Gaze upon me, mortals, and tremble! For I am the brute that walks!
Star Spangled War Stories #108
“isn’t sophie turner kinda married in real life now? aren’t some staged marriages legally binding?”
It depends. Did they use a real minister? I thought Gonzo was going to play the minister.
He said Star Trek is too “philosophical”? Screw that noise.
I don’t know when this interview happened but I AM SAD AND ANGRY NOW
The philosophies in Star Trek are kinda part of the actual setting. If you don’t get that, why are you allowed to make Star Trek movies.
Sigh. The whole point of Star Trek is that it’s philosophical. If you don’t want philosophical Science Fiction, there’s plenty of that for you to enjoy, but Star Trek is philosophical. Philosophy is part of Star Trek’s DNA, and if you’re given the captain’s chair, you’d better damn well respect that.
This just… hurts.
This reminds me of all the executives being hired to run YouTube networks who probably couldn’t name more than one YouTube channel.
I don’t really find this offensive? Mostly because it’s his right not to like a thing. It’s just not his jam. The way Star Wars is not my jam. I think he has come to respect the franchise, though. These movies would not be so enjoyable if he didn’t.
And when you’re making a huge film like this, with an enormous budget, that is expected by the studio to be a summer blockbuster, it has to appeal to fans and non-fans alike, so his point there is completely valid. You have to make a film that’s going to bring in the hardcore nerds (like me - I lost my shit over “the Mudd incident”) and the people who wouldn’t know a Gorn if it walked up and engaged them in poorly-choreographed combat. JJ says they made a movie that they were all happy with, and that’s great. I am glad this movie will appeal to a wide audience that isn’t just Trekkies. I want it to do well, because I want another one.
So, yeah. I’m not taking this personally, because it’s not personal. It’s personal preference, and I get that.
Yeah, this didn’t bother me either. Like, I appreciate Star Trek - like a lot of other millennials, I watched TNG with my parents in the evenings - but I can’t say that watching through seasons of any of the series has ever appealed to me. My impression is that it’s pretty cheesy (you cannot dispute this with TNG) and episodic (although I gather DS9 and Enterprise are different w/r/t plot arcs), which are two of my less favorite TV things, you know? So I was a casual fan of TNG and Voyager - I’d watch it if it happened to be on - but never really got into the rest of series. (I was a little young for DS9, and then just never caught an episode of Enterprise at all.)
JJ made a movie that included the things I loved about Star Trek - action, comedy, vision of the future, Karl Urban - but that caught and kept my attention and never really made me roll my eyes, which is super hard to do, because I am really picky about what sci-fi I watch/read. (It’s not necessarily about quality, but more about whether I can get into it or not, which is why Lois McMaster Bujold is my favorite.)
I get that people miss the whimsy of it. Whimsy just doesn’t happen to be my thing. It’s the same reason - and I’m going to get kicked off Tumblr for this, but here goes - it’s honestly the same reason that I never got into Doctor Who or Stargate (two series which all of my friends are crazy about). I mean, I like David Tennant, just like I love Leonard Nimoy! I will watch a limited amount of anything with them in it - but it won’t sustain me through something that I can’t connect to. I connect to these movies, and considering the box office I’ve got to assume that I’m not the only one.
It’s not sacrilege. Honestly. JJ is a pretty good director of blockbuster films, which is why these movies are pretty watchable, but he’s also really good with characters, which is why I kept watching Alias for like three seasons too long and why I keep coming back to the reboot universe. But to view a universe that has had author after movie after series after book after comic after cartoon after everything as some impenetrable, fanatics-only zone of pure virgin canon with no change in tone at all is kind of ridiculous.
See, I’m fine with someone like Abrams not appreciating classic Star Trek. Here’s my problem though—if he didn’t even like Star Trek, then why the hell did someone think it was a good idea to hire him to make a movie about that thing he didn’t like? If he can find nothing he likes about the franchise except the parts he came up with, then I think it’s reasonable to question his qualifications to shepherd said franchise.
Admittedly, this isn’t a new problem—Rick Berman famously had little use for the original series when he was running the other four TV shows. But I don’t recall Berman ever running around trumpeting that detail on national television.
When Abrams says “I never liked Star Trek, so I made a Star Trek that I would like, for people like me” he’s basically saying “people who aren’t like me, people who already liked Star Trek, are a low priority.” And maybe they have to be, in order to revitalize the franchise. But that doesn’t mean I have to like him telling me, essentially, “I don’t care if you like it, it’s for people who didn’t like it.” That strikes me as New Coke marketing. Apparently the reward for my allegiance to this fandom is planned obsolescence…which suggests that nuTrek fans can only await the same fate. That’s not the message I’d want to send to my audience, if I was Abrams.
My twin nephews »> yours
Sometimes I’ll be caught in the rain wearing sandals and I’ll roll up the cuffs of my pants and walk through puddles saying this to myself.
Reblogging because this is the perfect “I got all my tests to pass” reaction image.
THE SUPERIOR FOES OF SPIDER-MAN #2
NICK SPENCER (W) • STEVE LIEBER (A)
Cover by ED MCGUINNESS
Variant Cover by PHIL JIMENEZ
• With superior villains come superior problems as the year’s sleeper hit continues!
• Out of bail and aiming to stay out of jail, Boomerang must get his cronies on target – but does the PUNISHER have them targeted already?
• Nick Spencer (AVENGERS) and Steve Lieber (HAWKEYE) continue this most evil exploration into the Marvel U!
Everytime I see Boomerang’s still wearing that belt buckle, I get a little happier.
The Art of Fooling Thor:
What Loki Said VS.What Loki Meant
This is the exact point in the movie where I knew a) they were going to get Loki right and b) some people would miss it and fatally misunderstand Loki.
(via heytherekittencakes)
From Thunderbolts #57, one of my favorite sequences in the series.
Abe Jenkins became a supervillain to gain respect, and a superhero to earn redemption. He’s saved the world, served prison time, and had his appearance altered. All of that had been to get to here—retired from super-business, settling down with a nice girl, and making an honest living. And suddenly here comes Baron Zemo to tell him that was never the point. The life he dreamt of is an illusion; the life he’s led is his true destiny.
This is a theme in the book that transcends the whole “good guys and bad guys” business. People like Abe—or Zemo, or Songbird—aren’t meant to be normal, they’re meant to endlessly strive and struggle and challenge everything around them. Thunderbolts don’t rest in heaven or earth, they’re always wandering in-between.
TIME FOR A SCREAMING MIMI SPECIAL
Do we really want an incorruptible, nice guy superhero?
Go, read. I’ll be here when you get back.
Let me start off by making it clear that I agree with this guy’s basic premise.
It is resolutely true that for many people — including about 85% of those who approach you when they find out you’re writing a book called SUPERMAN: THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY — the character is “boring,” “a stiff,” “too perfect,” “not relatable,” etc.
And what I’ve been saying to those people is pretty much Bowie’s thesis — which let’s note is a bit more nuanced than “SUPERMAN IS BORING LOLZ.” No, what he’s actually saying is: Superman is difficult to write stories about. And he’s right.
I don’t think, however, that the point he makes in “Reason 1” — that Superman in isolation is not interesting, because he’s too perfect — carries much weight. For the simple reason that no one writes about Superman in isolation. No one writes about Batman, Spider-Man, Achilles, Gatsby, Dracula, or Pippi Longstocking in isolation, either. Fiction, even superhero comics, is always about relationships — relationships that exist to delineate your main character.
His “Reason 2” — that Superman without his powers isn’t Superman — is, I’d humbly suggest, wildly, egregiously, astonishingly, incandescently and provably wrong. Superman’s powers do not define him — they aren’t what make him a hero, any more than a firefighter’s fire-retardant gear make him or her a hero. Over and over and over again, in every media that delivers Superman to us, we have seen that his selflessness and determination — not the powers, the costume, the spit curl, the secret identity, the flying dog — are what make him Superman.
Bowie gets closest to why it’s so difficult to make Superman compelling in what he calls “Reason 3” — though I’d state it slightly differently: In writing fiction, you add tension and interest by keeping your characters from getting what they want in a variety of ways.
But surely it’s tough to keep Superman from getting what he wants, right? With the super-strength and the super-ventriloquism and whatnot?
Wrong. It’s very easy to keep Superman from getting what he wants, and tell exciting, gripping stories about him. A writer just needs to have a good feeling for what drives him, what he wants more than anything else. And here’s what Superman wants:
He wants to save everybody.
He wants no one to die or suffer, no matter the cost to himself.
Which is impossible. Unattainable. Even for him, even with all his abilities. THIS, we can maybe understand? THIS, we can maybe relate to? This inability to achieve what we most want, and the resulting desire to keep chasing it? This is why the best Superman stories deal not with him being robbed of his powers, but with him dealing with their very real limitations.
Because, as Bowie states, there IS a character from Greek myth that corresponds to Superman. He just got the wrong one. It’s not Diomedes. It’s not Achilles.
It’s Sisyphus.
(via rurone)
#a whale with black eyes stalks a human vacuum cleaner who managed to father a child somehow
i got a few
- a frigid, triggerhappy bitch rides a semi-immortal manchild for 20+ years and steals all his money.
- a mentally unstable head and spine attached to a robot body meets a colgate advertiser who basically HUEHUEHUE’s at him until he cracks. this results in the death of the colgate advertiser.
- an insufferable manslut and and his socially awkward friend stare at each other longingly for three years and eventually get one chance to fuck before being killed by some deus ex kid and space squids.
A suicidal drug addicted misandrist and an insufferable idiot show-off who doesn’t know shit about genetics or shirts fall in love then they both die thanks to said show-off’s brother killing them both
Also a mulletted psychopath and a weepy nerd have awkward sexual tension and constantly claim they’re not gay even as they adopt and raise a child together
A con artist who is in the perpetual mind-state of a 5 year old and a deaf social rights activist get sent to jail a lot by a man whose runs pretty fast until the con artist dies screaming NO HOMO and taking a bullet for the other
I need the translation for these.
The crazy thing about fandom is that, without context, any of these could just be weird interpretations of that Oreo/Chocolate Chip pairing that was going around.
I’m just going to pretend they’re all Homestuck.
Birdemic 2 goes above and beyond to prove it can be stupider than Birdemic 1.
Passing notes, 1944
They’re not very good at it, if I see them doing it from all the way over here.
(via madgeekyworld)
