No, Rian, Force Flight is an abomination

SPOILERS for Disney's Weekend at Yoda's 2: The Next Cash-In

STAR WARS has a villain problem.

By Star Wars, I mean Disney's Star Wars, which is not Star Wars.

THE FLASH Season 2 got Wally West completely wrong

I have a lot of complaints about The Flash Season 2, mostly pertaining to Zoom and, well, everything about Zoom being a less-impressive ripoff of the Reverse-Flash. But I want to talk about Wally West today.

CRISIS ON EARTH-X review

Suck it, Drumpf.

BREAKING: WB MAKES FIRST INTELLIGENT MOVE SINCE DAWN OF JUSTICE CAME OUT

Joss Whedon has been fired from Batgirl.

WB has no idea what it wants. WB has no idea how to get it. WB has no idea what it's doing.

But it does know that this time, heads have to roll. They stand to lose $50-100m on Justice League, and... haha no they're not firing the studio head who mandated it be 2 hours long. They're firing the schmuck brought in to clean up their mess.

Stop with the Martyrdom of Zack Snyder already

Guys.

This is a bad look.

"If not for Joss Whedon, the film wouldn't have sucked."

Oh? By "sucked" do you mean "it did poorly" or "it was bad?" Because those are two different things. And I'm just going to say it: Zack Snyder is not a critical darling, he's never going to get the praise he "deserves," and his films are never going to do as well as they "should."

"The studio interference-"

Stop it. I like Snyder, and even so I think he was laughably miscast as the director for some Superman movies. Yes, I get it, he likes making Big God Metaphors. But let's just compare the box office of some of Snyder's films against Marvel's Underpants Brigade, shall we? For funsies, I've added in the films of Christopher Nolan during that time period as well.

(There actually wasn't a Marvel Underpant movie in 2009, so I have to go with the closest release)

2008: The Incredible Hulk: $263m (Marvel)
2008: The Dark Knight: $1.005b (Nolan)
2009: Watchmen: $185m (Snyder)
2010: Inception: $826m (Nolan)

2011: Sucker Punch: $90m (Snyder)
2011: Thor 1: $499m (Marvel)
2012: The Dark Knight Rises: $1.085b (Nolan)

2013: Man of Steel: $668m (Snyder)
2013: Iron Man 3: $1.215b (Marvel)
2014: Interstellar: $675m (Nolan)

2016: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice: $873m
2016: Captain America: Civil War: $1.153b

Again, Watchmen, the adaptation of THE MOST FAMOUS GRAPHIC NOVEL OF ALL TIME, did worse at the box office than the Marvel Underpant movie that was so awful they had to recast the lead.

The fact of the matter is, when you're making a Big Dumb Expensive Movie, you need to get butts in seats.

Zack Snyder does not do that.

His films are great for weirdos like me and the film nerd class. But he is wildly out of step with what the average popcorn-munching imbecile wants.

"Justice League" review, part 1: How Infirm a Foundation

I'm not even going to touch the film in this post. I'm just going to explain why it was utterly doomed.

A while back, I wrote "undercutting Snyder with the BvS theatrical cut was the single dumbest thing in this entire attempt at a cinematic universe." Well... no, it wasn't. But at that point, it was the worst thing you could have done.

"That point" being: you've already committed to piggybacking your Big Shared Universe onto Zack Snyder's "The Only Way This Jesus Metaphor Could Be Less Subtle Is If I Released The Film On Easter Weekend," a title only slightly less cumbersome than what the studio ultimately went with. The Extended Cut only softens the blow as to what a train wreck Dawn of Justice is. There is no amount of excess footage that can get around the following problems:

1. Mark Zuckerberg cosplaying as Lex Luthor pulls a goddamn piss prank at a Senate hearing.
2. Batman and Superman team up because their mothers have the same name.
3. Wonder Woman teams up with them because Batman sent her an email.

So I'm just going to come out and say it: using Zack Snyder as the vehicle for your attempt to take on the Marvel juggernaut was a strategic mistake even Napoleon wouldn't have made.

This Week in Comics: October 11, 2017

Let's dive in, kids.

We're looking at Oz Effect, A Lonely Place of Living, The Secret History of Task Force X, Bizarro Reborn, Manslaughter, and Metal this week.

So I'm reading SHATTERED

I'm not entirely sure who the book was written for. You can tell the authors have no love for the Republican Party or the current president. But at the same time, they're up-front about the fact that Hillary was her own worst enemy and her inability to convey why she was running was a huge handicap.

I do think the authors are both Hillary fans who are upset over her defeat, but, like the campaign itself, they can't really come up with a reason for her to have run aside from "it's her time." But there is a fair amount of interesting information in there, despite their pretty evident bias.

One thing the book doesn't touch on at all is the death of Justice Scalia and the role that played in the race. I remain convinced that if McConnell had folded on Garland, Trump would not have won. A great many traditional Republican voters would have stayed home, rather than reluctantly pull the lever for Trump on the off chance he could win.

Something I hadn't considered that the book touched on was the role Black Lives Matter played in Hillary's defeat. It was in part her pandering to that group that alienated working-class whites.

Bernie wasn't robbed: a theory

The theory goes that if only that Nasty Woman Hillary hadn't locked down the superdelegates, Comrade Bernito would have sailed easily to victory over Der Trumpenfuhrer.

This theory is... well, problematic. But let's leave that for another day. What I want to focus on is the argument, apparently, that Hillary locking down the superdelegates was some sort of foul underhanded play.

It assumes that this was cheating? I guess? Like the Electoral College, which apparently nobody knew about prior to Election Night 2016. The Democrat primary system was this arcane thing that nobody bothered to study.

Only... Bernie Sanders was running for the Democratic nomination. If he didn't study the rules, then he didn't, you know, do his homework.

WONDER WOMAN

So as longtime readers know, my favorite James Bond film, and one of my favorite movies ever, is On Her Majesty's Secret Service, a 140-minute opus that features an athletic lead whose acting abilities received some criticism, begins with a fight on the beach, features an obviously doomed relationship, and has a story wherein a spy and his band of unconventional allies must stop a plot involving chemical/biological weapons.

Since Wonder Woman is a 140-minute opus that features an athletic lead whose acting abilities received some criticism, begins with a fight on the beach, features an obviously doomed relationship, and has a story wherein a spy and his band of unconventional allies must stop a plot involving chemical/biological weapons, it has some really, really big shoes to fill.

It mostly succeeds, although it did kind of lose its stakes when Diana got buried under a building and walked it off during the final fight. A-.

It's also, before I get to the spoiler section, astonishingly conservative. Consider that Wonder Woman was invented by a BDSM enthusiast who used his swimsuit-clad heroine as a siren song for the matriarchy, and then consider that this film sees Diana leave her liberal feminist (hinted lesbian) paradise to go fight a war against an enemy her mother/queen insists does not actually exist (he does), using enhanced interrogation techniques and a massive sense of gung-ho interventionism along the way.

Oh - and I couldn't place him while I was watching the movie, but Field Marshal Haig, the guy in charge of the British war effort, is Lord Commander Jeor Mormont. Just throwing that out there.

Spoilers below.