All I'm hearing is a lot of "corporate speak" about "platforms" and "properties". They keep repeating how much they love the characters but I don't feel the love with rebooting the entire universe. Instead I see a chance for them to put their own stamp on the DCU and give their FOTM writers the ability to run roughshod over the DCU with their imaginings.
They say they are going to preserve certain story lines that are intrinsic to certain characters and have helped shape the DCU but I have a sneaking suspicion that they will alter these arcs to suit their own sensibilities (sort of how all the recent 70s and 80s "remakes" are nothing like the originals).
They repeat over and over about getting back to the "core of the characters", but I have a hard time seeing a justification for that when (for example) they remove B. Gordon's wheelchair, give her working legs again and slap her back in the Batgirl costume . The story of her being shot and becoming paralyzed IS INTRINSIC to the character. How can they remove that story from her past?
All I see is them not liking where the universe has gone in the last couple decades and deciding to take matters into their own hands to "put it right" in their minds.
They could EASILY explore new directions with all of these characters within the framework of the current setting. I think it's a ploy so they can claim "these characters are new, bad-ass, and are (our) fresh ideas, these are not your father's/mother's super heroes". The thing about youth is that most kids are attracted to "the new thing" and things that have been around even for just a few months or a year are considered "old". Revamping the DCU gives them an excuse to offer something "new" to kids, but I have a hard time seeing them being able to honor what has come before. Maybe back in 1952 comics were for preteens and teens, but in the past 3 decades, comics have come to have a special place in the minds of older generations who loved them as a child and who still find the concepts and characters compelling. Should that mean that there shouldn't be a line of books made for kids? No, but I also don't think they should take the characters away from us old folks who love them and instead make them only for kids as well. I think a series of comics for the old and the new can easily exist side by side.
I call bunk and shenanigans on this whole thing. Their corporate speak and constant reaffirmation of how much the "love these characters" leads me to believe they in fact don't care one bit about the characters and that this entire thing is simply money driven without any concerns for preserving the integrity of what has come before.
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Absolutely loved this article. Great kick off to what I hope will be an excellent series of articles. Great job Matt!
I would say there are lots of super powers that have been abused over the years and others that have been escalated to ridiculous heights of capability. I think this should be sent as a petition to Marvel and DC to get them to calm down on their treatment of certain characters.
Solid article though - glad to see other people think this way about comics and their writers.
@chalkshark said:That's right, murder is never a reasonable action for a good person. There is a huge difference between acting in self defense when those actions lead to the death of person and the deliberate death of another person that has been tactically planned. From a perspective of justice, yes I do believe Shaw needed to be ended. He was a deliberate murderer in his own right. A person like that needs to be removed from the equation of humanity (or mutant-kind, or what have you). I just believe the circumstances of his death were not morally correct in and of themselves.When your goal is to murder the people who oppose you or have done you wrong, you're a villain. You can put whatever rationalization you like behind your actions. You're still a killer. Magneto makes a point of stating that he's already the "better man", but the better man doesn't resort to murder. He could just as easily have fended off that missile attack by hurling them all into the sea. He didn't. He wanted to strike back at the humans. He could have brought those war criminals to justice. He chose to exact revenge, instead. Shaw was rendered completely defenseless when Magneto killed him. His death was not a quick, in the moment, during a heated conflict type of thing. It was cold. Deliberate. Clearly premeditated. Magneto kept that coin all those years specifically to do what he did with it. Magneto is so blinded by his rage & hatred that he doesn't see that you can't stand up for the oppressed by being an oppressor yourself.Yes, murder is such a morally absolute topic and in no way ever a reasonable action.Better man in terms of power, clearly. Which war criminals? You mean those working for the US and Russain government? Unlikely. Or do you mean Shaw? Poor Shaw. The man was a monster, potentiating a global threat. He was pretty much invincible; if Magneto hadn't seized that opportunity to kill him, he would have started a third WW and killed millions, if not billions of people. It was a necessity, even if Magneto did it out of revenge. And, to be frank, that scene with the coin just added an awesomely brutal circularity to the movie. I can't see how you can show any form of compassion for Shaw…. Shaw himself played along with the Nazi agenda, whilst not necessarily believing it (but still, imagine the innocents he killed). He shot and killed Erik's mother in front of him and evidently showed a vast disregard for human life. His views were like Magneto's but amplified onto human eradication.
The fact that everyone Magneto killed was incapable of defending themselves at the time of their death speaks to his very nature. He didn't duel anyone, he didn't even really give them ample opportunity to defend themselves on a level field of battle. There was no sense of honor in his actions. He was willing to kill hundreds of innocent men on battleships who were in that situation just because someone in a room thousands of miles away gave the order to fire missiles.
While I can place myself in the character's position and feel sympathy for his victimization, sadness for his loss of family and his loss of innocence, it does not change the fact that he was a murderer. He was a man bent on revenge, not justice.
It is so disturbing to see people nowadays twisting the concepts of justice, morality, and honor into something so much less and using emotional reasons as a scapegoat. Temporary insanity is a fallacy made up by lawyers to create loopholes in the judicial system and to justify a lack of judgment. Morality by it's very nature is subjective and emotional. It's up to us as people to be objective about emotional situations and not act out of passion, but instead figure out what the right thing to do would be in those situations. Just because you can sympathize and identify with the character doesn't make his actions right.
I'm not debating Magneto's intentions, you can clearly see his intentions are good, but his methods and his actions are clearly evil. Thats what meakes the character so compelling. A person watching such a well-developed villain will undoubtedly have his own morality tested as he identifies with the character.
Direct from IMDB.com:
"Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were considered to appear in the film as the elder Professor X and Magneto, but the idea was rejected as the filmmakers wanted to start a new X-Men trilogy, without any connection to the previous films."
So the concept of this movie is a complete departure from the original three and the Wolverine movie. I still didn't think the movie was that great. I feel you can't just ask people to completely discount what came before - especially when the previous offerings were a departure in the first place - in such a short period of time.
The aspect of time line no longer matters at this point if this movie is not connected to the other movies. They could have had Cyclops, Jean Grey, Angel, Ice Man, and Beast if they had wanted to, but I suppose they attempted to grab some little-known characters for this story so fans didn't have to contend with another version of established characters
Taken on it's own merit as a stand alone piece without ties to the four previous X-men-related movies, I'm chiefly not comfortable with Mystique's portrayal in particular. I liken it very much to Hayden Christensen's portrayal of Anakin Skywalker. I imagine it can be blamed on poor writing, but it also has something to do with the actor. An actor needs time to "get into the skin" of their character. As evidenced by every television series I have ever seen. The first season of every television series I've seen is comprised of uncomfortable actors trying to find their individual voices and also figure out how they relate to one another.
I'm also not sure two-and-a-half hours was enough time to cover all of the detail, various back stories, and internal motivations of twelve different characters, so I suppose some two-dimensional writing is to be expected.
To me this was a bizarre version of the Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier origin story set within a backdrop that involved other mutants, in an attempt to preserve that X-Men feel.
I am saddened that it wasn't more canon-inspired or that it wasn't at least based on the established continuity of the last four movies, but it's done and that's that.
Younger is not always better. And changing fundamental aspects of any character's origin is just wrong in my opinion. If a writer alters enough "details" in a character's past, that character then becomes either unrecognizable or nonsensical. It is unreasonable to assume that you can hold onto continuity while changing a character's origin.
Also does this mean that individual titles in other story lines will stay the same? Will we be able to pick up issues of our favorite stand-alone comics or is everything DC getting the reboot? I for one don't want all versions of DC super heroes to loose 10 - 20 years, change their personalities, and never be able to read about their more traditional characterizations.
....... ....... As expected as it was, that's crap. Nothing against Jim Lee and Geoff Johns but do we really need modernizations? The modern age sucks. Sucks hard. I don't want to read about a Superman who is hip and young and has stupid emo bitch problems with his powers. I want to read about a Superman who carries great weight and resonates as an established authority for DC's superheroes. I want a Superman who showed up in 1938. Who fought in World War II and has at least aged so damn slow that he can pass of as at least 30. I'm half expecting this reboot to be like Ultimate Marvel, nothing against that either but a lot of the characters are so unlikeable (such as the Ultimates). I don't want a gritty realistic take on these characters or a realistic cynical take on them. I don't want the Justice League to be a task force formed by the government. Modernizing an entire universe removes the element of fun and excitment that comics used to have. I'm not even talking about Golden and Silver age stuff, I just mean since 2000 comics have just gone haywire in terms of giving bullshit explanations for superpowers, i.e. the metagene. It's not enough to just be struck by lightning and have superspeed; oh no we can't accept that because it's just not realistic. Boo hoo, it's not about trying to apply this to real life science it's about enjoyment. It is distracting us comic fans from the sad truth that we're going to die one day; sad and alone, wondering where it all went wrong. A modernization is just worthless, because these characters will still be around in a hundred damn years - we'll go through ten more modernizations to try and make these characters 'accesible' to new readers; readers who shouldn't want to see their heroes deal with real life issues; nothing against that either it's cool to...try, but whatever real life issues they try to deal with they will just piss a lot of people off, like Superman did recently when he got involved into a real world issue, that he shouldn't have poked his damn nose into. It's just stupid, 10 years from now they'll repeat this. They shouldn't ignore their 75 years of history, they should include it. They should build up from it not break it all apart and try to knot it all together with turn of the century tape. Their continuity doesn't have to be this iron wall that new readers can't penetrate. Redesigning their costumes is fine, even though they'll just go for the traditional costumes in a few years. But modernizing it; just a shitty fucking idea.thank you! I couldn't have said this any better!
@G-Man:
I still do hold to the concepts of truth, justice and "the American way" as ideals that have the best interests of all citizens in mind, as I am a child of the 80s and that was the dogma that was fed to me.Truth was synonymous with honesty , justice was paying for your crimes, and the American way was about being allowed to be yourself, and liberty in general (both ideas that get messy now-a-days as well as per your blog entry Battlepig) but also about social responsibility and benevolence. Look at the JLA and JLU cartoons. In several places Superman is referred to as the perpetual Boy Scout. The Boy Scouts organization has a very clearly defined system ethics and mortality so it would make sense that if Superman is referred to as a Boy Scout and people perceive him as such, then you could apply at least most of the organization's values to him as a character. I do understand what you mean about Superman being an "empty concept" Battlepig, especially in this day of social and moral ambiguity, but I'm not sure I was trying to get that existential.
My argument is that here at Comicvine we seem to rehash the same ideas over and over regarding "is this character, an example of this or does that character value that". I'm tired of looking at this from the fictional world of the character's perspective. Let's instead discuss why writers have such anti-American tendencies or why writers feel it's necessary to make characters, who in the past have been champions of freedom and honesty, into characters that leave us disgusted or morally confused by their actions.
Nowhere else in the literary world are fictional characters discussed in such concrete terms as if it were the characters themselves who were responsible for their behavior. Instead, discussions revolve around supposition of the writers motivations and look to their characters as metaphors or "constructs" that the writers have created to illustrate a point of view - the characters they write about are kept firmly where they belong, as fictional characters.
I keep trying to figure out why there are constant discussions of whether or not the character is patriotic. Wouldn't it be a better use of time discussing why the writers seem to have a preoccupation with calling Superman's patriotism into question?And I totally agree we dont need any more 'is Superman patriotic' discussions. Its kind of obvious that he is. But in accordance with that patriotism he is uniquely aware of his status as Earth's champion. And that goes along with him being the 'only hope'. While he might not be able to face all threats solo, he is still Earth's champion in that he is the strongest and (and this is very important) he represents all that is good about humanity. I can think of no better champion!
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