Hollywood Babble On & On #1231: On Comics, Costumes, & Coitus...

HARLEY QUINN'S FASHION CHOICES

They released the first picture of most of the cast from DC/Warner Bros. upcoming Suicide Squad movie. If you're not familiar with the property, it's about a team of super villains who are recruited by a shadowy government agency run by bureaucrat Amanda Waller to go on, you guessed it, suicide missions, led by professional commando Colonel Rick Flagg.

Before we go any further, here's the picture of some of the cast in full costume:

Now the standout in the picture is Margot Robbie who is playing The Joker's sidekick/life partner Harley Quinn. Where everyone else is trying to look tough and scary, her broad smile, pigtails, and the pent up energy in her body language, looks like she's committing 110% to this inherently over the top and madcap character.

My only problem is with her costume.

It doesn't scream super villain.

It screams "club kid who took too much Molly and now they can't stop grooving to bad EDM and texting 'OMG' repeatedly to her friends until her iPhone screen cracks."

I think we need to go back to the character's origins.

The character of Harley Quinn was created in the early 90s for Batman: The Animated Series. The reason for her creation was obvious, they needed someone for the Joker to talk to because thought balloons don't really work on animated shows.

However, her distinctive look, and high nasal voice made her an instant fan favourite. Over time they developed her character, backstory, and relationship with The Joker. It was revealed that she was originally his psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum, but she lost her heart and her mind, and became his partner in crime and life. They're onscreen relationship was the height of dysfunctional and even downright abusive, sparking Harley to split with Joker and form an occasional partnership with Poison Ivy.

Her popularity on the show led to Harley Quinn being adapted into the comics, including the Suicide Squad.

However, comic book publishers decided that it wasn't enough for a character to be interesting. They had to SEXY.

But not just sexy as in physically attractive, they had to look like strippers.

A classic example is the Suicide Squad's top boss Amanda Waller who went from looking like this...

 To this...

And it was decided that Harley Quinn needed to be improved as well, and she went from this…

To this…

Went from looking like a comical villain, to what you might find on a porn website if you put in a search for "Goth skanks."

Is it really an improvement, or is it just another failed attempt at sexy resulting in something that just looks sleazy, and makes the comics and its readers look sleazy.

I'm a bit relieved they didn't go full skank for the movie, but I would have liked if her outfit was just a bit more ridiculous. Remember, a comically ridiculous appearance masking a homicidal maniac is the essence of the character. Also it would make a nice counterpoint to the deliberate drabness of the outfits of her squad-mates.

But powers that be at DC/Warner Bros. apparently want that stoned club kid look.

WHERE'S BLACK WIDOW?

It's been noticed that Marvel's Black Widow, the sexy-secret agent played by Scarlett Johanson, is missing from most of the Avengers: Age of Ultron merchandise, especially when it comes to toys like action figures.

Now the first reaction to this was to assume that Disney, Marvel's parent company, is a sexist monstrosity that won't acknowledge female fans of female characters, ignoring that their empire was built by little girls seeing Disney Princess movies and buying Disney Princess merchandise.

However, that's probably not the reason.

The reason is the fear of the outraged mother.

I'll bet dollars to dungheaps that somewhere in the bowels of Disney's headquarters they were looking at designs for Age of Ultron toys, and realized that if they released a Black Widow action figure that remotely resembled how the character looks on screen or in the comics, it would most likely spark some internet outrage from angry mothers worried that little Timmy might look at that action figure and figure out some unclean actions.

They then calculated that the outraged mother boycott would cost them more than an outraged feminist boycott, and dropped Black Widow from most of the merchandise line-up.

That's my theory.

Which is probably right.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1219: Two Comic Related Thoughts...

I'll start with an update as to why my posting has been so erratic lately.

You know my mother had an accident, needed surgery, and she is still recovering, but her recovery's happening faster than anyone expected, and she's been moved to a hospital close to home.

The great irony is that while she's recovering, I caught a cold. Which was really inconvenient, but I'm recovering from that now, so hopefully everything is heading for sunshine and smiles.

So let's get to work with my usual snarking and griping…

SUPERGIRL'S SUPERSUIT

DC/Warner Bros. has revealed the look they'll be using for Melissa Benoist's upcoming turn as Supergirl on CBS.

I have to say that I'm shocked an appalled by this costume.

Where is the gross, sleazy, hyper-sexualized costume we've come to expect from the last 20 years of comics costume design?

This outfit looks almost as practical as you can get when it comes to a super heroine's outfit.

We can't allow that, some chick might see it and develop enough self-esteem to see a future for herself as something other than a sex object. 

(That's what you call satire)

VALIANT GETS INTO MOVIES

Valiant Entertainment was started by a group of comics creators and investors after their bid to take over Marvel was outbid. The company enjoyed some success during the boom times of the 1990s, and was bought out by video-game maker Acclaim. Acclaim went bankrupt and for a while everyone thought that was it for Valiant.

Not quite.

New owners came in and began rebuilding the company and its comics properties from the ground up. That work seems to be paying since Beijing based DMG Entertainment is ponying up a "nine figure" investment in the company to develop movie and TV franchises based on their characters.

Now some may poo-poo the idea since Valiant's roster doesn't have the same household-name status in the zeitgeist as Batman, Superman, or Spider-Man.

I say that's not as big a problem as you might think.

Iron Man was considered a "C-List" Marvel character and starred Robert Downey Jr., an actor that everyone considered washed up and quite possibly box office poison. No one thinks that anymore because Marvel's raked in BILLIONS thanks to the doors Iron Man opened for them.

Valiant seems to be watching and modelling themselves after Marvel. Which means that they'll be selling them not as familiar brands, but on the promise of delivering a quality entertaining story that's packed full of action and opens doors for even more quality entertaining stories.

It's a big promise, and Valiant is going to have to burn serious calories to deliver. However, if they do pull it off the rewards could be enormous, and could break the Marvel/DC duopoly that dominates big screen movies.

So I wish them good luck. The business needs competition to stay vibrant, so the more the merrier.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1201: Villains, Super-villains, and Superstars

Lots of big villain news this week, so let's jump in headfirst…

BOND 24 HAS A TITLE & A VILLAIN

Here's a video revealing the title for the next Bond movie…

The film will be shot in London, Rome, Mexico City, Tangier, Erfoud and the Austrian Alps, but that's not the big news.

The big news is confirmation that 2 time Oscar winning German character actor Christoph Waltz will be playing "Franz Oberhauser," who turns out to be notorious Bond baddie Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

You may recall that the Bond franchise had to give up using Blofeld because of a legal fight with the mysterious Kevin McClory that had been recently settled.

Personally, I hope they follow the great story arc the Bond/Blofeld relationship followed in the Bond novels. Starting out as a standard hero vs villain and becoming more violent and way more personal as it goes along, leaving both men physical and emotional wrecks. Only a handful of actors can pull off Blofeld, and Waltz is on the top of the list.

SUICIDE SQUAD IS GO!

DC/Warner Brothers have announced the cast list for the Suicide Squad movie, and it only took them five years to pull it together. If you live in a cave and don't know who the Suicide Squad is, I'll give you a rough summary.

In the DC Comics Universe the Suicide Squad or Task Force X is where the government drafts super villains for certain death missions where at least one of them will not survive, in exchange for time off their sentences.

So, it's The Dirty Dozen in tights.

The cast is:

Tom Hardy as Rick Flagg the non-villain military man who leads the team.

Will Smith as Deadshot, a master sniper/assassin who has taken on Batman, the Green Arrow, and other DC heroes.

Jared Leto as The Joker.

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Joker's former psychiatrist turned psychotic lover and partner in crime.

Cara Delevigne as The Enchantress, an artist turned sorceress who started out as a hero, but either a lust for power, or a split personality caused her turn to villainy.

Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, a Flash rogue and boomerang tossing hitman.

And they're looking for a middle-aged African-American woman to play Amanda Waller, the bureaucrat who sends the team on their missions. One rumour said Oprah was taking the part, but I doubt she'd want to play a character whose callousness creeps out even professional killers.

Now I have an iffy feeling about this cast or the movie making it all the way to the premier in the originally intended form.

That iffiness lies with Will Smith.

Remember Smith passed on Django Unchained because he didn't want to be upstaged by Christoph Waltz.

I don't see him willingly be upstaged by the heroics of Flagg, or the psychotic scene-stealing of Joker and Harley, unless…he's pulling a Janet Leigh.

That means he's signed on to get killed off and shock the audience into realizing that this franchise is unlike the others, and will kill off major characters with the mad glee of The Walking Dead.

But that's a slim chance for someone who passed on a hit movie with some of the best people in the business to make After Earth.

Then again, maybe he's learned his lesson and realized that in order to stay a viable movie star he'll have to learn to share the spotlight without having to upstage everyone.

We'll have to see where this ends up.

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Hollywood Babble On & On #1198: 13 For Constantine

NBC's supernatural mystery/horror drama Constantine was ordered to stop production after 13 episodes, but the network hasn't officially cancelled it, at least, not yet.

The show, based on the DC Comics character, is about a working class Liverpudlian sorcerer who travels around America solving mysteries involving monsters, ghosts, demons, black magic, and dark deeds in the hope of saving his own soul, which was damned when his arrogance turned an exorcism into a disaster.

The show was put in the Friday night death slot, but managed in just a few episodes, to find and grow an audience based mostly on generally positive word of mouth.

I've watched the show, and while not knowing the comics very well, I found it well made, and reminiscent of the X-Files at its peak, and I would like to see it continue since it just now seems to be finding both its sea-legs and its audience.

Right now the show is in a precarious position.

If NBC just cancelled it outright, DC/Warner Bros. could just move the show to the CW Network, where Arrow and The Flash seem to be doing very well. Or they could sell it a cable channel like AMC.

But right now, it's in a bit of limbo. By not cancelling it, NBC can block DC/WB from shopping it around because it's still, technically, NBC's show, and in television timing is everything.

If NBC doesn't order new episodes without actually giving it a formal cancellation, then the producers will have no choice but to release the actors, writers, and other staff from their contracts so they can find new jobs. The longer the wait, the harder it gets to find a slot on another channel, and any momentum the show has fizzles out, and the show dies on the vine.

I hope that NBC renews the show, since they canned Community, Constantine and Hannibal are the only shows they run that I watch. So I hope DC/WB uses it weight to tell NBC to shit or get off the pot.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1194: Random Bits of Nonsense

AMAZON WON'T BURY THE HACHETTE

Mega-retailer Amazon and Mega-publisher Hachette have inked a multi-year deal, calling a truce on their war over e-book pricing.

To sum up the feud Amazon was racking up big losses in their quest to undercut and monopolize the book retailing business. They thought that they could use their bulk to get the big publishers to start eating some of Amazon's losses. Well, Hachette was the first one to say: "Ah hell no!" and thus the war began.

Now it's over. Probably because Amazon's shareholders took a look at the money they were haemorrhaging in the CEO's war of supremacy, and told Bezos, to make some kind of deal.

I still stand by my previous statement that if the big publishers don't want this to happen again, and again, and again, then they need a plan.

1. IMPROVE DISTRIBUTION: A few years ago I tried to order a book, a newly released novel from a popular author, through my local bookstore, which is now out of business. I had Amazon as an option, but I was willing to pay a little more to help support my local indie. They told me that the distributor took 6 to 8 weeks for those kinds of orders. Well that put the kibosh on that plan, since I was hoping to give it as a Xmas gift. There is no reason for that in this day and age. If Amazon can do it, the big publishers can do it for retailers. Or they can...

2. EXPLOIT PRINT ON DEMAND: The machinery to manufacture books on site exist, it's just not being used. There should be a machine in every bookstore in the world, right by the cashier, and under a sign that says: "If it's not on our shelves, it's in this machine." The customer gives the cashier their order, and they're told to feel free to browse the shelves while they wait the 10 minutes it takes to print and bind the books. You can also use this to screw Amazon by making their publishing arm's titles available via these machines. Thus they can't complain about being shut out, and the combine behind them will make a little off of every order.

Anyway, what else is in the news…

WONDER WOMAN BY A WOMAN

I'm not normally one to jump on rumours of who is doing what until things are signed, sealed, and delivered, but I just can't resist this one.

DC/Warner Bros. are reportedly interested in getting a female director for Wonder Woman, and at the time of this writing Canadian TV director/producer Michelle Maclaren is in the front of the pack.  Maclaren certainly has the right CV, starting her directing career on the X-Files and working on such big name and acclaimed shows as Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. Also, as a female director the studio only has to pay her 77¢ for every dollar they would pay a male director. (Now that's good satire!) 

But seriously, her record shows an ability to do quality drama, action, and suspense, while working within the tightly controlled budgets and schedules inherent in TV production. Plus, TV is where all the interesting storytelling is being done these days, and she's in the thick of it. Which makes her more than qualified for the job regardless of gender.

All I ask is that they work in getting some colour on Wonder Woman's outfit. Brown is not a super-heroic  colour scheme.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1176: Killing Wolverine Killing Comics

Wolverine, Marvel Comics most popular character is going to die.

Not only that, Marvel says that he's going to stay dead, forever, full stop, period.

They even have a picture showing Wolverine being carted off by the Grim Reaper in the manner of Michelangelo's Pieta:

They dug up their old art-history textbook, so you know they must be serious.

Now here's what I think:

(To be sung to the tune of "MacArthur Park.")

I CALL BULLSHIT

I CALL BULLSHIT

I CALL STACKS AND STACKS OF BULLSHIT

(And scene)

Wolverine's death in the comics is meaningless. It will have zero effect on the movies, and that's what matters these days, and we all know that Marvel has no intention of letting their biggest earner moulder in an inky grave.

As soon as the publicity dies down, and the folks at Marvel realize that it won't make Fox relinquish the rights to the X-Men, they'll make a big announcement that Wolverine will be brought back to life.

Hell, DC couldn't even keep the unpopular character of Jason Todd (aka Robin 2/The Red Hood 2) dead, even though readers voted overwhelmingly to kill him off in a phone-in poll.

Do you really think Marvel is going to let Wolverine stay dead? Because if you do, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you for a song.

And the people in the industry wonder why it's so hard to get people into superhero comics while superhero movies and TV shows sell like hotcakes.

Well, let's recap some of the reasons:

1. HARD TO GET: When I was a kid we had to walk a little under half a mile to get to the convenience store that carried all kinds of comics, ranging from the Marvel/DC superheroes at 45¢ an issue, to bags of five to seven Gold Key reprints each for $1 a pop.

Today, I have to go about fifty miles to the nearest specialty retailer. I could order things online, but then you lose a lot of the ability to discover new titles and characters you get by browsing an old fashioned spinner rack.

But that's not all...

2. HARD TO GET INTO: Even if you do manage to get comics, if you are not intimately familiar with 75-80 years of continuity, including multiple retcons, you are NOT going to know what the hell is going on. Even DC's mega-retcon "The New 52" like its last mega-retcon "Crisis On Infinite Earths" isn't completely retconning everything since the artists and writers won't give up their favourite bits, and the companies don't want to lose any potential merchandising and movie money from making people wait a little while for a character to develop naturally over time instead of just dumping them fully formed in the middle of everything.

3. SEXY SELLS SKANKY DOESN'T: Hardly a month goes by without someone making a valid complaint against the often anatomically inaccurate and usually ridiculous hyper-sexualization of female characters. The most recent being putting Spider-Woman in an impossible position and changing her costume into a thin coat of paint. 

Comics need kids to read comics to keep the audience alive and growing. However, both kids and parents are repelled by comic art that is just a few millimetres of spandex from looking like full-on pornography, and story lines dwelling on the sex-lives of superheroes often add nothing new to the characters except get in the way of what is their purpose, to give people near-mythological stories of demigods and monsters battling over issues good and evil.

4. CONSTANT SHELL GAMING: Publishers love the publicity they can get by pulling of stunts like killing a major character, or switching their race or gender. They claim that these changes will be permanent, but you know they will never permanently change the mainstream continuity they have decades of stories and dedicated fandom invested in. The whole thing is to just get some attention in the mainstream press, get a 1-week uptick in sales from the curious, who will take a look inside, not understand a damn thing going on, and never buy another comic again.

It's starting to drive people, even comics fans, nuts. Which is why they're not buying comics, but instead go to the superhero movies, who, for the most part, stick with their job of telling fantastical stories of heroism & don't rely on killing off major characters for promotion.

The comics industry needs a major overhaul, not only in what it's selling, but in how the industry is run, and it should be done while there's still an industry to reform.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1174: Original Origins

Hollywood loves superhero movies, they make a lot of money.

Hollywood loves reboots, rehashes, and remakes, because they make executives feel safe.

Combine the two, and the Hollywood studios think that they've got a license to print money.

One problem, it's driving fans nuts, because not only are we seeing origin stories, we're seeing the same origin stories over and over again.

Here's a good example...

When Sam Raimi's Spider-Man franchise sputtered out in the overwrought and overcrowded Spider-Man 3, Sony, desperate to keep the franchise in the hands and not back with Marvel/Disney had two options. They could have "James Bonded" it, and just changed the actors and filmmakers and had Spider-Man go off on a new more or less stand-alone adventure, or they could reboot it, with a retelling of the origin story.

They decided to go for the reboot.

Why?

The real reason is that the people running the studio think that simply continuing a successful franchise isn't enough, you have to go and redo a specific story that they know for a fact has succeeded in the past.

However, that's not what they told the public and the filmmakers.

Those people were told that the reboot was necessary to bring about a new creative vision that will take the characters and the franchise in new directions.

But did it?

In the retelling they just seemed to take the elements from the first Sam Raimi film and just shuffled them around like a deck of cards with a few tweaks to create the illusion of depth. They added a storyline about a conspiracy about Peter Parker's dead parents, had Norman and Harry Osborne switch places in the whole Green Goblin storyline, and piled money on the whole thing with two hands.

It seemed to work. The two Amazing Spider-Man films made a lot of money at the global box-office. But there's a catch.

So much was spent on those movies that Sony's margins on them were either paper-thin, or nonexistent. This means they've delayed the third film, and are, no doubt, thinking about rebooting the whole damn origin story all over again.

There's also reports that Fox's reboot of The Fantastic 4 will feature a retelling of their origin story, which was done in the first Fantastic 4 movie.

Oy.

So let's take a moment to consider when and why you should tell a superhero's origin story.

1. IF THE AUDIENCE DOESN'T KNOW IT ALREADY.

Iron Man needed to have his origin story told, because the general audience really didn't know where he came from and why he does what he does. Simple.

However, if his story was fully part of modern folklore and can be recited by a child in a country that doesn't even have comics, then you probably don't need to do it.

But what about Batman Begins?

Batman Begins was technically a reboot of Batman's… beginnings, but unlike Amazing Spider-Man it actually served two purposes.

First, it corrected the error of Tim Burton's Batman that made a pre-Joker Joker the killer of the elder Waynes instead of common street punk Joe Chill. By denying Bruce Wayne vengeance against the person directly responsible for the deaths of his parents, it forces him to act out against crime in general.

Second, it filled in the mechanics of how a young boy survived a terrible trauma to become the ruthless butt-kicking cape-wearing maniac we all know and love today.

2. IF THE ORIGIN CAN'T BE TOLD IN A TWEET.

Let's face it, you can sum up the origins of a lot of superheroes fairly quickly. Superman: Alien gets powers from our sun, Spider-Man: Gets bit by a radioactive spider, loses his beloved uncle. Etc…

So if you can get away with just saying "This happened and that's why they're like this" and just get going with the adventuring. 

3. IF IT HAS SPECIFIC RELATIONSHIP TO THE CHARACTER BEYOND JUST GIVING THEM POWERS.

Right now Marvel is casting their Doctor Strange, and it would probably be a good idea to include his origin story in the film. He's not that well known, and his becoming the Sorcerer Supreme plays a major role in his character's story arc. He starts off as an arrogant neurosurgeon, confident he has mastery over life and death, has an accident, can't do surgery anymore, and his desperate search for a cure leads him into a hidden world of mystery and magic.

That's a pretty involved story, and pretty important to the character. So it can be forgiven for telling his origin story, as long as they only do it ONCE.

Anyway, that's what I think, let me know what you think in the comments.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1169: Comic Book Movie Cornucopia!

Both Marvel/Disney and DC/Warner Bros. have released their release schedule for a whole slew of comic book/superhero movies up until 2020, which by then we'll be ruled by giant alien robots.

I've astrally projected my mind into the future and I have brought back my predictions (10000% guaranteed) to tell you what the future holds:

DC COMICS/WARNER BROTHERS SCHEDULE:

March 25, 2016 – Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice 

Hoping to bring some of Batman's cool-factor with Superman's penchant for mega-spectacle, and open doors for other characters, and ultimately a Justice League movie franchise.

It makes a shit-ton of money, but so much was spent making and promoting it, it will fail to turn a profit.

August 5, 2016 – Untitled DC Film

The first release date for the Wonder Woman movie, which will be cancelled because the studio can't bring themselves to pull the trigger on a female led superhero franchise.

Replaced by a Green Lantern reboot which is a shot-for-shot remake of the failed Green Lantern movie, but this time Ryan Reynolds is replaced by Russell Brand.

It flops.

June 23, 2017 – Untitled DC Film

AQUAMAN! - starring Jonah Hill.

Flops, because no one really likes Aquaman.

November 17, 2017 – Untitled DC Film

Second cancelled attempt at a Wonder Woman movie. Replaced by a movie about LOBO, starring Mark Wahlberg, a character who was big in the 1990s, but no one gives a shit about anymore.

It flops.

March 23, 2018 – Untitled DC Film

SHAZAM!

But Dwayne Johnson was too expensive, and was replaced by Seth Rogen, with Justin Bieber as Billy Batson, who by this time is working for dime-bags of pot.

May 25, 2018 – Untitled Lego Movie

This movie will be even more egregious in the product placement because they think that's what people want, not realizing that audiences flocked to it because it was a family friendly all-encompassing parody movie.

July 27, 2018 – Untitled DC Film

3rd cancelled Wonder Woman release date.

Replaced with a Lobo reboot, this time starring Zac Efron.

November 16, 2018 – Untitled WB Event Film

Big money Justice League movie, but in the interim everyone introduced in the previous movies has been fired and replaced with cheaper actors.

April 5, 2019 – Untitled DC Film

Supposed to be Aquaman 2, but that flopped, so it was given to finally releasing a Wonder Woman movie, but then cancelled again.

Replaced by a Shazam reboot, this time starring Leonard DiCaprio as Shazam, directed by Martin Scorsese.

May 24, 2019 – Untitled Lego film

Reeling from the negative reaction to the all-product placement Lego movie this film is cancelled and replaced by a movie based on Oreo cookies.

It too flops.

June 14, 2019 – Untitled DC Film

Batman reboot starring Matt Damon.

April 3, 2020 – Untitled DC Film

Superman reboot starring Will Smith, who has recently ballooned to 300 lbs and refuses to lose weight.

June 19, 2020 – Untitled DC Film

Batman reboot starring Tobey Maguire. It replaces the cancelled Wonder Woman movie, this time starring Miley Cyrus. Film was cancelled in pre-production when Cyrus gets her flapping lizard tongue caught on a passing car that drags her all the way to Mexico.

November 20, 2020 – Untitled WB Event Film

Justice League reboot with a $500 million budget, an all black, all female cast, and all references to superpowers and super-villains replaced by discussions of relationships or long montage sequences about shopping. Naturally fans are baffled by a film marketed as a superhero movie turn out to be an unsanctioned remake of the first Sex & The City movie, causing Time-Warner CEO Jeff Zucker to go ballistic and threaten to sue everyone who doesn't buy a ticket to the movie.

No one buys a ticket.

Its failure is used as an excuse by Warner Bros. management to eliminate all female led films or ethnic diversity from its production slate.

MARCH 14, 2021 - Warner Bros. Purchased by News Corp.

After a string of expensive flops, an expensive lawsuit from Sex & The City's creator over the Justice League reboot, and Jeff Zucker's investing of all the corporation's assets into an all Rosie O'Donnell themed national daily newspaper, the whole Time Warner Empire, DC Comics included, goes bankrupt, and is purchased with the change in cyborg-Rupert Murdoch's couch cushions.

That's what's going to happen.

What do you think will happen?