproduction, as writer/director Guillermo del Toro had conducted a “poll” on his Twitter page to see how many fans were interested, and as I pointed out, he wouldn’t have mentioned it at all if some progress hadn’t already been made on the project. Sadly, Del Toro just announced, also via his Twitter account, that the film would “100%” NOT happen. This would seem to be the final word on the subject. What happened?

If Del Toro wants to do the project and star Ron Perlman wants to do it, it would seem a logical assumption that the holdout is character owner Mike Mignola. I don’t know WHY Mignola wouldn’t want them to do another film, as it could only help sales of the HELLBOY comic book. Maybe Mignola has reached a level of success where he no longer has to worry about book sales and royalties? There might be other reasons, too, why it all fell through, but it’s hard to figure what those issues might be. Del Toro is himself at a level of success where he can get projects made, even if the studio involved isn’t crazy about said project, so we can probably rule out the studio as a contributing factor. We’ll never know for certain, but it’s sad news to all fans of the films that the planned finale to what was supposed to be a trilogy will never get made. As Hellboy would say, “Crap!”