Tag: Batman

Michael Bay VS. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

by Matt Blackwood

First they put nipples on the Batsuit, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Batman fan.

Then they reduced The Force to midichlorians, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Star Wars fan.

Now they’re coming for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I am speaking out. Shouting in fact. And I’m not alone.

In case you haven’t heard, Michael Bay recently announced that his 2013 reboot would redesign the Turtles’ origin as extraterrestrial. Instead of ordinary pets mutated with ooze, Bay’s Ninja Turtles will be aliens. From space. Turtle-shaped aliens.

As you might imagine, the blogosphere lit up like a mannequin covered in light bulbs at the news. Nerds all over the Internet gathered to bay at Bay, voicing their vitriol at the change to their beloved TMNT.

The anger was so widespread, in fact, that Michael Bay was forced to address it head-on with an official statement on his website:

Fans need to take a breath, and chill. They have not read the script. Our team is working closely with one of the original creators of Ninja Turtles to help expand and give a more complex back story. Relax, we are including everything that made you become fans in the first place. We are just building a richer world.

Bay doesn’t understand why people are so upset when they haven’t even heard the full pitch of his changes. So I will explain it to him in a language he understands:

OOM-BAY!!

But seriously, the reason we aren’t happy is obvious. These are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. If you are willing to change something as fundamental as a descriptor in the title, how can anything be safe?

This is the type of mercurial change thrown out by a suit that doesn’t get the importance of art in pop culture, that doesn’t see how committing to and enriching a story is better than tossing it out and using a new one. The decision was clearly made by someone who was not a fan of the Turtles, only of the money that can be made off their name.

Michael Bay doesn’t have any love for the Turtles; if he did, he wouldn’t be doing this. Besides, after the inglorious debacle that was the Transformers trilogy, how can we be expected to trust this guy with our favorite franchises?

Which face do YOU trust?

So why don’t you chill, Michael Bay. Because that’s what people do when they don’t care one way or the other. I’ll be over here with the nerds, worked up into a frenzy and telling anyone who will listen. Because I do care. Because it matters to me.

People often confuse nerd rage with Internet trolling, but the two couldn’t be more different. Trolls draw from a place of hate, a deep dark well of dissatisfaction that they can’t release in their public lives. They wait until they can hide in the high grass of the Internet and let their bile fly.

The Secret of the Ooze

Nerd rage, on the other hand, comes from a place of love. Our aggression is that of a mother protecting her child. We love things so much that we can’t stand to see them destroyed.

Because that’s what defines us nerds. Love. Forget all of the descriptions you’ve heard; we don’t need to be hyper-intelligent, socially awkward, or technologically inclined. Nerds are people who love something so much that they examine it obsessively in an effort to completely understand it, and thus to ultimately understand ourselves.

I love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I grew up watching the cartoon, collecting the action figures, playing the video games. I even played TMNT with my brother and some kids around the neighborhood. The Ninja Turtles gave me countless hours of pure childhood joy.

Michael Bay gave me racist robots.

Tyler Perry's Mudflap and Skids

Even if the Turtles aren’t your thing, if you’re a nerd like me, I guarantee something you love has been tampered with, tainted, or destroyed by non-nerds. The Rise of Cobra, the gentrification of The Last Airbender, whatever 2003’s The Cat in the Hat was supposed to be- something has been marred forever thanks to the tinkering of people who don’t love the characters the way you do.

Or maybe your favorite story is next.

If we don’t tell the Michael Bays of the world exactly how we feel every time, they will take our silence as implicit consent. And without a solid phalanx of dissent, the suits will interpret a mix of negative and positive comments, no matter how lopsided, as “indeterminate”. We have to band together under a common nerd banner and cry “NO” to Darth Vader crying “NO.”

We need to speak up for the Turtles, or they won’t be there to speak up for you. Because they’ll be on Ork or something.

Heroine Addict: Let’s Talk About Rape

by Molly Mahan

This past weekend, I was having a lunch date with a fine gent who happens to be a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. While emphatically discussing the books and the show, I made a comment on how great the women are depicted in the story and how it really could be examined as feminist literature, if you were so inclined. My date looked at me, shocked and perturbed. “Are you serious? Unless you’re [a short list of female characters which has been redacted for potential spoilers], you’re going to be raped. At least once.”

I tried to make an argument for how that was realistic, given the time period, and that the fact that GRRM even allows for women to play in his Game of Thrones was pretty awesome (Yeah, Tolkien. I’m looking at you. Eowyn aside.), but the conversation pretty much ended on that note. Which got me thinking the rest of the weekend about rape in fiction. The main question that came to my mind was, since these characters are controlled by an author (or some other conglomerate), is it okay for a character to be raped or is it fridging as usual? As with all things, it depends on its purpose and how it affects the character after the fact.

Retroactive rape is still rape.

For many a costumed heroine, rape is part of her origin story, either originally (Starfire and, depending on canon, Helena Bertinelli), or retroactively tacked on (Felicia Hardy). Even male superheroes are often subjected to rape. Though, in those cases it is less often about power and usually due to a female villain trying to breed some kind of super heir. In the Batfamily, there are only two characters that I can think of who have not yet been raped, nearly raped or a product of rape and they are Kate Kane and Cassandra Cain. Don’t worry, though, they’re pretty new to the game, so they have time. Same goes with Team Arrow, although Mia (who may be retconned?) did have some serious trauma with her history in the skin trade, but she was still able to fight crime, despite having AIDS. Even Kyle Rayner of the Green Lanterns was drugged and raped and the whole island of Themyscira is made of the souls of women who were mistreated by men in their past lives. A lot of DC references, but Marvel’s not innocent here. Ms. Marvel, the lady Hawkeye and Mockingbird have also been raped.

Kyle Rayner feels used… We’re guessing he saw the Green Lantern film too.

As you can see, rape is a prevalent trope in comics, and it affects both male and female characters with almost equal frequency (which is odd, but nice to see something is at least equal among men and women, right?). The problem with these instances is that the rapes scarcely affect the character in the long run, or at all. None of these characters dwell or angst about what happened to them. This sometimes stems from the fact that comics are serials with multiple authors over time, and depending on who is currently penning the book, he or she will concentrate on certain aspects of the character’s persona. But more often than not, it’s because these characters are viewed as weak, and not in the “I can’t carry a box that weighs more than 40lbs” weak. But in the sense that they don’t carry their own title and their existence is in virtue of the fact that they support the main hero, They are not seen as characters in their own right, so they can go through the wringer, the grinder and be served as Sunday dinner, just so the villain can “get at” the lead. None of the victims need to overcome the pain or trauma they just went through, because the pain and trauma that occurred on the previous pages wasn’t about them, but their (frequently male) cohorts and how he has been able to overcome the horrible things that just occurred to his beloved.

This is why it gets put down as “Women in Refrigerators” or “Stuffed in the Fridge” (as it may happen to men). The raping, murdering, etc. happens, but it has little to do with the character it happened to and everything to do with those who care about said character. Or it’s just to have something controversial happen to keep the books selling, but after the conclusion of the arc, it is never addressed again and no real healing occurs, either for the victim or the reader. And that is why there is a problem with rape as it is often depicted.

Though, those characters that are “strong”–Kyle Rayner, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson–either don’t remember the event or just never bring it up again. Either way, weird. You’d think a man like Bruce Wayne, with so many emotional issues, would have a serious problem with Talia Al Ghul taking advantage of him, but apparently not! Although, I have a serious qualm with that whole scenario in and of itself, as it stems from a pretty good story (Son of the Demon), where Bruce may actually have found his one true love. And while I’m no fan of Talia (and a Cat x Bat ‘shipper to the end!), it was nice to see The Detective happy with a woman. For once. As for Dick Grayson, maybe he is so jaded by all his romantic trysts that he finds it all old hat and doesn’t care that he’s been raped–twice. I don’t know the reasons why these issues are never addressed, but I definitely find it curious. Why have a rape scenario if you’re not going to address it?

Batman: A Victim of Rape. Yes. BATMAN.

Before writing this article, I looked up the statistics for rape. According to the US Department of Justice, by way of Wikipedia, 1 in 6 women are either victims of rape or have been nearly/partially raped. In the US. That’s just under 17%, and I’m not certain if that is adjusted to include the number of rapes that go unreported. Either way, it’s a more frequent occurrence than how many women develop breast cancer in their lifetime (1 in 8), and that has a whole month dedicated to it, and it means we all know someone who is dealing with that trauma, whether we are aware of it or not. Which means, every writer of comic books knows–or, possibly, is–someone who has been raped or nearly raped, which gets me to thinking, as statistics are wont to do: if you know someone who is suffering, be it deeply or something that only crosses her mind when there is a trigger present, wouldn’t you want to create characters that actually deal with their pain rather than ignore it or pretend it didn’t happen?

Which brings me back to A Song of Ice and Fire. By virtue of the fact that it has one author, George R. R. Martin, and, potentially, a definitive beginning and end, all of the events that happen in the novels occur with purpose. Additionally, is written from 3rd person multi-perspective, meaning the reader gets to view the events from a variety of different view points. Some of these characters are women, and some of those women go through the wringer, grinder and are (nearly) served up as Sunday dinner and some of them do the wringing, grinding and serving. It’s a wild world in Westeros, but the pain is palatable. They aren’t just victims, even if we sometimes think of them that way. Despite all her faults, Sansa is aiming to survive and live through her experiences just as much as the beguiling Cersei, come hell or high water. If you can give even your most loathsome character that trait, then even if everyone around her views her as pathetic, she still has a lot of grit to her. That’s right, I said it: Sansa has grit. It doesn’t matter how much she internalizes all her fears and emotional trauma, she’s still managing through those books better than her brother Bran made it through the pilot episode of Game of Thrones. (But I don’t want to give too much away about just yet, as I still want to do an article on the awesome women of Westeros.)

Basically, what I’m saying is not to not write rape scenarios, but if you’re going to do something like that, at least understand the repercussions and ramifications such and action will cause. Not just to those who love the victim, but to the victim, too. Let them deal with the pain, on the page. Research your characters thoroughly and show us how they deal with it on the page so that those who have been hurt might be able to learn how to do deal with it, too. It’s a serious issue and one that affects more people than I’d like to think possible, and therefore should be addressed with delicacy and care. It’s not something that should be used just to sell books.

This would be a hard one to forget for numerous reasons.

As a reader and fan of fiction, I like to imagine that writers have a great duty in being stewards to the collective consciousness, by bringing humanity to a fuller understanding of each other, rather than just being purveyors of all that is wrong with the world and insight further fear or misunderstanding. So, if you’re going to abuse your characters, at least know how it will affect the character going through the experience, and not just those around her.

The Dark Knight Reviewed

by Jonathan

I’m not going to hide it, but ever since I saw Adam West don the spandex, I’ve been a Batman fan. I’ve slugged through the good movies (Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Begins), the goofy movies (Original Batman movie) and the travesties (Batman Forever, Batman and Robin), all in the name of a love for the cape crusader. With this in mind, I eagerly as possible in a post-Phantom Menace world, I’ve awaited the release of Dark Knight, the newest movie in this linage of batman movies.

Its been 24 hours since I was let out of the movie, and all I can say is this:

The Dark Knight is amazing.

While there is no denying that the Dark Knight is an action film at its core it is really an ensemble film. Each core member of the cast, Bale, Ledger, Eckhart and Oldman in their respective roles of Bruce Wayne, The Joker, Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon are given equal screen time both together and alone. This results in the movie being as much a study in character as it is about exploding buildings. The biggest question addressed by the movie is of how these characters deal with their responsibility. Ultimately many of the characters, both major and minor, are shown to shy away form making any firm choices where they would ultimately be responsible. This is shown from the mob unleashing the Joker on the city to Dent’s reliance on his double headed coin.

The biggest part of this move that everyone will be talking about is the portrayal of The Joker by Ledger. Gone is the joke buzzers and mayhem of The Joker from his previous incarnations, and instead in its place is a calculating man who is severely left of centre. This Joker is an agent of Chaos who prefers to cut his victims instead of gassing them. The horror of this character is further strengthen by drawing from elements in the comic, The Killing Joke. Most notably is the idea of The Joker attempting to show that any man, no matter how good they are, can be destroyed by a really bad day.

Being a new take of the character, the film makers also made some interesting changes to his origin. The biggest being the refusal to give him any origin or motivation for his actions. As Alfred says in the movie, ‘Some men just want to see the world burn’, and The Joker is this man. While the rest of the cast is shown to struggle with the weight of responsibility and the choices that must be made, and lived with, The Joker is shown to be a primal force of nature. He comes in like a hurricane, causes his damage, and when he is finally dealt with, all are different for the experience.

Ledger, like Eckhart and Oldman owned their roles. I got chills watching the scenes where Ledger and Eckhart interacted with each other. Each monologue by Ledger is also a treat to watch, and the attention paid to the finer details, such as body language do nothing but build his case for an Oscar nomination this year. In general the casting for the film is strong, with perhaps the weakest point in it being the title character Batman. Bale is shown, and continues to be the best Bruce Wayne to grace the screen, but his Batman, and his raspy voice is at times distracting.

We cannot discuss this movie without addressing the one question on everyone’s mind, is the Dark Knight better then Iron Man? If you looking purely at the generation of money, then yes, Dark Knight will be the better movie. If you look at the question in terms of acting and story, then the answer becomes less clear. To compare Iron Man and the Dark Knight this way is like asking a father to pick between his two children.

And as comic fans, we are all the better for having two children then just the one.