BS Fatigue

If you know me— or tripped over me in that Bounding Into Comics piece— you know that I don’t believe in “Superhero fatigue.”

But I do believe audiences are suffering from BS fatigue.

BS fatigue comes in many different forms: crappy writing, girl bosses (but I repeat myself), and various other nonsense.

For example? Critical Drinker insists that five years ago, Blue Beetle could have made a good chunk of change just for being a superhero film.

I insist that they lost me when the director and several of the cast made statements that amounted to “Whitey, stay home.” Shockingly enough, Whitey promptly stayed home.

Notice that the Black Panther marketing never said that it was Blacks Only. 

It made a billion dollars.

My point is that, Sorry, Drinker, but BS comes in various forms.

Start with Marvel. Endgame was Game over. It’s clear that there was no plan for after Endgame. Instead of various and sundry writer / directors being allowed to develop their own characters (Like Jon Favreau, Iron Man, Captain America, etc), the goal was to replace characters (Black Widow, Hawkeye, Black Panther 2’s “Ironheart”) or introduce the multiverse (Marvels, Doctor Strange 2, Ant-Man 3, Shang-Chi to a degree).

The funny thing is that this level of heavy-handed studio interference is what killed DC’s films. Say what you like about Joss Whedon, but he didn’t stomp on people’s individual films when he was at Marvel.

I’m getting off-topic.

How does BS fatigue apply here?

“Let’s make a Black Widow movie after we killed her.”

No. No thanks. I’m not interested.

I would have been interested had it happened before Endgame, but mostly after Avengers.

Hell, I looked forward to Doctor Strange 2...

Until I found out that I was required to see the garbage WandaVision show on Disney+, and I gave up on that one. 

I may catch it on network one day, because I like Cumberbatch. But shoe-horning the multiverse into everything was just more BS.

They even hired Sam Rami … only to hand him a script and tell him to make the film, without allowing him any real creative control. Then they assigned homework, available for extra coin on Disney+.

For me, The Marvels suffered from a lousy first entry, and worse CGI. Seriously, whoever made that trailer had their work cut out for them if “let’s use the CGI cats that look like a cartoon” was one of their best ideas. Also, more homework: You had to see Mz Marvel on Disney+.

Ant-Man 3? One word: MODOK. That CGI in the trailer just killed what little interest I had in that part of the franchise.

The ads for Shang-Chi looked bland, and didn’t tell me anything about the plot; the ads were worse for Eternals. I hear tell that I missed nothing.

Black Panther 2 … they lost me when they killed T’Challa. Just recast, guys. If you could disappear Terrence Howard after Iron Man, you could replace T’Challa. The changes they made to Namor soured me even further, and that was a cute trick.

I hope I’ve made my point.

On the DC end of superheroes, this brings me to what started this random post: 

Supergirl was trending on X, or Twitter, whatever we’re calling it this week.

And it provoked a thought.

The thought was “I don’t care.”

Not because I’m tired of Superman and what’s around him. After all, we haven’t had a superman movie in years. Man of Steel was a decade ago. I tried getting into Batman vs Superman twice, and failed. And then there’s Justice League.

Frankly, I also know DC is going to screw it up. How do I know this? You have your pick of choices of BS.

One: Studio interference. WB has meddled in so many ways with every film, we probably won’t be able to track all the ways for a few years. This is regardless what you think of Zack Snyder. Studio mandates caused a lot of the clusterf*** on that.

Two: The CW. Remember when they had an Arrowverse, where they were going to try to keep things a little grounded while delivering a surprisingly good show? And then it turned into endless soap opera, endless girl bosses, chock full of gay, and perhaps a money-laundering operation (I’m looking at you, Batwoman)? 

I’m expecting at least two out of four of that to happen in the Gunnverse. You can guess which.

Three: Speaking of James Gunn... Why? Why Gunn? Why put him in charge of anything. Just … why? He directed three decent Guardians films, but I otherwise can’t stand his body of work. What proves his bona fides to handle a whole franchise? If Gunn does to the DC films what he did with The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, I don’t need that level of BS in my life. Nor do I need that level of shaky-cam and poor directing. (No James, I didn’t need to see the Peacemaker/Rick Flag fight, so shoot half of it as a distorted reflection in a helmet).

I guess all three points just boil down to this: I don’t trust these people to do even a halfway decent job.

Let’s say you like James Gunn.

Let’s say you liked every season of CW’s DC TV BS.

It’s still being run by a lot of the same dummies who have been running DC films into the ground since day one. You know, the ones who wanted to start with Justice League ASAP instead of building characters in individual films?

Most of these studio changes have lead to it being all a discordant mess. To Hell with “no unifying vision,” can we have some quality control?

These are the people who decided to release The Flash despite the lead actor being deranged and criminal.

These people had two of the better elements of the Arrowverse — Deathstroke and Suicide Squad episodes—taken out of the show because “they’re going to be in the movies.” Funny how that worked out, huh?

WB was so eager to kick Snyder to the curb, they forgot that HE WROTE WONDER WOMAN, decided Patty Jenkins could have the keys to Wonder Woman 1984, and she drove it into a ditch.

Robert Pattinson was cast as Batman at the same time as Batfleck… and did anyone edit that movie? I mean at all. Also, lighting would help. I don’t care if it’s dark, I want to be able to see what’s going on.

Was anyone manning the ship then? And why did they think that James Gunn was the go-to guy to man the ship now? I genuinely don’t think he has the ability to run DC movies. Even if he did, I’m not sure the studios would let him.

But like I said, this is BS fatigue.

Have Chuck Dixon write a Batman movie, I’ll watch it in theaters and drag people to the film. Twice.

Have Bill Willingham do … anything in the realm of comics on film, I’ll watch it three times.

But I don’t trust Gunn, WB, or Disney to put out a halfway decent product.

As for superhero fatigue? I have the collected Paul Dini and Bruce Timm animated universe (Batman TAS, Superman TAS, Justice League, JL Unlimited) as part of my weekend viewing. Because the legacy media we have is superior to most of what Disney and WB want to shove down our throats. Those are so good, I’m not going to worry about “fatigue” of any stripe. Especially not Superhero fatigue.

If your million-dollar, star-studded film can’t stand up to a 30 year old cartoon, I don’t see how that’s my problem.

If Hollywood wants to get their comic book audience back, then Hollywood should:

• Stop hiring nobodies to write and direct. (Seriously, IMDB these people sometime)

• Focus on the quality of individual films and stop worrying about needing to make a billion-dollar franchise. (See Tom Cruise’s The Mummy and “The Dark Universe.)

• Stop blowing hundreds of millions of dollars to get crap CGI. When Iron Man effects looks better than Phase 4, you’re doing it wrong. (If Godzilla -1 can do it…)

• Stop shoving The Message down our throats. The audience doesn’t care about your highly diverse cast.

• Dear Disney, stop making homework on streaming services. Disney+ isn’t going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen.

Anyway, I think that’s all for right now. I’ve managed to aggravate myself sufficiently. Be well all.

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