Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Why everybody going Batcrap crazy over Ben Affleck as Batman is a little misguided pt.1

Let's be honest here a few of yall are mad because you don't like Ben Affleck as an actor, those folks hey if you don't like somebody you don't and nothing the person does will EVER be good to you. I'm not talking to you, because you are allowed not to like who you don't want to like. I'm the same way with Dane Cook, dude just isn't funny to me. While there are roles where I say okay, yes Dane Cook worked in that, they are few and far between and I ain searching out a Dane Cook movie JUST to see if he worked in it. We could get into how I LOATHE Jamie Kennedy ENTIRELY but you know what that is a blog in itself, when he came out he was like a poor man's version of Dane Cook to me so yeah he had no chance.

Some of you guys are basing your dislike for Ben Affleck as Batman because you disliked the Daredevil movie, I am partially talking to yall. Mainly because you are mad at Ben Affleck because you were expecting a Blind Spider-man which is YOUR fault not his. Some of you really don't read Marvel Comics, don't understand where MOST of their characters come from, and thus when you come at it from the ORIGINAL DC stand point you get some chapped hides. From a guy pushing 40 let me give you the basic breakdown of DC vs Marvel: when I was younger MOST of the DC characters were models of perfection, yes they had the normal super hero mishap Superman his planet was destroyed. But his life:he was a kid who had almost perfect Step Parents(John and Martha), was raised on a farm with love and caring, and while he had a few issues tamping down his powers as a child(well not really in a lot of the early comics he didn't get his powers til his teen years so he had a mostly normal life) for the most part he had it pretty steady. The Flash: was a pretty decent police lab tech(don't know if they called them csi's back then but normally he worked in a lab doing work for the police), a lightning bolt hits some chemicals he becomes your faster than life speed demon. Oh wait I should pause I am doing the comics from MY Childhood I understand there was a flash before Barry Allen I just didn't read him that much, the Magical Ring green lantern either. Even Batman Rich kid, having a pretty good time then he's parents are killed after a pretty good night and while still privileged he is tortured for the rest of his life and goes out to fight crime. Early on he actually used guns, was less of a fighting specialist and more of just a brawler, and while he had gadgets he wasn't as super prepared as he is now.



Marvel comics was more of the misfit who got powers to stand up for the little guy. Reed Richards is the super nerd, who had the jock best friend who kept the bullies at bay, with the hot Army brat/government employee family girlfriend(originally kind of just a basic blond in later iterations at least close to him mentally), who is brighter then almost anyone in the world and thus is rarely understood(I am not going to get into the who is smarter Doom or Richards debate). Reed Richards believes that he has the perfect way to view cosmic anomalies, builds a ship to do it, takes his young girlfriend, her teen aged cocky surfer boy type brother(may be seen as child abuse now but then pfft he'll be okay), and that Jock turned astronaut best and gets them all bombarded by cosmic radiation. Yes they all get powers but his best friend becomes am aesthetic monstrosity who has to date a blind woman to get affection. Most of Reeds life for the first 20 years was spent between fighting crime and trying to give Ben some semblance of a normal appearance(look up the Thing Ring, it's Hilarous).   Bruce Banner another brilliant guy, rarely listened to, often bullied , but another guy who knows his crap, saves a cocky teenager/young man (notice a theme) and ends up with an awesome power with a terrible twist. Spider-man the polar opposite of Johnny Storm in a sense, hell Johnny was Spider-man's persona before he got the powers. He was quipish, a prankster, mouthed off and rarely serious. Peter Parker lost his parents young, dove himself into science(I think Richard Parker was always a scientist, I believe for a time he was a government scientist but scientist none the less when he was brought up), was always bullied(yes there were bullies in the comics in the 1960's so no kids bullies are not a new thing), and somewhat mousey. His Aunt and Uncle loved him, but they weren't rich so while he had a brilliant mind he didn't have all the resources to explore it ala say a Tony Stark. He gets bitten by a spider while at a radioactive science display at NYU or Columbia gets his powers but CONTINUES to be bullied while Peter Parker.

In Defense of Daredevil
 
Now let's get to Daredevil. Matt Murdock is the son of a Prize Fighter Jack "The Devil" Murdock(in some comics it says Battlin Jack Murdock who fought like "The Devil" but basically DareDevil is partially in honor of his murdered father's in ring name), his father is a Journeyman boxer who never really was great but he had plenty of potential, I believe his mother always died when he was really young. Matty may or may not have been bullied as a kid, but he was always a bright kid, good in school(because his dad demanded it), and the apple of his fathers eye. The Blinding:now this one you could get a little picky about in some comics I read Matt Murdock is blinded while either helping a little old lady across the street and pushing her out of the way while a truck with improperly sealed radioactive waste speeds past cutting the corner too quick, pushing a baby stroller out of the way with the same speeding truck scenario, or of course the movie version where he walks up on his father(who he thinks is a dock worker but who is really muscle for the local underworld boss) beating up somebody runs away angry and an accident spills the radioactive waste in his eyes. Now while he does not have the moniker "Daredevil" yet basically once he is blinded he is Daredevil he discovers his ability to see with sound, read most typeface with his fingertips, have balance better than a cats, and a grip like no other. He builds up the muscle later, but yeah he has the abilities he just spends his teenage years training(you know LIKE BATMAN). Now in the older comic versions where Matty lost his eyes being heroic, while his dad always dies after not throwing a fight whether or not he was a heavy first and Matt catching him collecting is what re-inspires his dedication to pugilism can sometimes be misty. And usually yes it is the King Pin who kills his dad, though it is Wilson Fisk working for the local underworld boss not being him. So as far as the movie is concerned yup pretty much right on the mark for "Origin of the character."

Matt Murdock is from Hell's Kitchen, not Queens like Peter Parker his life is gritty. So the whole dark turn the movie took that appalled some people, yeah you pulled a Siskel and Ebert review The Fantastic Four on that one. Siskel and Ebert famously complained that Reed Richards was too distracted and aloof. Almost like not only was he the smartest person in the room, but that because of it he was always thinking about some abstract equation or theorem instead of the conversation he was in or who he was around. Ben Grimm was a brooding, forlorn, overly somber character who while he had somber moments seemed to be too wrapped up in his pain. And Johnny Storm OMG he was so Juvenile, all he did was play pranks, be goofy, and seem to be too wound up in his own looks and charm. Which to anybody who ever read a Fantastic Four comic or watched a Fantastic Four cartoon before the movie came out would have told them, um yes that is exactly who they are. Sue Storm you can give them a slight break on, they tried to update her character in the movie as they were about to in the Ultimate Universe of Marvel comics so yeah Jessica Alba did her best but it was a little messy. And the whole "always ending up naked thing," while I have no problem seeing Ms. Alba naked, you could have displayed her problem controlling her powers just as easily with a:disembodied head, headless or limbless body, or a ghostly/transparent figure standing in the room trying to have a conversation with you. Even a few unintentional invisible walls or obstacles would have been cool.

My point being you are mad at an Actor for actually portraying the Character to the source, not to the Status of what you think a hero should be. So yeah some may say the "cocky blind guy" in like the Park Scene with Jennifer Garner may be a bit much but that would be Matt Murdock. This guy doesn't have a happy life, hell in the comics not only does Elektra die but later on he dates one of his biggest arch rivals Typhoid Mary(the chick who can kill you with her touch, yeah he has issues). Marvel really doesn't do happy, they do dark and tortured, they do characters that you can easily slip yourself into because you just went through that same problem yesterday in class, the lunchroom, at work or hell on the playground.  And they were based in "the real world" New York city, not "Gotham", Queens NY not "Metropolis"(okay Queens isn't really the same as Metroplis it is it's own Mega city sort of like Atlanta/Chicago/Maybe Orlando or Miami) so you could if you wanted to walk to a street and say "Hey Spider-man fought the Rhino here" and while it was a fantasy world the usually did try to draw the stores and features close. Or like they did in the movie "They call it Clinton now" because while Hell's Kitchen was a real place I believe they did change the name in the real world so you mirror it in the movie.

Okay so we got the "description of his character" out of the way, Daredevil was not perfect. I mean while they did the whole "realistically creating a costume that could exist in the real world" for the character with the leather sort of biker's gear for Daredevil, they then got lazy with everybody else. Elektra meh just throw her in anything. Bullseye let's ignore the importance of his costume(we are going to keep him just as crazy, just ditch the costume), just have him walking around in an EXTREMELY LOUD(at least for his foil Daredevil with the super hearing) trench coat, and then ASK for a costume later. Now yes, it was nice to see Bullseye constantly reaching into said trench coat for whatever everyday item he was going to turn into a deadly weapon(which by the way is a skill he and Hawkeye share. "The Hawk" ain just good with a bow and arrow my friends, Oh No, he could nail you with a bowling pin at 200 yards if he wanted to and I'm sure if I checked did it to somebody) but you could have done that with a bunch of pouches around his waste in his costume too. It's a black wet suit with a bullseye on the head, really not to hard to pull off. As for King Pin Micheal Clark Duncan, in a white suit, Nailed It(and the edition of the cane was a nice touch, sophisticated and useful)!

This is getting "Long in the tooth" so I am going to make this part one and do a part two.

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