While attending Cinemacon, Comicbook.com caught up with Gary Oldman and got his thoughts on J.K. Simmons playing the role of Commissioner Gordon in the DC Extended Universe.
“J.K. Simmons doesn’t need any advice from me. He’s a wonderful actor. I’m intrigued to see what he does with it. I’m looking forward to it. Gordon was very good to me so I wish him a lot of luck. I’m excited for him.”
Oldman portrayed Gordon in the Dark Knight trilogy, and did an incredible job. His character was an integral part of that series; the performances were top notch through all three films.
Are you looking forward to seeing Simmons as Gordon? Either way, comment below and let us know your thoughts!
Justice League, Simmons’ first appearance in the role, releases on November 17, 2017.
“Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s (Henry Cavill) selfless act, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) enlists newfound ally Diana Prince to face an even greater threat. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to recruit a team to stand against this newly awakened enemy. Despite the formation of an unprecedented league of heroes — Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and the Flash — it may be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.”
The Mummy, Universal’s shared monster universe kickoff movie, just got a second trailer. And if you were less-than-excited after seeing the first one, I can’t imagine this one will help.
Here you go:
An ancient princess is awakened from her crypt beneath the desert, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia, and terrors that defy human comprehension.
My personal list of concerns is substantial. Like, what is this movie? It’s definitely heavy on action and adventure, you know, like the other Mummy reboot we got in the late 90s. But does it shift to horror somewhere along the way?
Also, what exactly is happening here? This is either a plot too convoluted to explain confidently in a trailer, or Alex Kurtzman and the brain trust behind the Universal shared universe just remade X:Men Apocalypse or something. Perhaps Russell Crowe, who pops up here as Dr. Jekyll, can balance things out. His part felt more subdued, more ominous, less concerned with all that running and stunt work.
Which I personally love. Tom Cruise doing his thing is fun as hell. But can’t we just try something different here? Something with, you know, horror infused? I knew this new Universal universe was going to lean towards action, and that felt like a bad call even when it was announced. This has all the stink on it of a failed summer blockbuster.
Who knows… maybe Cruise and Sofia Botella, who plays Ahmanet the mummy, can make The Mummy work. It opens June 9.
It’s back, folks. The first teaser trailer for season two of Preacher has been dropped online. Watch it below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziF6gvIGC3g
“Preacher follows a West Texas preacher named Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper), who is inhabited by the renegade spawn of an angel and demon and gains the power to control people with just a word. The series’ second season returns this summer and follows Jesse, his badass ex-girlfriend Tulip (Ruth Negga) and an Irish vampire named Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) as they embark on a road trip to find God, dealing with issues both worldly and other-worldly along the way.”
Are you looking forward to season two of Preacher? Why or why not? Comment below, let us know!
Season one of the show premiered on May 22, 2016, and was then ordered for the upcoming second season, which starts on June 25 at 9 p.m. on AMC.
This series will be a brief, semi-comedic review of the CW superhero shows. You can check out last week’s review post here, or see the tally of winners below. The only shows discussed will be ‘Arrow’, ‘Flash’, and ‘Supergirl’. There WILL be some spoilers discussed, so only look at the reviews you’re up to date on!
Supergirl, “Distant Sun” (Mar 27)
“Kevin Smith let me live because I’m not a Jesus freak”
Mon-El is becoming a bit of a bore. While his romance plot with Kara’s a bit stale, seeing Supergirl fighting alien mercenaries is great. The parent dynamic is pretty great, and it makes for a nice twist when they betray each other. Alex’s relationship often dominates episodes directed by Kevin Smith. This episode used it more sparingly, which meant it avoided too many cliches. We were saddled with an obnoxious “kindness in your heart” speech from Kara, but all things considered, that’s a small price to pay.
SCORE: 8/10 Kryptonite daggers that should’ve worked on Martian Manhunter because they’re still, y’know, DAGGERS
The Flash, “Abra Kadabra” (Mar 28)
He needs to get back to the future… but how’d he end up in the past in the first place?
This episode was like a poorly written cop/medical drama, rehashing many of Flash’s blandest plot points. Abra Kadabra is an overpowered one-off villain, who accomplishes nothing new for the show. The reveal of Gypsy’s former partner was horribly cliche, and Cisco being mad Gypsy had an ex is super unfair. All those shots of people sitting alone, being moody, were incredibly cringey. And HOW MANY TIMES IS BARRY GONNA TIME TRAVEL? TIME TRAVEL NEVER WORKS! AND CAITLIN REALLY DIES ON THE WORD “DIE?” ALL OF IT IS THE WORST!!!
SCORE: 3/10 Time Machines
Arrow, “Disbanded” (Mar 29)
Ollie’s exact moral code has never been super clear
Chase’s mind games continue to be exciting to watch. Mopey Oliver is nothing new for Arrow, but the way it galvanizes his teammates is great. Anatoly has become one of the most interesting characters on Arrow. The change in their dynamic, five years apart, is brilliant. The Helix Hipster Hacker squad isn’t all that interesting, but Felicity in action is fun. It’s also nice to see the relationship between Oliver and Diggle take priority. Even though it’s the same morality argument from every other season, the way it ropes back to earlier this season is nice. Most notably, the fact Oliver wouldn’t even let the team keep their suits is hilarious.
SCORE: 7.5/10 Diabetes Meds
WEEKLY WIN TALLY:
Arrow: 7 Weeks
Supergirl: 7 Weeks
The Flash: 4 Week
What show did you think won the week? Does Legends of Tomorrow take your vote? Do you think A.o.S. or Gotham outshines all the CW shows? Let us know in the comments below!
Do you ever miss getting the newspaper and stealing the gag-a-day comics page before your parents could get to it? It’s one of those little joys that’s been lost with the disappearance of newspapers from most doorsteps.
However, the medium of ‘newspaper comics’ hasn’t vanished. While plenty of webcomics tell soaring, intricate stories with beautiful art, just as many if not more are ‘gag-a-day’ webcomics. They publish self-contained strips, free of the rules of continuity and storytelling, and they’ve also evolved in another important way: they are impossibly nerdy. It’s not necessary to appeal to a broad audience anymore, not when the Internet guarantees access to the people who will get your esoteric jokes.
Below are five gag-a-day webcomics (not all of them daily) that make no apologies for their cynical satire, genius-level jokes, or blatantly obvious passions.
Possibly the most famous ‘gag a day’ webcomic now online, xkcd by Randall Monroe has been running since 2005 and has been his full-time job since 2008. It describes itself as “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”, and is known for its rather sarcastic commentary on technology, mathematics, relationships and politics.
xkcd updates three times a week, and has barely developed in art style since 2005, mostly deliberately.
Drawn by Zach Weinersmith, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, often shortened to SMBC, takes on a lot of the same topics as xkcd with a heavier dose of cynicism. Weinersmith glories in crossing the line with his humour, and he particularly has it out for economists.
Scenes from a Multiverse is Jonathan Rosenberg’s trippy multiverse gag-a-day comic, running since 2010. Every comic takes place in a different universe, as posited by the multiverse theory where any universe is possible. It technically does develop some continuity later on, but the ‘final destinations’ are decided by reader vote.
As any good satirist should, Rosenberg uses the settings of his comic for political and social commentary, especially around anti-science movements. Recently, he’s given up whatever subtlety he had in favour of more pointed jabs.
Scenes from a Multiverse updates Monday-Wednesday-Friday.
Drawn by Kate Beaton and updated whenever she has an idea, Hark! A Vagrant is an assortment of esoteric pop culture and history jokes. Hark! A Vagrant is especially well known for the Strong Female Characters, her personal take on underwritten female characters in movies and television.
Hark! A Vagrant is currently on hiatus while Kate Beaton works on a book. Not everybody can multitask, as she cheerfully admits.
Rock, Paper, Cynic is the brainchild of Peter Chiykowski, who describes it as “a comic for people who think too much and too little”. His comics usually poke fun at love, pop culture, and technical trouble.
Peter Chiykowski has also released an album of his own nerdy songs called ‘Borken Telephone‘, featuring songs like ‘I Don’t Need You (I’ve Got Netflix)’, and ‘One Shell, Two Shell, Red Shell, Blue Shell’.
I believe practicing constructive cynicism helps us question things that make the world crappy and better appreciate things that make it pretty sweet. Also, sometimes I just like to make silly jokes about turtles.
-Peter Chiykowski
Do you follow any of these comics? Which ones are your favourites?
Last year, at the same time, Marvel was dominating with Star Wars, Spider-Man, Deadpool Mercs for Money, Deadpool, Darth Vader, Power Man and Iron First, Amazing-Spider-Man, Spider-Man Deadpool, Old Man Logan, Invincible Iron Man, Obi-Wan and Anakin, Avengers Standoff Welcome, Might Thors, All New All Different Avengers. How many of these books had women (or people of color) as main characters?
Two.
Just two of those books had “diversity” as their gimmick.
How many of those books are still in the top 20?
Two.
This means that more than “diversity” is bringing sales down. So, let’s chat about what those numbers mean and why Marvel’s blaming women and diversity in comics not only acts as a cop out, but it’s the kind of thing any parent would remonstrate a child for doing. Marvel refuses to take responsibility for the writing and marketing problems plaguing their brand. They decided to blame it on the hegemonic, patriarchal, institutionally racist theory that their attempt at diversity failed because no one wanted it.
Let’s all say this together: BULLSHIT.
The numbers prove several things butnot about diversity in comics bringing down sales. They prove that women are out in force buying books. They also prove that in the last year, DC has done a phenomenal job of gaining market share to move up from a 20ish percent share to a 30something percent share in a year. Meanwhile, Marvel has lost about ten percent share in a year.
Things that make you go hmmmm.
The number of women buying comics remains approximately 45-50% of the population, if we’re looking at people who identify as binary. Fair enough. I’d be curious to know what the numbers would say if they looked outside that male-female gender distribution. However, that can be saved for another day.
Women didn’t stop buying comics. Women didn’t decide to ignore representation. Some of those stories just… they went bad. Giving me a female character just to “appease” me is like handing me McDonald’s and telling me it’s the same as a filet mignon because it’s beef. That isn’t true. We all know it.
Want to know the numbers that prove the theory of poor writing and derailed stories?
Old Man Logan. In February 2016, Old Man Logan, a much beloved white male character, ranked 15. In 2017, it ranked 44 and 45 respectively. That would be a drop of 30 spaces in the span of a year. That would be a lot of sales right there. None of them related to the idea of diversity in comics but all of them related to story and marketing.
Chatting numbers means chatting like Old Man Logan and giving actual demographics.
Want to look at the diverse stories? Guess what, they didn’t drop in sales exponentially because for the most part, Marvel didn’t write them in ways that would get them to the top twenty. However, sure, let’s take a look at the demographics for them anyway.
The 2016 Eisner awards were as follows:
Best New Series: Paper Girls. The word “girls” is in the title.
Best Reality-Based Work: March: Book Two This is about the civil rights march. This is the definition of racial diversity.
Best Digital/Webcomic: Bandette It’s about a female thief.
Best Academic/Scholarly Work: The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art.
Let’s take a long thing about what this says.
Marvel’s problem is not that it failed at diversity in comics. It’s that it failed at promoting good storytelling.
I’ve bought every female led Marvel book in the last year. I’ve watched as they’ve gone from some of my favorites to some of the ones I put to the side and wait to read until, well, meh.
Spider-Woman started out amazingly strong. The writing is still good, but the current love plot? Turned a bit trite to me. The “he loves her from a distance and then OMG she finds out and realizes she loves him too” trope was a bit much for me.
Spider-Gwen has been a bit repetitive in the last few issues. Although, I totally admit, I ship her and Miles for whoacakes.
Thor, I can’t talk to that one mainly because, while I buy it to support it, Thor ain’t my jam.
The best of the books out there from Marvel right now? World of Wakanda. You want diversity in comics? This is a book about a lesbian same-sex relationship that handles all of the guilt some people feel when trying to own a non-hegemonic sexuality. However, there’s been little to no promotion of this book. I only knew about it because I follow Twitter.
Ms. Marvel is a favorite, but the whole Kamala nearly getting her best friend killed and losing a main character led to a lot of weirdness in the story since he was so integral to the relationships. The issue isn’t the diversity in comics problem. It’s the plot not being linear because of the Civil War II tie in stuff that derailed the plot and character.
That brings us to the biggest problem Marvel faces. You want to know what killed Marvel’s sales? Civil War II. The convoluted plots and tie ins lost readers. In fact, by making Carol Danvers the de facto villain throughout that plotline, Marvel undermined one of its more powerful female characters. Marvel argues that it was diversity in comics that killed its sales? It was precisely the lack of diversity. Fans screamed in anger over the fridging of War Machine, followed by the inconsistency of Captain Marvel’s response to his death. Marvel took one of the strongest female characters in its toolbox and turned her into a trite shrieking harpie over helicopter parenting. Marvel willfully continued down its path of plot-oriented sales demise.
Marvel’s marketing VP used the words “women” and “diversity” as an easy excuse. Marvel, in this case, decided to use those words to evoke a response of agreement from precisely the demographic that continues to harass women and people of color in the geek world. Marvel limited its shallow investment in the majority of these books to characters. Hoping for an easy payoff, they underestimated the diverse populations. They assumed that all we wanted were high level represenations. They ignored the fact that to keep a readership, the books much be, by definition, readable.
Speaking with The Telegraph, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story director Gareth Edwards talked about how the death of Carrie Fisher impacted him.
“I’ve not really sat and watched the film since the opening weekend, when Carrie was still with us. I just feel the whole thing was, to be honest, one big love letter to Carrie. What we’re doing with the entire movie is all building to that one moment [of the Death Star plans being handed to Princess Leia] where we hand the baton to her, to go off and make that film that inspired us all as kids. So it couldn’t have ended better from that point of view. It’s just sad – I was always thinking that I would get to meet her and talk to her at some point about it, and I never really met her properly. I walked past her once on the set of Episode VII, I was meeting some of the crew, and she walked past me, and I had a little fanboy freakout.”
Then, Edwards gave detail on how the Leia cameo came to be.
“When it came to our film, it went so late with that shot, trying to get it right, that Kathy took it down personally, on a laptop, and showed her. And initially Carrie apparently didn’t realise it was CGI, and wondered if it was footage which we had taken from somewhere else. Which was really reassuring for us. I thought, one day, either at the premiere, or one of these conventions, I’d get a chance to talk to her. And it’s really sad that it’s not going to get to happen.”
As a fan of Star Wars, seeing the ending now is poetic in a sense. It’s a send off to the character while simultaneously throwing her back to the original trilogy days, where she first made a difference to fans around the world.
Rogue One will be available on Blu-Ray/DVD on April 4.
Do you think Heard was a good choice to play Mera? Comment below, let us know!
“Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.”
Justice League stars Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Ben Affleck as Batman, Ezra Miller as Flash, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Henry Cavill as Superman, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Amber Heard as Mera, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, Willem Dafoe as Vulko, and Connie Nielsen as Hippolyta.
The film is slated to hit theaters on November 17, 2017.
As fans frantically wait for the season finale of a gut-wrenching seventh season of ‘The Walking Dead,’ Norman Reedus brought a lighter side to his character Daryl Dixon and Daryl’s relationship with Rick Grimes.
Reedus attended the 2017 Garden of Laughs Comedy Benefit on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden in New York City and Page Reporter, Lindsey Kupfer was curious about Daryl’s potential love life on The Walking Dead. The answer surprised us at Monkeys Fighting Robots and adds a whole new dynamic to Daryl and Rick’s friendship.
“It’s such a thing, the love story, you know what I mean? Once you throw someone up against a tree, it’s over. I kind of don’t know that Daryl is mature enough to do that. Let Rick get all the girls. I’m like Spock on ‘Star Trek’ and he’s like Captain Kirk. He gets all the ladies and I sit in the background and say weird things,” said Reedus.
Do you want to see Daryl find love in Season 8, or are you a fan of his loner status? Comment below. It’s probably best for Daryl’s health that he does not find happiness, because in the cruel world of ‘The Walking Dead,’ happiness usually leads to someone’s death.
The Season 7 finale of “The Walking Dead” airs Sunday night on AMC.
Every Film Deserves A Second Chance, Even ‘Showgirls’!
The success and legacy of a film lies in the hands of critics. One bad review has the chance to completely derail a film before it even hits the box-office. But what if the critics at that time got it wrong? That’s the point of this editorial series; looking back at a film that was once hated and giving them a second chance. First up is the infamous ‘Showgirls‘.
If you don’t know about the enigma that is ‘Showgirls‘, here’s a brief history. The film is basically ‘All About Eve‘ but set in sleazy 90’s Las Vegas. A young beautiful drifter named Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) arrives in Las Vegas with big dreams to dance. After a chance encounter with the biggest act in Vegas named Cristal (Gina Gershon) and her boyfriend (Kyle MacLachlan), her dreams begin to come true. Nomi realizes that all isn’t what it seems and that the industry she dreams of us is darker than expected.
The plot alone lets you know that this script is attempting to be a serious deconstruction of how society views women and the dark-side of fame. Even the hyper-sexual scenes and chats about nails can’t distract from the powerful vision from director Paul Verhoeven. Some still discredit the work Verhoeven put into the film but the director always defends the film, going as far as calling it “the most elegant film he’s ever made”.
Initial Reaction:
Before ‘Showgirls‘ saw a release in theaters, it had a relativity big hype surrounding it. Not only was it the first (and only) widely released NC-17 rated movie but it marked the turn around for Elizabeth Berkley’s career from good girl to more mature actress.
With all this talk going into the film, it was met with a fiery passion. Critics tore into it with a cynical rage. The average critic would mock the film for being campy but when presented with the idea that it is a satire, it’s dismissed. Even famed “bad” filmmaker John Waters said he loved the movie but he thought “the writer and director, no matter what they say today, don’t appear to be in on the joke.”
The reviews of the film were negatives but it seemed like the hate became directed to one person. Elizabeth Berkley took most of the critical lashings. People would go as far as saying the “screen would go dead the moment (Berkley) was on it”. Because she had the most notoriety, she became an unfair target and scapegoat for critics. People seemed to loathe her but ‘Showgirls‘ would’ve been nothing without the iconic role of Nomi Malone.
With a 45 million dollar budget, it didn’t even hit 38 million at the box office. Some blamed the harsh age restrictions, while the critics played a huge part in the film’s near complete failure. Roger Ebert called it a “sleazefest” & an “expensive soap opera”. Even lead actor Kyle MacLachlan talked about his disappoint after seeing ‘Showgirls‘ at the premiere.
Current Reception:
It didn’t take long for ‘Showgirls‘ to gain a cult following. The home video sales of the film helped the film make money and became a bestseller for MGM. The idea of seeing something like this at home adds to the appeal; either you can feel comfortable seeing all the dirty scenes with less strangers or you can join together for a group viewing with a few drinks and of course, some chips!
Within a few years after the release, ‘Showgirls‘ was a cult classic. It seemed like a callback to the days of exploitation films and midnight movies, the fans were ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show‘-level of crazed. And then the wonderful Special Edition DVD commentary with superfan David Schmader brought the film into a whole new light.
Rising from the grave, director Paul Verhoeven never expected the cult following. “Maybe this kind of ritualistic cult popularity isn’t what I intended, but it’s like a resurrection after the crucifixion.”, he said. Because of the rise of ironic viewings and the camp appeal, it forced critics to begin to look at the film again.
Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum and critic for The Village Voice J. Hoberman both went on to say ‘Showgirls‘ should’ve been looked at as a serious satire. In 1999, French filmmaker Jacques Rivette would call the film “one of the great American films of the last few years”, while Quentin Tarantino said it’s one of the only few big-budget exploitations films. With a few powerful voices in the industry and some years passing, ‘Showgirls‘ began to gain steam as something more than “so bad, it’s good” movie.
“There’s always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you.”
-Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon)
Final Thoughts:
Because of my age, I wasn’t aware of the film when it was first released. I found the film on my own, years later. It was playing late on some movie channel and I sat mesmerized at the screen. Even when the film hits the pool sex scene, there’s laughter for all the right reasons. By the time the credits rolled, it became an instant obsession.
It came as a shock to me that this was hailed one of the worst movies ever. Maybe I was desensitized to the insanity because I saw it in a post-‘Showgirls‘ world but I honestly found it to be a beautiful and humorous look at women, fame, and sexuality.
That’s why movies need to be watched and reviewed constantly. Seeing a hated film so far removed from its initial release can really factor into the viewing experience.
Let me know what you think about ‘Showgirls‘ in the comments below!
What other films do you think need a critical re-evaluation?
