Man of Steel

I have, at some time in my life, seen all of the original four Christopher Reeves’ Superman films.  However, I have never revisited them.  That is to say, although I have seen all of them, I have probably seen none of them since the inception of the VCR, when I watched them as a young lad with my father.  Even at a young age I remember enjoying the first two and not so much the latter two.

I’m not so sure how well the films really hold up, especially considering the strides made in special effects, and I am perfectly happy allowing my diminished memories of them not be ruined by a second viewing three decades later in order to prove or disprove the notion.   Regardless, I have been given the impression that the first two are the standards by which Superman films will forever be measured. 

Now that technology is all growed up, surely we can create a better Superman movie, right?  One that doesn’t rely on ropes and pulleys and green screens and city models.  I mean, sure, Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns has already come and gone.  A solid but unremarkable entry in to the series marred by a noticeable lack of action and an inordinately lengthy run time, met with many unenthused “mehs” and forgotten about quickly and quietly.

But we’ve learned from those mistakes, yeah?  We’ve learned about making superhero movies with better dialogue and effects, with richer characters and better pacing.  Christopher Nolan has shown us the way, and his involvement along with David Goyer’s has to be a positive.

Man of Steel opens on a dying Krypton.  In the first few minutes we are assailed by numerous plot points.  Superman (referred to in the movie either as Kal-El or Clark Kent, but referred to by me as Superman) is born, and then we quickly cut to a scene where Supes’ dad, Jor-El (Russel Crowe), is arguing with Krypton’s council.  Krypton is dying due to…over usage of limited resources?  Some manner of population control?  “Degenerative bloodlines?”   Who the hell knows.  What’s important is that the military leader on Krypton, Zod (Michael Shannon), thinks they should conquer a nearby planet and Jor-El believes they can live peaceably with another civilization, should they put forth the effort to find a suitable one.

So Jor-El fights Zod, escapes from his grasp, and ships Superman off to Earth.  Zod eventually catches up to and kills Jor-El.  Somehow, Zod and his band of military ne’er do wells are captured, although we are not privy to how this happens or how long it takes.  Then, in the first of many completely inane plotting points, the Krypton council decides to ship them to the “Phantom Zone.”  They killed a number of Kryptonians, plotted a coup, and their punishment is to be shipped off of a planet that literally explodes the very next scene.  Ah, a wise choice.

I think, at this point, most of us know the story of Superman and one pro of the film is they don’t spend a whole lot of time rehashing Clark Kent’s (Henry Cavill) discovery of his powers.  They are told in brief, surprisingly human, flashbacks.  They manage to give the feel of him discovering his powers over time in an organic manner rather than just deciding one day to, say, lift a car off a dying man.

After an unknown number of years, Zod and his group of lackeys, fresh from escaping the Phantom Zone, eventually hunt down Superman on Earth.  In another plot point I never understood, they hunted him down because, before his death, Jor-El imbued Superman with the DNA “codex” of the Kryptonian people.  I have no idea what this means.  If you’re  a Kryptonian you just have the sex with another Kryptonian and you create a Kryptonian, right? Or does it have something to do with the population control and the “degenerative bloodlines?”  Again…it’s hard to say and doesn’t really seem to matter.  It’s mostly just the reason Zod has to invade Earth and kill Superman.

Zod lands his ship in Metropolis which, rightfully so, creates a bit of commotion.  He demands Superman be brought to him.  Superman goes to surrender himself and is taken in to Zod’s ship, along with Lois Lane (Amy Adams)…a bit more on that later.

Lois escapes with the help of the ghost of Jor-El…more on that later…then Superman follows suit, saving Lois from a tumbling escape pod just before it crashes to the ground.  What follows is a pretty reasonable action sequence between Superman and the Kryptonians.  I found myself enjoying the film well enough up to this point, even if I didn’t understand why, when you throw a Kryptonian in to a train car, it explodes like a bomb.

Superman defeats a couple of the Kryptonians, and they retreat.  This is one and a half hours in to the film.  A reasonable length.  Had the curtain dropped at this point I would have walked away saying the film felt half-baked and was unfulfilling.  Lucky for me the movie is another hour long, so that I could walk away saying it was a festering pile of dog feces.

I can overlook a lot of crap in a film, especially a comic book-based action film.  I can overlook that Amy Adams is miscast and wooden.  I can overlook that Lois Lane is unnecessarily shoed in to every single scene she appears in.  I can overlook exploding trains that shouldn’t explode.  I can overlook Superman saving two soldiers, Lois Lane TWICE, and a random family in a museum, all JUST IN THE NICK OF TIME. 

Here are some things I can’t overlook.

After Zod runs away with his tail between his legs, he decides to unleash the “World Engine” on the Earth.  The World Engine.  The ultra-dramatic shot of Michael Shannon forcing the line “Release the World Engine” up from his larynx is one of the most embarrassing scenes I have been privy to, especially considering I was just touting him as an actor who was overlooked for an Academy Award Nomination for his role in Take Shelter.

OBVIOUSLY terraforming.

With the World Engine released and causing all sorts of chaos in Metropolis, we are taken to a 
shot of a military compound.  General Swanwick (Harry Lennix), looking pensively at some sort of computerized satellite feed projecting on a big screen, asks “What did they just hit us with?”  In the span of ten seconds, TEN SECONDS, Dr. Emil Hamilton, who I am assuming is some sort of military scientist, replies, “Oh my lord, they’re terraforming the Earth!”  How in the hell did he decipher that?

Now, a quick flashback.

When Superman originally finds the ship he crashed in he finds a small, two inch rod, shaped like the Superman emblem.  This is a “command key,” and, apparently, when you put it in any random orifice in any ship, it brings forth the consciousness of Jor-El.  And not just, like, a semblance of him.  He walks and talks and makes decisions and espouses his opinion.  During the scene in which Lois Lane escapes from Zod’s ship, he not only helps her escape, but actually tells Lois Lane how to defeat Zod.  This is both the most pathetic and literal interpretation of Deus Ex Machina I have ever bared witness to.

Back to the current plot strand.

Lois Lane….yes, reporter form the Daily Planet…convinces both Superman AND THE MILITARY, that she…a reporter from the Daily Planet…knows how to stop Zod.  And here it is:  Superman’s old ship is powered by a “Phantom Drive.”  Zod’s ship is powered by a “Phantom Drive.”  If they crash Superman’s ship in to Zod’s ship, it will create a black hole which will suck the Kryptonians back in.  So why do colliding Phantom Drives cause black holes?  I don’t know.  Where will it suck them “back” to? I don’t know.  Why will the black hole not suck up all of Metropolis?  I don’t know.  But just like that they all agree this is the best course of action because Lois Lane claims a dead alien told her so.

The plan is two-fold.  Superman is going to go ahead and destroy the World Engine and, in the meanwhile, the military are going to load up his old ship in a giant bomber and crash it in to Zod’s ship.  And, of course, Lois Lane is going to go with them on this extremely dangerous military mission to destroy aliens.  Because, you know, she’s a reporter.  From the Daily Planet.

As Superman approaches the World Engine, two tentacles spring forth from its carapace in defense. Sigh.  Yes, you read that correctly.  We are now treated to an action sequence where Superman battles CGI tentacles for what seems like an eternity.  Eventually, he defeats the tentacles (I can’t believe I had to write that sentence) and destroys the World Engine, just as the other group crash the two Phantom Drives together, creating a black hole that kills all the soldiers, the military scientist, and all the Kryptonians, but in spite of any semblance of logic, shoots Lois Lane AWAY FROM IT. 

We then cut to a shot of Superman looking up in to the black hole and he sees Lois Lane falling away from it.  Meanwhile, from where he is standing, on the ground, there is debris getting sucked in to the black hole.  So…let me get this correct.  The debris which weighs more than Lois Lane and is further away is getting sucked in to the black hole, but she is falling away from it.  And just to add a cherry on top, Superman flies in, grabs her, and then can barely fly away from its gravitational pull.  Lois Lane must be, like, really dense.  She must have some sort of condition.  Like, mercury for blood or something. 

To top it all off the film is poorly written and flatly directed.  There is not one moment of humor throughout.  The film only even takes one shot at humor.  One.  Here’s how it goes.  At the very end Superman confronts General Swanwick about trying to spy on him with satellites. After the confrontation he flies off, leaving Swanwick and an unnamed female soldier standing there, looking after him.  The female soldier is grinning broadly and when Swanwick asks why she tries, quite unsuccessfully I might add, to act shy and flustered, and answers “I think he’s kind of hot.”  What, are you kidding me?  You have to be kidding me.  Jesus tap dancing Christ somebody leave something on the editing room floor!

It just felt like a bunch of studio execs sat around saying, “Hey, remember when Bryan Singer tried to reboot Superman?  And the main complaint was that it was boring?  Let’s put some action in this one!”  But the action sequences aren’t well choreographed.  They feel like they’re thrown in because superhero movies need action sequences, with no real idea of how to orchestrate them.

Zack Snyder, whose eye-catching 300 now seems like an eon ago, interjects no energy in to the proceedings.  As a matter of fact, I would argue the direction actually defuses what little energy there may have been.  With the exception of the flashback scenes, which I felt to be the most fully realized parts of the film, everything seems to have the color drained from it, with filters of blue and sepia removing all traces of warmth.  Look, I know Nolan wrote and produced, but Superman isn’t Batman, and this film should be colorful instead of muted.

I haven’t seen Superman Returns since the theater.   I remember walking out thinking it was really boring, but at least it looked good and was well cast.  When I got done with Man of Steel, I think I was literally sitting in my basement shaking my head.  How did everything go so wrong?  I went from marginally enjoying the first half of this film to hating it.  I felt like I was watching some old, sub-par episode of Star Trek.  Command keys, phantom drives, world engines, ghosts, terraforming, black holes, codexes filled with the DNA of dead Kryptonians fused to the living cells of Superman.  One of the main action sequences revolving around a battle against CGI tentacles?  Really?

Although I can’t recommend this film, I did like Cavill’s casting as Superman.  He’s handsome and muscular and when his hair is coifed just so he looks as much like Superman as any actor to ever play the part.  But knowing that the next film is set to be directed by Snyder yet again, with Goyer writing and a freshly cast Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne, I can’t help but wonder how DC always seems to get it wrong, and Marvel always seems to get it right…just like when I grew up reading comics in the 90s.

Ticks, Abomination and Shuffleboard

Remember the movie "The Abomination?"  No, of course not.  It's 25 years old, cost about $3 to make and was distributed and produced by "Donna Michelle Productions."

How about "Ticks?"  You probably don't remember it either, as it was only recently released on DVD, but at the very least it starred such "big name" acts as Seth Green, Alfosno Ribeiro and Peter Scolari.
Recently my friend Kris Riley came to visit and we had every intention of visiting the "Horror Hound" convention here in Cincinnati.  But it quickly sold out so, instead, we (re)watched "Ticks" and "The Abomination" and recorded a podcast about it.

Oh, also we visited a Chinese restaurant's bar (Rong Tan's) at 10:00 on a Sunday night during a blizzard.  And insisted on watching the Florida Gulf Coast NCAA game.  While playing the shuffleboard game they have set-up in the dining room.

Click Here for Ticks/Abomination Podcast with Kris Riley!

Check out the trailers on Youtube to get a good idea of the sort of films we're talking about, then listen to the podcast.  That's good stuff.

SETH GREEN, GET THAT TICK OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!

YO! MTV Raps. The Cards.

The set of random trading cards I bought recently off eBay was purchased mostly because it contained four packs of UNOPENED YO! MTV Raps cards.  I would like to pretend it was because it had Goonies  cards or Gremlins cards, and those definitely sweetened the pot.  But I grew up listening to hip-hop in the early 90s, and four unopened decks…….with TWENTY CARDS APIECE in them.  Well, that’s a bit hard to pass up, don’t you think?  Who knows what gems I would find in EIGHTY cards from a 1991 pack of Topps rap cards.

After opening the first pack, I was a little bit disappointed by something I should have fully been expecting.  Four acts in particular were a bit overrepresented.  MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, LL Cool J and…..Public Enemy?

 My favorite, of course, is the one on the right, with the entire group.  Professor Griff and the S1Ws, Flav, Terminator X and, of course, frontman Chuck, holding his boombox like a gun (“Can I tell them that I really never had a gun? But it’s the wax that the Terminator X spun”).  Great pic.  And is that Chuck in a Cincy hat?  I always remember him in that Raiders hat, probably because it’s the same one he is sporting on the cover of “It Take a Nation of Millions…," my personal favorite PE album.

The last one….I put it in because it’s kind of weird.  Chuck sporting Flav’s iconic clock, wearing a track suit with a rooster very near the armpit, at a terrible angle where it looks like something glowing is sprouting from his snout.  If I’ve learned one thing from two decades of listening to hip-hop, it’s all this must mean Chuck is a member of the Illuminati.  Take that Jay-Z!

I mean, I understand PE was big back then, but I hardly expected them to match card-for-card with the crossover appeal of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.  In the end, after opening all packs, I had 7 LL Cool J cards, 8 MC Hammers, 11 Public Enemies and, the “winner,” if one was to gauge winning by the amount of times your likeness appears on 20 year-old cardboard, Vanilla Ice with 12.  So, in my pack of eighty cards, nearly half of them were represented by these four acts.  Bummer.

But there was a silver lining.  Look at these pics!  Hammer in a million sequins, Hammer with no shirt, Hammer looking smoothed out (is that a bow-tie crocheted on his vest?  Ahead of his time.  Take that Bruce Bowen!), Hammer, I dunno, ducking the torts from legitimate hip-hop artists whilst in front of an American flag? (“What you say Hammer? ‘Proper,’ rap’s not pop if you call it that than stop”).

 I can’t decide if these references are too vague or not.  Hopefully it’s what you might expect reading a piece about really old “rap” cards.

The Vanilla Ice were simultaneously the most disappointing and also the best cards in the sets I received.  Here’s a set of three that are all “different.”

I mean…..really?  The bottom two are damn near identical.  Most of Ice’s cards look like they were taken in one night at the same concert during about 10 minutes out of the set.  Probably all the photographer could take before abandoning the show.  Look, we all really liked Ice, Ice, Baby, but that’s because it’s a really great David Bowie song we didn’t know about when we were 11.  I dare say, if pressed, not a single person could name one other Vanilla Ice song and, personally, I would like to keep it that way.

This card?  Probably my favorite in the deck.  Why?  Because it’s Vanilla Ice WEARING A VANILLA ICE SHIRT!  That is…totally something.  I’m not sure “self-absorbed” covers it, so I’ll let you peruse through the thesaurus at your leisure.

 There were also a couple Bell Biv Devoe cards included.  You may argue whether or not they were really “rap,” (they weren’t), but that’s what made their inclusion all the better.  And this particular card exemplifies New Jack hip-hop smoothed out on the R&B tip with a pop feel appeal to it.  If you didn’t know what that meant before, you do now.  In short, orange trousers.

I want to wrap this up with the weirdest cards in the deck and my favorite cards in the deck, but first I want to mention that I did receive a couple really nice cards.  Most of the BBD cards are fantastic, reflecting perfectly the styles from that era.  Eric B and Rakim had a few cards in the deck, as did Slick Rick and De La Soul although, somewhat mysteriously, no Tribe Called Quest.  Also a couple sweet poses from 3^rd Bass, KRS-One and EPMD, all of whom I liked back in the day.  They even slipped in a single Paris card.  Astonishingly underrepresented was RUN DMC.  I received one card in my four packs.  Enough of the good stuff though.  How about this gem:

 This is probably the weirdest card.  The floating head of Ted Demme.  I know, right?  Who in the hell is Ted Demme?  He is decidedly un-90s hip-hop.  Turns out, according to the back of the card, he was the producer of the show.  So, yeah, I got this guy, but an Ice Cube or Naughty by Nature card?  Meh.

I also received cards of Dre and Ed Lover (warranted) and one of Fab 5 Freddy.  And, I mean, I guess he was a VJ on the show but, really, who cares?  We all watched for Dre and Ed Lover’s shenanigans, let’s be real.  The thing worth mentioning about Fab 5 Freddy’s card is on the back, out of the myriad of shots they probably had to choose from, they slapped a picture of him FISHING with MC Serch of 3^rd Bass.  Fishing.  I’m not sure what stereotype to skewer here, because there’s plenty to choose from.  I’d certainly love to see that episode.

My fave cards to wrap it up.  Anybody who knows me is aware I choose digital underground in the early 90s as my favorite group, and this is a great group shot.  And Kool Moe Dee?  Probably the late 80s/early 90s most underappreciated hip-hop artist.  “I Go To Work” is masterful.  In every way.  Well.  Maybe not the video.  But still, production, flow, lyrics, masterful, even today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agnKPLrG2E0

I Never Met a Trading Card I Didn't Like

Ever since I read this article on Dinosaur Dracula, I’ve wanted a pack of the Fright Flicks trading cards.  http://dinosaurdracula.com/features/fright-flicks-cards/.

I love horror movies.  Not only did I grow up watching them, but in my late teens I became even more obsessed.  My friend, Kris Riley, and I used to wander in to the independently owned rental store down the street from us and rent the worst horror movies we could imagine.  You know, something, like, say this:

I remember that one in particular, because it had a button on the cover that turned on a green, blinking light in the eyes. Pretty sweet.  For 1990.  If I had any idea how to make an animated gift, I probably still wouldn’t, because I’m real lazy. 

So why in the hell wouldn’t I want a bunch of horror movie trading cards?  Especially horror movie trading cards with completely random one-liners written in.  But, while looking for Fright Flicks on EBAY I stumbled across something….well….maybe not better, but just as amazing.  Goonies trading cards!  And while looking to find the person who would give me the most Goonies trading cards for the lowest price, I found something definitely better.  A guy selling a mixed bag of Goonies, Batman Returns, Gremlins and some YO! MTV Raps cards.

When I got the cards, there was a surprise inside.  Maybe I overlooked it in the description, blinded with excitement as I was with the other cards.  Also included were a good 8-10 Baby: Secret of the Lost Legends cards, a 1985 flick about The Greatest American Hero stumbling upon some still living dinosaurs.  Not on a deserted island, but just hanging out in Africa.  And one of them is a baby.  Thus the name.  Apparently, in the 80s and 90s, they would make a trading card out of anything.

I just went to EBAY and typed in Freejack trading cards and nothing came up.  Still, it did give me a list of items I may be interested in based on the search and, while the complete randomness of the recommendations make it quite obvious it had no idea what to recommend based on that particular string of words, it did manage to recommend a full set of Seaquest DSV cards.  Based on this evidence I’ll let you decide whether or not the above statement about making a trading card out of “anything” is too strong or not.

I barely know where to begin with these cards, so I’ll start by saying the Gremlin cards are the clear winners, with cards that not only help tell the story of the film, but also depict scenes from the whereby it appears somebody painstakingly took the time to find stills from the film that would actually look presentable once placed on card stock.

Gizmo Surprised!  Rand Peltzer, dejected!  Crazy old lady, getting ready to get shot out of the side of her house like a cannonball!  Judge Reinhold, incarcerated!  Those four cards alone made the purchase price worth every penny.

The Batman Returns cards, on the other hand, oh dear.  Quite the opposite.  Looks like somebody just took every, say, 5 minutes? of film and, regardless of what was on screen, made it in to a card.  It has been a loooooong time since I have seen this film, but even in my small sample size I seem to have an inordinate amount of cards where penguin is wearing only long underwear.  And standing near a giant rubber duck.

I was a little disappointed there were only 10 Goonies cards which, I assume, was probably only one pack.  There was a close-up shot of the skeletal piano player and one of Chunk brandishing a sword.  A few more fairly generic offerings.  However, two of them were pure gold.  A pretty fair percentage considering I only got 10 cards, I think.

The first was a card featuring an action sequence of the octopus scene which wasn’t even in the final cut of the film.  I know this scene exists, but I have yet to see it.  I love the idea of a trading card with a scene from the film not even in the film.  Boy howdy, back in the heyday of trading cards, this one must have fetched upwards of $1.00!  The movie card equivalent of Bill Ripken’s 1989 Fleer baseball card.  Well, for some of us anyway…

 The next card is a cast shot.  I liked the shot, it frames everybody pretty well.  Except for Josh Brolin.  But, you know, what else did he ever do anyway? God knows he could never boast of having used the film to springboard himself to as successful a career as a Jeff Cohen or Martha Plimpton.

 The thing is, it's titled “The Goonie Pledge,” which automatically makes me think of the scene where they find the coins in the well and Mikey gives his speech (“The next time you see sky, it'll be over another town. The next time you take a test, it'll be in some other school. Our parents, they want the bestest stuff for us. But right now they gotta do what's right for them, 'cause it's their time. Their time, up there. Down here it's our time. It's our time down here. That's all over the second we ride up Troy's bucket.” *Insert heartfelt nostalgia here*).  The shot on the card, however, is clearly not from that scene.  So, my curiosity piqued, I turned the card over to see what they were talking about.  And oh, my, was there a surprise waiting for me there.

“I will never betray my goon dock friends, we will stick together until the whole world ends.  Through heaven and hell, and nuclear, war.  Good pals like us will stick like tar.  In the city or the country, or the forest, or boonies.  I am proudly declared, one of the Goonies!”

An actual pledge, written and, assumedly, recited, to display one’s loyalty to the Goonies! 

I have never heard of such a beast.  I know for damn sure it’s not in the film and 1985 was well before we could ever start thinking about DVD extras.  So where did it come from?    I just can’t get the picture out of my head of a bunch of Topps employees sitting around a stereotypical oval meeting room table, brainstorming ideas for card captions.

“We should just use the speech from the well scene”

“Hell no, we’re gonna leave our mark on card #85.  It’s gonna be an honest to God pledge.  In rhyming couplets.  We’re gonna incorporate nuclear war and tar.  And damn the naysayers!”

I would love to find the guy(s) who wrote this particular card and see what they’re up too nowadays.  I’d like to think they own a small restaurant which sells nothing but hot dogs, and they are all named after characters from the film.  “The Chunk” comes with a little bit of everything on it, “The Mikey” is your all-American dog, with just ketchup and mustard, maybe onion could be optional, and “The Sloth” is prepared with nuts, caramel and chocolate.  But no nougat, because that’s just plain disgusting. 

I also received 4 UNOPENED packs of YO! MTV Raps cards, with TWENTY cards apiece in them.  Mighty impressive.  I grew up loving rap, but I’m not completely sure it jibes with the rest of this piece, so I am going to make it a separate blog sometime in the future.

However, I will leave you with a couple of the Baby: Secret of the Lost Legends cards.  I don’t have a whole lot to say about them.  I’ve seen the movie, but not in three decades, and had mostly forgotten about it until I opened my package.  I sure in the hell didn’t know the lead was Williiam Katt.  And the cards?  Well, they’re pretty much garbage.   About 50% of them just featured a close up of the dinosaur's neck and head.  Like he was just some big sock puppet.  Blech.  Dinosaur special effect in the 80s.  Just think, a mere 10 years later, an absolutely classic film about dinosaurs hit the silver screen, becoming one of the most popular films ever, redefining the way we looked at special effects, and spawning two sequels.  Of course I'm talking about Carnosaur, a modern day classic.  CLICK HERE FOR THE TRAILER!  

Mutant Turtles are Dead, Long Live the Aliens!

I’ve started to write this blog entry before, when the original announcement was made that a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was going to be made.  At that time, a deafening roar of scorn was thrown up from every male age 25-35, so loud and indignant it reverberated off every mountain top and every grassy hillock from the Appalachians to the Cascades. 

“No, not the Turtles!  No not Michael Bay!  No, not aliens from another planet!  This must be stopped!”

As the rumors floated in, I gathered up all the contempt and vitriol I could muster, focused it not unlike Daniel Rand focusing his Chi to his hand, and with one, all-powerful, infinitely relatable gesture, I shrugged my mighty shoulders.

“Meh.  Who cares?”

Really?  Who cares?  What “serious” director wants to helm a NINJA TURTLES film?  Aronofsky?  Spielberg?  Nolan?  Maybe that’s how Scorsese would like to wrap up his career.  The reason the keys to the car have been handed over to Bay is because he has made three Transformers film and despite the pervasive bellyaching that none of them are worth watching, somebody is sure in the hell going to see them, as they have made a TON of money.  Hard though it may be to believe, the movie biz is usually about making money.

I’m not going to say some folks don’t do it for the art, they obviously do.  Another conversation for another time.  But, if somewhere in the deep reaches of your mind, you think for ONE SECOND any film based on a toy was made for any reason besides cashing in…well…you’re addled.

I always have trouble writing blogs like this, and the reason why is because I have problems compartmentalizing my ideas.  I need to get in to the original Turtles, the (bastardized?) cartoons, the movies, the actors, Sam Rockwell, the lucre; the filthy, filthy lucre.  Although this was a rant I wanted to save until the end of the piece, I think it’s crying out to be mentioned now.  Megan Fox as April O’Neil.

When this casting choice was made, the voices, lulled in to complacency by a notable lack of activity on the subject, swiftly rose up to voice their disdain yet again.  I saw no less than a half dozen Facebook posts, no less than a hundred disgruntled fanboys making their discontents known on comment sections of various entertainment websites.  And, once again, with all the vigor I could manage, I gave an indifferent, “Who cares?”

Why NOT Megan Fox?  Is there really some female actress everybody is so intoxicated with that, had they hired her to play the part, everybody would have given a collective sigh of relief?  Like, “Oh, well, they cast Amanda Seyfried as April O’Neil, NOW I’m going to see it.”  What, you’ve sat down and watched so many Megan Fox films you just can’t stand her anymore?

“Oh, man, I just sat through Friends with Kids, Megan Fox is soooo terrible, so miscast.”

You were predisposed to hating the film.  It doesn’t matter WHO they would have cast, you would have attacked every social media outlet with the “bad” news.  On top of all that, if there’s one thing I’ve learned since Al Gore invented it, DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET.

Hey, you remember just six months ago when all the online media reported this film wasn’t even going to happen?  Wait a second……..but………

In an age where all we do is read a snippet from a totally untrustworthy website who attributes an anonymous source “close to the project,” and then regurgitate it ad nauseum like it’s fact, I can’t help but be a little skeptical about everything I read.  What I’m saying is, don’t be surprised if Megan Fox “leaves” the project six months from now due to “creative differences.”  And by “leaves” I mean she was never really associated with the project and by “creative differences” I mean she was never really associated with the project.  Not saying it’s GOING to happen, just saying it COULD, and I would be nonplussed.

On a side note, I would TOTALLY cast Amber Tamblyn as April O’Neil.  Dear Hollywood, please contact me from now on when you need pure casting genius.  Thanks.

Assumedly, from what I can gather, Bay is getting ready to “destroy” the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Here’s the problem.  As adults we are somehow unable to come to grips with a simple fact.  All the stuff we watched when we were kids?  It’s garbage.  It’s totally disposable.  It was marketed by capitalist giants to our younger, naive selves -- like Nino Brown waving crack rocks at Pookie. 

I was never really a HUGE Turtles fan growing up.  Well, the Turtles as most people know them anyway.  My next door neighbor when I was growing up, Evan Camp, was a few years older than me and he introduced me to the Turtles at a young age.  The original Turtles.  Black and white, violent, and foul-mouthed.  You could, really, if you wanted to be a purist about it, make the argument that Playmates ruined the Turtles in the first place, bastardizing Eastman and Laird’s dark, brooding mutants and creating colorful, kid-friendly, surfer dudes.  I’m not really here to do that, but it could be argued.

This isn’t to say I didn’t have a few action figures, or play the NES game, or the arcade game.  Yeah, I saw at least the first movie, and maybe the second, in the theatre.  But I wasn’t much in to the cartoon or the toys, really.  Looking back it feels like they were a little on the periphery of my childhood.  I was born in the late 70s.  I had a glut of He-man and GI Joe, and even though they didn’t quite have the same aggressive output volume-wise, I also loved the Thundercats.  And Ducktales.  But who didn’t?

Don’t worry, I’m getting to the point here.

You know what I have in my possession?  The Best of He-Man.  Volume 1.  You know what’s almost impossible to sit through?  A SINGLE episode of He-Man.  You know why?  Because it’s rubbish.  And because I’m not five anymore.

Eschewing a bunch of the points I have forgotten by now, this is the crux of the TMNT conundrum.  If anybody, ANYBODY, who is all up in arms about Michael Bay (who, by the way, according to “reports” isn’t even directing the film anyway) or Megan Fox being involved in this project  could name the actress who played April O’Nei l in the first film and ALSO who directed it, I would literally (read: figuratively) fall over dead.

Never happen.  You know why?  Because they were NOBODIES!  Hacks, paid to spend some screen time with MEN DRESSED IN FULL SIZED TURTLE SUITS in order to fleece children’s parents of their money.  Although to be fair the director, who I won’t name just in case it’s right on the tip of your tongue (slathered with sarcasm), did direct a slew of music videos.  Oh, and also one other really good movie.  “Coneheads.”  I’ll let you decide for yourself whether or not that’s sarcasm.

Herein lies the problem.  Nostalgia is such a weird thing.  When I think about how easy it was to make me happy when I was six it gives me a warm fuzzy, and we all want to be able to recapture the feeling.  In a futile attempt some months back, my friends and I attempted to watch 24 hours of movies based on comic books.  In general, it t urns out I’m too old for that shit.  But, more relevant, one of the films was the original TMNT film.  I had to leave the room.  Couldn’t sit through it.  Absolutely terrible.  Maybe some people can resurrect a warm, ebbing glow by watching the original TMNT movie, or some old cartoon.  I’m not one of those people and, in this case, I believe I’m probably in the majority.

This is a still from GI Joe.  No, really.

I watched the first Bay directed Transformers movie and I hated it.  I also hate the He-Man movie and the attempt to resurrect the cartoon a few years back.  I won’t even consider watching the GI Joe movie made in 2009.

It was a marketing ploy then, and it’s a marketing ploy now.  Michael Bay isn’t “ruining” the Turtles, he’s trying to take an old idea and reintroduce it to today’s youth in order to make money.  If you’re 35 years old and yelling you don’t want to see the Turtles as aliens from another planet, it’s all good.  Just means you’re not the target market.  And if today’s youth likes it, and the Turtles are resurrected, albeit somewhat differently, good on him!  And if not…who cares? 

Because, you know what?  All of those movies, all poorly made, in my opinion, have absolutely no bearing on how I remember my childhood.  As a matter of fact, my favorite recollections are opening up new action figures on Christmas and then sitting around and playing with them all day with my brother until it was time for bed.  When I reminisce, never once does Shia LeBouf jumping in to a Bumblebee Camaro ever sully my memories and I find it hard to believe I will forsake any memories I have of the Turtles based on a movie I’m too old to see anyway.