BIRD? PLANE? Nope #SUPERSHIT
*This post contains spoilers!!*
Well, it’s me. It’s him. It’s T.I.M. I just went to see the new Superman movie (if you want to call it that…) with a dear friend Melody Munson, and her partner, Claire. Melody is a body-positive ally, just like I am, and she is an actress and an art coordinator. I respect her opinion, and at the conclusion of the movie she did say she liked it. Stay tuned on if that opinion changes… However, I’ve got some different thoughts. In fact, I’ve got some aggressive thoughts. As I write this, I am pounding the keys in frustration. It did not meet my expectations. It was extremely disappointing and absolute garbage. It pissed me off.
Let’s break it down. Well, before I do that, I want to clarify that James Gunn and I are social acquaintances and professional peers. I know the guy, I’ve spent time with the guy. We have even gone back and forth on subjective art. I do appreciate some of his work. We have Troma Entertainment in common. My movie The Nudels of Nudeland is still available to stream on their subscription platform of Troma Now. Lloyd Kaufman is a friend, has been on one of my San Diego Comic Con panels and heck once gave me a tour of Troma Studios in New York City. James Gunn has done some early work with Lloyd at Troma Films. He did Tromeo and Juliet, & Terror Firmer to name a couple. I got to hang out with Gunn at an anniversary screening of Tromeo and Juliet. We had a lengthy discussion about Guardians of the Galaxy before its release. People were saying they felt that the movie would bankrupt Marvel, sink it, and it would be Marvel’s first disaster. It wasn’t Iron Man. It wasn’t Hulk. It wasn’t Thor. It wasn’t Spiderman. It wasn’t anything people were familiar with. Not many people knew about Yondu, Star Lord, or some damn talking raccoon. We were teasing him lightly about how a talking raccoon might be the downfall of Marvel. Thankfully, I was proven completely wrong. Guardians of the Galaxy is the Star Wars of my generation. It holds up artistically, visually, and creatively. It was smartly shot, clever, beautiful, thoughtful, and heartfelt. It has a cool, fun, and amazing soundtrack. There is so much to say about how much I love it, so this is where my level of respect comes in for Gunn and his ability, as evident in his history, to transition from Troma to Scooby-Doo, to Slither, and now to Marvel movies. So, he can do amazing work. The one issue I can think of right now that we butted heads on was his movie Super, starring Rainn Wilson. There was an unnecessary rape sequence where a woman—at the time played by Ellen Page, who now goes by Elliot Page—was brushed off like it was nothing. Whereas if it were a rape of a man on a woman, people wouldn’t blow it off as just part of the story. Obviously, Gunn thought it was sexy or something, but he was wrong. Way wrong just like he was wrong in those inappropriate tweets that got him blackballed for a year. Dude’s sensibilities are off at times for sure. We traded barbs on Twitter over it. I have no issue calling him out when he does something wrong, and this movie is indeed one of his colossal blunders, it is #supershit.
However, this will not be a ‘I’m shitting on James Gunn’ post because I respect him as a person, but he does get carried away and needs to be reined in every once in a while. This movie, for example, is if he were a 16-year-old kid who was given the keys to a very fast car and then immediately crashed it. It was as though he was given too much creative control and power, and he didn’t have enough people who were willing to say “no” to him. Or at least question his decisions. I felt it was a shot glass full of a gallon of root beer. Overflowing terribly, and it was too much nonsense and boring. Near the end, I had to step out of the movie before the credits. I couldn’t take it anymore. I read all the spoilers earlier with the post-credit scenes, so I knew they were inconsequential to any DCU stories, and I was already overdone with the movie. In fact, by the third act, I was ready to walk the heck out. When I went back to the concession stands to buy a Superdog commercial prop bowl for my friends, the lady behind the counter even said, “Ohh, you saw Superman. I liked it!” I wanted to scream in frustration. How can everyone be so stupid?
So, let’s talk about the concept behind subjective art. I fully understand that people are allowed to like what they do and that I will not always share the same sentiment as everyone else. There are plenty of horror movies and trash that I love. For example, I Spit on Your Grave, the original from the ‘70s. Bloodsucking Freaks is another, even XTRO, are ones I love and adore. My point is that people are allowed to like what they like, even if they are wrong. However, I am looking at this from the perspective of one creator of art to another. If you break down the storyline, the characters, the arcs, the humor, the villains…everything! It doesn’t hold up. It’s awful! It is a step back for DC, and it is a step back for Superman.
All right, let’s go ahead and dive into this #supershit movie. **Again, spoilers! If you haven’t seen the movie and intend to, but don’t want to be spoiled, then go away!** Let’s start with our hero of the story. Superman. Superman was written as a dumb, inconsistent, naïve character. And when I say dumb, I don’t mean All-American Apple Pie optimistic. I’m saying dumb because they had these fictitious countries, Boravia and Jarhanpur. A war was about to break out between these two countries. Superman tells Lois Lane in an interview later that he flew over there, captured the evil dictator, and held him up against a cactus. Threatening to hurt him badly if he didn’t agree to back down and hold off on having this war. So, we have established that Superman will grab the bad guy and threaten them harm. Keep that thought in mind. Later in the movie, Lex Luthor steals the dog Kal-El’s watching. The Man of Steel storms into Lex’s
office, tips over a couch, and yells at the villain, but doesn’t do anything to solve the situation. He could have taken Lex to the same cactus, and the movie would have been over in two minutes. Now, if you had taken my cat, SpookyNinjaKitty, when he was still alive, I would have ripped your eyes out. Seriously. The fact that Superman would hurt the bad guy to stop a war, but couldn’t do it to Lex, there was
only one reason he would back down, and that is for the plot. A dumb plot point, and it left me frustrated.
Our main villain, Lex Luthor, should be cunning, clever, and smart. Every good villain believes they are doing the right thing, and they are justified in their mind. MCU Thanos wants to save the universe. He thinks getting rid of half the people will accomplish that goal. Honestly, we could pick any villain you want and break it down; they always have a perspective and a mindset. In Superman, Lex is just plain evil. He is not smart. He is not clever. He is not anything but evil. He’s twiddling his mustache, tying girls to tracks. It’s a cheap way to write a character.
How about our love interest of the movie, Lois Lane? Sadly, disappointing. She was written as a really bad person. One of the examples I explained earlier is when Superman’s dog is taken from Lex, and he is worried, she simply says to him, “It’s just a dog.” It was a very heartless thing tosay. My friend Melody (although overall she liked the movie) shared some choice words about her opinion on Lois, and it was not a good one. A pet is someone’s baby, it’s family. I already told you what I would do if SpookyNinjaKitty were taken, so for her to brush it off as though it doesn’t matter is terrible writing.
The other women in the office at The Daily Planet were overly sexualized in this movie. No emotion, nasty, evil people who were so eager to break up with their guys, or they are all sex pots who can’t wait to take selfies. They want to have sex, and they want to cheat. For some reason, they all wanted to sleep with Jimmy Olsen. It was about his cock. They didn’t want a relationship. They didn’t want to be swooped away. They all wanted to have sex with him. The movie failed the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test is where two identifiable female characters in a movie speak to each other about something other than a man. Very simple, very easy. When you have Lois Lane talking to another woman, what are they talking about? Who’s dating whom? Who are you seeing lately? It’s stupid and juvenile. Again, poor writing. Another example is that the only other woman in the movie, The Engineer, who works for Lex Luthor and is his baddie girl, is just evil. But even she is doing unnecessarily over-the-top CGI, changing her body into different shapes. Like, what?! Or better yet, how about this? Remember when I said that Superman held the dictator up to a cactus to threaten him? So, Hawkgirl is supposed to be a hero, but she ends up flying this guy high into the air. He says to her, “Oh, take me into justice. I know you guys don’t kill.” She then says, “I’m not like Superman.” And let’s him go! Just like that, murders him. We live in a society where everyone is like, “Yeah, that’s good.” I don’t think that’s
good. I don’t think vigilante justice is the solution.
Ma and Pa Kent. Oh, boy. He used them horribly in this movie. Other people stated they were offended by how they were portrayed as old Podunk people who didn’t know how to use a cell phone or anything. And I can agree. It was offensive to me. The only time you see them is when Superman flies out there for a moment of tranquility and Zen-like thinking about purpose and meaning, and who comes out for the speech? The dad. The dad sits and blah, blah, blah, blah life. I could close my eyes and throw a dart at a storyboard for a movie and land exactly on how they’re used. It was supposed to zig when you can zag as a creative screenwriter, and that was using these people to their most basic form. Very disappointing.
Now let’s dive into the different plot points. The Fortress of Solitude is boring. It’s like an ice garage. You wouldn’t want to hang out there. Nothing is going on. There is nothing to do. It sucks. It’s stupid. It’s not cool. Lets talk to robots and play three minutes of a video on the wall. LAME. When you think of things like the Bat Cave, you are supposed to want to hang out. There is even a playset for the Fortress of Solitude, but why would any kid want to play with it? Why would Superman go there? To show off his robots and then watch a video clip of his original parents that sent him to Earth? It wasn’t well thought out. It was not explored further. Disappointing. There was a weird plot with Nano Bites. The Engineer invades Superman’s body through his mouth and lungs with Nano Bites to try to suffocate him. Superman flies way up into the sky in this like space fight, then shoots down. Unnecessary garbage. It reminds me of being hungry for ice cream and then somebody says, “Great,” and they bring a tanker truck in of Neapolitan and shove it down your throat. Ugh. How about the pocket universe? I was willing to chalk it up to Gunn’s version of events, but when we arrived at this plot, this is where the movie fell apart for me. It was like a bad video game. Lex created a pocket universe for the people he didn’t like and then stuck them in a big glass prison box. Women he used to date, in. Political enemies, in, etc. There is a character named Metamorpho. Lex is holding his baby hostage, so Metamorpho is willing to do as he commands. He can transform himself into any material, so he turns into Kryptonite to contain Clark Kent/Superman. There is a little Kaiju monster that runs around and becomes a big monster. It argues with the Justice gang, which includes Mr. Terrific, Guy Gardner as Green Lantern, and the earlier mentioned Hawkgirl. And the line that Guy Gardner has after he gets into Superman’s face, “Make a move, big blue.” As if he has any chance of beating him. Between frost breath and laser eyes, Guy would be toast in a second. Ever heard of Homelander? Geez…
But they are arguing about why they shouldn’t kill this thing; it’s just a being. Then they end up killing it anyway. My point in all this, if you are being held prisoner by somebody who has kryptonite and the world is being destroyed, people are dying right in front of your face, etc., why couldn’t Superman just zap him with his laser eyes and kill the character, then break out and save the world? But no, he is whining about being in pain, and what can I do? Just absolutely unforgivable terrible. Garbage. When it came to the Justice gang, it was like Gunn was trying to revive the characters / personalities from Guardians of the Galaxy. I can agree. I see the quips. I see the lines. These are things that Star Lord would say to Yondu, or Nebula, or somebody else in that list of characters. I get it. But it didn’t bother me as much as the other things I’m going to focus on now.
The CGI was horribly misused. Lex walks into a battle at the Fortress of Solitude and walks straight ahead while machinery and blades are flying centimeters from his nose and his head! That’s not badass. That’s not cool. That’s stupid. That’s dumb. These aren’t things Gunn has
control over, but come on! And the whole Ultraman clone thing, yeah, I’m not going to even get into that because at this point, I had already mentally checked out. It had lost me. So unnecessary. Lois and Clark got to kiss in the movie, while also expressing their love for each other. At least I feel a little good that we got that moment. But he still introduced the will-they, won’t-they love that Peter Quill and Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy had. They were into each other but never kissed. When Gunn was absent from the company in the Infinity War movies, they were kissing as a couple, so he was never a part of that. So, for Lois and Clark to kiss and say they love each other in this movie, I’m glad to see he had that moment. I appreciated that.
At the end of the movie, you find out that the dog Superman was watching was, in fact, Supergirl’s dog. She shows up drunk and takes her dog back. She then flies off drunk, and Superman doesn’t seem to think that is a disservice, a danger, or a hazard to people. Supergirl says, “Thanks for watching him, bitch.” Then she is gone. That’s our introduction to Supergirl! So, if you want your daughter to look up to Supergirl, then she might be drunk driving and calling people bitch. Is that a good thing?
There are a couple of things I liked about the movie. One being Superman’s backstory. The classic tale of Superman is that his planet, Krypton, is dying, and his parents sent him in a little rocket ship to Earth. Now, why they couldn’t send themselves or other people to Earth, I don’t know. That has never been questioned. But Superman comes to Earth and is raised by human parents. Superman adopts Earth’s ways and does the best he can to help society. Great Wonderful. So, Superman grew up thinking that he was meant to be a savior to humans and mankind in America. In this movie, it takes place three years after Clark Kent became Superman. When he arrived on Earth, he was sent with a transmission that was damaged in flight, so he was only able to hear part of the message. Logically, why didn’t Superman find a smart genius to fix the video? That’s weird. But how is it that when Lex Luther breaks into the Fortress of Solitude and steals the transmission, he can get his henchman to fix the code? Doesn’t add up. Now we get to hear the whole message, and it turns out that Superman’s parents wanted him to conquer Earth and to rule over it. James Gunn’s version was that Superman’s parents wanted him to have a harem of women, 100 wives, and tons of babies. I think it’s good to play with some of the things that we know of him because it gets boring using the same tropes. So, that was clever.
The second thing I liked was in the third act. The pocket dimension becomes unstable and rips a tear in reality, splitting the Earth. Okay, that’s bad. Mr. Terrific, who is this genius superhero, needs Superman’s help. However, the dictator from earlier knows that Superman is being held in the pocket dimension, so he begins his war again. The tear in the pocket dimension is taking over Metropolis. So, you’ve got a war that’s getting started, and Superman can’t be in two places at once. That was the moment when I was getting excited. Finally, something real, some stakes, some drama, some tension, and of course, they bungle it and kind of sidestep it. Now, if anyone ever allowed Tim Chizmar to have creative control over a Superman story, nobody ever will. But if someone did, I would explore the idea that Superman can’t be everywhere at the same time while he’s having dinner with Lois Lane. Kids are being kidnapped, people are being raped, people are being tortured, people are being killed, people are being sold into sex slavery, but he is choosing to sit there and eat some turkey with his girl. That is what I feel is a story, because how do you deal with that? How can you turn off your super hearing, where you hear screams of ‘help’ and ‘please save me’? To ever have any semblance of a life and not go mad, not go crazy. How would you not want to set the world on fire because it’s so evil all the time?
Here we are at the end of the movie, and I literally pulled my blanket over my face and thought to myself. I’d rather watch someone take a shit. Oh, an expensive shit. Thanks, Gunn. Give me your keys. You are drunk, drunk, drunk with money and power. Who let him drive?
This movie was predictable and forgettable. Overall, I am very disappointed in Gunn’s artistic ability and what he did with this film. #supershit. With that said, my dear friend who accompanied me had her thoughts. She liked it. The ending, about the adoptive parents teaching Superman about love and the beauty of humanity, as well as the dog’s cuteness, was heartwarming. After processing the movie for a few days, she came back with more insight. Her thoughts to me included – “””Lois Lane was a cunt. The whole “I’m thinking about breaking up with him” bit was just…really? You think you can do better than Superman? The good’est boy in the history of boys. Then she is grilling him because he stuck the dictator to the cactus to end a war. God forbid a warlord gets pricked in the back a little!! I wish they had spent more time together to justify the ending. I hated the dog defeating Lex Luthor as much the way Pepper Potts defeated the bad guy in Iron Man 3. The unnecessary use of the dog chewing on Lex and throwing him around the way that the Incredible Hulk threw Loki around, a little too on the nose. I like the darker take on Superman’s parents sending him to Earth to conquer it. However, Invincible did it first and better. I was also not happy about Lois saying, “It is just a dog.” She thinks Superman should have broken up with her just for that. The fact that he stayed with her after made me lose respect for him. Congratulations, Pepper Pots, you are now the second-worst girlfriend of a superhero in cinema.”” There you have it! After she mulled it over, I wasn’t the only one to think this movie was #supershit. Could Gunn have done better? Yes! Could I have done better? Of course! Gunn, you’ve done better, man. Don’t surround yourself with Yes Men. Please.
Before I sign off, I have an announcement! After years of hurdles, I am finally set to shoot my project baby, Naked Alien Massacre, in September! I wrote it, am producing it, and directing it. *Wink* *Wink* I’ll show you how it’s done, James Gunn!
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