The Geek Beat »

It's an ongoing joke that fans of anything geeky (D&D, comic books, video games, sci-fi, runes, mythology, The History Channel) lacks a love life. You know the stereotype. So, is it coincidence that some of the very best couples are found in the geek genre? Are they trying to let all those lonely nerds get a glimpse of the good life? Or is it just that uncertain futures, alternate universes, galaxies far far away, or splash page bound stories lend themselves to bigger and gutsier stories? After all, sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero stories tend to break gender barriers in all sorts of ways. Women were packing superpowers and weapons in genre stories a lot sooner than they were on big or small screens.

As to why that is, maybe it has something to do with the origin of sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books. Sci-fi, comics, and fantasy inherited the old mythologies of Homer and King Arthur, where people expected great highs and lows to everything their heroes and heroines did. If lovers weren't tragically separated or punished for their sins, and there wasn't a lot of sword fighting and slaughter in between, then everyone was bored. Nowadays, you can't have heroes who are gone for decades and battle trolls unless you're in a particular section of Blockbuster or Barnes and Noble, because it's just not thought to be very serious stuff. (Unless you're a literature professor. Then you know better.)

February dawns with a lot of intriguing little news bites about The Green Lantern, First Avenger: Captain America, and how your favorite characters may be mangled by odd story choices. Last year, I described this very same week as one where "everything is taking a breather before Watchmen, Wolverine, and all the madness that will follow the filming of Iron Man 2, Thor, Scott Pilgrim, and Captain America. In weeks, we're going to be bombarded with Terminator: Salvation, Star Trek, and Sherlock Holmes – and maybe, just maybe, a glimpse of Avatar. I can't wait for that stuff to hit the web so we have something to really tear into."

Ah, the innocence and excitement of February 2009!

In fact, seeing as there's so little to write about this week, I thought I'd go back to that very column and revisit its mawkish sentimentality. The Geek Beat has once again hovered very close to my Cinematical anniversary and my birthday (Wolverine style, we're going to avoid that topic), so I thought a retrospective was in order. I've been on this column and on this site for two years now, which is stunning and strange. I know it's corny, but it really seems like it was just yesterday that I was shyly talking to Erik Davis for the first time, and logging into our blogging software to write a Punisher: War Zone update. I now measure time by movie seasons and release dates, and it's a really surreal way to live. Two years goes by in a flash of casting news, rumor reporting, initial set images, and ranting.

When a big property like Conan is finally cast, that initial moment of excitement (or despair) is matched only by watching the subsequent waves of fan reaction. It's one reason I enjoy my job so much. It's people watching on a global and digital scale, and it's especially enjoyable if you're not particularly invested in the character. So much about fandom, fantasy, and imagination is revealed in people's knee-jerk reactions. (And yes, I've been guilty of them myself. Who isn't?) I couldn't care less who plays Conan the Barbarian. The only thing I wish for is a good sword-and-sorcery movie so that someone will put together a Red Sonja movie. A real Red Sonja movie. Not the cultish cheese that was Brigitte Nielson's attempt, nor the elaborate piece of fan fiction that Robert Rodriguez is cooking up.

In fact, I nearly scrapped the piece when I learned Rodriguez's film was still faintly breathing. (I'm sure readers wish I had.) I've actually tried to be kind about that, but let's face it, it was always an excuse to put Rose McGowan in a chain mail bikini. Well, she already took the photos in it, so why not just leave it at that? Leave it as a nice, sexy piece of pop art that men and women snapped up at ComicCon 2008, and allow the t-shirts to live on as a geeky relic. There's no need to waste millions on a script, casting, and special effects just to see McGowan moving around in the bikini unless you're a die hard McGowan fan or Rodriguez himself. Scrap it. Start over.

One of the very first posts I wrote on Cinematical was whether or not pure and unsullied heroism was dead in movies. I disagreed at the time and I still do, though some recent Green Lantern news has led me to backtrack a little bit. Just a little, mind you.

Superheroes are pretty much defined by their own label – they are super heroes. Better than good. Larger than life. A finely sculpted Adonis with nary a crack in the marble. When you call someone a superhero, it's because they did something so wonderful that it was out of the ordinary level of heroism – the heroism displayed by soldiers, policemen, firemen and doctors who will always tell you that they were just doing their job. (I don't mean to lessen their job in any way. I'm just trying to classify.) There's Superman, and then there's Backdraft. The appeal of one is that he's unpaid and he can rescue airplanes, whereas the appeal of the other is that regular men and women against fiery odds. They may not always win, whereas Superman always does. Theoretically, we enjoy the superhero stories because of that moral certainty and comfort blanket of goodness. Or we used to.

CHUD caught up with Martin Campbell, who let slip a little about how The Green Lantern will tackle Hal Jordan's origin story. In the comics, Hal was given the ring because he was a modern day Galahad. He was pure of heart, incorruptible, the right human to wield a ring of enormous power. But DC Comics decided that was too boring, especially in comparison to embittered Batman and drunk Tony Stark, so they did a miniseries called Emerald Dawn. The miniseries retconned Hal into a bit of a screw-up. His father dies in a fiery plane wreck, and he carries those demons into a bit of a bad boy persona. He drives drunk, he crashes his car, severely injures his friend, and winds up in jail. Hal receives the ring not because he's the white knight of the crash site, but because he just happened to be there when Abin Sur crashed. It was quite controversial and unpopular, and remains so to this day.

As you undoubtedly know by now, Spider-Man 4 is no more. It was killed at some point yesterday afternoon, roughly a day or so after John Malkovich was happily awaiting his final Vulture script. It was one of the weirdest turnarounds I've ever seen in the time I've hung around online moviedom, particularly since I continued to receive comments gleefully extolling the virtues of Vulture.

Of course, it isn't just that Spider-Man 4 isn't happening. Movies crumble all the time. It's that Sony has declared the end of one Spider-Man and the beginning of another. The corpse of one franchise isn't even cold in its grave before they've planned to reboot the entire thing. It makes Fox's plans to reboot Daredeviland the Fantastic Four seem the soul of patience and discretion. Even the most jaded critic, analyst, or fan has a pretty sour taste in their mouth right now. It isn't just a matter of what this franchise has come to, but what blockbuster filmmaking has become.

This is an ugly, ugly new world -- and it wasn't born yesterday. Sony had plans to reboot Spider-Man even before part four fell apart. When James Vanderbilt came aboard in August, it was already speculated that Sam Raimi wouldn't return for installments 5 and 6. Sony planned on turning those into some kind of franchise reboot in order to remake the series and keep it going with a new Peter Parker. At the time, fans were supportive of that idea. Will they be so now, after they've become invested in Raimi, Tobey Maguire, and all the John Malkovich and Anne Hathaway possibilities? I don't know. I'm curious to watch the ripple effect today and find out.

It's a new year and a new decade, which means I have a really good excuse to write a Geek Beat about superheroines. It was one of the very first topics I ever tackled here on my column (and oh how clunky it was!), and I imagine there might be a few more in the dim future. But honestly, 2010 might actually be the year when things changed for the women who fight for truth, justice, and ... well, personal gain. (I'm looking at you, Black Widow and Helen Mirren.)

It goes without saying that the last ten years read like a laundry list of missed opportunities -- Elektra, Dark Phoenix, Lois Lane -- and a few fun exceptions like Pepper Potts and deadly little Miho. (Oh, I know all the arguments against Frank Miller but if I had to choose between watching Miho and S&M Gail or another neurotic Jennifer Aniston heroine, I'd pick the former. But that's just me.) But 2010 has some promise. Why? Well, by June 2010 you're going to have a lot of comic flicks either in theaters or in production. Thor, Green Lantern, Spider-Man 4, and First Avenger: Captain America will all be in various stages of completion. The dust will be settling on Iron Man 2, Kick-Ass, and The Losers. Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, Jonah Hex, and Red all loom on the late summer and fall horizon. Hell, you might even know just who The Avengers are!

So what? Well, many of these films are going to feature women as important characters. Some will have superpowers, some will just be packing heat, some may be entirely ordinary, and some will be nothing but love interests. One isn't even really a woman, but a young girl. But the possibility of cool is there for all of them, and there's rumblings in the land of Marvel that could shake up just who and what becomes a hot new film franchise in the coming years.

It's the last column of 2009, and one that follows on a maelstrom of commentary. I don't think I received a single comment or e-mail that didn't care intensely about Avatar one way or another. It's been fascinating and frightening to experience.

I feel as though movie fandom has taken a very extreme turn. Drew McWeeny noted back in May that it took a turn for the worse in 1999 after Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. "Fandom has changed profoundly in the last ten years, and it would be hard to argue that it's been for the better. Although I detest that sub-moronic oft-repeated metaphor about George Lucas 'raping my childhood,' I could be willing to agree that 1999 was the end of fandom's innocent optimism and the beginning of something rancid and self-entitled and angry, something that's more about tearing down and insulting than about celebrating or enjoying."

My professional experience is a lot shorter than McWeeny's, but I've felt a distinct change in the last year. Thanks to the Internet, I feel that fandom has expanded to the most unlikely of films, camped out, and become intractable. You're either for them or against them, with no middle ground of "I don't know. It was ok, I guess." There's little room for criticism. Everything from James Bond to Joss Whedon is a sacred cow. A casual Twitter comment about a film risks dozens of your online friendships, so imagine what a critical Geek Beat can do. No one seems to keep it in perspective. No one remembers that at the end of the day, fandom is supposed to be about fun. If you wear yourself out defending or attacking a particular film, I can't imagine you have a lot of time or energy left to enjoy anything.

As you've seen and enjoyed, 2009 has been a great year for sci-fi. But as we come to the end of our mini-renaissance, and breathlessly wait to see where it will go, I can't help but see some very troubling themes within sci-fi fandom. For a genre that's all about being open minded and exploring the unknown, we're incredibly comfortable with it taking massive shortcuts right into the land of cultural and sexual stereotype.

If you've seen even a trailer for Avatar, you can't help but notice the obvious similarities between the Na'vi and Native Americans. There wouldn't have been a million Dances with Wolves jokes if it was subtle. It's no surprise that the movie paints them with an even broader tribal brush, though to be fair, it throws in some African and Aboriginal Australian anthropology so as to seem a little less obvious. But when you've cast the great Wes Studi as the Na'vi chief, you clearly want us to be imagining them as blue Powhatans, but without the responsibilities of portraying them accurately.

Avatar's production designer Rick Carter* basically said as much to the LA Times back in September: "Take Dances With Wolves. Although God knows it was a wonderful movie and did as well as any movie could hope to do, it still had to run in that middle ground between the truthful Indian existence, as perceived today, and what is acceptable to the Indian community and then still be a Hollywood-oriented star vehicle for Kevin Costner. There was a lot of lines to toe and issues of political correctness, almost, to tell that tale. Now if you go back and make a movie that tells the story and is free of that ... All of that creates a "there" where you can stage a story that you can tell with a real freedom. The three of four leaps that you've taken, if you make them credible, you can mirror back on those themes that you were talking about and say what you want about them."

Do you know what movie came out 31 years ago on this very day?* Superman: The Movie. What a Christmas present that was for every kid and geek in 1978!

It's a nice anniversary to think about as every print and online outlet races to put up their Best of the Decade lists (and yes, I'm working on a superhero / comic one as you read this). Many are counting up the genre films in amazement, and feeling very culturally aware by labeling it the decade of the geek. But all of this began 31 years ago, except that no one thought to label it "geek" or snicker at comic book fans. Superman: The Movie was just that -- the movie. I wish I could pinpoint the exact cultural moment when Superman and his heroic ilk took about twenty steps back into something that studios were sure nothing but "fanboys" would watch. I'm sure it's possible, and I'm also sure it would be a relatively recent date.

But, this isn't going to be another "geek is chic" column. I've done plenty of those, and I imagine I'll churn out one or two more as the mainstream begins to encompass everything the geek held dear. No, instead I wanted us all to laugh over the fact that 31 years ago the most wholesome superhero in history took flight on the big screen. He thrilled the world with his boy scout antics. And now, funnily enough, we have Kick-Ass, where kids who grew up on a steady Superman diet take to the streets as vigilantes.

It's one of those awkward weeks for The Geek Beat. There's a real scarcity of meaty geek news out on the interwebs, and the timing is completely off on the retrospectives I've been pondering. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to fall back on a rather boring topic -- wishful adaptations. Hopefully, it'll get you thinking and discussing whether or not any of these stories would make good movies. If it doesn't, well, I hope it inspires you to add some books to your Amazon wish list.

By now, you're looking at the title and that picture of a gun-wielding monkey and thinking "She can't be serious." But I am! Sort of. In looking over my creaking shelves and stacks, I noticed that a lot of the books I love, hand out, or just had a really fun time reading are animal related. Frankly, I was surprised at just how many edgy tales resorted to zoology to make their point, but I really shouldn't be. Authors have been using our furry friends to dish out some allegory since ancient times. In the modern world, such stories seem to really fall into three camps -- those that "soften" something terrible by using animals, those that intend to shock you even more, and those that are just having childish fun with the concept.