The world just shit its pants.

Check out the trailer here. This trailer is two and a half minutes long, the longest possible under MPAA regulation. In fact, what makes this trailer and the potential movie in general so fucking kick ass is that it’s balls-to-the-wall confident about the direction it’s taking. They skipped the teaser, probably because they know Iron Man is so easy to fuck up royally, there was a lot of skepticism running abound from nay-sayers, and ultimately no one would give a shit about a teaser unless they see Iron Man in action up close.

This film just secured $900 trillion in box office its first minute of release. Here’s a graph to prove it:

I don’t really know too much about Iron Man, I’ve read a few comics and watched the cartoon on television (wikipedia link). It wasn’t my favorite cartoon, but I watched it and thought it was cool enough for a rich guy to have a cool robotic suit. So given that background, I wasn’t really expecting Iron Man to be on my must-see list of movies for the upcoming year. However, when I heard that Jon Favreau was directing it, I put it on my radar to keep tabs on it.

Who’s Jon Favreau? You probably know him from his acting career, notably in Swingers, Rudy and The Break-Up. He’s your average actor who does some cool movies now and then, but not a big enough name to really headline a movie on his own. However, as a director, that’s where his career has truly been shining. Sure, he doesn’t have much to his credits yet: Elf and Zathura being his biggest blockbusters so far. I saw Elf on cable a few months ago, it was a decent holiday movie with Will Ferrell in it. Nothing bad, and nothing truly great.

ZATHURA

However, it was from watching Zathura that really changed my mind about this guy. I went in not knowing what the movie was really about, except for the fact that it was the sequel to Jumanji. The marketing and timing for Zathura was definitely not great, in fact, in great part because the studio didn’t really know what they had, the movie bombed at the box office. However, step into the theaters on opening weekend, and you saw a different story. Kids were jumping in their seats and talking excitedly afterwards about their favorite parts of the film and the fictional game. Unfortunately, the only people who remember what the hell Jumanji was, are people my age (in college or just starting their career in the workforce) who had seen Jumanji when we were in elementary or middle school. Most of us didn’t have kids who were old enough to take and see Zathura, so the “built-in” audience wasn’t being reached.

The trailer for the movie advertised it purely as a kid movie, a sci-fi version of Jumanji starring two kids. And since what I most remembered from Jumanji was that Robin Williams was in it, it didn’t help that it had no names starring in Zathura. And on top of that, despite starting with a chic “Z” the movie’s name was forgettable. You’d say “Do you want to see Zathura?” and people would squint and say “What the fuck is Zurethra, some Korean movie?” I was very unexpectedly blown away by the movie. It’s not your typical kiddie movie, the kids actually act like real kids, they call each other names that you don’t expect to hear from little kids, etc. It’s not watered down bullshit like most kids movies. And the movie has some relatively mature themes that you wouldn’t expect, much like the classic children’s films of yesteryear. The movie also has a robot that oddly looks a little like Iron Man, perhaps Favreau’s way of putting his hand out to helm the superhero flick.

If you haven’t seen Zathura yet, I’d recommend it for you and any adventure-film lovers, it’ll probably make you want to see Iron Man even more, because all the wit, enjoyment, action, and thrills that’d you hope for are all there. I have admiration for filmmakers who respect the films they work on, enjoy the films they work on, and Favreau does just that.

GREAT TEAM

I had a close friend who worked on the film, and everything they said about it seemed too good to be true, how so many of the effects were amazing and done practically on-set. How masterfully the cinematographer controlled the look and the set (the DP is Matthew Libatique, who’s previously worked on the spectacularly-photographed The Fountain and Requiem for a Dream) and how full of enjoyment and kindness Favreau was constantly, riding around on his scooter.

If Favreau can make a kiddie movie so very awesome, then think what he can do when he’s armed with Robert Downey, Jr. and a huge robot suit that actually has glowing eyes! (Why didn’t they think to do that with the Batman suits?) Batman and just about any superhero who lurks in dark areas have glowing eyes in cartoons and comics, why is Favreau the first guy to realize this awesomeness on the big screen? For that achievement in itself, Favreau has me convinced he’s gonna come out a super-director from this film. There’s probably going to be sequels to Iron Man, not to mention what other awesome movies that the studios will be offering him next. Hell, maybe the movie studios will actually grow some balls when it comes to their superhero movies being more straight up badass. Bravo, Favreau, thank you. And double bravo for making sure Iron Man is superbly awesome, complete with jetpacks coming out of his palms to make him go even faster in the air and break the sound barrier.

Panties everywhere are in need of a dry replacement.

1. High contrast dark lighting all the time. The “Batman Animated Series” got it right when it actually drew Batman to look badass all the time, and said “Fuck you” to lighting-appropriate looks. He looks contrasty badass all the time and the hell to logical lighting. His eyes glow, he’s got one rimlight on him, always. Batman’s look and lighting should be computer-assisted to look superhumanly badass whenever practical lighting isn’t possible for that end. I want silhouettes, moody rimlights, slashes of light betraying subtle details of the costume here and there, basically everything that makes Batman awesome.Light the shit to make it look awesome, how hard is it? Not at all. Two simple steps. 1. Imagine how it would be if it were awesome. 2. Light it to be the way you’re imagining it. You even get a bonus stage in post where you can tweak the lighting, there’s no damn excuse.

2. The costume needs to change, even unreasonably, if it’ll make it more badass looking. The cape breaks into parts and stays in one piece or is rigid or flowy whenever it needs to look more badass. It should appear to be one giant cloak most of the time, seamless with the mask/cowl and connected in front to create a look similar to the Emperor’s Royal Guards in Star Wars, but become like a giant wing flowing in the wind the next second, and a heavy leathery shield the next second. The mask should be shrouded in darkness nearly all the time, and somebody PLEASE realize that Batman has glowing eyes. I don’t care what you have to do to make him have bright eyes all the time, but just god damn do it! He’s got bright eyes, maybe he’s got goggles in the mask like Spider-man and they’re emitting or just reflecting light, or maybe the whites of his eyes need to be popped out in post, but his eyes HAVE TO BE the focal point on the face, not his gigantic jaw. Nobody’s interested in Christian Bale’s perfectly red cherry lips and creamy skin.

3. Follow Batman everywhere and watch him do everything that’s cool. If I’m wondering, “Huh, how did he do that?” it means I should KNOW how he did that. Batman movies kind of gloss over how Batman does his little tricks. For example, how the fuck does Batman disappear when people are talking to him? It’s not interesting that it’s mystery, I’m not going “Damn, it’s a mystery, how cool.” No, in fact, I discount it, because it’s just a stupid movie trick that isn’t necessary. However, if you actually saw it happen, and you go “Ohh, that’s how he does it, ” then you’d feel like you were involved in a movie instead of just sitting there watching one. As mentioned before, we should be up with Batman doing his “moving through the shadows” trick whenever he’s stalking a bunch of hoodlums in a warehouse. I don’t want to watch a Batman movie and go “Wow, Batman is so cool, I wish I were Batman.” I want to go to a Batman movie and go “I was just Batman for two hours, and now my mind has been expanded and I love my life.”

4. In Batman Begins, the goal of the hero is to “Keep Gotham from tearing itself apart.” Who gives a shit? I care about Batman, and what he’s going through and him looking and being badass. Nobody really gives a shit about Gotham as separate from Batman. The solution in cinema is often to focus more on the story, and the solution for Batman is the same, except in very specific ways. Batman needs to choose between saving things dear to him (thusly serving himself and his ego) and saving something greater than him. The idea that Batman will save everything isn’t accurate to his character, because he always bites off more than he can chew, that’s why he’s so pissed off all the time. The drama of Batman is that he’ll ultimately choose to save the things greater than him, sacrificing his own happiness and quietly biting his lip about how that’s fucked up. It’s dramatic because even though he wants to save his parents, he’s choosing not to save them over and over again, instead choosing to stop super villains of sorts and sacrifice his own wants and desires.

5. God damn it, use slow motion. Batman filmmakers get all shaky when it comes to making badass stylistic choices. Slow motion is a very compelling tool that a Batman filmmaker can use to create a badass look to Batman when it’s too expensive to light him correctly. Just have Batman walk towards the screen or jump off something in super slowmo, and it’ll look more awesome than one thousand Christian Bales hanging upside down.

6. Let Batman get beat to shit. For some reason, very few Batman movies want to commit to a “battle-worn” costume for Batman. One of the main problems with Batman Begins is Batman is too superhuman and Bruce Wayne is too much of a regular guy. So much for being realistic, Nolan failed horribly on this count. Batman doesn’t get one single scrape on him, despite theoretically battling every single Arkham Asylum fugitive and the very guy that trained him. This is what we call “Matrix Reloaded syndrome” where the hero has an impervious armor around them created by writers masturbating over how badass the hero they’ve created is. The final showdown on the elevated train is laughable, with cutaways to 47 side characters giving me redundant useless information while Batman has a fight with a guy who can’t really kill him and who he doesn’t really want to kill, so it ends up being a pseudo-wrestling match where one character basically has to get from point A to B to C.

7. Cut the fucking camp, damn. All the Batman movies have this campy undertone to them, you’d think the comic books have people cracking jokes and saying clever wry comments every other fucking bubble. Whenever a Batman comic I’ve read has overt humor, it’s only to juxtapose with the intense drama that’s happening. Having a cop do the “I’m clueless cop until the hero unexpectedly zooms by my car” worked great when they did it in The Fifth Element, but how many fucking times can people be “humorously amused” by the Batmobile? According to Christopher Nolan, it’s never enough, maybe because he’s relishing the only element of the film that closely resembles the uber-canon “Dark Knight Returns.” Good for him, too bad he ruins it by shoving it in our faces whenever the car shows up by having all the actors basically drop their monocles in their martini glasses.

8. Make a Batman fight sequence where I can tell what’s happening, please. I’m not talking about the fight on the ice lake, that doesn’t count ’cause there’s no Batman. I’m talking about a straight shot, no frills scene with Batman fighting somebody who he wants to open a can of whoopass on, and who can match him. The closest thing to this is Batman beating the shit out of the Joker and his goons at the top of the cathedral in the Tim Burton Batman. Most of the action sequences in Batman Begins involve the camera sitting there in a medium shot while a bunch of blurry shit happens. What the fuck happened to fight sequences? I thought The Matrix educated the entire world on how to go about this shit, but apparently not. I’ve heard that the fight sequences might have been influenced by Bladerunner, which is unfortunate, because the fight sequences in Bladerunner should only be your target if you’ve somehow gotten hold of the Delorian Time Machine and are making a movie in 1985.

What I’m talking about is a fight sequence that doesn’t make you think, “Ooh, Batman is cool/mysterious, I can’t wait until the next plot point,” but that makes you think, “Shit, Batman can kick some fucking ass and make it look badass, with or without the element of surprise.” Instead, in Batman Begins we get some horror-inspired scenes, which would be better if the goons didn’t vocalize their inner turmoil so much, then some blurry medium shots of Batman fighting badass Shadow League guys before flying ridiculously beneath a speeding train on a cable that inexplicably passes through cement pillars.

9. Allow Batman to be flexible, not a walking Gargoyle. The main reason Batman can’t be as badass as he should be in the movies is because they’ve got him suited up in a fucking ridiculous armor thing. People say “What did you expect, yellow spandex? OMFGROFL.” No, I expected Batman to be able to fucking FIGHT and move instead of putting his arms up to block where the stunt people are punching and kicking, and then miraculously placing one inexplicably powerful punch to the goon’s face. Some people say “Yeah, but tights and lighter material can’t stop bullets.” Yeah, neither can armor on your bicep, sorry. The idea that Batman has to have bullet proof armor on every point of his body is stupid. Batman has armor on his chest, which explains the thick bat symbol and the thick pectoral-padding on it, and I’m sure his helmet has lightweight whatever on it, but that’s about it. The point is, it’s absolutely unnecessary for Batman to be unnecessarily armored to the point where it’s changing his entire character dynamic. That’s not a tradeoff, that’s having Greedo shoot first.

Here’s where a bunch of people would also put some stuff about how some villain needs to be in the Batman movies, or how they need to bring in Robin, or bring in this guy or use that gadget. Fuck that shit. The only real complaint anyone can reasonably have is that Mr. Freeze needs to be redeemed, because his portrayal in the previous Batman movie was so god-awful, it’s like they took a dump on the entire series and made everyone hate everything about Batman. He doesn’t even ride a frozen fire hydrant to the top of a building!! What’s the fucking point of having Mr. Freeze if he can’t ride gigantic streams of water while freezing them?

Batman is awesome, Batman looks badass all the time. Movies about him should reflect that and stop being wishy washy bullshit.

Who is Batman?

There seems to be misconception that Batman has no superpowers. I know what you’re thinking, “He doesn’t.” Actually, he does. Batman’s superpower is to look really really badass all the time. All the money, all the angsty whatever bullshit, all the martial arts training, gadgets, detective-ness, and costume have one purpose, and that is to give a plausible reason to why Batman can look so badass all the time. But the truth is, even if you had all those things, you still wouldn’t look that badass, which can only mean that Batman has been endowed with a character superhuman-ness to look badass all the time. That is his superpower.

Batman has the only superpower that is perfectly suited to the visual medium of comic books and cinema, he can look as badass as we can imagine. And yet, the film Batman Begins, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into it, got it wrong. It didn’t capture the essence of what we all enjoy about Batman, that he’s badass and looks badass and can look badass at the most opportune moments. The only reason he’s even a detective in the first place is so that he can show up somewhere and look badass while fighting, otherwise he’d just constantly be sitting on the tops of buildings being emo.

How do you look badass in cinema?

Batman’s main form of looking badass is looking scary, closely followed by looking like a mad human demon. The easiest way to get both of these effects is to NOT show everyone every fucking crevice and detail on the suit and face all the time. Batman is the monster that’s stalking Bruce Wayne, and you need to keep the monster mysterious for most of the movie, this allows the audience to fill in all the implied badassness with really awesome badassness that only they can conjure.

Important Thing #1: Hide the betraying details, make the motion and imagery more abstract. The audience could even fear Batman, and they should, he’s the dark avenger about to get medieval on their asses without due process.

Important Thing #2: Batman is the Monster.

Batman is Bruce Wayne’s nemesis. When a super villain shows up, the danger isn’t that the villain will poison Gotham or make giant robots or whatever, the danger is that Batman will fucking murder that villain and rip his body in half while drinking his blood and smiling darkly with glowing demon eyes that are no longer human. Of course this shouldn’t actually happen, that’d make the story pretty boring, but the point it is not happening is why Bruce Wayne fights the demons inside him. This would be a gigantic conflict that Bruce Wayne would have to deal with, it’s the ultimate conflict, the “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”-esque conflict where we have enemies and darkness inside us that pours out and destroys the world.

The great drama that we love is that Batman is slowly subtly winning this battle against Bruce Wayne, constantly. Every night, Bruce Wayne dons the suit of Batman hoping he can hang on to his humanity. It’s a demon Bruce conquered once, but it’s slowly taking ground, moving higher and higher into the center of Bruce Wayne/Batman’s motives and actions. Vengeance, but not only Vengeance, also Wrath, Hatred, Moral Apathy, and Sadism.

It’s these very things that Bruce Wayne strikes out at, manifested in his external villains, because he projects himself on those very villains and sees the monster that lives inside him in their actions. Self-loathing and self-hatred are the facets present in Bruce’s everyday struggle. In his decadent life of plenty, donning the cloak of the “dark knight” is the only thing that gives his life meaning. Every time he’s victorious against a villain, he feels he’s one step closer to being victorious against the the darkness inside him. It’s a vicious circle, for in order to escape, Bruce must perceive himself as conquering all darkness in the world. Even then, what price will he pay in doing so?

Many perceive Batman’s ultimate success as being able to put away the mask and cape, and living a happy life as Bruce Wayne. But the reality would be a sobering opposite. Vengeance and wrath, and all actions taken in their name lead only to more vengeance and wrath. Sure, Bruce Wayne may spend months or years feeling like he’d won, but ultimately Batman would sit quiet in his cave, waiting for the moment that darkness rises again, and if it doesn’t, he’ll sit forever alone in the darkness of that cave.

Important Thing #3: Batman is the Monster and we are privy to the Monster’s Perspective.

A lot of people might interpret “Batman is the Monster” to mean that the camera should treat the villains as the victims, looking up and into the shadows for Batman as those villains/victims would. WRONG.

One of the coolest parts of Batman is that he’s the monster and looks badass all the time, AND we can see what he’s doing all the time, allowing for a maximum efficiency of badass awesomeness on the screen. When it comes down to it, the only reason Batman can be treated like the hero in a story is because he’s active, actively doing any manner of stuff. So in order to get a sense of that, we need to SEE HIM DOING STUFF. When there’s a warehouse of guys shooting up at the moving shadows afraid of Batman, it’s a classic Batman movie moment, but it’s also FUCKING BORING. We need to see Batman’s perspective, looking down, moving quickly through the shadows, creating decoys and shit to throw them off, then coming down swooping in with cape open looking like a giant bat. Then, for the one half-second before he caves a guy’s sternum in, we see the villain/victim POV.

Why are Important Things #1, #2 and #3 important?

When Christian Bale walks around looking serious in the Batman costume, it is literally one step from being fucking ridiculous. That step is taken the first time he opens his mouth with that faux-deep-serious bullshit. I laughed, as did many people I was watching the film with. Batman Begins treated Batman as a person in a suit posing for the camera. And that’s what it looked like too. And for everything that people said about the Tim Burton Batman looking like faggy gay-muscle-suit bullshit, the same can be said about this Batman Begins suit, except now he also has a fucking gigantic nose that the cinematographer doesn’t know how to light and an even stiffer neck.

Well the solution isn’t to redo the costume, it’s to redo the entire fucking concept. Batman isn’t a super soldier with a cape, he’s not supposed to look realistic or even Alex-Ross-realistic, he’s a fantasy we have of a dark avenger. This idea of “I want to make Batman like he would actually be, plausible,” is fine and dandy, but don’t fuck with Batman’s super power. Realism is about means and motivation, a character has a realistic motivation and must obtain the means to achieve those ends. It has nothing to do with making his costume look like a piece of metal with etched abs, then shooting him with lighting fit for television. Cinema has a hard time grasping onto this concept, but Sam Raimi with Spider-man got it pretty well. It’s not enough just to put the superhero in front of a background and film it, they need to be shot in the right way, creating an ambience, melding with their environment. And as much as Spider-man benefited from that and the blurring backgrounds that are indicative of Spidey’s iconic imagery, Batman absolutely demands this type of treatment, because, again, his super power is that he LOOKS badass all the time. Batman needs to be crouching and flying down at something in every other shot we see him in, doing things that Batman does like crouch to prepare to fight/jump or fight/jump.

I guess the trouble is, that Batman’s superpower isn’t easy to put on film, because he needs to look badass at 24 frames per second, that’s a whole lot of badass. It’s impossible for somebody to look badass all the time, that’s why we’re calling it a superpower. So we end up getting this wishy washy Batman Begins look, trying hard to do something, but ultimately falling far short of potential.

Ok, so enough whining, now it’s time to come up with ways to make Batman work on screen.

COMING SOON: Batman: (Part 3) 9 Things that Batman movies need and are horribly lacking.

At the time, I wasn’t very amused by the show. My film knowledge kept kicking in, and I kept thinking about how the execution looked poor, how simple tweaks here and there could have made it not only more professional but funnier, and how these guys were trying to use the poor quality to their benefit by poking fun at crappy movies in general. Sure, you can intentionally use poor cinematography, editing, and cheap tricks to get laughs, but something about “The ‘Bu” just didn’t sit right with me. After the third or fifth episode, I was annoyed by the fact that over an hour of my life was wasted to watching crappily executed, low-bandwidth low-brow low-quality no-laughs comedy shorts pretending to be hi-larious quality ha-ha’s. I figured, perhaps it just wasn’t my kind of humor. After I was allowed to free my eyes of the horrid shorts, I put Channel 101 on my “Never Visit These Sites Again” list and didn’t think much more about it or The Lonely Island guys and their so-called show.Until in late 2005, when I find out that those Lonely Island guys had been invited to write and act on “Saturday Night Live.” At this point, “Saturday Night Live” was on my “Not Worth Remembering When This Shit Is On TV” list, but since I had been a big fan of “SNL” when it used to be funny, I decided maybe I’ll give these Lonely Island guys another chance to show that they’re funny. I then went to their official website and watched a few more shorts, which turned out to be just as agonizing as the first time I saw their stuff. Well, this is before they have access to bigger budgets, I thought, maybe the fact that they’ll be on actual TV now may put them on another level of comedy and quality.

But something else happened instead, they got on “SNL” and their large crowd of internet groupies followed them to the “SNL” website, making the “SNL” website more popular than the actual show. This made it so that Lorne Michaels couldn’t help but bump them up from featured to full members of the “SNL” team. Hearing this news, I decided to see what the new “SNL” hype was all about. And yet again, I was disappointed. “SNL” hadn’t changed the Lonely Island guys’ comedy and quality, they made “SNL” change to their comedy and quality, to be shittier and more ill-conceived than it was even in the shitty quagmire of Jimmy Fallon as star, trying to be Adam Sandler and laughing at how funny things were in every sketch, all while being horribly embarrassingly not funny (Hint: Suggesting that you and the audience have a “special” relationship where you can laugh at your own jokes doesn’t make you America’s sweetheart, it makes you the only one laughing.)

How did we get to this? Now “SNL” has all these shitty-looking shorts littered with headache-inducing shaky hand-held camera, crappy costumes, and piss-poor visual effects that look bad even for “haha, this is so bad.” In the good old days, “SNL” didn’t have the greatest quality stuff around, but they did have something different and fresh and inventive, and often they even had a few things per show that got big gigantic laughs. It didn’t matter that their budgets weren’t high, because they were abundant with messages dressed up in elaborate comedy sketches. Comedy that didn’t just show you a funny character or concept, but that also poked fun at some issue or idea that wasn’t being mentioned anywhere else. It didn’t make you think that hard about the issue, but you remember those sketches clearly because it hit some chord and brought to light some truth that went beyond the initial laugh. But nowadays, when I recall a sketch from “SNL” that’s been done by the Lonely Island guys (which is all the “SNL” Digital Shorts, and even some of the regular sketches), all I remember is shitty execution and wondering why I have brain space devoted to remembering Laser Cats. Come on, this is funny for the first 10 seconds, then they need to cut back to Lorne Michaels’ face, which is actually the funniest part of the whole sketch. The fact is, the “OMFG this is so shitty” laugh that they’re apparently trying to get isn’t even in itself that well done, and it’s all basically a poor version of the awesome Official Ninja Movie, a much better attempt at that style.

But even then I decided not to blame the Lonely Island guys for the lack of quality in “SNL.” The show had been slipping for years. And it’s a bit much to think that three new kids on the block would be able to drastically alter “SNL” to suddenly become like it used to be a decade or more ago. They’d have to be comedic geniuses to do that, and it was fine with me that they weren’t, even though I secretly wished that someone would take “SNL” back into a better direction. Whatever, I thought, those guys will probably eventually mature their comedy and get a show of their own or get a movie deal in a few years, and hopefully it’ll be something I’ll want to watch.

And then it happened, they got a movie deal. You’ve probably heard of it, Hot Rod. Did I go watch it? No. I saw the trailer, looked at the movie poster and website, and I knew what to expect — the same old stuff I’ve already been disappointed/annoyed with. And plus, they made a movie called Hot Rod which didn’t feature a hot rod car. Apparently, reader, you didn’t watch it either, because it bombed. Perhaps if they didn’t insist on five year olds doing their production design all the time, it would be clearer that the movie name is about a guy named Rod that’s supposedly “hot,” and not about a cool car, which it isn’t about. Regardless of the apparent marketing brainfart, I knew this wasn’t one of those movies where perhaps the marketing was misleading. The marketing did its job, and I got a taste of exactly what I’ve been getting from these guys from the very beginning, complete mediocrity.

And now I’m fully qualified to say I’m disappointed with the Lonely Island guys. They’ve been given an opportunity that most people can only dream about, they were given carte blanche to make anything their large web/”SNL” audience might go see, and this is what they come up with? The same warmed over “OMFG this is so shitty/bad/misinformed” comedy that they’ve been stumbling through for years now. They probably got a few million dollars to make this movie, which meant their quality could sky-rocket compared to the stuff they did before. But, as I’m sure most of us are well aware of now, even if a bunch of money is thrown at a movie, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to suck balls. Sure, I thought to myself, the visual quality is much better than their Channel 101 days, but it still looks like an amateur is learning how to shoot a movie while shooting it, and on top of that the content still sucks. It has the exact same story as another shitty dead-on-arrival comedy called The Ringer that came out two years ago (the only difference is that in The Ringer, the main character is a normal guy pretending to be a retard, whereas in Hot Rod, the main characters are retards pretending to be normal people.)

And that’s when I realized what it was that bothered me that day 3 years ago when I first watched “The ‘Bu.” The problem with this stuff isn’t the execution quality, it’s the content. It’s not the shaky camera and shitty lighting, it’s the fact that it’s mildly funny at best, never hilarious, and usually has a feeling of very barely giving any effort. Never in all the stuff I’ve seen of these guys, have I found myself laughing out loud. I would smile at some stuff, a haha may come out of me every once in a while, but I was never fully laughing. And despite what resources these guys are given, they haven’t improved their stuff. They very well might be funny talented people, but the execution of their video/film content needs to come up dramatically. Case and point, their greatest achievement so far (their movie) isn’t funny and bombed at the box office despite getting a similar marketing treatment from the same people who pushed Transformers.

America seems to agree, as shown by their box office numbers. (BTW, in case you don’t know, a $5 million opening box office is considered a horrible opening for a comedy opening in 2,000+ theaters.) And if you look here, based on box office numbers, it seems that theater goers liked Dana Carvey’s The Master of Disguise better than Hot Rod. And if you don’t remember, Master of Disguise was a pretty horrible movie, and this coming from me, a diehard Dana Carvey fan. The difference is, with Dana Carvey, he’s earned the ability to fuck up, and after years of being absolutely hilarious on TV and cinema, we can forgive him. But the Lonely Island guys have yet to prove themselves, everyone looks at their stuff and goes “these guys have potential, they should do a feature or a tv show,” and when they get a chance, they suck.

Maybe they”ll get better with time, and simply because they were a bunch of no-name underdogs getting a chance to hit Hollywood by storm, I was rooting for them. But what they’ve done with their storm is nothing new to Hollywood, reheating old comedy standards with the misinformed hope that a string of gags can replace a well-written story. If you get a chance to hit Hollywood, why not make the most of your talent and skills and make a dent, freak out and do something new and fresh for people? Why waste it on continuing the same thing you were doing when you had no money and were making stuff out of your garage? The world’s had its fix of that shit.

The Lonely Island, I’m disappointed with you. If you’re reading this, Akiva, Andy, or Jorma, sorry guys. I was rooting for you, and maybe you can still do it, but the plan of attack needs to change. Maybe try something a little more efficient, and a little more awesome.

Batman Begins Got it Wrong

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of talk about how or why Batman Begins messed it up, and with the sequel currently in production, people are falling into the humdrum acceptance they shovel out to all shitty blockbusters. I think studios make false claims about high budgets to hammer in this feeling of toleration and acceptance in people, forcing people to subtly accept that large amounts of money are bet against their opinion that the movie sucks. Cry out against the masses and you’ll get all sorts of retorts like “No, it was dark,” or “It was better than Tim Burton’s,” or “It’s more like the Batman I want to see,” Nobody says “Well who could’ve done it better?” or the even more blasphemous “So you could’ve done better?” because they’re not even sure what they’re saying. Technically, the filmmaking was good, or was it? There’s something lacking. The writing isn’t really “bad” but something about it is just off.

People talk a lot about how Batman Begins is “darker.” Well, putting aside the fact that the adjective “darker” has no actual meaning, they’re partly right, the Batman Begins MARKETING was darker. But as it got closer to the release, and ultimately up to the actual movie, the imagery and tone of the film got less and less dark.

COMING SOON: Batman:(Part 2) Why he’s badass and why no movie version has got him right.